Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap sees you completing waves solo or with up to 3 friends across a variety of levels. It’s tower defense with a third-person action twist, full of upgrades, and unlocks, and it’s a ton of fun. There’s one major issue, though. It looks and runs below expectations on Xbox Series consoles. Let’s break down the basics for this Day One Game Pass launch and see if it’s worth a download for you and your friends in this review.
Runs on Runs
Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap has a basic premise and setup. Throughout three rounds one to four players will do their best to stop orcs from reaching a center area. To do this you’ll have a repertoire of attacks and moves across multiple characters and many traps. These traps are limited early on, and you’ll unlock them by playing the game and killing orcs. Rinse, repeat, upgrade, and have fun doing it.
There are no frills and the best I can tell there is no true campaign. You’ll do runs in various areas with your selection of heroes for the love of the game. Regular skulls are the currency for permanent upgrades and unlocks. Golden skulls are special currency for specific upgrades, and there’s an overall and per-character talent tree as well.
The game starts with you in a central hub, with multiple tutorial videos available. After that, you’re thrown into the thick of things. Missions are all the same, stop orcs from reaching your hub area. They’ll pour out of 2, then 3, and eventually 4 locations on the map. This is where things get fun.
Trippin and Trappingg
Runic coins are your in-run currency for buying traps and activating defense systems. The game has a Fortnite/Minecraft-style grid layout for moves. Early on you’ll focus on funneling enemies into specific paths, as the game gives you ghostly runners in the setup phase. These ghosts let you know where orcs will come in from each at active gate.
Once you’ve got an idea of how your traps work you will focus on how best to slay every orc, knowing that you can’t be everywhere at once. I primarily played solo and found the game to be difficult but not impossibly so. Making sure to save coins for future waves when possible was key to winning runs.
You’ll have six waves on three maps, that become progressively harder. I had to spend a while upgrading my character, unlocking and upgrading new traps, and fine-tuning my trap layouts before I saw the third level in one run, let alone getting a win.
Your traps consist of similar types of items across a variety of damage types. You have physical, acid, lasers, and more on hand. Spike traps will deal high damage to a single target before resetting. Firewalls damage over time on all who run passed them while active, and upgrades not only raise the damage but lower cooldowns.
Everything works on a grid structure, and mistakes in placing items are easily remedied in between rounds as sell-back prices give you every coin spent in return. Levels are large, so you’ll need to focus on properly funneling orcs into traps or defensive units you can activate. There are archers around certain levels, and canons in others, and for a high amount of currency, you can activate them as an automatic defense. This, of course, is all in service of your player character’s attacks.
Third Person Combat
All but two characters in Deathtrap are ranged, and the shooting feels good. Melee is a little more hit-and-miss with a big club-wielding bear and double dagger cat not always giving the best hit registration, at least on the controller. Overall I found the game a lot of fun to play, though without a group of friends, I couldn’t see myself sticking with it to unlock all of the content.
While you will use the d-pad to go through your various buildables, you’ll want to spend most runs on your weapon. Shooting feels great with a predictable travel time on items like the crossbow. Special abilities will be a “learn ‘em as you do ‘em” situation. Every character has abilities with cooldowns alongside an ultimate move that requires you to build up a meter.
In-between each round you will get randomized “threads” that let you upgrade an ability or set a passive buff. Overall it’s just enough to feel like you’re constantly earning upgrades without being overwhelming. I wish the onboarding for these systems was a bit more tutorialized but fans of the series will know it all right away.
Great on PC, Rough on Xbox
One of the biggest surprises, and I’m hoping a Day One patch can fix it, is the performance on console. Previous Orcs Must Die! games looked and ran well on the console. This one feels like it might be 60 while looking incredibly fuzzy. It’s difficult to say exactly what feels off about the performance, but on Series X it’s “off” somehow.
PC performance was fine, running at a locked 120fps/4k on my 7900xtx/5800x combo. It looks pleasant, with a lot of color, and attempts at personality that didn’t bother me. I’m not the target audience, and while the humor never landed it wasn’t overly annoying graphically.
The same holds for the audio, as the music is there without being in the way and the comedic voice lines made my wife laugh. She overheard me while I was playing and let out a few chuckles when my shotgun-wielding character was shit-talking a group of orcs she just murdered.
Outside of the weird performance on console the game ran well and had few if any bugs. It’s a play anywhere title on Cloud, Console, and PC. It’s exclusive to Xbox and PC at launch, with a Steam version available alongside the Microsoft Store.
Wrapping Things Up
Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is a fun game with some serious looks and performance issues on Xbox Series consoles. If it’s cleaned up at all by a day one patch then it’s an easy recommendation. Available Day One on Game Pass it’s a solid solo title and one that’s a ton of fun with friends.
Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap
Played on
Xbox Series X and PC
PROS
- Trap Variety
- Occasionally Funny
- Decent Art Style
CONS
- Runs/Looks Poor on Xbox at launch
