PC Gamer - October 2011

ORCS MUST DIE

Gnolls are speedy, durable, and generally a pain in the ass.

HANDS-ON The best defense: a good offense—and walls that shoot arrows

I never feel powerful in tower defense games. Even when I create some murderous bottleneck, or I get synergy going between a freeze turret and a mortar, or plant a smart Potato Bomb—at best, I feel like a really skilled car wash operator.

There’s room for tea-sipping. And as an
ever-twitching FPS gamer with Red Bull
for blood, I don’t like feeling passive, or
locked into the rails of a machine that’s
already in motion. If tower defense games
are a car wash, playing
Orcs Must Die is like
wading into that suds-
and-water tunnel your-
self—wrapped in a scuba
suit, spraying a hose,
slinging soap, lunging
with the sponge. You’re
inside the machinery,

READ ME PUBLISHER obot Entertainment DEVELOPER obot Entertainment LINK http://bit.ly/orcsdie

directly involved in the process of subtracting what shouldn’t be there (orcs).

Your character is your agent for all this—the War Mage: a brash, magical, crossbow-wielding guardian that could be Bruce Campbell’s cousin. You play behind his back, at a ground-level perspective. The War Mage can make headshots. He can sprint and jump. During

I feel like I’ve left an oven on too long, except the oven is dragons.

my hands-on, I grab a single orc in the air
with my Wind Belt, suspending him in
midair before air-blasting him across the
room into an acid pit. As I’m taking my
time with this mortal volleyball, spinning
blades I installed down the hall are
crashing out, thinning the horde.

Cross-pollinated

OMD is an action game that takes place inside a horde-mode defense game. You’re a warrior-engineer, coping with the well-armed conga line of orcs by killing them directly, and by lining the surfaces of the dungeon you’re defending with traps. Mostly, it’s an endless cycle of panic and relief (like any good tower defense game). As waves get bigger, enemies inevitably slip through and you’ve got to apprehend the runoff with your weapons and spells.

Naturally, your approach depends on the layout of the level. Early stages usually have a single, narrow path that the orcs advance on to help you focus on learning the trap mechanics. But in a late-game dungeon, I have to deal with two