I tend to despise things that are mashed. Mashed Potatoes are gross, mashed peas look gross, and the series MASH is a depressing reminder of the Vietnam War. Mashed up genre’s are a bit hit and miss as well, it’s not always like getting orange sherbet in your chocolate ice cream. Robot Entertainment takes the raw ingredients of an action adventure and mashes it up with equal parts tower defense and blends them together int heir latest game Orcs Must Die and boy does it chocolate my peanut butter.

Gameplay

What you’ve got here is an arcade style mashup of the tried and true action and tower defense genres. Orcs Must Die drops you right in the thick of it from the word go. You’ll be taking on the role of the War Mage sworn to guard the rifts between worlds from the onslaught of orcs, ogres, and imps.

The game is presented sequentially through numerous stages. Each of these stages will present new items, traps, or enhancements. In traditional tower defense style, your goal is to protect an objective from waves of assaulting forces strategically through the use of the terrain and traps. The traps of Orcs Must Die are particularly diverse and interesting ranging from those that pierce, sauté, and launch to those that tenderize, slice, and squish.

Also in tow are your guardian archers and paladins. Like traps they cost you cash and are, for the most part, stationary. However, I found their extensive range and versatility to be extremely powerful. There were actually little to no levels where I didn’t ultimately use all of my available guardian slots. This may have been somewhat simple minded of me and ultimately my own fault for being somewhat exploitative –  but what can I say, I believe in giving people jobs over machines!

Another objective of my constant dependence were the powerful magics wielded by the War Mage. Made available as you progress through the game, the powers will give you the ability to blow enemy orcs away with wind, incinerate them with fire, freeze them with ice, or electrocute them with….electricity. These weapons cost no cash, but instead used your mana pool which gradually regenerates. These weapons are extremely useful and let you really get in the mix and even the odds. Not to mention I found there to be little or no diminishing returns on the entertainment value they provided — there is just something about blasting orcas off ledges into vats of acid.

There are also a few “Weavers” as the game calls them who provide a sort of skill tree like approach to augmenting your abilities. The upgrades cost cash just like traps, so it may tend to be a later investment in each stage as their effectiveness scales. I actually found the games introduction of the Weavers to be somewhat lacking. It didn’t do much to describe them and eventually I had to fat finger the wrong button to figure out what they were and how to use them.

Since Orcs Must Die is a tower defense at heart, it’s important to mention the level design. The level designs dramatically influence how you play and strategies. Many of the levels will include purposeful chockepoints or areas of orc flow confluence. The scarcity of resource element putforth by the cash system enforces the need for not only effectiveness but efficiency as well. The maps also have hazards of their own that can be used as weapons. Like, for instance, a classic boiling cauldron of oil or perhaps a pre-placed log at the top of a steep flight of stairs. The maps accomplish all of their necessary tasks quite well and perpetuate the sense of tower defense as well as providing items that augment the action elements.

I’m fairly certain Robot Entertainment didn’t invent the concept of the Action / Tower Defense mashup, but I do think this is likely one of the best. Orcs Must Die is an extremely solid gameplay experience with very few flaws. I will say I was extremely saddened by the omission of online cooperative play and hope it is something that may be introduced in the future as DLC. For now all you can do online is lord your high scores over your friends. But ultimately playing the game was an overwhelmingly positive experience.

Audio Visual

Orcs Must Die doesn’t really break any barriers with its graphics. They look good, and suit the style of the game perfectly. They strike a healthy balance between stylized and realism that makes your stay in the War Mage’s fortresses a pretty pleasant one. There is a fair amount of ornamental objects that give the areas a nice living feeling and interactive objects are prominent but not audacious. All that said it doesn’t, as I said, break any barriers. I don’t really think anything new was done here, and it sometimes felt like it was all something you had seen before. Hell there are some points in the user interface you may swear you had seen it before. But all this simplification and generalization also leads to a frustration free experience and encourages an expeditious return to actual gameplay.

The very first thing I would like to say about the games audio is “kudos to the voice acting.” They did a brilliant job bringing life to what is ultimately some really generic lines. Speaking of which, I know Charlie Sheen jokes were in when you were making the game, but they aren’t now — “Winning” is now “losing.” Back to the point, the cheeky wise cracking nature of the main character is voiced in a way that doesn’t make you want to throw him right into the traps you just laid, and the narration during the cut scenes is also up to snuff. Musically the game paints an avantgarde  mishmash of medieval sound with modern beat, the result is a pretty awesome. In particular, I never got tired of the success song, or is it the celebratory dancing that goes along with it. either way, it’s baller.

Summary

Robot Entertainment’s Orcs Must Die is probably the most fun I’ve had this year. It’s an exceptionally fun romp that challenges and provides hours of entertainment. It also has a kind of arcade-esque fun factor that will keep you coming back. right after finishing I found myself pretty compelled to hop right back into it and have a play through at harder levels while trying to unlock some more of the achievements. I’s biggest pitfall was a lack of multiplayer cooperative play and as such I’d like to give it Two Fedoras first ever ‘out of ten’ style rating of 8 out of 10.

Orcs Must Die was reviewed on PC. It is available on XBLA for 1200 MSP and will be available on Steam on October 12th for $14.99.