I picked up Orcs Must Die! when it was a daily deal in December 2011. It was under $4, and I'm usually a sucker for cheap games. I was going to buy it, until I heard it was a tower defense game, at which point I went "Ewww" and moved on. Later that morning, my roommate wandered in to ask what the daily deal was, and to watch the video for that. We agreed it looked better than what the description sounded like, and he encouraged me to pick it up. And I am glad he did, because OMD! is one hell of a game.
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| OMD crit my expectations! |
You're a war mage, or at least an apprentice war mage, who
gets a field promotion when your master slips in a puddle of kobold blood and
dies. As a war mage, you're tasked with defending the rifts from an onslaught
of orcs, ogres, hellbats, and other baddies that want nothing more than to step
through the rifts in their world, and cross over into yours.
To those ends, you're gifted with a variety of traps and
special weapons. You are, however, limited in the number that you can carry
throughout any one level, up to a max of 10 slots. The first always contains
your trusty crossbow, which is great for taking out enemies at range or
stunning them with the secondary function before they can take that final step
through the rift. After that, its up to you to pick what best fits your play
style, and the available paths in the map, and there are plenty of traps and
weapons make your slaughtering possible.
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| Actually, my favorite weapon is the Alchemist's Satchel, mostly because it blows up and sprays acid everywhere /innuendo. |
Got a narrow bridge that funnels enemies to you, with a pit
of lava on each side? Maybe some spring traps to fling them into the pools.
Don't like traps, well then maybe you should use your wind belt tool, and knock
them off the edge, that is, as long as you've got the manna for it. Or it could
be that enemies are moving too fast for your wall traps, like axe blades or
arrow traps, to catch, so you could lay down some tar traps to slow 'em down or
freeze them in place with the Frost Amulet weapon. Fliers becoming an issue?
Use your crossbow, or archers, or ceiling traps to fry them out of the air.
There are a total of 26 traps, weapons, and other useful items in the game,
unless you pick up one of this game's two DLCs, in which case you get two more
weapons and two more traps, which are all worth it.
Each trap can be upgraded by spending orc skulls, which are
acquired by doing well in a level. Some upgrades are pretty basic, such as
decreasing the cost of buying archers, while others offer special effects like
increasing the range the traps reach or infecting enemies with a slowing
poison. It is important to note that upgrades are permanent, as you actually
unlock the upgraded unit outside of the campaign by buying it, and then it is
always available. And since skulls are going to be in short supply, especially
when you're just starting out, you'll want to make sure to choose very
carefully.
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| Scantily clad women that augment my damage dealing ability?!? Why can't I have all three? |
Another form of tweaking your character and your traps comes
in the form of weavers, which unlock later in the game. Each level you are
allowed to pick one weaver, each of which has a series of special bonuses
arranged in a tree like fashion, where you must have bought the prerequisite to
advance down the tree. I've always been fond of the Steel weaver, which
improves my traps and guardians. Archers firing fire arrows are always great
whenever there are fliers about, while turning up your physics traps so that
they fling ogres, the biggest bad guys in the game, right into the pit of lava
or acid with all the other guys, is well worth the investment. If you're not a
fan of buffing your traps, you can choose another weaver that improves your
weapons, or an eventual third that focus on your special magical weapons and
abilities, like the flame gantlets. While it's costly to advance all the way
down to the bottom, those bonuses always seem to pay off.
There are 24 levels in the base game, and 5 more in the
game's second DLC, which range in difficulty by design from the incredibly
simple, to the massively complex "holy crap how am I ever going to defend
this??!?" If you manage to get through them all on this game's normal
difficulty, you can always try your hand at nightmare mode, which amps ups the
enemies and gives you only a handful of seconds between waves. Plus, you can
always try and go back and get that perfect 5 skull score, so there is plenty
you can play through again here.
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| Death corridors are so much fun. |
All in all, OMD! is a great game. For $6 I got the game and
both DLCs, yet that gave me 17 hours of game time just getting through
everything on normal, since I'm not insane enough to try nightmare. There are
some issues with it, mostly related to running an SLI configuration (even if
you're running a single card, like my GTX295), but disabling SLI lets you
bypass all of that. Worth picking up, at anywhere between $10 and full price,
and you should have a good time defending rifts, killing orcs, and laughing at the
level intro/outro humor of this game, as well as little comments by your
character, like "making orc salsa!" or "this will hurt me more
than it will hurt you...no, wait, other way around." So jump on this one
the next time it's on sale - it's 9 out of 10.
So, the final breakdown:
Score: 9/10
Suggested Price: $10+ (with DLCs)
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