Review: Overlord (360)

A good portion of Gamestyle's staff is made up of children of the 1980s who grew up with classic cartoons such as Transformers, G.I. Joe and Thundercats. While the shows mostly followed the adventures of a pure-hearted cast, the most memorable characters were the villains. We laughed at their plans with holes big enough to fit a 747 through, at their inept and traitorous lackeys, and their complete and utter lack of accuracy. For all their faults, they always stuck in our hearts as the 'coolest' characters... and now you get to play as one.

Overlord tasks you with conquering, pillaging, and other associated activities, to re-cement your place as the land's foremost authority in evil. See, a while ago, some bothersome heroes murdered you and stole all of your evil possessions; however, you have been resurrected and must now take revenge on these heroes, who seem to have fallen rather far from grace, as they have all become incarnations of the seven deadly sins. The first hero you meet, the Halfling Melvin Underbelly, has become a gluttonous eating machine, who literally uses his massive bulk to crush you, his skin pulsating and stretching grotesquely thanks to the game's impressive graphics. Such a monstrosity would pose quite a threat if you had to do all the fighting yourself, but being an evil overlord, you have one very large ace up your sleeve: your own army of minions.

The minions are what make Overlord the brilliantly fun game it is, as combat with the main character is rather awkward and not up to the standard of many action-adventure games. While Overlord presents itself as some Fable-esque action RPG, the inclusion of these minions edge it closer to the real time-strategy genre than you would expect. The controls are not designed around assisting your character with his simple three-move combo and spells - they're designed so you can control your army of (up to) 50 minions to do the heavy lifting (figuratively and literally) for you. Controlling these little guys is a great experience; sweeping them across a courtyard full of people and watching as they gleefully murder in your name is a heart-warming sight. They cackle, they wail, they bring back gold to upgrade your weaponry and other abilities, all while arming themselves with fallen or found armour and weapons. The little buggers will even gladly sacrifice themselves so they can be used to upgrade your armour or replenish your health.

To properly utilise the minions, you need to understand their distinctions, as they come in four different flavours. The brown minions are your bog-standard infantry, the most resilient and best at hand to hand combat, and probably the ones you'll call on the most. The next are the red minions, who are weaker than their brown counter-parts, but can toss fireballs at a distance (effectively making them your archers) and absorb any fires blocking your path. Next are the green minions, whose resilience is weaker than the browns', but are able to latch onto an enemy and deal devastating blows while attached, and can also deal with poison gas the way the reds deal with fire. Finally, the blue minions, who are the weakest in combat and resilience, are the only type that can cross water and damage magic-based enemies; they can also revive their fallen comrades, but won't have to use that ability often, as individual minions are very expendable and easily replaced from various spawn points by gathering life-force from other creatures.

These differences are crucial; you have to use the right minion for the right situation, and luckily the controls allow you to do this with little fuss. The right bumper on the control pad brings up the minion menu and allows you to select just a particular type, or all types. Once you have selected the type of minion you wish to deploy, you have full control. The right thumbstick allows you to move the group in any direction, separate from the Overlord himself if need be. From there, you can set them to guard specific areas, charge toward a particular enemy or item, or recall, among other things. The controls work very well most of the time, but there are a few instances where a minion has flat out refused to do what we ordered for reasons unknown (although such occurrences were rare in the extreme). The only real complaint is that, while the minion system undoubtedly works, in the heat of combat it can be rather difficult to set a specific group of minions to perform a task.

The only other real problem lies with exactly how evil the game is. While sending your minions out to murder peasants is fun, it doesn't actually feel particularly 'bad', even as they run screaming for their lives. Obviously, the developers at Triumph Studios went the comedic route so they could get away with more; but in other games where you could make a moral choice, such as Knights of the Old Republic, when you did something evil, it felt evil. Here it feels like it's not really a choice due to the game's linear nature. While there are opportunities to be a kinder Overlord, this doesn't affect the game in any way aside from slight cosmetic changes and the ending you get.

Despite these niggles, Overlord is definitely a game worth checking out. It's a sort of evil version of Pikmin with the ability to slaughter the innocent. It's a shame that the title seems to be getting forgotten by the sales charts, even in the slow summer months, as it is one of the more original and fun games to come out in recent times.

Rating: 8 / 10

Words by Garry Webber