While this may be a “niche” game, the franchise has enough cache with the gaming community at large that plenty of new heads will likely turn Stadia’s way. It was a touch of genius that Stadia managed to finagle a timed exclusive with Orcs Must Die! 3. While it doesn’t make a ton of noise, the franchise has always been what I think of as “low-key-super-popular.” Orcs Must Die! games don’t typically make the covers of gaming magazines, but a lot of people play them – and a lot of people love them. I took a quick look and, sure enough, I have the first two games in my Steam account, and the free-to-play version in my PS4 library. Because a good tower defense game is just the first step to a good full-featured tower defense game.If you are anything like me, you probably have an Orcs Must Die! title lurking somewhere in the labyrinths of your various gaming libraries. Zombies, Defender Chronicles, and Dungeon Defenders. The problem is Toy Solders: Cold War, Plants vs. The problem with Orcs Must Die isn’t necessarily Orcs Must Die. And since I don’t have any reason to care how many I’ve killed, I couldn’t tell you my number. The community support comes down to how many orcs you’ve killed in total. Orcs Must Die includes only a handful of scenarios, no survival mode, no RPG trappings, and no challenges to encourage replay. Now that my barricades and archers are as cheap as they’re going to get, I don’t really care about getting more skulls. And while I love the idea of spending these skulls to improve my traps, the improvements are so limited that I’ve lost interest in earning skulls. I can earn a fifth skull if I finish within a certain amount of time, but this is a minor part of the game that mostly comes down to how far forward I build my defenses. If no orcs get through, I get four skulls for upgrades. What’s more, every level is graded only by how many orcs get through. ![]() It all comes down to building a choke point and spamming archers to shoot the orcs who pass through that point. I get a new doo-dad and I couldn’t care less. I’m usually reluctant to make observations about game balance and tuning, but after playing most of the levels, I’m at the point where I’m doing the same thing every time I play. Those tools have to be all useful, or at least the sandbox has to be tailored for them.īut Orcs Must Die fails at this higher design level. It’s not enough to just throw tools into an empty sandbox. Consider the limitations of day, night, pools, and fog in Plants vs. Consider the challenges in Toy Soldiers: Cold War. Consider how Atom Zombie Smashers limited which tools you could use. Once you wrap your head around this, the challenge level pretty much falls apart, which didn’t need to happen. It mostly comes down to crowd management tools, which include blowing orcs back with wind, a springboard that flings them in the direction of your choice, and impassable palettes that let you define their path. What does it matter whether a trap shoots arrows at an orc or hits him with blades? What’s the difference between crushing him from above or spiking him from below? What good does a steam grate do if the orc isn’t wearing a skirt? There are some obvious combos early on, but as the game draws out and new tricks are introduced, I go from looking forward to them to wondering what the point is. ![]() Orcs Must Die unlocks a new trap or gadget every level, but it does a terrible job of explaining them to me, and the result is that I suspect many of them are useless. But the best battles have long-term context or variables you can fiddle with. ![]() The best games of this sort give you a reason to play, and a reason to replay, and different ways to play. Zombies, or Toy Soldiers: Cold War, or Defender Chronicles, or this week’s deliciously grindy Dungeon Defenders (which mostly renders Orcs Must Die redundant). To stand out, a tower defense game needs to tie it up in a package, like Plants vs. Moment-to-moment gameplay can only get you so far. But also like Trenched, it fumbles the crucial bigger picture. It looks great, it’s got charm, and there are plenty of toys to help you bring about the eponymous imperative. Like Trenched before it, Orcs Must Die does a good job with the moment-to-moment tower defense gameplay.
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