Friends Required
If you told me that you have never heard of this series, Orcs Must Die; I would believe you. Despite this entry being the 4th in the series; it’s still a really niche title, but usually they are a lot of fun. Orcs Must Die: Deathtrap makes some changes to the tried-and-true formula of setting up traps and defending a portal from the horde of encroaching orcs and honestly, I think the game is worse off for it.
MSRP: $29.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $19.99
Orcs Must Die games have always been about giving players the freedom to set up crazy traps around a level in order to stem the tide of the orc onslaught. The good news is that in Deathtrap, this still rings true. Players can still use barricades in order to herd the orcs where they want them to go. There are tons of options for players to show their creativity and lots of depth when it comes to setting up impressive kill boxes. The real challenge in each map comes from the location of the rift that players will need to protect. The various traps are made to be placed on walls, floors and ceilings so map layouts will drastically change how players can set their defenses which for me, is all a part of the fun. While in the past game’s players were free to run around and use their sword to kill the orcs as well but it was never a focus; until now.
In Orcs Must Die: Deathtrap players are introduced to the War Mages. These six playable characters are pretty varied, and all have different attacks and albitites. This would be cool if this was a hero shooter, but it isn’t. The goal of this game was never to run around the map and slay the orcs yourself, no; it’s to be the mastermind and set up these traps and watch as hilariously orcs are bounced around from spike traps and zapped into skeletons from electric rays. I don’t mind the various characters at all, some of the voice lines garnered a chuckled but none of their abilities felt any more powerful than the traps and, in some levels, I never even used them.
The biggest issue with Deathtrap though is the difficulty, the game will add modifiers to levels, and they make things entirely too difficult for single-players. This includes things like limiting areas where players can build, changing costs of traps and more. Not to mention the fact that the maps also wildly vary in difficulty going from ‘easy breezy’ to downright nightmarish. The series has always been a blast with friends but this entry with the focus on the War Mages and the modifiers that ramp up the difficulty; Orc Must Die: Deathtrap feels like the multiplayer should be mandatary and not optional. To that end players will be able to level up their various War Mages and traps to improve their combat performance.
Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is not as fun as Orcs Must Die 3 but there is still some enjoyment here. Coming up with creative trap lanes and watching the orcs run helplessly into them is always a joy. And the fact that the game is on Xbox Game Pass lowers the barrier of entry to test it out; at least if you have Game Pass. But with brutal difficulty, playable War Mages whose albitites just feel lackluster and no real narrative to speak of this entry feels more like two steps back in the series rather than one step forward.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.