Defence Grid is a good TD.
I personally get bored of Tower Defense games really quickly unless they're more action focused, never been a fan of static defense. I do think that Defence Grid[sic] is the best "classic" experience you can have with tower defense. Very well designed game.
Just having a look at what is presumably the last sale before the summer sale starts, Dungeon Defenders. £3.39 for the game. £22.26 for the dlc's. Even allowing for the fact that £11.96 is for the recent dlc's that are not discounted, that seems excessive.
Add on to that how joyless the endgame is and you've pretty much summed it up. Not worth a buy at all IMO.
Dungeon Defenders is basically a DLC whore. They make a billion of these stupid little DLCs that add nothing, and then a few ones that add overpowered things you need in order to do anything.
Basically, it's fun for a bit. Then it's not fun.
I had no idea what I was doing in Dungeon Defenders. Used the match making feature which is not totally broken in anyway. Teamed up my level 0 character with a whole bunch of level 70s. I was level 70 in half or so. Didn't play it again.
Orcs Must Die! is the better, I made up a term for this, Action Tower Defense game (aTD). It's a very polished experience with some great gameplay for cheap. It's single player only, which I prefer personally. The sequel is coming out soon which should have co-op.
Isn't it an issue with your import taxes and minimum wage?
No taxes on digital products in Australia at all. Couple that with the fact that often Australian ISPs will mirror the game FOR FREE and you don't have to pay server costs. There's no logical reason it should be priced differently.
If you're talking about non-digital copies the biggest expense would be shipping. Even then it's not even close to a mark-up of 200% on most games. Games don't take any kind of special storage, so no fees there. Selling games takes no kind of special skills, so having a teenager on minimum wage isn't expensive at all.
What it really comes down to is a combination of fault from all parties. The consumer, like your average mother, has always been buying the over priced games at $100 a pop.
The retailer is part of a monopoly of bigger companies trying to stuff out competing and having huge mark-ups.
The video game distributor blames either the Publisher for setting the price or for things like "localisation" when they haven't changed a thing.
Publishers just changing the game price because they can, see 2K and the Borderlands bullshit. Usually blames the distributor for the price.
Personally the biggest finger (for digital products) to point would be at the Publisher. I see many smaller publishers like Paradox or Valve who don't price region and last time I checked they also had distributors. Nobody has managed to convinced me that digital price regions is nothing but price gouging yet.