Poor Orcs...
I can't even count how many of these adorable creatures I've decimated over the years. First in Orcs Must Die on Xbox 360, then I gave them a break because, the 2nd episode being exclusive on PC and not running on mine, I thought it was better to let them replenish their troops . But that was without counting on Orcs Must Die Unchained, a free to play cross-play oriented multiplayer on PC and Playstation 4 which brought me out of retirement and allowed me to burst tens of thousands of these little choupinous with love and compassion, despite servers that are difficult to stabilize. Once again, after a few months of service, I hung up the gloves to take a well-deserved retirement.
But these assholes are back and humanity needs a pretentious hero to save it from the flaws of these mindless creatures and train the next generation on Orcs Must Die 3. So once again I'm back to put a comb to them.
For those who don't know, Orcs Must Die is a series of Tower Defense games where the player must prevent orcs of all types from entering a rift with limited hit points on numerous maps. For this, the player has his weapon at his disposal, but also and above all, a whole panoply of upgradable and inventively sadistic traps which can only be set against cold hard cash that you will win by killing orcs. The whole being done in the humor and the lightness carried by Maximilien and the orcs and their weak replies. What more does this third opus offer us? Apart from a main campaign centered on two apprentices of the Order, the absence of Maximilien who will be on the front of the stage just for a very short secondary campaign, not much in fact. The game still offers dozens of traps to place freely on levels to stop and defeat the hordes of enemies, the majority coming from previous games. The player, alone or with an ally online, will always have to defend the rifts as effectively as possible to earn a score and skulls, the latter allowing you to improve your traps, weapons and accessories.
Despite the arcade and casual side of the title, it is the strategy that prevails, and placing your traps should not be done anyhow to first protect the fault, then then optimize your score and therefore optimize your skull gains . The game offers around thirty cards, all modes combined, as well as 4 game modes that are sufficiently eclectic to maintain interest for a while. In addition to the classic Campaigns, Weekly Challenges and Infinite Mode, whose names speak for themselves, the game offers a Scramble mode on which we will dwell a little.
In each game, the game will randomly select 5 levels on which you will have to do your best to defend the rifts. Pass a level and you will move on to the next 5. Fail and it will be over. Simple, right? Enough for the developers to add a system of penalties and random bonuses to spice up your Scramble sessions to the point that they will become addictive. What is less addictive are the technical issues...
If they are harmless in the menus (in particular duplication of enemy visuals and blurring), those in game are downright more problematic. Finally... I put the plural, but it is above all the same type of visual artifacts which is likely to cover a large surface of the screen when the player manipulates the camera and which will greatly interfere with the readability of the action for a few seconds. We must also mention a problem with targeting weapons, the imprecision of which is very annoying, when it comes to making critical hits on the wire. Surprisingly, there is no problem with online fluidity, whereas Orcs Must Die Unchained had rather fragile and unstable servers. A good point.
Fortunately, the above-mentioned concerns don't spoil the fun, I have a blast on it, but during tense situations or sieges of war, it's something that deserves to be better calibrated. If you liked the previous games, Orcs Must Die 3 will also satisfy you. Its biggest flaw, in the end perhaps being that it does not revolutionize the series, but is content to play the security card by continuing cautiously with a minimal evolution...
- Xbox (version testée Xbox One)
- PlayStation 4
- PC
