Orc’s Must Die Review
Orcs Must Die – Xbox Live Arcade
1200 MS Points
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Developer: Robot Entertainment
Released Date: October 5th 2011
I’ll have to admit that I wasn’t too optimistic about this release. Tower Defence games are not really my thing and to be honest, I find them sightly tedious and dull. Could this recent offering from Robot Entertainment change my mind?
The story revolves around your character “The War Mage” who is, for the want of a better expression, an idiot. An all-brawn, no-brain type of warrior who has a penchant for killing Orcs. But after the Orcs attack your fortress, you are left as the sole survivor and the responsibility of the kingdom is in your hands. To defend the kingdom, you must protect the fortress’ from wave after wave of Orcs.
To do so, you start off with simple traps such as ground spikes and wall mounted arrows and position them in the best place in order to optimise the amount of Orcs that will be slain as they storm the fortress.
So a pretty standard Tower Defence game then?
Thankfully, no! Robot Entertainment have combined the Tower Defence genre with a 3rd Person Shooter and have done it to great effect. One of my pet hates with Tower Defence games was the fact that once the traps had been set, you couldnt really do anything once the action had started in earnest. But The War Mage is armed with a sword, a crossbow and spells that mean that when your traps fail you, you can get involved and take matters into your own hands.
Unfortunately the War Mage has an annoying habit of coming out with “hilarious” quips during the course of the game which really got on my nerves. It’s like he graduated from the Duke Nukem School of Humourous Innuendo.
But the action more than makes up for the annoying protagonist. At times there will be hundreds of Orcs charging at you all at once. Depending on how you want to play, you can let your traps do the dirty work or you may find that you prefer the personal touch and try to hack and slash them down yourself. There is a very intelligent learning curve and you will soon find out which style of play suits you best.
After each level you unlock a new trap and they get more entertaining and more grisly as the game progresses. This means that you will inevitably find yourself promising yourself that you will just do “one more level” to see what new method you will have at your disposal to smash/mush/impail/boil/cripple your enemies.
The graphics are fantastically rendered and, while the levels are obiously linear (how could they not be for this type of game?) Orcs Must Die makes great use of the 3D space by allowing you to stay at ground level and inspect the path the orcs will take before the level begins. Once it begins you can run up stairs to intercept the Orcs from above or to position yourself to watch them being splattered by the Meat Grinder trap that you have set up.
One thing that could have improved this game greatly would have been the inclusion of a multiplayer mode. I cannot see why they chose to not include it in a game that seems to be screaming out for a co-op campaign. There are leaderboard tables to compare your scores though which is a little consolation.
Overall
I would have no hesitation to reccomend this game. This may not be the most original of games but they have taken aspects of different genres and have incorporated them brilliantly to create a thoroughly entertaining and fun game. You will want to go back to the earlier levels and use the traps that you have recently acquired which gives it a huge replayability factor, despite the exclusion of the multiplayer mode.
Orcs Must Die is a definite Must Buy.
SCORE : 9/10
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