In Orcs Must Die! you’re a War Mage trying to defend rifts (gateways to our world) from endless waves of orcs and their fiendish associates. The gameplay is fast, fluid and very addictive. The satisfaction derived from watching your cunningly planned sequence of traps squish, spike and flambé hundreds of unsuspecting orcs can’t be overstated. To get the job done, your character can utilise a variety of traps (spikes, blades, swinging maces, fire, harpoons and so on), guardians (Archers and Paladins) and spells.
As the game progresses you can also access Weaver upgrades, which further boost the effectiveness of your arsenal of tools. And if you prefer to engage foes at close quarters, you can always jump into the fray wielding your trusty crossbow or bladestaff. Aside from orcs, you also have to contend with ogres (slow yet tough to bring down), kobolds (lightning-fast and will ignore decoys), kobold sappers (watch out for your barricade), gnoll hunters (they’ll ignore the rifts, but will chase you down), hobgoblin shaman (resurrect enemy corpses) and a couple of varieties of flying units (use your lightning bolt on the smaller fire babies and your ice spell on hellbats).
The game is single-player only, but it has an extremely high replayability factor. We’ve spent countless hours repeating the 24 levels in Nightmare mode (the highest difficulty) and are constantly discovering intriguing new trap combos and strategies. Orcs Must Die! is simply one of the most addictive, exciting and masterfully executed action/strategy games we’ve played in the past couple of years. Orcs Must Die! is simply one of the most addictive, exciting and masterfully executed action/strategy games we’ve played in the past couple of years.
