09-06-2012, 01:52 PM
Of all the games I picked up from this year's Steam Summer Sale, the one that sucked away the most free time was, interestingly enough, Orcs Must Die!. In the grand tradition of the Lurker Lounge shelling out for advertising money, I bring you a review of this game by me so that I can roll in the cash.
Erm, maybe not. But I'll review it anyway.
Spoiler: I really liked the game, and I'm drawing attention to it because I think many here will like it too.
Take Diablo, change it to a third-person perspective, make it a tower defense game, add humor, and you have Orcs Must Die! (Metacritic link), a budget game from Robot Entertainment. Okay, so maybe it's not really that much like Diablo. The developer's fairly new on the scene and has, in my opinion, made a successful splash.
Coming out almost a year ago, the game also features a few "expansion packs," which include new traps/spells and levels. You can purchase the whole thing bundled up in their "Game of the Year" edition (recommended for an extra $3.00). The sequel is also out, amazingly titled Orcs Must Die! 2, which adds a key element not present in the first game - multiplayer. Does that make the first game skippable? Not in my opinion, although I haven't played the second yet. But what about the game itself?
I've always been a fan of tower defense games. There's something enjoyable to me about figuring out optimal strategies of tower mechanics, placement, usage, etc to see how well you can stop an oncoming horde of Bad Guys™ who want to reach objective X. In Orcs Must Die!, you're not so much defending things with towers, but rather setting traps of all kinds along a path (often multiple paths) to stop an invading army of orcs, ogres, goblins, and bats from reaching their objective - a "rift," a portal to the world of humanity where they can run rampant (pillage, murder, etc). You combine traps with your own offensive weapons and spells, which adds an action element to the game. For some reason, almost all my favorite games throughout my life have been hybrids, and this is no exception.
The game has a plot of sorts - don't expect anything earth-shattering; the emphasis is on the gameplay. But there is a loose story tying everything together, and the eventual reveal of the Bad Guy™ plays into the game's sequel as well. There's a lot of gameplay present, though. Three difficulty levels keep the game fresh if you want to really push yourself at the hardest level. The Apprentice mode is the "casual" difficulty - orcs are easy to kill, and there's fewer of them. War Mage is the "standard" difficulty, which still teaches you as you go along. When you're playing the early levels, you'll only have a handful of traps to use, and each victory will award you a new trap that you can set. By the time you reach the end of the game, you'll have access to dozens of different traps - but can only select 9 per level to use, so the choice of traps is a big part of the strategy. The final difficulty level, Nightmare, is for those who have mastered the game and want to give themselves a hard time. It's an unforgiving difficulty that gives you no time to prepare your defenses, throws a lot more orcs at you, and increases the difficulty of the monsters you face.
As you win each level, your performance is rated thusly on a scale of 1 to 5 "skulls":
1) Did you complete the level within the "par" time? This timer is there simply to ensure that you don't just spend 15 minutes leisurely setting your traps between each break in orc waves. Completing the level within par awards you 1 skull.
2) Did any orcs make it to the rift? If so, start deducting skulls based on the number that made it through.
You lose a level if the requisite number of enemies make it to the rift - this number varies per level. Of course, you can just try again. If you play a level in easy mode - Apprentice - you'll only receive two skulls maximum for a win.
The skulls you win for your performance you can then spend to upgrade your traps. Trap upgrade decisions are final, with no refunds, so choose carefully. If you play through the entire game and all difficulty levels, you'll get enough skulls to upgrade pretty much everything, but it's true that you'll get more bang for your buck upgrading certain traps first (hint: tar trap).
What really shines to me is that there are a staggeringly large number of different ways to solve each level. It's very easy to fall into the trap (pun intended) of settling into one way to approach each level, until you finally hit a level where your method doesn't work well and you're forced to try something different. I recommend experimenting once you get a good set of traps to use. Be willing to lose a level to try out a method and see what happens, or else you'll get stuck using one or two methods only and struggle later on. This is what happens naturally when you start out with certain traps and gain more later on - you'll have a lot of experience with the early traps, and be less willing to try out the later ones. After I beat the game, I watched a few Youtube videos of how people played certain levels and was amazed at the varied methods people employed to get the job done (don't do this when you're stuck, though - it'll ruin the fun of figuring out a new method yourself).
Also, if you're really struggling to get a 5 "skull" win on a particular level, you can always move on to the next level and come back to the one you struggled with once you have some new or upgraded traps. Some levels are just plain harder than others. The game encourages you to go back and replay an old level that way, sometimes with an entirely new strategy.
When you play on Steam, it will show you your score on the Leaderboards. It will also show you your score for each level compared to your Steam friends who have the game, and if you're into that sort of thing, you can try to compete for higher scores. You gain more points from setting up kill combos (where multiple traps are used to kill monsters) and killing streaks.
All in all, it's a great game and grows on you the more you play it. You get cooler and cooler traps, upgrading them is fun, and you gain more and more varied ways to win the levels. The levels get tougher as you go along, and the Lost Adventures add-on levels are particularly challenging.
The game has a lot of humor. As the orcs are charging you to get to the rift, they yell out a lot of silly lines, such as "can you validate my parking?" and "last one to the rift is a human!" The main character, a cocky moronic a-hole, shouts out things like "aww, look who has no arms!" after blasting an orc, or "THAT just happened!" It adds a comical ambiance to the game that doesn't take itself too seriously, and I enjoyed that aspect of it quite a bit. An argument could be made that the comic lines get old after a while, which is true.
I heavily recommend this game to anyone who enjoys action games or tower defense games, and especially if you like both of those. The combination of the two makes for a really fun experience. Crotchety old Bolty™ gives Orcs Must Die! two thumbs up.
For a feel of the gameplay, I'd recommend Robot Entertainment's interactive Youtube trailer, which lets you make some decisions about how to approach a level and shows you the results.
Erm, maybe not. But I'll review it anyway.
Spoiler: I really liked the game, and I'm drawing attention to it because I think many here will like it too.Take Diablo, change it to a third-person perspective, make it a tower defense game, add humor, and you have Orcs Must Die! (Metacritic link), a budget game from Robot Entertainment. Okay, so maybe it's not really that much like Diablo. The developer's fairly new on the scene and has, in my opinion, made a successful splash.
Coming out almost a year ago, the game also features a few "expansion packs," which include new traps/spells and levels. You can purchase the whole thing bundled up in their "Game of the Year" edition (recommended for an extra $3.00). The sequel is also out, amazingly titled Orcs Must Die! 2, which adds a key element not present in the first game - multiplayer. Does that make the first game skippable? Not in my opinion, although I haven't played the second yet. But what about the game itself?
I've always been a fan of tower defense games. There's something enjoyable to me about figuring out optimal strategies of tower mechanics, placement, usage, etc to see how well you can stop an oncoming horde of Bad Guys™ who want to reach objective X. In Orcs Must Die!, you're not so much defending things with towers, but rather setting traps of all kinds along a path (often multiple paths) to stop an invading army of orcs, ogres, goblins, and bats from reaching their objective - a "rift," a portal to the world of humanity where they can run rampant (pillage, murder, etc). You combine traps with your own offensive weapons and spells, which adds an action element to the game. For some reason, almost all my favorite games throughout my life have been hybrids, and this is no exception.
The game has a plot of sorts - don't expect anything earth-shattering; the emphasis is on the gameplay. But there is a loose story tying everything together, and the eventual reveal of the Bad Guy™ plays into the game's sequel as well. There's a lot of gameplay present, though. Three difficulty levels keep the game fresh if you want to really push yourself at the hardest level. The Apprentice mode is the "casual" difficulty - orcs are easy to kill, and there's fewer of them. War Mage is the "standard" difficulty, which still teaches you as you go along. When you're playing the early levels, you'll only have a handful of traps to use, and each victory will award you a new trap that you can set. By the time you reach the end of the game, you'll have access to dozens of different traps - but can only select 9 per level to use, so the choice of traps is a big part of the strategy. The final difficulty level, Nightmare, is for those who have mastered the game and want to give themselves a hard time. It's an unforgiving difficulty that gives you no time to prepare your defenses, throws a lot more orcs at you, and increases the difficulty of the monsters you face.
As you win each level, your performance is rated thusly on a scale of 1 to 5 "skulls":
1) Did you complete the level within the "par" time? This timer is there simply to ensure that you don't just spend 15 minutes leisurely setting your traps between each break in orc waves. Completing the level within par awards you 1 skull.
2) Did any orcs make it to the rift? If so, start deducting skulls based on the number that made it through.
You lose a level if the requisite number of enemies make it to the rift - this number varies per level. Of course, you can just try again. If you play a level in easy mode - Apprentice - you'll only receive two skulls maximum for a win.
The skulls you win for your performance you can then spend to upgrade your traps. Trap upgrade decisions are final, with no refunds, so choose carefully. If you play through the entire game and all difficulty levels, you'll get enough skulls to upgrade pretty much everything, but it's true that you'll get more bang for your buck upgrading certain traps first (hint: tar trap).
What really shines to me is that there are a staggeringly large number of different ways to solve each level. It's very easy to fall into the trap (pun intended) of settling into one way to approach each level, until you finally hit a level where your method doesn't work well and you're forced to try something different. I recommend experimenting once you get a good set of traps to use. Be willing to lose a level to try out a method and see what happens, or else you'll get stuck using one or two methods only and struggle later on. This is what happens naturally when you start out with certain traps and gain more later on - you'll have a lot of experience with the early traps, and be less willing to try out the later ones. After I beat the game, I watched a few Youtube videos of how people played certain levels and was amazed at the varied methods people employed to get the job done (don't do this when you're stuck, though - it'll ruin the fun of figuring out a new method yourself).
Also, if you're really struggling to get a 5 "skull" win on a particular level, you can always move on to the next level and come back to the one you struggled with once you have some new or upgraded traps. Some levels are just plain harder than others. The game encourages you to go back and replay an old level that way, sometimes with an entirely new strategy.
When you play on Steam, it will show you your score on the Leaderboards. It will also show you your score for each level compared to your Steam friends who have the game, and if you're into that sort of thing, you can try to compete for higher scores. You gain more points from setting up kill combos (where multiple traps are used to kill monsters) and killing streaks.
All in all, it's a great game and grows on you the more you play it. You get cooler and cooler traps, upgrading them is fun, and you gain more and more varied ways to win the levels. The levels get tougher as you go along, and the Lost Adventures add-on levels are particularly challenging.
The game has a lot of humor. As the orcs are charging you to get to the rift, they yell out a lot of silly lines, such as "can you validate my parking?" and "last one to the rift is a human!" The main character, a cocky moronic a-hole, shouts out things like "aww, look who has no arms!" after blasting an orc, or "THAT just happened!" It adds a comical ambiance to the game that doesn't take itself too seriously, and I enjoyed that aspect of it quite a bit. An argument could be made that the comic lines get old after a while, which is true.
I heavily recommend this game to anyone who enjoys action games or tower defense games, and especially if you like both of those. The combination of the two makes for a really fun experience. Crotchety old Bolty™ gives Orcs Must Die! two thumbs up.
For a feel of the gameplay, I'd recommend Robot Entertainment's interactive Youtube trailer, which lets you make some decisions about how to approach a level and shows you the results.
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