Y'know, for a medium where interactivity is king, 99.9% of game trailers get it wrong, by simply not offering anything to do. Sure, all the chanting, shiny CG and ominious voiceover is okay for setting mood but that stuff tells you nothing about the actual play experience of a game.
Robot Entertainment's new teaser for its XBLA release Orcs Must Die does exactly that. Now, the YouTube video doesn't give control of the game's medieval War Mage character in a 3D environment. But it does offer you the choice of in-game units, with each click taking you to another video where you get to see the Crossbow & Bladestaff, Archer Guardians and Spring Traps in action. (Note that you'll need to have Annotations turned on in YouTube for the gimmick to work.)
By the time you click through every one of the videos, you'll get a good sense of how the hybrid of 3rd-person action and tower defense—also recently seen in Section 8: Prejudice and Gears of War 3's Horde 2.0—looks like in Orcs Must Die!. I, for one, will admit that this series of clips made me go from ignoring the game to wanting to check it out.
Did I mention that Orcs Must Die! is out today on Xbox Live Arcade? See, interactivity works.
Choose Your Own Adventure [Robot Entertainment]
You can contact Evan Narcisse, the author of this post, at evan@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.