Musings on ... Orcs Must Die

And so they shall in Robot Entertainment’s first-person tower-defence game. You take on the role of a War Mage and, with the help of your many traps and spells; you must stop the orc hordes.

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Now this game is very, very silly. Yes it has a story and characters and whatnot, but it all comes down to decapitating hundreds and hundreds of chunky green orcs. And a few ogres to be fair. You see, all you need to do is to stop them from reaching a portal to the rest of the world. If you fail to do that, everyone will die. Depressing, I know. But fortunately for you (and the rest of humanity) you have the ability to place a huge range of traps along the orcs’ routes to the crystal. These range from a basic spike trap, to giant flippers which fling orcs into lava or way back to the start of your gauntlet.

Each trap is pleasingly effective, and most of them ragdoll your enemies crazily, or just turn them into large chunks of meat. All of this is done with an air of comedy and with an emphasis on fun. You aren’t there to slave away at a level, but to slowly discover your own solution using your own preference for certain traps. You don’t even need to use traps if you don’t want to. You can equip your character with a variety of fiery or icy spells, each of which has a different use and effect upon your titular opponents. Some levels will demand you to take these spells, as there’s no possible way you could build enough traps to slow the horde, let alone demolish it.

And that’s where you come in. I don’t mean you as a character, but rather you as a player. There is often no choice but to get your spear/crossbow dirty with orc blood. It’s good, therefore, that the combat is so satisfying. If you prefer to get close to the orcs, your spear will take out great swathes of them in a single swipe. If you’d rather hang back, you can use your crossbow to score headshots for instant kills. Accompanying you through this are not only traps, but other human guards that you can buy. Essentially they’re nothing but static towers, but they offer extra support based upon your chosen fighting style. I often depended heavily on the chunky and tough knights to slow enemies down whilst I took enemies down from afar.

But despite this huge number of traps, the game is by no means easy. It’s probably the most challenging tower defence game I’ve played, but not because of anything stupid. It doesn’t just crank up the health on enemies, to the point where every minion is a demi-god in his own right. Rather, it makes the maps trickier, forcing you to race between different routes, trying to keep your towers alive and firing whilst simultaneously keeping yourself alive. And this is just on the first play-through. Complete that (and you’ll almost certainly want to) and you’ll unlock the harder mode. As far as I can tell the second mission is literally impossible. It’s possible I’m doing something wrong, but mother of God they don’t make it easy for you. Throwing an ogre (armoured as well if I’m not mistaken) at you almost straight away is cruel.

But the game remains fun, and more importantly it makes you think all of the time. Even during the building intervals, you’re making choices about which towers you want to buy, or which upgrades you want. I’m just going to put it out there, but I really like the upgrade system. The first time in each map that you wish to purchase an upgrade, it forces you to choose between improving towers and improving yourself. Initially I thought I would always stick to the tower upgrades, but by the end I had no choice but to improve my spells and weapons. I was pleasantly surprised, therefore, when it turned out the upgrades turn your character into an absolute beast, capable of destroying dozens of orcs single-handedly.

That character is an odd one. He starts off quite fun, with a fairly decent selection of one-liners that he calls occasionally. Then he passes through a phase of ‘Jesus Christ, just shut up please’ (or as I like to call it, the Garrus in Mass Effect 2 Effect). By the end though, I was back on his side, his cockiness and clear joy for his job was a great relief from most of the brooding angry men we’re usually forced to play as.

I suppose, then, that there is nothing left but to pass judgement on this game. A firm recommendation on my part. I can’t think of anyone who won’t enjoy it, especially for such a decent price.