Orcs Must Die! Review: A Bloody Good Time

Game: Orcs Must Die!

Developer: Robot Entertainment

Genre: Tower Defense/Third-Person shooter.

System: PC (Steam)

Rated: T (Blood, gore, violence)


 Sometimes you want to play a game with a thought provoking story, an immersive world and well developed characters; other times you just want a game about killing lots and lots of orcs. If you didn't guess by the title, Orcs Must Die! resides in the latter category, and boy does it do a good job at orc killing.

Gameplay: Despite its orc ridden appearance and title, Orcs Must Die! has more in common with Plants vs. Zombies than, say, more orc-focused games like Warhammer and Warcraft. Orcs Must Die Is a Tower Defense game but plays like a fast paced third-person shooter. The game plays very quick and is always focused on the action of the moment. As you proceed through the game, you get new traps after completing each level. After every wave you get a few seconds to set up some traps, and after three rounds you get full breathing room to set up your deadly devices of orc dismemberment for the next couple of waves.

Orcs Must Die! Is more forgiving than other Tower Defense games since if your traps fail to kill off enough orcs, you yourself can take them out by the hundreds with your trusty crossbow, sword and spells. Combat is fluid and fast paced. Placing traps is simple and easy to do; just select the trap and place it. You don't have to go through a pants-load of menus. Just set it and forget it.

Story: The story in Orcs Must Die! is only really made up of a few cut-scenes (less than a handful) dispersed throughout its 24 levels but is entertaining and ends in a surprisingly interesting way. The story in itself isn't the strongest out there, but you will pretty much be having too much fun killing orcs, setting up traps and planning your next strategy to care.

The main character has a few funny quips here and there (usually about his former teacher), but he will mostly repeat jokes that weren't that funny to begin with.

Visuals: Orcs Must Die! lends itself to a more cartoony cell shading which definitely adds spunk that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Even though all of the levels have pretty much the same aesthetic design, they each feel unique, and each level requires you to change up your tactics to fit said level.

Final Thoughts: In the way of replay value, Orcs Must Die! is rather limited to replaying old levels at a higher difficulty, but it is still a fun game that can easily please any Tower Defense or Third-person shooter fan.

9/10

Metro 2033 Review: Overlooked Brilliance

Game: Metro 2033

Genre: FPS, Survival Horror

System: PC

 

Developer: 4A Games

Rating: M

 

 

 

Every once in a while a game will come along with enough guts and balls big enough to slip past my guard and steal my heart from right under my nose, (Don’t ask why it was there, Trust me you don’t want to know.) Metro 2033 is the latest member of those thieves’ heart burglars.

Visuals: Graphics wise, Metro 2033 is fairly pretty looking game (With the exception of a few character models here and there, and the fact that all of the characters tend not to blink that often) but, its aesthetics are what really make it a beautiful game. Everything in the game feels like the apocalypse swept in not too long ago and left the world (or at least your part of it) in shambles. Everything from the environments you go though (like the dark, gloomy and decaying metro system you travel most of your way and the bitter, icy-cold, nuclear winter on the surface), to the people you see in the metro station, to the weapons and items you use, have the feel of an apocalyptic depression to them and not in a gray-brownish kind of way.

Story: Metro 2033 is based off of the Russian book of the same name and while that is cool (And I suddenly have a hankering to read said book) it does leave the game with a few holes in explaining thing. For instance the game doesn’t really explain what the mutated monsters were before the apocalypse or why there’s a war going on in the metro between Communists and Nazis, or even how the Nazis got there all of which I’m guessing was explained in the book.

Gameplay: Starting off the gunplay is very solid; most of the guns in the game feel good to fire (With the exception of Pheumatic weapons which I found to be pretty useless) I did find that regular Iron sights a lot better than the scopes (though that could just be me.) Depending on what difficulty you play it will be either plentiful or not.

The enemies consist of your basic human (I’m fairly sure you’ve heard of them) Opponent to a somewhat wide variety of mutated monsters (By “somewhat” I mean most of them are a grayish color but they form into a bunch of different shapes.)

In the game your main source of currency is military grade bullets. You read that right bullets=money… Well kind of. “High grade” ammo is your money; dirt ammo (Basically the crappy quality ammo) is what you use on most enemies. When you get to friendly metro stations you can spend your money ammo on items (gas mask filters, throwing knife, grenades and medkits), Dirt ammo and better weapons. This gives the game some light RPGs elements in a way. Will you spend money on more dirt ammo? Maybe some throwing knifes, a better gun perhaps? Maybe just save it up for the next station. Who knows maybe you’ll find a better weapon later on.

Throughout the game you will also find certain levels that can be completed in a more stealthy way (Most particularly during the “Front Line” mission) and there are routs past enemies but I felt like there’s nothing really to distinguish as the “Stealthy way” to complete said mission and I tended to only find them after I had already killed a bunch of guards.

One thing I absolutely loved was the well thought out items that you use throughout the game. For instance, you want to check your current objectives you press the objectives key and it brings out a note-book and lighter. By pressing the right mouse button/360 trigger you look at your current objectives and by pressing the left button/trigger you flip your lighter on in order to see it better.

Are you about to go to surface? Not without your trusty gasmask you won’t! During surface missions the gasmask provides some extra tension as you keep track of your gauge, filters and how much damage your gasmask takes. Now I never actually ran out of filters since there is always a dead body around I could loot for them and there’s usually a spare gasmask around to replace your damaged one but, I still had the feeling of “am I going to make it to the end?” whenever I went to the surface.

One item I especially liked was the watch. Your watch is kind of the Swiss army knife of the metro. When you put your gas mask on it tells you how much air you have (though I found this to be flawed since it always seemed to be in the red even when I put in new filters to my mask), It comes with three LED lights (Red, yellow and green) which act like the light crystal from Thief and tells you how hidden you are and Last but not least, it tells time. Not in game time but actually time (or you know what ever time you set your computer’s/360’s time to) seriously, it actually acts like a real watch!

Checkpoints could have, no,should have been done frequently. At times I would find myself begging for another one to appear before I got myself killed (Which I knew would be very soon). That’s one of my mains flaws against the game outside of it killing off most of the characters before I got to know them more.

Final Thoughts: Metro 2033 has impressed me, which, isn’t an entirely easy thing to do. The game has its flaws such as: it could do with some more frequent checkpoints and the main storyline had a few holes when it comes to explaining some things but it’s the best example, I’ve seen, of elements in game telling a much grander story than the story in game.

9.50/10

Valkyria Chronicles 2 Review

Title: Valkyria Chronicles 2

Console: PSP


Genre: SRPG/Shooter


Released: 2010












If I had said to you a few years back "I want someone to make a game that combines strategy with RPG and shooter elements" You would have shown me several great examples of the first two together and the last two together but would probably have been perplexed as to how a combo of all three together would work...Then Valkyria Chronicles came. Unfortunately I don't have a PS3 to play the first game (Cue sad face) but, I do have a PSP which means I was able to play the second game and I have to say, I fairly enjoyed it.

Gameplay

Like I said above, the game combines strategy RPG with shooter elements. These both make the game unique and fun. After observing the battlefield from a top down map, you then select a unit and are then sent down into a 3^rd-person perspective over said character. You move the character into the position you want (With in the stamina limit of course) then go into fire mode. It combines the braininess of a strategy with the feeling of actually controlling the character instead of them just being mindless pawns.

My only problems with the gameplay are the amount of units you can have on the battlefield and the poor battlefield verity. The max amount of units you can have on the battlefield at one time is six, when you add into the fact that you will almost always have Avan and the tank in the battlefield that leaves you with about four spots to customize with. Since most of the combat consisted of starting units in through two areas I almost always had 3 units in one area and 3 in another (With a few exceptions and several classmate missions.) Unfortunately you'll have to be prepared to duke it out in the same spots a lot, because, the game reuses the same maps a lot. While playing in the same zone for a while wasn't totally bad, it would have been a lot better if you could have gotten new maps faster.

Story

The country of Galia is thrown into civil war after a group revolutionaries revolt because they don't like the queen person's hair color... that pretty much sums up what the main story is supposed to be about but, the game kind of abandons the story as soon as you start playing. About the 45^th hour mark when I stopped playing I had just won some leviathan cup thing and then asked myself "Wasn't I supposed to have been fighting several evil persons wearing weird capes?" and "Why does the mysterious girl who previously kicked butt now only wants to have awkward pool parties?" Questions that are still unanswered.

Characters

Unfortunately the three main characters are uninteresting. Avan is the stereotypical anime character who thinks on his stomach but not much else, Zeri is kind of an A-hole but is a little bit of a better character then the other two and Cossettie is... The girl character. However the side characters are what really shines in this game. The more times you use certain units in combat the more likely you are to have a post mission conversation with them. These conversations manage to flesh out each individual character and about the third conversation (After the introduction conversation) you get a classmate mission (Which I found tend to be more fun than the regular missions.) After completing said mission you get their last cut-scene/conversation and then awaken a new potential in that character. I found myself switching characters up a lot just so I could get their conversation, so I'd say the developer did it well.

Summery

Valkyria Chronicles 2 is an RPG that combines strategy with shooter elements but unfortunately suffers from a lack of mission and battlefield verity. The story seems to get lost and the main protagonists get out shined by the side characters but, it is still a very fun game. If you have a PS3 I would recommend getting the first game, if you have a PSP then I'd recommend the second, if you have both then you know what to do/already have done.


Tips From The Journey Man



Tip #1:While the tech class is rather annoying to use, if you can upgrade them to Fencer you will dominate the map.

Tip #2: Avoid the gunner class like the plague. Trust me they are worthless.

Tip #3: Don't put down the APC body totally at first. Trust me with the utility APC body, a flamethrower turret and a lancer unit inside you can rule the map. Of course you should customize your tank to your own preferences but, it's just a suggestion.

The Lair is open for business.

Well folks I'm still working on it but so far I'm actually likings my new base of operations. For anybody who reads this and is not from said place, i used to only blog at Gameinformer.com. Now i have not left it per say, if and when i blog about something video game related i will definitely republish it over there to but i wanted to expand my blogging freedom to other things that pop into my mind not just about video game related stuff (Although alot of the stuff i write will be video game related).

In other words i decided i needed a new secret lair to plot my evil schemes and what not (everybody knows you need a good lair in order to plot).

I guess I'll start this off in the middle of things (Since i already started talking before i told you who i was) my real name is um well since I'm not there to correct the pronunciation of it you might as well call me The journey man or JJ as most people do (Well the journey man is what most people on the Internet call me and JJ is what everybody else calls me in real life).

What will i be blogging about you ask? Well mostly Video gaming and book stuff plus what ever else comes to my mind (Your either in for a real treat or a real surprise depending on how you look at it and from which angle...And how much you had to drink).

Welcome to my Lair... Welcome to The Journey Cave.