Of Orcs and Awesomenauts

As you probably guessed from the title, this will be a meagre incursion into two titles that I've been playing as of late. To be honest, I had my eye on Of Orcs and Men ever since it was announced. The premise of playing an Orc and moreover, possibly being the good guy was what got me stirred. As time flew by and I've had contact with some of Cyanide's other projects, I started worrying for the title.
After a few hours of playing it, it feels pretty decent, given the circumstances under which it was made. Cyanide are a rather new team which made some unimpressive games. Of Orcs and Men is mostly similar to the Game of Thrones RPG (or perhaps it's the other way around, I'm not sure which one was developed first).

 

The combat system is based on queuing up orders and while pretending to push you into thinking strategically, more often than not adding random orders will work for you. The two characters also bear resemblance to the GoT RPG. Arkail, is the warrior type, having strong attacks and large health pool, while Styx is your rogue-type. The graphics are rather decent but some animations (especially the ones in the cutscenes) are quite clunky and they manage to break immersion pretty often. The game is linear, but then again, Dragon Age Origins was linear as well. However it tried to hide it's linearity and succeded. Of Orcs and Men doesn't even bother to hide any of it. Maps (at least early on) are comprised of corridors which you have to follow. At certain points you get into fights which you can approach either stealthily or aggressively. Funny thing is that you can stealthily kill a guard in front of civilians and they won't be bothered by it. Also, you can kill a guard stealthily and ,as long as you weren't noticed while doing it, his buddies won't mind his corpse being there, despite, walking over it. Repeatedly. The story's supposedly it's better part and I have to say, it's not too shabby as far as I saw. It's not the stuff of legends either, but there's something about the two characters that keeps me wanting to go back to it. You should look into the game. It might work for you when you feel like you want to play a flawed RPG that has some potential to it.

 

Awesomenauts combines Moba elements and 2d perspective. It's kinda fun and the matches tend to last aropund 15 minutes (at most). If anyone picked it up while it was on sale (It might still be), lemme know.