‘Orcs Must Die! 3’ Does Exactly What It Should: Go Big

I’ve killed millions of orcs in my life. Sure, I’m a monster in the greenskins’ eyes, but, to me, I’m just a big fan of the Orcs Must Die! series. For the past decade it’s offered me the unique entertainment of filling corridors with elaborate arrays of traps, all placed with the express purpose of efficiently and effectively flattening, dicing, and scorching incoming waves of orcs. It speaks to the middle manager in me. And the masochist.

Orcs Must Die! 3 is the kind of sequel that knows what to change and what to keep the same. The campaign is another collection of levels set in the depths of fantasy castles, all constructed of winding, overlapping corridors and dotted with gates that will be breached by invading orc hordes. Your arsenal of traps include all the old favourites - there are arrow walls, pounders, grinders, flippers. The old tactics still work, so when faced with armoured orcs you’ll do extra damage if you electrocute them; unarmoured orcs are susceptible to acid; and ogres, well, they aren’t fans of George RR Martin, so you want to hit them with ice and fire.

Watch the launch trailer for Orcs Must Die! 3 below…

So what has changed? Well, in a most Orcs Must Die! manner, this game goes bigger. Bigger traps, bigger orcs, and bigger hordes. There’s a whole new family of war machine weapons. These mega traps are like Goliath to David. There’s a giant flip trap that will fling clusters of enemies across the map (or off it, if angled right); a wall fitting that fires out a huge metal boulder and crushes any enemies in its way; and something called a Mega Boom Barrel Launcher. This is a catapult you can climb into and use to launch explosive barrels across the map. It’s an excellent way of tearing through groups of orcs in a single shot.

You’ll need the war machines for the new War Scenarios. These colossal maps see you face many, many more enemies than usual. Hundreds of orcs will pour out of the starting gates and charge at your rift. Mixed in among them will be ogres, trolls, and boss characters, really piling on the pressure.

Robot Entertainment

Orcs Must Die! 3 may not shake up the series, simply going bigger than it’s gone before, but in this case that is enough to make it one of my games of the year. I played through the campaign in a weekend. Then I played through it again in co-op. And I then played through it again to achieve five skulls on every level. There is an uncomplicated joy to these games that hasn’t dimmed in a decade and that should be applauded. 

Developer Robot Entertainment has done things differently in the past. 2017’s Orcs Must Die! Unchained reimagined the game as a kind of MOBA and, while I liked it, it never found an audience, and its servers were shut down in 2019. I’m happy to see the series continue in its original form, especially if it keeps getting expansions as good as (and as well titled as) the snow cyclops DLC Cold As Eyes.

Topics: Opinion