GBAtemp Recommends: Orcs Must Die!
The setup is fairly simple. You play as a mage who needs to defend The Rift, a glowing ball of energy. The Rift only has so many hit points, and it loses one any time an enemy reaches it (bigger enemies can cause it to lose five or ten points at a time). If you die, it costs five Rift points to revive you. If the Rift hits 0 points, you lose. Fairly standard for a tower defence game.
Each level follows a similarly standard routine; first, you’re given time to explore the level, choose your loadout and lay traps. With their detached perspective, a lot of tower defence games don’t make great use of 3D space. Since Orcs Must Die! doesn’t need to provide a full view of the map, it can use more details in the area to let you strategize around. There are elevated areas where you can safely install archers so they can eliminate enemies without being hurt themselves. There are tight choke points where you can combine floor, wall and ceiling traps for devastating effect. Like most strategy games, learning the map here is the most fun part. You can see what clever tricks have been put in to the map to trip you up, and your mind starts racing to figure out the most efficient way to slow the enemies’ progress.
Next, you unleash the horde, and see how your plan holds up in practice. This taps in to the normal tower defence satisfaction of seeing waves of enemies fall before your automated defences, but in a slightly different way. Since there’s usually more than one entry point for the enemies, or more than one Rift point to defend, you can’t watch everything at once while killing enemies yourself, so your eyes are often darting back and forth between the enemies in front of you and the mini map to check for stragglers. Even if you’re not seeing the enemies die at your automated traps, it’s still extremely satisfying to know that you’ve prepared sufficiently. You can usually even dawdle over to that end of the map to enjoy the carnage and revel in your victory.
And if you do see some red dots scurry past your defended area, that tension that had been building boils over. The mini map doesn’t differentiate between enemies, so you’ve got no idea if you’re being overrun by lumbering giants that take forever to kill, speedy runners that slip past you and go directly for the Rift, or flyers that bypass obstacles and are harder to take out yourself. Then you’ve got to decide if you have time to handle what’s in front of you before you run to the other side of the map, or if you need to run back and forth between the two. Again, it taps into that stomach-in-your-throat feeling you get in tower defence games when you see your defences crumbling, but instead of having to sit there and watch it happen, you get a little rush of adrenaline as you try to rush over and pull everything together.
In between waves, you’ll get about ten seconds to adjust your defences, and once or twice a level you’ll be given infinite time to completely revise your strategy. You’ll also usually have enough money at this point to buy weavers, upgrades that can grant you or your traps various special abilities. It’s a needed little moment to catch your breath before the next wave.
Orcs Must Die! is a great example of how to tweak a genre. The majority of it plays like any old tower defence game, but that one core change manages to affect the way everything else plays. It’s a perfectly high-concept video game; one simple change, a one-line premise, and you’ve got something totally new and unique.
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Zero Escape Series - #27
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Pokémon XG - #24
Assassin's Creed II - #23
Rune Factory 4: Special - #22
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Tall Bagel - #18
Jazzpunk - #17
Mario's Super Picross - #16
Dread X Collection Volume I & II - #15
Journey to the Savage Planet - #14
Collar X Malice - #13
Persona 4 Golden - #12
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Frog Detective Series - #9
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