This game is just utter crap, though I suppose you can assume that from the title itself. While it does have some interesting mechanics behind the basic beat-em-up action, the way it's put together makes it fall flat.
Here's a quick look video if you'd like to see for yourself what this game is. But if you'd rather have something more concise, then read my review below.
http://youtu.be/E0PSS7T-ln8
I'll first start by telling you the basic concept of this game. You're an orc who is having his land overrun by humans, who have also poisoned your home and given everyone terrible gas. Mind-blowing, I know, but stay with me. It's now your job to take back your lands with violence and flatulents. And that's pretty much the whole reason behind this game.
Okay, so maybe the story isn't the best. What else did you expect from game with this title? What you should be getting these kinds of games for is simply the gameplay itself. So what do you do in this game exactly? You fight wave after waves of enemies until you reach a boss or the end of the level. It's that basic.
But let me tell you what makes this bad. To start, the enemies that you will repeatedly be hammering the attack button against are all pretty much the same. You may go do a another level and they look different, but they're still the generic grunts that mindlessly swarm around you and try staring at you to death. Sure, some may have a hammer instead of a sword, but they still act exactly the same. Even the ones with shields you can treat the same as the ones without. After a few quick swings of you clubs, the shield is gone and they act exactly the same as everyone else. It's just boring. And the worst part is that you have to trudge through far too many waves of these punching bags that have way too much health for their own good.
Still, you may stumble upon an interesting enemy every now an again like mummies or archers, but even they have their problems. The mummies for instance, you can only kill with your toxic gas. Alright, that's well and good. But if you happen to be out of magic and have nothing left to kill to regain it, you're pretty much screwed. Or if the mummy happens to grab you in a mess of the generic trash mobs, you have to play an annoying game of rattle your controller stick to get him off. And while you're doing this, the mobs keep attacking you and resetting your work until you die and have restart the bloody level again in the hopes of it not happening once more. The archers themselves were fine since you had to use a moving barricade to get close to them, but when I did, I noticed arrows magically coming out of their frozen bodies and heatseeking me. A very sad sight indeed.
Okay, so maybe the enemies aren't the most interesting things. What about the combat itself? I do like the fact you can use the environment to your advantage and blow up your farts to great effect. I also like how you can pillage shields and weapons sometimes that give you different movesets. All well and good. But what I don't like is that the most effective move/combo in the game is simply ramming the quick attack button over and over again. Nothing beats it. Sure you may get an interesting belly flop move or charge attack that leaves you open afterwards, but you'll always do more damage and be more efficient just hitting that one button. So ultimately, you'll be doing the same thing start to finish.
What makes this much worse is the awful pacing of the game. After spending several minutes pounding on the same horde of dudes over again, you'll most likely be met with another just down the way. They're not even quick to get to you. They run at a snails pace just like your character, so you spend a good while just waiting for them to reach you. And when you're not fighting trash mobs, you're doing waste-of-time platforming such as riding a painfully slow lilypad down a creek or waiting for an electric fence to let you into the next area. There's even one escort mission where you simply fart around until the dude you're escorting finally reaches the next point he has to be. And even when you beat a boss, you're not just given the rewards. You have to wait for them to randomly drop on the floor across the arena, then you're stuck with the chore of having to roll around and try to pick them up before they disappear. It was like a slap in the face after trudging through the entire level.
But now that we're on the topic of bossfights, I might as well tell you about them. While they are gonna be the most interesting enemies you encounter, they're also likely to be the ones to show you some of worst mechanics behind this game. I'll start by saying there is no way to cancel an attack once you're swigging so you can dodge, so you have to be patient and time everything accordingly. While some may like that commitment to attacking, it can be the most frustrating thing to watch as your orc lazily charges up his attack as the boss telegraph his next move that you won't be able to dodge. And when you do get hit, expect a good 7 seconds of not being able to do anything as your orc lays on the ground. It makes the whole boss fight a chore as they cycle through the same few patterns over and over again.
Now I've said a lot already, but let me put another few items down that rubbed me the wrong way.
*The game crashed on me twice. Once when I was simply changing the resolution and graphics to high, and another time after a beat a level. 2 gamebreaking bugs in one hour, and one was even in the first minute. Not a good start.
*While I like the fact you can level your orc the way you want it, all you're getting to choose is basic stats and nothing that modifies the way the orc is played. It doesn't help that the game really doesn't tell you how effective the upgrades are either.
*One of the resurrection items makes you play the dumb minigame of waggling your controller before a 10 second timer runs out. What the heck was the point of that?
*Some of the tooltips telling what to do are needlessly long and too frequent. They don't help the already terrible pace of the game.
So yeah, that was a lot of bad. But what does this game do alright?
*I like that the orcs have different special abilities such as freezing, flaming, or petrifying gas. They just need more to flesh them out and make them different.
*I also like that there is online and local coop. More people playing the game together always makes things more fun, though I doubt the online is gonna be very active.
*The brawling is actually alright. Things are hit and react the way you expect them to. It's just the little variance makes it super boring after the first hour.
So in summary, the negatives of this game far outweigh what it does right. You may have a chuckle at the concept for the first level, but then you'll suddenly realize that it's lost its charm. But for some reason you still want this game, at least wait until it goes on sale. That way you'll have little to regret if it doesn't suit your tastes.
