Orcs Must Die is a very strange beast because it fuses two gameplay styles that should not match well but they do actually! The game is a hybrid of TPS style frentic movement and tower defense mechanics, where you need to defend a portal from the invading orc armies. How do you do that? I am glad you asked!
In Orcs Must Die you play as Maximilian who is a warmage wannabe. He can summon traps and units out of nowhere, no questions asked, and can wield a wide array of magical artifacts. When you begin the level, the game shows you where the orcs will be coming from and their route, so you can plan accordingly.
You can burn, freeze and zap them to death, shoot them with magic arrows, push them into lava and many more. Your traps are also very varied, including spikewalls, flametraps, barricades, turrets etcetc.
What makes this game fun is basically the frantic nature of it, that you can just run around the map, shooting so many different beasts (but mostly orcs) and plan your little dungeon of death. What dragged down the experience for me is the fact that despite the varied traps, some of them are outright useless.
I finished the game with the starting ones and some magic weapons and I did just fine so I do not like the fact that some of these traps are not that useful. On the highest difficulty some can be handy but it is very situational.
Overall, Orcs Must Die is fun and relatively short but if you beat it, you can buy a short campaign as a DLC and some extra traps and weapons dirt cheap these days.
In Orcs Must Die you play as Maximilian who is a warmage wannabe. He can summon traps and units out of nowhere, no questions asked, and can wield a wide array of magical artifacts. When you begin the level, the game shows you where the orcs will be coming from and their route, so you can plan accordingly.
You can burn, freeze and zap them to death, shoot them with magic arrows, push them into lava and many more. Your traps are also very varied, including spikewalls, flametraps, barricades, turrets etcetc.
What makes this game fun is basically the frantic nature of it, that you can just run around the map, shooting so many different beasts (but mostly orcs) and plan your little dungeon of death. What dragged down the experience for me is the fact that despite the varied traps, some of them are outright useless.
I finished the game with the starting ones and some magic weapons and I did just fine so I do not like the fact that some of these traps are not that useful. On the highest difficulty some can be handy but it is very situational.
Overall, Orcs Must Die is fun and relatively short but if you beat it, you can buy a short campaign as a DLC and some extra traps and weapons dirt cheap these days.