Orcs Must Die! 2

Orcs Must Die! 2 is at its best when you are laying traps between waves and then watching a plan unravel in a very busy hallway. By our assessment, the mix of tower defence and direct action is the point: you place spikes, spring traps, barricades, and then jump in with weapons and spells when the orcs get through. The trade-off is that it is built more for short, replayable stages than for a long strategic sprawl, so it can start to feel samey if the trap loop is all you want. In practice it has a brisk, comic rhythm, with constant fiddling over where to spend resources and where to plug a leak. Compared with pure tower defence games, it gives you more hands-on fighting; compared with pure action games, it asks for more setup and planning. Orcs Must Die! 2 suits players who like to improvise defenses under pressure, and the co-op side makes that even noisier.