Overlord review (Xbox 360)

Okay, so there are different levels of evil. Speaking purely in the fictional worlds of video games and movies, there are the Sauron pure wrongdoing take-over-the-world by killing and maiming Lord Of The Rings types of evil, and the tongue in cheek lovable villain Austin Powers’ Dr Evil kind of nastiness, and this game confidently steps into the latter camp, reaching over to the first to grab the best bits. You play the Overlord, an evil being (not too far removed from the aforementioned Sauron’s look) saved from being buried alive in your dark tower, and woken up by some helpful Gollum-esque creatures rubbing acid in your eyes to help you see properly. This opening sequence sets the tone for the rest of the game that demands you perform evil deeds, but doesn’t necessarily require a heart of iron.

The overall objective is to gain power and rule the land, which will involve killing a series of ‘Heroes’ that plague your existence. Part of the cute and cuddly justification of these deeds includes the fact that they don’t seem to be particularly nice characters themselves, despite their urge to wipe out your evil. Early on in the game you are asked by a poor farmer to help rid a farm of the ‘plague’ of Halflings (read Hobbits) invading his land. After killing them, even if you destroy all of the crops and items in his farmhouse he thanks you for helping get rid of the smell. It is this sense of trying to do evil and still appearing as the hero that gives Overlord a likable tongue in cheek attitude about itself.

Corruption is a hard sounding word

If you desire, you can still play the most sick and twisted of characters however, as various decisions are thrown at you through the game that lead to your varying state of corruption. A string of rabid unicorns litter an ancient Elven forest, and you could rush in there, kill all of them and leave the Elves their land, the alternative is to burn the whole forest down and save yourself the effort. Plenty of these choices appear through the game, allowing you to play your character as either Evil or totally Evil.

While your main character can deal with most of the enemies on his own, the main twist to the game involves minions, those Gollum-like creatures, that follow you around and do your bidding. Killing enemies, innocents and even sheep provide your character with life-force that can be used to summon minions from the various portals littering the environments, and give you a different type depending on the life force you have collected and the colour of the portal you are using, once you have unlocked each type of minion, by claiming their hives and bringing them to your tower. Unfortunately, these hives are too heavy for you to carry, so sending out minions to do this bit of dirty work is a necessity to progress.

Minion sounds like such a cute word

Unlike standard third person action adventures, while moving is achieved through the left analogue stick, you have no control over the camera, the right stick being used to directly control the swarm of minions. Run them into an enemy and they will attack, into a lever and they will pull it, and into some life force and they’ll bring it right back to you, screaming ‘For youuuuu’ in a remarkably cutely demonic way. The main puzzle aspect to the gameplay starts cleverly with these minions being able to reach places that you cannot, allowing them to unlock routes that let you progress. Further to this there are four types of minions, each skilled at different aspects of evil life. Browns are your first servants, and are good hand to hand fighters, shortly followed by Reds, that are resistant to fire, can put out other fires allowing everyone to progress, and use a ranged fire projectile. Then come the greens that are invulnerable to the poisonous plants and subsequent clouds that emanate from them, also with the ability to camouflage themselves and leap out on unsuspecting enemies as they pass dealing massive damage, finally rounded off by the Blues, the only minions to be able to pass undamaged through water of any kind, attacking using magical blasts (the only thing that can hurt magical enemies) and can even revive fallen minions if they are not killed first.

While minions remain the main way for you to interact with the environment (what self respecting leader would get his hands dirty picking up a pot of gold?), your character can upgrade his own skills by finding spell objects around the environment and getting your minions to bring them back to your tower, and forging new weapons and armour while imbuing them with the power of your minions to make them more powerful.

Why is abbreviation such a long word?

No self respecting action adventure would be complete without boss battles to truly test your mettle, and there are regularly spaced boss enemies to challenge as you progress through the game, generally following the classic ‘work out attack pattern, avoid until vulnerable, attack, repeat’ routine that while simplistic avoids many of the unfair guesswork that could have been present. The satisfaction of blowing up an enormously fat guy to leave his contents painted around the room is akin to sweeping a veritable hoard of minions over a field of sunflowers to have them chop the stalks and clean the area.

Killing bosses naturally earns an achievement, and the rest are spaced nicely through the game from gaining minions of each new type to harvesting a large amount of life-force and even spending your money to upgrade your tower to satisfy the whims of a mistress you may have picked up on your travels. Online modes provide a few achievements too, but don’t seem to provide as much of a draw as the centre stage single player mode, especially since there seem to be plenty of complaints about lag and slowdowns (obvious really when you think of multiple players actively controlling a swarm of minions.

‘Visuals’ sounds like a very ergonomically designed car

While naturally presented in HD, and looking distinct and colourful, I never felt that the graphics were a large pull for this game. Most of these new 360/PS3 games make me feel the need to sit close to my TV to see all of the details, but Overlord was played from further back, after the first few sessions, not helped by the fact that many of the animations (especially of your character) feel a little clunky, and not ‘I’m wearing a massive suit of armour’ clunky, but ‘I don’t have much experience walking’ clunky, which I doubt was an intention of the design.

The sound is focussed on fantasy based effects and background music, complimented by a recognisable Mark Silk (he did those Black & White advisor voices) and a load of further tongue in cheek performances that don’t distract you from the atmosphere, instead helping you justify your menacing acts. (Not in real life, Jack Thompson.) Ultimately, the game provides plenty of enjoyment, and sits very happily on the 360, slotting itself in as a console game well. Plus, who doesn’t enjoy a bit of mindless destruction, and a justification to empathise with the ‘other side’?