Yeah, it had to be done…  Sorry, a little slow on the verbiage here, was going to do a nice long review of Orcs Must Die, but I might have to circle back to that later…

Anyways, picked up this little gem for dirt dirt cheap an while I’ve never been a fan of “tower defense” type games, I have to say this was certainly enough to convert me!  At first I was a bit hesitant, I mean, the main character looks like he’s missing his ultra high popped collar and maybe it was the little hippy angel on my shoulder shouting PETA propaganda against killing orcs, but man, I didn’t put a whole lot of stock into this game.  And as per usual, that means I’ll eventually love it!  Talk about gaming stockholm syndrome!  Err, you get my drift.

In OMD (orcs must die), you play an obnoxious dude (and he’s supposed to be) that’s been tasked with keeping all the orcs from getting to the portals to someplace… Azeroth I assume… didn’t pay much attention.  Anyways, you progress through the stages, each harder than the last, but get new tools and traps to help keep them pesky orcs at bay.  You start off with a little money to spend on traps, but the more you kill on that stage, the more you can put down until you have an efficient orc murder machine that would be the envy of every chain fried chicken shop!  And there are soooo many fun tools to roast an orc with!  I swear, the developers are either geniuses or some kinds of closet sociopaths, because there are some pretty inventive ways of dealing with them green dudes.

Also, it’s not just a typical tower defender where you lay out traps, it’s actually more action oriented!  Kind of 3rd person shooterish with a little hack and slash and magic in there.  Like if Elder Scrolls had a zombie apocalypse, but with orcs.  So it can be as hands on as you want it to be.  And of course the replayability is pretty high;  once you beat a level, you can replay once you’ve unlocked some nice new traps to beat it even faster and get more “skulls” which are used to upgrade your tools.  Then there’s the super hard mode… haven’t gotten there yet, but it scares me a bit…

All in all, it’s an amazing game that you can sometimes find for an unimaginably low cost!  Highly recommended, even if tower defense games aren’t your thing.  Trust me, they weren’t mine, but try it out and you’ll be hooked!

So let’s hear it!  What’s your favorite fantasy creature (well, the playable kind like in rpgs)?  See, this whole OMD thing kinda turned me off at first cause I like the orcs.  Sure, they’re a bit on the tough side, but you know under all those tusks and green skin is still a big ol squishy heart!  They remind me of the Klingons a bit.  You know, rough and warlike on the outside, but still sing opera and read poetry…  Other than that, I’m a bit fond of the dwarves myself.  Usually, given the choice, I end up with a dwarf hunter/ranger/archer or whatever I can possibly do to make it close enough to it… a hearty beard is sometimes enough to scrape by.  >)