While there are people that rage that less than a year between sequels can only end in failure, Robot Entertainment has proven to me that there are games and genres that can pull it off. Orcs Must Die!, a title that I had the pleasure of enjoying at PAX 2011 while Angry Joe was chatting up the developers of Crimson Alliance, was definitely high on my list of games that you must play last year. Now, that title is replaced by Orcs Must Die! 2–and I mean it in a literal sense. Not many of the elements of the game have changed, but the details and mechanics that have changed are for the benefit of the player and the title as a whole.

Time has passed since the first game and due to the actions of the War Mage protagonist in sealing them off from humanity, the orcs will never invade the world beyond but at the cost of humans living without magic. The result will be a series of famines and droughts that the human race will not be able to adapt to before perishing, as most of the way of life revolved around the use of magic. Another minor problem would be of the Sorceress, the power hungry antagonist of the first game, is now without magic to enslave the orcs, and now on the run from the monsters due to the severing of the worlds.

Just before the monster hordes found her last hiding spot, a small rift to the human world appeared and offered her escape at the cost of allowing the orcs to pursue the Sorceress into the human world. The antagonist now protagonist of the game meets the War Mage of the first game, now a miner in the dwarven mountains seeing as there is no real demand for a magic user in a world with no magic. With the orcs stepping out of the newly created rift, reports of rifts opening up all across the mountain, and the question as to how the initial rift opened in the first place, the former War Mage and the Sorceress team up to keep the monsters at bay so they can find out what exactly is going on.

AHHH! AFTER TEN THOUSAND YEARS I'M FREEE!

The core gameplay of Orcs Must Die! 2 has changed subtly, still keeping the 3^rd person tower-defense aspect of play from the first game, but retiring the in-game talent trees. In recompense for this move, the skulls you earn in game either by performance in a level, random drops from enemies, and bonus skulls for reaching score benchmarks is used as currency. Skulls can be used in your spellbook to buy or upgrade your weapons, traps, and newly added trinkets that grant a passive bonus while equipped or has an active spell that can severely change the tide of battle.

While there are many new foes to face from the world of monsters, like bomb throwing gnolls, cyclopean mages, earth elementals that multiply on death and incredibly powerful trolls, having both the arsenal of the War Mage and the Sorceress is more than enough to annihilate any creature that pours forth. One of the major features of OMD2 is the facet of co-operative multiplayer, whereas two players can take on the hordes to find interesting trap compositions to take down foes.

For example, my friend lives and breathes by the Car Wash Co-op trap setup, whereas the enemies will wander into a tar trapped hallway while being sprayed by acid traps from each side and from the ceiling. If the fiends make it to the end of the hallway, they get rewarded with a spinning haymaker trap on the ceiling that will knock the foes to the beginning of the car wash, or straight into a deathtrap, whether it be a freefall off a cliff or a pool of acid. My personal favorite is dubbed the Coin Roast, placing patches of brimstone in between coinforge platforms so that enemies are set ablaze and die shortly after on the coinforge, granting more money per kill. All others who do not die from being set ablaze are met with fire arrow traps at every placeable wall.