[Review] - Orcs Must Die!

Orcs Must Die! is about the last of the War Mages defending the fortresses of the Order, an organization dedicated to stopping the orcs from invading their world. In each fortress there is a rift leading back to your home world, which you must stop the orcs from entering. You are given many traps to place as you progress through the game, as well as archers and paladins that will attack nearby enemies. You also have weapons ranging from your trusty crossbow and blade staff, to items that allow you to cast offensive magics. Using all of these, you must kill all of the invaders as they rush into the fortress.

In the beginning of a level you have time to set up your defenses before pressing a button to commence the battle, and you get other such breaks after every few waves. Otherwise, you normally only get about fifteen seconds between each attack. Attacking enemies vary from standard melee orcs, ranged crossbow-weilding orcs, weak kobolds that rush towards the rift, slow but powerful ogres, flying enemies, and others. You primarily gain money for traps and henchmen by killing enemies, and often will have to place traps during combat to strengthen your defenses. You can also purchase combat upgrades and other perks. You must choose between three different spell weavers to purchase these perks. Each grants you a different tree of abilities to use, focusing on player spells, traps and henchmen, and other bonuses.

When you're satisfied with your defenses, you can rush to meet the enemy head on with your crossbow, blade staff, or spells. Personally I found the sword to be underpowered, as you take much more damage while using it, whereas the crossbow can be used to great effect to pick off enemies with head shots from a distance.. The spells you can use include a pushing wind spell, a fire spell, an ice spell to freeze opponents in place, and a lightning spell. All weapons and spells have an alternate attack as well, with effects such as stunning.

Though the controls for the Xbox 360 controller are fairly good, I found the controls with a keyboard and mouse to be a bit more accessible and precise. This isn't really a fault of the game, just the nature of console controllers in general. There aren't many controls to memorize, but numerical mapping for traps and weapons is much faster than scrolling through weapons and abilities with a button.

Graphically there isn't much to say for the game, except maybe that it succeeds in having a decent, mildy cartoonish, stylistic look within the limitations of an arcade style game. Nothing looks particularly bad, but it's not as if you can zoom in and see lots of fine detail. The music also has a somewhat whimsical style, presenting you with an almost taunting sounding track as you complete a level.

Completing levels nets you a certain amount of skulls depending on your performance, with five being the maximum. These are used to upgrade your traps and make them more effective. You can go back to previous levels with newly unlocked and upgraded equipment to improve your score to get more skulls. This gives the game fairly good replayability, and makes it rather addictive. It also has a fair length with twenty-four fortresses to defend.

After completing the campaign you unlock Nightmare difficulty. In this mode you can replay the same levels but earn an entirely new set of skulls for each level you complete. What makes Nightmare mode so much harder is that you don't get more than three seconds between waves at any time to setup traps. Often you must set your traps during combat. It is much more hectic without the occasional pause to place your defenses.

Orcs Must Die! provides an interesting twist on tower defense style gameplay, and is yet another good example of genre mixing done well. It never feels too strategy heavy or entirely too much like a basic hack and slash game. It succeeds in having its own style and very solid gameplay. If you are looking for a fun but strategic game, Orcs Must Die! is a fine choice. It is currently out on the Xbox LIVE Arcade, and releases for the PC on October 12th.