Orcs Must Die! (XBLA) Review

Posted by Adam Larck on 10.05.2011

The premise is basic, but is the gameplay? Find out inside.



Title: Orcs Must Die! 

Publisher: Microsoft Studios

Developer: Robot Entertainment

Genre: Tower Defense/Action

Players: 1

Rated: T for Teen



Orcs Must Die! is, in no way, a hard game to understand.

You’re a War Mage tasked with, guess what? Killing orcs. Well, among other enemies, such as ogres, gnolls, kobolds, flying enemies and more. Why are you killing them? To keep them from entering the Rift and destroying other worlds.

The War Mage is actually part of the Order, a group tasked with keeping the Mob from reaching the Rift. Everything had been fine with the elder War Mage, until he slipped on a bit of blood and offed himself. Now, your character, which is considered a bit immature and haphazard, is charged with picking up the task. Thankfully, he knows how to kill things quite nicely.

The Rift has 20 hit points that tick away each time an enemy enters it. It will also lose five points if you have to revive. Thankfully, the Rift can heal you if you stand near it. The only way I found myself dying wasn’t by enemies; it was by falling into a pit. When you’re using the crossbow zoomed in, it’s harder to keep track of your edges and, as a result, I’d find myself spending some Rift points to come back to the battle.

When the stage starts, you’re limited to just four weapons: a crossbow (which you always have equipped), sword, spike trap and tar trap. Except for your crossbow and sword, and some other weapons you earn later, everything costs points to use. The better the item, the more it costs to use it.

This is where the tower defense portion of the game comes into play. Before the start of each level, you can run around as much as you want to so you can get a layout of the level and see where enemies will run to reach the rift. After doing so, you can select which traps you want in your active inventory and go to work placing as much as you can. When you’re done, or you run out of money, you can let the onslaught begin.

Overall, there are quite a few weapons in the game. They range from simple floor traps to explosive barrels to wall traps and even extra warriors that will attack. Figuring out what is best for an area and where to place it is key to not letting any enemies into the Rift.

Besides deciding which traps to put in the inventory, you also need to figure out which spells you want as well. While you can never remove the crossbow, all other spells and weapons are entirely optional. You can choose to keep the wind belt to launch enemies over the side, or put on the fire bracers to launch fireballs into the fray. There are other weapons you’ll unlock as you progress as well.

Like usual, spells use up some magic when you use it. Magic regenerates over time, but using the weapons too much at once can hurt you if another rush of monsters comes at you while it’s recharging.

Also, all weapons and spells have a secondary attack mapped to the LT. the secondary attacks use some magic too, but have different effects, such as stunning a group of enemies or picking an enemy up. It’s always worth checking the secondary feature out to see what you can use.

Anyways, getting back to the horde. Once you hit the back button to release them you settle in and get ready for rounds of slaughter. While the orcs run at you, you can use the crossbow to take them out from afar and switch to melee at close range. While you never see how many orcs are in a round, you can tell when you’re between rounds as an orange clock will pop up counting down a few seconds as you build a few new things or move to a different location.

Every three rounds you get a long break where you can reequip your active inventory and take time to build what you need. It’s also a good time to sell traps that didn’t work to make your money back or to build something better. After preparing again, you can let the next waves come at you and test your defenses.

After making it through all the rounds in a level, you get skulls based on how many points you have remaining at the Rift, along with if you beat the level under par time. That’s right, you can only get a perfect on a level by beating the level under par time and not letting an orc through. Personally, I would have liked it just based on defending the Rift, as I like to take my time placing traps and killing enemies.

You’re going to want the max amount of skills on each level, too. Not just for bragging rights, but to let you buy new upgrades for your traps. The upgrades can make things deadlier, or can also make some items cheaper to buy. Either way, you’ll want to try and get as many as possibly to make your best traps even better.

Now, I do have to make note of what I think the biggest omission of the game is: co-op. A game like this is perfect for two players to set traps and slaughter enemies together. However, there’s only one mode available for players and that’s it. Hopefully, something can be implemented in DLC because it feels like a big loss.

After beating all 24 levels on the game, you can unlock Nightmare versions of each level. However, unless you just want to try and beat all those levels, that’s really all there is in the game. Sure, levels change and progressively get harder, but once you have a solid group of items you like to use you can pretty much advance through most of the levels with the same set.

Graphically, the game has an interesting artistic style that’s enjoyable to see. The War Mage looks cartoonish, as do the enemies. The levels also change in the paths they have, as well as extra traps available to use. Also nice in the game is the music, which fits the dungeon theme of the game nicely.

Pros

Plenty of traps and spells to choose from.

Good blend of action/tower defense.

Twenty-four levels to go through.

Cons

View when using crossbow can lead to accidental deaths.

Not much else to do after you beat War Mage mode and Nightmare mode.

Game could have been great for co-op.

The 411:

Overall, the gameplay is solid and offers a good balance of third-person action and tower defense. There’s plenty of traps and items to use, and a good number of levels to go through. I just wish a few more modes would have been implemented, namely co-op. Still, tower defense fans should find joy in leading thousands of orcs to their demise.

Graphics	7.5	The graphics style is cartoony and fun to look at. The levels are good, but there's only so much you can change a dungeon's look.
Gameplay	7.5	The gameplay is simple to pick up but will take you a bit to figure out what works best where. It's good, but nothing that the genre hasn't seen before.
Sound	7.0	The music is good and fits the theme nicely, but there's not much else to report in the sound department.
Lasting Appeal	6.5	There's 24 levels to go through, as well as an additional difficulty, but there's not much else going on here. A co-op mode is sorely missed.
Fun Factor	8.0	Killing orcs is simple and enjoyable, and there's plenty of ways to do so in the game.
Overall	7.3   [ Good ]