You can’t just say that Dwarves are actually bearded Norwegians with a strong taste for Black-Briar Mead, or that in reality unicorns are just misunderstood horses that don’t need their fashion sense or sexuality questioned by a judgemental world. Well Of Orcs and Men just kind of said screw you – we’ll have as many transgender Scandinavian horses as our ale can handle.
In a plot twist strong enough to kill half the characters of a soap opera in one swift Christmas special, in Of Orcs and Men you play an Orc, as well as a small Goblin whose mission is to kill the emperor. Now despite that sounding as basic as building a cube out of Lego bricks, the plot is actually one of the strongest points in the game – first of all, instead of humans being the weak, boring, tea drinking creatures that most fictitious story lines make us out to be, they are instead the oppressors in this tale; and you are the downtrodden race of society which makes you so far below the food chain that there is a serious scientific debate as to whether an amoeba has a stronger claim to deserving more respect than you. Your task is to assassinate the emperor and in doing so free your people of all oppression – I understand the concept of ‘cutting the head off the snake’ however that plan is slightly flawed when the rest of the snake has sharp pointy objects they can use to stab you with, and are now rather irritated at the fact you just killed their emperor. Plot holes aside it actually works rather well, more specifically, the relationship between the Orc and the Goblin works exceptionally well. I don’t tend to care about friendships in games, as most of the time anyone remotely important will either be killed or turn out to be the evil superpower that will inevitably betray you for a bag of chips and Wagon Wheel; however I take my dubious hat off to the writing team here because they had me play through twenty hours of a game just to see if they go to the pub afterwards to sort out their differences. You see, because Goblins are seen on the same level as fecal matter, and Orcs usually have the emotional capacity of a teaspoon, the development of their individual storyline is actually quite captivating.
The way the combat and gameplay works is that during fights you can swap between controlling either your tank Orc or stealthy Goblin and use strategy to outwit your opponents – this is done by being able to slow down time to a near stop, and plotting out your attacks – or in other words; your standard Action RPG combat system. It’s fairly robust and fluid, which is quite crucial when it’s the only mechanic in the game. You can make your Goblin invisible and try to secretly assassinate his targets before they notice him, however apart from that this is pretty much the entirety of the content of the game. Each, and every mission, consists of getting from A to B, possibly finding a cut scene on the way, and fighting some kind of boss-type-thing in order to achieve your objective and bring you one step closer to the emperor. The word I shall use to describe this game, and believe me I won’t use the word nearly as much as the game actually used the concept, is padding. You’ll notice certain levels are unnecessarily long, or just at the end of a level there’s an extra, uber tough new set of enemies you have to tackle for no apparent reason other than the biscuits ran out on their lunch break and they have nothing better to do. Then if it’s not levels being dragged out, it’s chunks of storyline being repeated. I won’t put any spoilers in but imagine watching a film, and then immediately afterwards re-watching the second half because you’ve got an extra half hour to kill. It’s hard to explain this point effectively without saying the storyline so I’ll just have to say that if you love the combat great, there’ll be twenty hours of it waiting for you non-stop until you get so sick of it you’ll want to set fire to your trousers.
Graphically, for a game that was obviously built for console, not much can be said – you could probably make QWOP run further than the render distance and the animation team must’ve either been severely underpaid or they hired a group of Goblins. If you are playing it on console then it’s forgivable and I would sincerely advise buying this game on console. You can tell by both the control scheme and menu system that it’s suited to a controller rather than a keyboard and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The bad thing hiding in the corner, for me at least, is that a game that’s heavily based around two players has no multiplayer function – especially as it’s geared towards the console market. Surely if you’re going to pad your game thicker than a Nord’s pyjamas, then you might want to make the experience more bearable by adding a second person to grind through the story with you?
In the end if you’re particularly attached to Action RPG’s then this might prove a valueable buy for you and could be quite an amazing game provided you’re willing to look past the nineteen hours of repetitive carpel tunnel syndrome that will ensue. I wouldn’t go as far as saying this is a bad game; it’s a particularly good game that when repeated through each and every level grows tedious and irritating and due to the checkpoint system being as useful as a fire extinguisher made out of petunias that doesn’t help either. My suggestion for this game would be get a five pound note and photocopy it until you get the full £29.99 because an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, an Orc for a Goblin.
