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Orcs Must Die! was one of last year’s surprise hits. The melding of tower defence gameplay with third-person shooter dynamics, coupled with bright cartoony graphics and a wicked sense of humour made for an enjoyable slice of orc slaughter that required both brains and brawn.
The sequel, Orcs Must Die! 2, doesn’t stray too far from the winning formula. There have been a few gameplay tweaks, but the biggest change is that you can now enlist a friend to help you repel the orc invaders in online co-op mode.
The setup is simple: orcs, ogres, goblins, bats and all sorts of other nasties pour out of one or more locations on the map, and you must stop them reaching the magical rift gates – if too many get through, it’s game over. Your character might be well armed, but there are far too many enemies to fight on your own. Instead, you have a variety of traps at your disposal to turn the tide of battle. These range from floor-mounted spikes to swinging maces, wall-mounted grinders and pop-up fire traps, to spring traps that fling your enemies into pits of acid or lava.
Each trap costs money, of course, and you never have quite as much as you would like. This means that winning a level requires you to thin down the horde as much as possible, before dashing frantically from pillar to post picking off those who have made it through your traps. The best defences involve using traps in combination; making orcs trudge through sticky tar while being shot by automated arrows is particularly effective, as is using traps that knock them off their feet into wall-mounted blades.
The original Orcs Must Die! granted you a new trap each time you completed a level, and you had the option to purchase upgrades for your traps in-game from the mysterious Weavers. Orcs Must Die! 2 takes a different approach. You are still granted new traps occasionally, but the majority, including all the traps from the previous game, must be unlocked with skulls. The better your performance on a level, the more skulls you get to spend on new traps, weapons and upgrades. You can also earn skulls with the new Endless Mode, which pits you against waves of ever-tougher enemies to see how long you last.
Skulls can be refunded as many times as you like, which encourages experimentation with different trap types and upgrades. If you can’t finish a level with a certain number of traps, you can always refund your skulls and pick your load-out from scratch. While this provides a little more variety than the original, it does mean you have to rely on trial and error more. In Orcs Must Die!, you knew that it was possible to finish a level with the traps you had at that point, and so you experimented with different strategies until you got through the level. In the sequel, you’re more tempted to mess around with different loadouts until you find the most effective.
Co-operative mode is a joy. You can only choose six traps each and have far less money than in the single-player game, so it’s vital to work together to lock down certain sections of the map and pile in to help out your buddy when necessary. There’s no limit as to where you can each place traps, so you can help or hinder your partner as you see fit. You can’t drop into each other’s campaign games, but Valve’s Steam service makes it very easy to pair up with a friend.
The main problem with co-op mode is that it has affected the single-player game. The later levels have four entrance points for the orcs, as well as more than one rift gate, and trying to cover them all can feel needlessly difficult. The first levels are fine, but the later ones are almost too large for one player to cover and difficulty goes through the roof. While it was possible to play the first game through on medium difficulty, with a few retries on the later levels, some of Orcs Must Die! 2’s later levels feel impossible until you’ve earned enough skulls to fully upgrade all your traps. To earn these skulls you have to hit the Endless mode, which feels uncomfortably close to grinding for us.
Nevertheless, there’s still an awful lot of fun here for £12. Once you’ve finished the main 15 levels you can always go back and play ten “classic” levels from the first game, only with all-new monsters and traps. If you’re after some challenging fun with a friend, Orcs Must Die! 2 is a great buy.
| Details | |
|---|---|
| Price | £12 |
| Details | www.robotentertainment.com |
| Rating | **** |
