Last week, I gave a review on Orcs Must Die! 2. The game isn’t overly difficult, but some maps can be more challenging and frustrating than others. This week, I decided to do a favour to all beginners players who are struggling with the game by sharing some of the strategies I used in the game.

1) Learn how to use checkerboard layout in your floor and ceiling traps

For people who doesn’t know what a checkboard looks like, please see the drawing below.

A checkerboard design maximises your tile layout in your floor (and ceiling) traps in the best way possible. Many newbies are tempted to lay the same trap in a row, but it suffers from one big problem. Sometimes, a stray orc or even a kobold can run between the two traps, triggering them both at the same time. This results in wastage in trap effectiveness as the other trap could be activated on another orc. For the above, a Tar trap (War Mage only)/Brimstone combo is particularly effective. Tar slows everything that comes (more on that later) while Brimstone has a constant effect and is very effective against gnolls and kobolds.

2) Tar is easily the most useful trap available in the game

Tar is a unique trap for the War Mage in Orcs Must Die 2 and its primary function is to slow enemies that enter its area. Unfortunately, its is easy to neglect Tar trap since it is not one of the killer traps in the arsenal. However, please do not let its simplicity deceive you! Firstly, Tar traps cost 300 coin when the reduced price is fully upgraded, which is one of the cheapest permanent traps you can have with  Steam Trap, Pushers, Spike Trap and Coin Forge. The cheaper the trap, it means more traps for you. With starting coin often being a limiting factor at the beginning of levels, having a cheap and effective trap can make difficult early waves manageable.

Secondly, Tar trap is constantly active, along with Swinging Maces. Brimstone might seem to be constantly active, but it could only hit up to 5 enemies and must recharge after that. Tar, on the other hand, hits everything that touches it, all the time, without fail. Tar will slow single enemies, groups of enemies, from Kobold Runners to Mountain Trolls and all other enemies in-between.

Thirdly, Tar traps have a powerful slow especially with upgraded with the Unique to slow enemies even more. Slowing things down could mean the difference between winning and losing. Slowed enemies stay in killboxes and choke points longer, allowing traps to reset and striking them again. It also allows easier killing of fast enemies like kobolds and gnolls. Many traps in OMD 2 slow enemies, including Arrow Walls with chill, Acid Sprayers with poison, Ice Vents with freeze, Spike traps that slows. Tar traps, however, outclasses them all when comparing value, influence, and effect.

3) Learn how to use your barricades

Barricades are immensely useful, because, as the War Mage puts it, orcs apparently can’t jump. This means that most enemies, with the exception of Gnolls, have to go the path you want them to because of the barricades, allowing you to set up killzones and chokepoints to manage the horde more effectively. Sometimes, instead of defending your rift from 2+ sides, you can block one side with Barricades and force all enemies into one direction.

For these reasons, Barricades are highly recommended in almost all levels. As soon as you are able, upgrade them to level 3 to lower their cost. The less coin you have to spend on Barricades, the more you can spend on other traps.

One of the common strategies of using barricades is to use barricades in a snaking manner (see picture below) as a killzone. Enemies that pass through here must deliberately curve their path through your Barricade maze, like a snake. This tactic can significantly slow enemies. In addition, a snaking tactic is very effective when used with a wall trap that extends the entire pathway, or Swinging mace that swings through the entire length. Creative use of Push Wall near the exit (not the entrance) of the snake path will push lesser enemies back to the starting point, and Tar traps could slow them down to effective push them again and again to be stuck at the trap area. If combine with a Void wall, that also means all the enemies would be killed instantly. Grinders and Haymakers near the single entrance/exit tile could also maximise their effectiveness in the killzone. Just so you know, having an effective killzone is a lot better at killing orcs than placing traps all over the place.

Another strategy is to create a funnel (as depicted below). A funnel is not necessarily as effective as the snaking method. But it usually comes at the cost of having to use lesser barricades. While most of the hordes congregating at the middle point, a combination of tar and Swinging Mace usually would work, with the player facing the exit and blasting it away.

Barricades don’t have to be fully connected to block off a path; simply being connected from corner-to-corner is enough. In the diagram below, you can see how a chokepoint/funnel could easily be formed using this method. In the map Crutch, this could be used in conjunction with the middle statue to block off one route.  This can save you the cost of an extra Barricade here and there if you’re willing to experiment.

 

The wisps before the start of the wave is pretty accurate, as it shows you the path the enemies would take. Therefore, it is very important to pay close attention to the wisps when using Barricades. If a wisp curves away from a path the Barricade is blocking, it means that the barricade is usually safe. But if the wisps stop in front of the Barricades, enemies will attack them.

When using Barricades, be wary of Gnolls and Kobold Sappers. Gnolls act as if they don’t exist and walk over them freely. Sappers will attack Barricades if there are no other players, Guardians, Decoys, or charmed enemies nearby, and around 3 are enough to completely destroy one. They will usually destroy more than 1 due to their explosion’s radius. One effective way to handle Sappers is to use “dummy Barricades”, which is simply putting a single Barricade in a place where Sappers will target it instead of your primary Barricades. It’s less costly than replacing main Barricades and, unlike Decoys, won’t draw attention from non-Sappers.

Note that when using the Sceptre of Domination, charmed enemies can cause other enemies to unintentionally damage the  Barricades, since their attacks hit an area in front of them.

4) The crossbow can be your best friend

On higher difficulties or on Endless Mode, two things are usually required: Mana and the ability to kill off heavies quickly at range, since ogres have the annoying ability to stun you and once ganged-up with other enemies, it usually means your death. No other weapon can fulfil this with the exception of the Crossbow.

The Crossbow does fairly low damage but makes up for this with its rapid fire capabilities (to help kill off kobolds) and allowing you to land headshots for greatly increased damage. The greatly increased damage is nothing to scoff at especially when combined with Ice Amulet; since the frozen status increases the damage received for the enemies. Using that method, Earth lords usually die at 3-4 shots and Earth elemental with 2 shots. If you were to use a fully charged Sceptre to attack, usually an Earth Lord could easily take more than 8-10 blasts, making it easy for you to be overrun. Additionally, its fairly high accuracy makes it effective against air targets (compared to the Blunderbuss). The Unique ability of generating mana per headshot (10 mana each time) is very useful since it gives you more chances to use your Ice Amulet, or in my case, I use in combination with Ring of Lightning, which is perfect for killing multiple weaker enemies in 1 chain lightning shot.

5) Learn to refund your skulls to suit the map you are playing and not just your playstyle.

A lot of beginners make the mistakes of “locking in” the skulls without sensing the context of the map they are in. While weapon type may demand for a certain playstyle, the traps setup should be adequate to the map, and hence upgraded according to the selection.

A frequent mistake was to invest skulls in what I call contextual traps, traps that are effective in some maps and not others. One example would be spring traps, which can be useful in maps with pits/lava/acids, but has limited use without them. Another would be investing a lot of skulls in archers, which are fantastic with decoys and works wonderfully in normal mode. However, in Endless mode, gnolls will kill off these archers, and investing skulls in archers but not using them in Endless Mode is just a waste of skulls. The skulls could be better placed in Floor Portals for example, and using them could allow a better management in Endless Mode.

Therefore, be flexible in the trap layout and upgrade the appropriate traps for the appropriate map. Seeing the layout and knowing the environment and its traps helps a lot in terms of receeing before you leave the map to respec.

Hope you guys enjoy the tips above. For any further tips to this wonderful game, feel free to comment below.

Names are important. For people who were born with unfortunate names, life is hard enough without all the teasing. That’s what exactly happens to this game and its cheesy title. If you judge a book by its cover and a game by its name, stop doing that now and continue reading. You wouldn’t regret it.

The tower defence genre is easy to be dismissed as a short, app-like game that has no action nor hardcore elements in it. Ask people about tower defence games, and they would think of Plants versus Zombies, or Kingdom Rush. Both games are great on its own, but it does leave a feeling that the genre has to be powered by mobile or tablet devices. This is…until Orcs Must Die! came to the PC in 2011, which truly redefined the genre. It throws us away from the classic top-down view of placing towers along a pre-defined path to controlling the the main hero, who would have a mean arsenal of traps and weapons to kill the green-skinned menace (hence the title…in case you haven’t noticed)

Nope….it’s not like this.

Orcs Must Die!2 and its prequel has a simple story.  Essentially, the story revolves around a faction of wizards known as the Order, who guard the Rifts as a source of magical power. Over centuries, the Order is to maintain the peace in the world through the use of magic for humanity. However, the Rifts are also sought by the Orc faction to pass to the human world – essentially a mix bag of Orcs, Orges, Gnolls, kobolds and bats. The Order were able to defend against them by having magically-empowered fortresses to guard the Rifts until the orcs appeared to have suddenly gained in strength and intelligence, which was shown later to be lead by the evil Sorceress, a past student of the Order who sought to use magic to control the Orc army for herself.

That of course, didn’t materialise. In Orcs Must Die! previously, the protagonist, an Apprentice War Mage, eventually found a way to seal the Rift, stopping the use of magic forever for humanity who has grown accustomed to using magic as a way of life. In Orcs Must Die! 2 now, the Sorceress, found to be weakened without magic, managed to escape from the mindless Orc army that she no longer can control and tag team (not-surprisingly) with the himbo jock of a War Mage to massacre her previously mind-controlled green minions. The dialogue between them is cheeky and hilarious, offering a light-hearted feel to a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

The gameplay is where it shines the MOST, and that is where a lot of game developers sometimes forget what is at the heart of a game: having fun. You control either the Sorceress or the War Mage, each with their own traps and weapons. The game rewards with its gruesome currency of having orcish skulls after each level, much like the 5 star system found in most app games for completing a level. These could be used for upgrades that are extensive to suit your gaming style. Taking the trap Arrow walls for instance, it could be upgraded with fire arrows or ice arrows. And if you were to upgrade it more, you can place them on the ceiling to create raining arrows of death. During the levels, by carefully (and sometimes creatively) placing traps on the floors, walls and ceilings, you find yourself gleefully smirking as your killbox of traps grind, cut, slash, burn, freeze or melt the huge variety of enemies pouring out to reach their goal. It is awesome fun, for example, to build a Rube Goldberg Machine of sorts, by having enemies flung up in the air by using a steam trap, and while they are levitating in the air, having a well-placed archer shooting at them (and consequently the ceiling), which would trigger a ceiling trap full of boulders to fall on the floating enemies.

That being said, the traps are limited by having a reset timer, and that is where it deviate from standard tower defence games by needing your character to be in the middle of the action to kill off what the traps were unable to. In addition, the traps are limited by the amount of cash you have and one have to brainstorm to place the traps in the most effective manner. There is a lot of thinking and the difficulty, especially for solo play, could be unforgiving. The designers obviously design some of the maps for co-operative play and that gave the game much criticism for its sudden difficulty spike. However, I enjoyed the challenge and frequently find myself pondering how to improve on the trap setup and how to spend the funds more wisely to kill orcs.

Ohhh…the traps are soooo delightful.

When give the chance to play with a friend, co-operative play makes it even more fun. And that were where Robot Entertainment took the feedback most from Orcs Must Die! and greatly improved on. It is deeply satisfying to play shoulder to shoulder with your friend against the tide of enemies rushing your way. From the Story mode to Endless mode, where 50 waves of enemies come crashing upon you, you will find yourself needing a friend most of the time. It is fun to devise together where to place the traps and where to defend, and this game delivers a nice buddy system to it.

My only gripe for this game is the lack of player-produced maps. Please do not get me wrong, Orcs Must Die has a lot of content with weekly challenges released by Robot Entertainment that restrict the player to certain types of equipment and traps. However, it would be cool to design a map for a friend to complete, much like the Warcraft 3 Map editor which spawned off lots of fun and creative TD games.

For all its content, depth and the extensive replay value, Orcs Must Die! 2 is remarkably cheap. I got it from the Steam Sale that occurred during the Christmas Season (which just ended yesterday) at just USD3.74 (- 75% off!!!), which is way cheaper than some of the paid games you see in you mobile or tablet apps. For you guys who ignored my post or missed the sale, fret not. Orcs Must Die!2 is still very cheap at UD15. This is a game that I highly recommend for kids and adults alike.

I would give it 9/10. For more tips on Orcs Must Die!2, be sure to check out the posts in the coming weeks. =)

Steam Autumn Sale had just pass us by, but from 19th Dec to 3rd Jan, Steam Holiday Sale is ready to give all gamers another round of bang-for-the-buck.

For those who are new to Steam (e.g my female work colleague who thought Steam is a hydro-electric energy company), Steam usually releases its summer sale around mid-July, and its autumm sale at around mid Nov. These sales give PC gamers huge discounts on popular titles (some of which at also in PS3. For inspiration, check out the Top 10 PS3 games for Christmas). Recent, blockbuster hits could see absurd discounts up to 75% to 90% in some cases, and these discounts do change dynamically.

Being a kiasu Singaporean, let me summarise a few pointers on getting the game you want for as little as possible:

1) Check Steam sales regularly. By regularly, I mean daily. You do not have to go crazy and track the Steam Sale like a stock market

2) Be patient. Don’t buy a game unless it’s a daily deal or a flash sale. Standard store discounts are 25% to 50% in general. And these are everywhere in Steam. Don’t buy them. Resist. Like any obedient young Padawan, your patience will be rewarded in a more impactful daily deals/flash deals, which would bring discounts up to 50% and above.

3) If you miss your game as a daily deal or flash sale, wait for the Encore sale. If for whatever reason, you choose to not follow pointer 1 above, then wells, you are not screwed. Usually, like a good bazaar stall, the last day of the Steam Sale is almost always an Encore Sale, and that’s where you pounce.

4) Anything above 75% is likely to be the best you can get. I have tracked Steam’s discount structure. And usually new games either come undiscounted or having 25% to 40% discount. If you are patient, it will pop out at few months later at 50 to 70%, which is about the time to strike if the game you want goes below $10. However, if you see anything appearing more than 75% discount, that is probably the best deal you can get from Steam. Cowabunga!!

Drool……

5) Use the wishlist function. Steam allows for wishlists to be made, allowing you to be notified via email whenever there is a deal for the game you want. Use it to get notifications and then strike fast and true.

6) Buy publisher bundles as soon as you see it. Why? You asked. Because they are dirt freaking cheap. Usually an Ubisoft/Activision/Rockstar etc bundle is the cheapest you can get. So when you see that, think no more. Just go. Go…really. Come on.

Hopefully with all these tips, you get to have the awesome “WIN” feeling especially you know you have gotten a good deal (P.S Farcry 3 is at 75% now!!)