It's been three games, but these orcs are still destined for slaughter. Launching first exclusively on Google Stadia, Orcs Must Die 3 (OMD3) returns to the shoulder much of tower defense fans will remember from previous games in the series.
This time, Stadia is said to be giving players new ways to see war unfold, such as impressively dense battles only possible in the cloud.
We have no other platform to compare performance to today. Still, it's true that hordes look gorgeous and intimidating on Stadia, which only makes them that much more rewarding.
Orcs Must Die 3 Review: Creative Cloud Slaughter
For the uninitiated, as I have already been, Orcs Must Die 3 is a third person action defense game. While my first impression of OMD3 (and therefore the series) was to compare it to Fortnite's lesser-played Save The World mode, I looked at gameplay from previous games and realized it was the other way around. . Orcs Must Die was already doing the kind of action-tower defense seen in Save The World years ago.
The story of Orcs Must Die 3 jumps forward two decades to a time when the hero of the last game is now dead, and the villain has been reformed as a mentor to two young heroes. Suffice it to say that beyond certain characterization inclinations, which regularly color character banter, the story is properly backburner as little more than lore for longtime fans. You can easily jump into this third entry without any previous knowledge of the series and pick up the narrative pieces you might want to understand.
Each level takes place in a castle-like environment. An overhead map shows you where entry points are and possibly where enemies are attacking, while the UI reveals how many waves you need to survive.
Players choose their gear from a handful of projectile weapons like a crossbow and frost spell as well as dozens of traps and are instructed to keep enemies out of the rift, a portal that would presumably send orcs into the human world. Really, the context here is entirely irrelevant, but that's okay. This corresponds to the configuration.
Orcs Must Die 3 has a mobile game addiction, which pairs really well with Stadia as you can play it mobile on the right wifi. I spent most of my review time playing it on a phone, and the whole experience was clearly designed to translate across the Stadia landscape.
It seems that the guiding principle of MDG3 was not a measure of how to drastically change the formula presented to it, but to make everything seem bigger and better. In turn, the cast of villains and the means to thwart them are both extremely deep.
I counted 50 total traps and weapons available to players, and I'm still unlocking some of them. They also get very creative, from early unlocks like spiked floors and heard tenderizers to late-game unlocks that can upend the game's economy, allowing your traps to become much more effective.
Each of these items has its own skill tree that requires many uses before it can be completed, meaning one game of the game simply won't be enough to use them all.
Endless mode sits alongside the campaign's 18 chapters as an additional way to play with the eponymous orcs, and it's in either mode where OMD3's central draw really shines.
Experimentation is key, and the game hardly nudges you towards particular items, sometimes only reminding you of a new tool you've unlocked (which can be inferred can work wonders on your current map). You'll unlock certain traps as you progress, but you can also skip the line and unlock certain things when you feel like it, customizing your loadout with the traps you rely on the most.
At first I found great success spiking floors, but it didn't take long for larger orcs to survive many of these hits and break through frontline defenses. Often we hear “trial and error” when someone complains about a game's mechanics, but in OMD3 it's a fantastic selling point.
Failures are interesting because you can often see where your best-laid plans have gone wrong. This teases a quick comeback. Many times I played much longer than expected because I was determined to fix my mistakes and see a level until the last wave was over.
The downside of opening each level is that some feel like difficulty spikes. Rather than a smooth upward curve found in some other genre games, OMD3 hit me a few times with levels that felt a lot harder than they should have, and took a lot more tries to overcome. They would always finish before the frustration set in, but I sometimes found myself at my wit's end as to how to slow the orcs' rise up the rift.
If your creativity isn't enough to overcome some of the game's immense challenges, it can also be played cooperatively. I don't have much to say about this feature other than it totally fits into this game - and really, isn't everything better in co-op?
While the levels spur creativity, the setting leaves a lot to be desired. Layouts vary with each card, but the surrounding assets seem to be repurposed on a regular basis. Generally, the same castle walls and distant fantasy landscapes color each level, leaving OMD3 to feel visually repetitive. Since the story doesn't matter, I feel like there was an opportunity to diversify the settings more than Robot Entertainment.
If it's any consolation, you'll often be rushing around each level so frantically to make sure your defenses hold up that you won't have time to sightsee. This is never more evident than with war scenarios. In these sections, players relive the adventures of past heroes as they fend off hordes of absurdly large green ghoulies.
I've been told the number of orcas on a screen can be as high as 450, and although counting them is nearly impossible, I believe it from seeing it in action. These levels feature some of the most complex lanes and by far the coolest weapons, even among dozens of great contenders.
Some weapons are exclusive to these War Scenarios, which break up the campaign across the board, giving players tools like mountable catapults that rain fire on orcs or giant floors, which can cleanly wipe them out of the castle like a spatula. These levels are like the boss battles of the campaign, and as a result, they're the most elaborate shows of all.
Orcs Must Die 3 Review – The Result
Benefits
- War scenarios offer stunning hordes and awesome weapons
- Creativity reigns supreme with endless victory lanes
- Fun even on failure as you strategize better
- Cheerful style and colors
The inconvenients
- The skin of the levels is very repetitive
- Some difficulty spikes can disrupt the flow of rewarding progress
All in all, Orcs Must Die 3 returns a lot of humor and level design that players might remember from previous games, but it's all presented on a grander scale. With dozens of interesting traps to choose from, there are countless ways to win, and with War Scenarios, winning has never felt better in the game – or perhaps the series.
A few issues with the dressings and difficulty spikes aside, Orcs Must Die 3 is an easy recommendation for fans of the series and genre.
(Note: A copy of Orcs Must Die 3 was provided by Robot Entertainment for the purposes of this review.)
