Orcs Must Die

 
Developer: Robot Entertainment
Steam Release: Oct 2011
Hours Played: 9.4
Similar To: Dungeon Defenders / Sanctum / Sang-Froid - Tales of Werewolves
Rating: 5/5 Parsnips




GAMEPLAY
OMD is a third-person action game where the camera tracks your hero from behind. However, before the fighting kicks off you'll need to make preparations. First off, after hitting Go, you'll need to open your spell-book and choose which traps to utilize from the roster. Then, back in the dungeon and with the icons for each trap lined up along the bottom of the screen, you'll click on these to bring up a ghost image of the trap which you place on the ground and walls; obviously with a view to doing the most damage to the pesky orcs who'll be waiting to burst forth from the entrance. When you are happy with your set-up, you release the hoard and let the mayhem commence! The orc's goal is to get to the rift while your job, with weapon at the ready, is obviously to stop this from happening.  


BALANCE & PACE
Each trap costs money and money is accrued by killing orcs which means you can place more traps on the fly in the heat of battle. You proceed to mow down these orcs with your crossbow while also seeing them get obliterated by your carefully placed traps. Take heed though, for there are more waves to come and as you progress the sheer volume of enemies can easily overwhelm you. If less than 20 get through by the time the level ends your comical war-mage character does a little dance and it's happy days! However, gameplay gets pretty frantic at times and it can be particularly disorientating when things get desperate. Fail - and you'll find yourself replaying levels multiple times to figure out the optimum strategy. Overall though, if you love the idea of seeing loads of orcs getting skewered, fried and mashed Orcs Must Die is a no-brainer!
 

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
Satisfyingly chunky rock solid menus with plenty of information adorn Orcs Must Die, along with a vibrant and cartoon-like medieval theme. The art-style, colour-schemes and font styles also suit the zany ambience of the game. Only the "Hollywood" style voice-acting of your war-mage is the jarring design element of the game but this is easy to forgive. Gameplay wise, I think it would have benefited by having a pause function between waves so that you could place your traps with more thought and care rather than confront the time-pressure and stress. Personally speaking placing all those traps effectively, with the newly acquired wealth, from one wave to the next in the minuscule 12 seconds I was given, wasn't anywhere near enough time to feel comfortable and really induced more panic that was necessary.
 

PROGRESS SYSTEM
A lot of your time will be spent at the campaign-menu where all 24 levels are listed with the accompanying skulls awarded for each. Additionally, your score and online rank for each level is shown on the adjoining leaderboard. There is also an upgrade button which shows you all the traps you have at your disposal but this can also be accessed in-game in the form of your spellbook. The main goal is really to get as many skulls as possible for each level. The more skulls you amass the more upgrades are made available as well. Unfortunately, I hit a wall and felt unable to progress after about 8 hours of play due to being constantly overwhelmed but I like to think this is due to my own ineptitude rather than is a fault with the game. However, I have also heard reports that the game is more friendly to the co-op crowd rather than the solo player 
 

CONCLUSION
Regardless of the co-op vs single player debate, unlike other popular action tower-defense games such as Dungeon Defenders and Sanctum, Orcs Must Die seems to be a more user-friendly title that doesn't over-complicate or bamboozle you with unnecessary extras. Trying to collect as many skulls as possible, for each level, also gives the player something to aim for. Everything is very intuitive, it doesn't take itself too seriously and it's a very straightforward pick-up-and-play game. Replaying levels is necessary but this becomes a fun activity and it's less messy and more fun than those aforementioned titles.  Still, this doesn't take away from the fact that Orcs Must Die is a positive blast to play and probably the best action tower-defense game out there at the moment.