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Orc Attack: Flatulent Rebellion
PC (Steam)
This Fart is Solid.
1/5 stars
I love orcs. I’m also always on the lookout for multi-player games that the whole MJ crew can play together. When “Orc Attack: Flatulent Rebellion” was first revealed, we all thought it looked like a reasonably entertaining throwaway title that we could buy on PSN for a couple weeks of coop diversion. Unfortunately, “Orc Attack” was delayed over TWO YEARS, leading us to believe that it had died on the vine. Such a death would have actually been a mercy to the game and its developers, as the resultant product is nothing but an embarrassment.
Presentation
“Orc Attack” is okay to look at, but clearly has little art direction behind it. Stages and enemies all look like pre-packaged sample material that came with the Unreal Engine. While the titular Orcs are well animated, the enemies they fight are ridiculously stiff, with ‘standing up’ animations that consist of levitating and rotating to their feet.
The soundtrack is utterly forgettable and barely noticeable. I can’t say the sound effects are particularly interesting or memorable either. Even the flatulence and belching sound like they were simply picked-up for cheap from a canned sound effects e-shop.
Technically, “Orc Attack” is an unmitigated disaster. While it may look and sound forgettably average, the fact that it crashes constantly, has difficulty running, and has stupidly unstable netcode makes the whole thing not worth the bother. It crashed on me when I tried to change resolution the first time. It refused to run for some of the other guys. It kept kicking us out of networked play, which relegates the game to strictly local co-op, if we bother trying it again at all.
Story
Honestly, I think the dev team behind “Orc Attack” should give up on making games and just write a webcomic. “Orc Attack” is somewhat clever in its juvenile potty humor, coining words like ‘fartology,’ and the like. The still images that accompany cutscenes are also relatively well done. I would get significantly more enjoyment out of simply reading the tale of the titular Flatulent Rebellion in comic form than trying to play a terribly made, ill-conceived game.
Unfortunately, even the story has some issues (and I didn’t even come close to experiencing the whole thing). Telling a story from the Orcs’ perspective, where humans are the ‘bad guys’ has become increasingly common lately. It’s a fine story conceit, and one that I used to great effect with goblins in one of my D&D campaigns in the 1990s. However, “Orc Attack” seems suspiciously similar to “Of Orcs and Men,” just with an extra layer of potty humor slathered on top.
Gameplay
“Orc Attack” is an unoriginal, uninspired Beat ‘em Up. It plays similarly to the ‘Dynasty Warriors’ titles in that it revolves around comboing quick and strong attacks, but doesn’t even have the ‘Dynasty Warriors’ series’ McGuffin of huge, spread-out battles featuring hundreds of throw-away minions. Instead, “Orc Attack” simply forces 1-4 Orcs through a series of linear stages. Along each stage path, groups of enemies pop-out and must be killed before moving on. Some of the stages in “Orc Attack” feature gimmicks, like riding lilypads or escorting an allied Orc non-combatant that actually make the gameplay WORSE instead of more interesting simply because no thought was put into the mechanics in these stages.
Each Orc can be improved via an RPG-esque system of upgrades. They have stats that can be boosted to the player’s liking by killing foes as well as easily-losable gear upgrades that can be purchased from an Orc shop.
Even after upgrading my Orc’s speed stat, I still felt like combat was slow and clunky. The cumbersome gameplay still manages to become even worse due to the horrendous game camera. Most 3D action games have bad cameras, but with the advent of dual-analog controllers, bad cameras have become shepherdable. “Orc Attack’s” camera, however, is not only incredibly bad but also ACTIVELY RESISTS any player attempt to correct it.
The primary selling point of “Orc Attack,” that being the ability to use bodily emissions as weapons, rarely comes into play. Orcs can build up a mana-type meter in order to let loose a belch or fart. Belches are only effective on certain enemies, while farts do nothing unless ignited by a fire source (which makes them very situational). Un-upgraded, the flatulence meter runs out extremely quickly to boot, which completely knocks the legs out from under a game that promises non-stop rudeness.
Overall
When an Orc farts too hard, sometimes a turd comes out. That is what happened with “Orc Attack: Flatulent Rebellion.” The game is a technical and design disaster whose only redeeming feature is a goofy story that would have been better off as a webcomic.
Presentation: 1/5
Story: 3.5/5
Gameplay: 1/5
Overall (not an average): 1/5
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