Why I’m excited, and you should be too.
Even though I was late getting to it due to having so many other games to play and review, Orcs Must Die was one of my favorite downloadable games from 2011. It was released in October but I didn’t pick it up until December during the Steam Holiday Sale, when it was on sale for less than $5, so I had no excuses and it was finally time to play it. Fast forward to July 2012 and I am playing it all over again while I wait for the sequel to be released next week on July 30th.
After playing through everything that the game had to offer, I grew more and more excited for the sequel and one of its new features, and the biggest downfall of the orignal due to the lack of it, two player co-op. That’s right, Orcs Must Die 2 will feature two player online co-op throughout the Campaign, Classic Mode and the recently announced survival-based Endless Mode. From the moment I started playing I knew the game would instantly be better by playing with a friend and luckily for us Robot Entertainment agreed and added it to the sequel. Combining traps, slaughtering those ugly Orcs and upgrading our skills together could make Orcs Must Die 2 one of the best co-op games of the year, as long as they’ve stuck with what made the first game so great, which so far seems to be the case.
What makes the game so great you ask? Well, in my opinion it’s all about the well-designed traps. For those who may not have played the original game, the way it works is that you have a certain amount of money to spend on different traps which are used to kill the enemies before they enter the Rift that you are protecting. Each trap has a unique function such as the Arrow Wall which shoots a cluster of arrows whenever they walk in front of it, the Reinforced Decoy which explodes when attacked and the always efficient Archer Champions who help push the attack from a safe distance. My goto trap combination was lining the hallway with Arrow Walls, covering the ground in Poisonous Spikes, the ceiling with Pounders and then sticking a few Decoys in the middle. It works like a charm, every time, but I can’t wait to see what new traps they have in store for us this time.
Robot Entertainment haven’t revealed many details on the new traps but we do know that the War Mage has a new shotgun type weapon instead of his trusty Cross-Bow from the original, there is some sort of new spinning overhead trap to attack flying enemies and what looks to be a new poisonous wall trap. We also know that when playing cooperatively, the second player will take control of the Sorceress, who has a magical staff that has four different firing modes.
Combining traps together to inflict more damage is key and with over 50 traps, weapons and magical items in the sequel, it’s only going to get more devastating for the Orcs. As you unlock new traps and weapons in Orcs Must Die you could upgrade them by using the skulls you earned on each level, but there was only one upgrade per item (19 in total) in the original. In the sequel there are 225 upgrades available to unlock, which vastly increases the depth and replay value of the game. I wished for more upgrades in the first one and Robot Entertainment are delivering much more than I would have expected in the sequel.
With the addition of co-op, new traps and weapons with a deeper upgrade system and all new environments to slay Orcs on, Orcs Must Die 2 should easily top the original and I can’t wait to play it. If you still aren’t sure how you feel about it, check out the video below and then tell me that you aren’t at least a little excited to play it too.
