Orcs Must Die!

Fantasy genocide has never been such fun. [Issue#79, p.102]

For a fifteen dollar indie game, Orcs Must Die! has given me more enjoyment than most AAA, sixty dollar titles. I wholeheartedly recommend people buy this game, hardcore and casual crowd alike.

The action mixes well with the entertaining strategy elements of trap placement. The visuals are good and the sound is a definite high point. I only wish Orcs Must Die! Was longer; the game can be completed in around five hours, and after completing each level there's little incentive to keep playing.

If you can get past the War Mage's obnoxious personality and the repetitive and equally obnoxious Gothic metal soundtrack, which isn't asking for much, you'll find endless hours of good times in Orcs Must Die.

Orcs Must Die embellishes your devious side, encouraging you to devise clever ways of fulfilling the command of the title. For the not-so-clever, mowing down invaders with an automatic crossbow is also a great time.

Orcs Must Die! is one of those rare games that arrived exactly as promised. It's a fun tower defense romp with a twist, and plenty of strategy to keep the brain-gears spinning, nothing more and nothing less.

It's a pretty niche game, for sure, but if you like the sound of something action-y and strategy-y, you should definitely check it out - even if you've never heard of tower defense.

A brilliant little game, Orcs Must Die! lives up to its name with gusto. At 1,200 MSP ($15 USD) for 24 levels of highly polished, Orc-killing fun, Orcs Must Die! offers up a satisfying balance of challenge, personality and strategy.

Orcs Must Die definitely falls into the tower defense genre of games, but the speedy controls and solid third-person shooting mechanic make it feel more like an action game throughout.

Orcs Must Die! is a fun tower defense romp with plenty of strategy where you'll find endless hours of good times.

An amazingly fun game that definitely causes hours to pass without you noticing. The mixture of action and tower defense should really please fans of both, and the casual difficulty makes experimenting with different strategies a lot of fun without consequence.

Below its cartoony surface and morbid fascination with killing orcs in as many brutal ways as possible, Orcs Must Die! is a surprisingly deep and challenging game that begs you to delve into it and slaps you until you do it right.

While Orcs Must Die! isn't a perfect tower defense game, it's certainly a solid entry, and a great starting point for anyone who still hasn't caught on to this wild and crazy genre that is being ignored everywhere.

Orcs Must Die! is a wonderful addition to the tower defense genre spiced up with enough action to make it even more interesting and addictive.

A well-crafted, polished endeavor with gameplay that is enjoyable right down to its core, a charming aesthetic, and almost the exact opposite of a plot.

As far as tower defense style games go, Orcs Must Die is one of the best available and will find you literally glued to your seat trying to overcome the challenging story mode for hours upon end.

Nice-looking dumb fun. [Christmas 2011, p.85]

With practice, intelligence, and a steady aim, you'll find your own satisfying path to greenskin genocide. [Dec 2011, p.99]

Orcs Must Die! offers tons of fun but has no multiplayer mode which is a real pity. Let's hope Robot Entertainment develops a sequel with a multiplayer mode. Orcs Must Die! is without a doubt one of the best tower defense games of late.

While Orcs Must Die! doesn't really bring forth any entirely new ideas - Sanctum on PC does the FPS-meets-tower-defense thing, too - it does give us a really fresh combination of them, and along with the fantasy setting and legitimately funny jokes and fun ways to kill orcs, this is definitely one of the better XBLA/downloadable games you can buy this year.

There is one ball that this game dropped, one feature that is very missed from the whole experience: co-op.

Tower defence games will never be the same after this orc massacre. It's pure brilliance and impossible to stop playing. The only downside is that it would have been even better with co-op support. Maybe something for the sequel...

This mostly hilarious game fuses tactics with intense action and presents a solid challenge for any would-be orc slayer. The constantly growing repertoire of new traps and weapons provides endless amounts of bloody fun.

Don't get us wrong: Orcs Must Die! is lots of hyperactive fun. Just don't expect lavish long-term depth that'll keep you slaughtering for weeks.

A pleasant surprise in the downloadable games library. It mixes elements from strategy and action games, achieving a really addictive combination, with twenty levels that provide many hours of fun.

Orcs Must Die is a fine game and one that offers up plenty of fun. The amount of ways there are to kill Orcs means that the game rarely gets dull and if anything it awakens a sadistic nature from within. Genocide has never been so much fun.

If the writing were as clever as the gameplay it supports, Orcs Must Die would be a comedy masterpiece. It oscillates perfectly between states of calm, cool and collected design and panicked damage control, and rewards your diligence with a gorgeous sight: A finely-tuned whirling chamber of death, which gnaws up enemies with tactical brutality reminiscent of Tecmo's Deception series, and a gory kind of whimsy reminiscent of Grape Escape.

If you're a tower defense junkie, download Orcs Must Die! without hesitation. The lack of multiplayer is disappointing, but at around $15 you'll get five or six solid hours of play.

With numerous traps, weapons, and an endless supply of one-liners, Orcs Must Die! dispenses death with satisfying variety.

It's a game that entertains, and important elements like the controls and simple menus deliver the goods. Yet we doubt that we'll remember it when rounding up the many great XBLA releases this year in a few months.

Rewarding and frustrating in equal measure, but rarely boring, it's a memorable dose of mass slaughter.

The mechanics of Orcs Must Die! are totally solid, the visual style is nice, and the hyper-fast-paced play is a real strength, but the game almost feels incomplete. Without much variation in the gameplay and little in the way of details, characterization and extras, the end result is too lean to be as tasty as it should be.

Orcs Must Die is fun but in a limited, begrudgingly acknowledged sense. It's lacking a spark: something compelling to make you play beyond the first five minutes, or even through the first five minutes.

Orcs Must Die! is nice blend of strategic Tower Defense and venting hack'n slash, as odd as it may sound. Aside from a few shortcomings, its production's spot on and Robot Entertainment even managed to stick a nice story on top of it. But the main issue overshadowing the fame is the lack of challenge in the campaign. A little patch with a harder difficulty mode would be nice. And add a coop mode while you're at it, please.

Robot Entertainment successfully combines tower defence mechanics with some action, but the repetition of the levels and the long waves of enemies make it rather tiring.