Review: Orcs Must Die

I bought Orcs Must Die after having fun with the demo, but then I got busy with life and didn't get to play it until last night. Probably a good thing or I would have spent all my constructive time killing orcs.

Gameplay

It's basically a tower defense game mixed with and first person shooter. You play a rift mage who can create traps and use special abilities to protect a rift. Every time you kill an orc you get rift points which you can use to deploy more traps. You have limited resources so you have to choose your traps carefully. However that's where the game shines, there are many many ways to kill orcs, most of them also very bloody. Also it's a very strategy heavy game, if you don't put your traps in the right spots orcs will get by and it will be bad.

Graphics

Graphically speaking the game is well designed and the world seems fluid to itself. All the elements seem to mesh together. While this a bloody game it's fantasy gore so you'd have to be pretty squeamish to be disturbed by it. The traps effects rock and it's fun to watch the orcs go flailing through the air when launched by various means.

Storyline

Story wise the game is pretty simple. You are a rift mage who must protect rifts from bands of orcs by killing them by any means necessary, that's it. It's not a master piece of story, but it doesn't pretend to be anything but what it is a game about killing orcs.

Difficulty

This is not an easy game. Sometimes the odds seem impossible, you will die, and the rift will be lost. However the difficulty is well balanced to provide a challenge without being frustrated. And if you can't beat a level you can always lower the difficulty and come back later with better traps and powers.

Fun

This is a fun game, no doubt about it. I was only planning on playing for an hour or so and I ended up playing until 1 am and I didn't realize it. I loved every minute of the game even replaying levels to get better scores, you have new ways to kill orcs.

Overall

It is really worth the $15, but if you're not sure there are demos and they are worth trying. The demo is short, but it's exactly like the real game. I do think that the game might not be great on the replay once you've mastered all the dungeons, but honestly I think it's going to take a long time to do that. There are a lot of orcs and lots of ways to kill them. Even if I beat the game I could see myself coming back on a stressful day to run some orcs through the blender.

It's like engineering plus bloodshed.