Orc Attack: Flatulent Rebellion opens up the age old dispute … are farts really that funny?
To begin with, I like the idea that I am playing from the orc’s point of view. It’s a refreshing change from playing gleaming, armour-clad humans fighting orcs and various hideous monsters. I feel like I am representing every orc that has ever been mistreated in all of those games that I have played where they were my enemy. Power to the orcs!
In Orc Attack,the Orcs woodland has been polluted by the ignorant human pouring out toxic sludge and causing the poor Orcs considerable gut trouble (post-TacoBell-binge gut trouble), now the mighty Orc’ seek revenge.The Orc’s take their gastro-woes and turn them into a gassy weapon with which to get vengeance.
This means that, as well as the more standard hack-and-slash attacks, your orc character can guff out nasty green clouds of pestilent gas. These clouds can be ignited to fry nearby soldiers – it’s like a nasty flashback from your fart-lighting high school days. Igniting your own innard-gas is possible on your own, but is much more fun when you throw some friends into co-op mode. Why light your own farts when you can light a friend’s? Orc Attack includes up to four-players in co-op mode. However, an additional player is where the framerate problems begin. It isn’t great to begin with, so this is a major blow, and is present in both on-and-offline co-op. In online, you have to wait for ages and ages to join a group. This means that although co-op play helps with some of the problems of single-player, it triggers a whole bunch of other problems which will set your teeth grinding anyway. Playing on the PC is next to impossible – expect it to freeze. A lot.
Unfortunately, all of this fiery farty fun should have stayed in our regretted moments of the past. Let’s face it, farts just aren’t that funny. And especially not within the tedium of Orc Attack. The main characters’ names are snigger worthy – Doc Turd, Sir Sniff, Friar Krap and Lord Poop. I caught myself chuckling, before feeling like it really shouldn’t have been that funny at my age. But once you’ve belched and farted your way through the hordes of enemy soldiers for a little while, it quickly loses its comedic value. Having played all of these four characters, though, I’m wondering why I bothered choosing in the first place. They’re all the same. You can wield temporary weapons which change your gameplay a little bit, but ultimately, it makes absolutely no difference which crap-related orc you choose to play with.
Killing enemies grants you experience and money, allowing you to level up your four different stats (attack, defense, agility and fart-mana) and to purchase new weapons. This makes it feel as if you are at least getting somewhere. You can switch over to using ‘magic’ as your attack, if you feel like all the fart-burp jokes have made you feel like a sniggering 12-year-old again. But I can’t help but feel that this removes from the whole point of the game. Flatulent Rebellion is all about the fart jokes. Once they lose their shine, there isn’t a lot to the game to mark it out. It’s just another hack-and-slash. You can unlock combos as you play, but none of them prove to be much more effective than your basic attacks, which are much simpler to employ. Combat is also extremely slow-paced. Sure, I wouldn’t want to be hurtling my way into battle with a rumbling stomach full of wind, but Orc Attack is really dragged down by its slacking feel. All of this slow movement makes combat feel clumsy, too – you can’t move or dodge until you’ve finished playing out a combo, which is frustrating to say the least.
The lack of camera control is a real problem. As well as making it a complicated feat to ignite your own farts without the help of a friend (that’s what friends are for, right?), it makes simply moving around a game of guesswork. Even when your character hasn’t disappeared off-screen somewhere, it’s a challenge to distinguish your character amongst the engulfing mob of enemies charging around. This isn’t a huge deal since combat is so basic that you don’t really need to be able to see what you’re doing.
There are bosses, thankfully, to break up the tedium of these mobs. The bosses are quite varied, and despite being unnecessarily long-winded to fight, they’re good fun. You actually have to consider your attack methods a little more carefully, discovering and utilizing their weaknesses in order to defeat them.
Graphics and sound are a little lacking. The characters look great and are animated well, but the environment is not nearly so fine-tuned. And if I have to listen to the same death-cry of a soldier one more time, I’m going to mute the game forever.
Conclusion
Orc Attack: Flatulent Rebellion stinks. Pun completely intended. It’s a great idea to be fighting on behalf of the underappreciated orcs of video games everywhere, against humanity. But it’s wasted on technical underperformance, bland combat, and overused fart jokes. You’ll very quickly get bored.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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