Tower defense has been around forever. But what if you were simultaneously building the waves of creeps trying to break through your opponents' lines? Allow this video and batch of screenshots to explain.

Defenders of Ardania challenges players to play both sides of the traditional tower defense paradigm at once. Choosing how to invest your money between attackers and towers of your own is the key to victory in this Majesty-branded strategy title.

Paradox hopes to make this much more than yet another coffee break tower defense – there are dozens of examples of that available for free online. Players will also have access to magic spells that serve both offensive and defensive purposes. Some environments have interactive portions as well, which will affect the flow of a match.

Defenders of Ardania features some "mazing," where players define the paths that creeps take as they move along the map rather than placing towers along a pre-set course.

On offense, you don't choose your creeps' targets – they mindlessly charge toward pre-defined objectives. When two waves of opposing creeps meet, they take a swing at each other and keep going. This isn't like DotA, where armies smash together in the middle of the map until one gains an advantage.

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Twenty-four each of units and towers are spread across DoA's three factions, all with a slew of possible upgrades.

The game offers a single-player story-driven campaign, but Paradox is upfront about the fact that DoA's focus is on multiplayer – or at least playing the competitive modes against the AI, possibly with friends in a team scenario.

Multiplayer offers three modes that put different players in charge of offense, defense, or both. As mentioned before, up to four players can play at a time online or in a LAN. My bet is that two-player co-op versus the AI turns out to be the most popular mode, but we'll see.

Defenders of Ardania releases this summer for PC, PlayStation Network, and iPad at a planned retail price of $ 14.99.

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Meet Sean. Sean is a community manager for Harmonix, the developer of Rock Band. He's also, it turns out, incredibly good at pretending to be a game reviewer.

Sean is about to launch a new web series titled When I Grow Up. The show will document his attempts to fulfill various childhood dreams, such as being a stand-up comedian, while struggling with memory issues related to complications from a brain tumor.

To help promote the show, which will debut its first episode at PAX East this weekend, Sean has been posting short videos highlighting some of the potential career paths he could have taken. In the video below, he decided to try being a game reviewer, and I've got to admit, he's got my process for reviewing a game down to a science. Impressive logic!

Enjoy the video, check out the When I Grow Up website, follow Sean on Twitter, and give this cool project the support it deserves.

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[via Destructoid]

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GI converged on San Francisco and took in the sights and
sounds of the 25th annual Game Developers Conference. Check out our
gallery of pics that were too hot for TV.

And by hot we mean random. Browse the gallery for the real life Ethan Mars, high-powered Nintendo exec Hideki Konno, the T-shirt of Doom co-creator Tom Hall, the handsome iam8bit squad, a crazy napping chamber, Finnish chocolate (thanks, Recoil!), and a sky shot on the return flight to Minneapolis.

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Hot Toys' upcoming Battle Suit Jill Valentine figure already looked cool, but now it has some new features that push it over the top into freaky territory.

Tomopop has the news (and some pictures as proof) that Hot Toys has added Jill's mask and cape from when she was disguised in Resident Evil 5. Personally, I wouldn't want to have those soulless red eyes staring at me from my desk, but it's a nice addition to what was already a good-looking figure.

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