Xbox 360 Review
Overlord
August 15, 2008 by Hovsep YaghmourianThese days, it seems like a lot of games (mostly RTS’s) offer you the opportunity to play a campaign from the side of either good or evil, in an attempt to broaden the scope of a narrative. There are few games, however, that are designed to allow you to be really evil. Well ladies and gentleman, your game has arrived, and its name is Overlord. This quirky action/adventure/strategy hybrid from developer Triumph Studios and publisher CodeMasters allows you to get a first hand look at what it’s like conquering a beautiful fantasy world for no more reason than the fact that destroying and/or subjugating magical folk is both fun and funny.
When you start the game, you are in control of the titular Overlord, having awoken in the ruins of your once awe-inspiring dark tower after having been magically imprisoned by some gallant heroes. Your goal is to rebuild your tow
er and re-conquer the land from those devilish do-gooders that sealed you away. Of course, having been stripped of your power and equipment, it’s going to take a lot of work. Luckily, you’re not in it alone. The game’s first objectives are regaining control of your minions, small gremlin-like creatures that obey your every whim. There are four different types of minions for you to collect and control:
The Browns – Toughest of the lot, these guys are your front-line fighters
The Reds – Physically weak, the Reds make up for it with their invulnerability to fire and their ranged combat skills
The Greens – Immune to poison and able to go into stealth mode, they don’t have much in the way of defense, but get them around your enemies’ back and they can deal some incredibly high damage
The Blues – The weakest of all your minions, the Blues are able to resurrect other fallen minions, making them invaluable during battle. Blues are also the only minions able to go through water.
You use your minions from everything to combat, manipulating the environment, and even to upgrade your weapons and armor with the use of magical forges (watching your minions happily hurl themselves into your smelter to craft new weapons puts a smile on my face every time.)
You control your Overlord with the left analog stick, and your minions with the right one (you can also set up waypoints for your minions where they will await further orders, or attack if the opportunity arises, using each of the face buttons to control a different type of minion.) Controls are responsive, for the most part, though you’ll oftentimes see one or two of your minions lagging behind the rest. The graphics are great, the cartoonish world coming to life with bold, bright colors and hilarious character models, and that’s not the only funny part of the game. The dialogue and voice-acting, while campy, fits the tone of the game very well and had me chuckling (and occasionally, even outright laughing) throughout the whole, though the funniest parts by far are the casual actions of your minions while they trample everything in their paths. Looking on as your minions stumble drunkenly and noisily relieve themselves after raiding a dwarven drinking party never gets old.
While all these things stack up in the games favor, the experience isn’t perfect, with a few large stumbling blocks marring the overall experience. The first noticeably troubling oversight comes in the form of the map, or rather, the complete lack of one. The world your would-be-conqueror is traipsing around in is fairly large and full of twists and turns, and the absence of a map, any map, goes from mildly irritating when you’re having a little trouble finding your next objective, to infuriating when you’ve spent 15 minutes going in circles looking for the path to the next area. Also increasingly irritating as the game progresses is the A.I. of your minions. To put in bluntly, your minions are dumb, incredibly so, and if you’re not guiding them almost all of the time, they will get themselves killed. This is only a minor nuisance early on in the game, when simply swarming your troops over enemies is enough to take them out, but in later stages where higher degrees of organization and strategy are essential, your loyal servants’ habit of running headlong into certain death if you don’t watch their every move will have you tearing out your hair. Compounding that problem is the camera which (since the two analog sticks have already been assigned tasks) simply follows your Overlord around. This can be very aggravating in battle when to get behind an enemy to assist your minions, only to realize you cannot, now see what your minions are doing.
Though these issues keep the game from perfection, its imaginative setting, maniacal humor, creativity, and sheer fun keep these problems from being game-breakers and solidify Overlord’s place as a game that everyone should, at the very least, check out, and with a new expansion adding several single and multi-player levels, you can be sure that evil won’t be going out of style any time soon.
Xbox 360 Review
Overlord
July 14, 2007 by Cain DornanFrom the moment that you pick up the controller and begin ordering around some ugly yet charming little creatures, youll smile. Straight off the bat, Overlord is a charming and refreshingly unique gam
e, one of those all too rare gems to grace our grubby mits. Its one of those games that will likely be ignored by the mainstream, leaving only inquisitive gamers and journalists such as myself to appreciate the humor, creativity and imagination that has been pored into this fantastic little outing.
Overlord borrows some ideas from the Pikmin games on the GameCube, adding some of its own charm and dropping in plenty of light-hearted humor to help make Overlord a refreshing and pleasant experience. Its gameplay isnt exactly revolutionary, and its story isnt quite as engaging as we had hoped. However, its overall presentation and effective execution is what makes the game a top one.
You control a mysterious figure who has had the luck of inheriting the powerful and feared status of Overlord. After your predecessor was slain by seven heroes, all of whom have moved on to become corrupt in their own individual ways, the Overlords minions have found you and crowned you as their new king. Sporting some seriously wicked armour and a legion of willing followers to do your evil bidding, you step out into the world to chase down the corrupted heroes and claim back what is rightfully yours; control of the land and the terrified people within it.
The games Pikmin inspiration comes into play with your Minions, who are classified in similar ways to the GameCube hit. Theyre little creatures that follow you around and perform a vast range of orders at your command. There are four different types of Minions at your disposal, each offering their own strengths and weaknesses. The brown Minions are good at fighting, while Green Minions are immune to poisons and toxic gases, as well as possessing some ambushing skills. Red Minions are immune to fire and also wield it as a weapon, while blue Minions can enter water and re-heal fallen Minions, however they have no fighting skills. Throughout the game you are regularly faced with obstacles that require you to use each type of Minion as needed, adding in some great strategic and basic puzzle-solving elements. Youll encounter a vast range of problems, some of which can be approached and overcome differently, with very few proving to be frustrating or annoying.
Youll use your Minions to do just about everything; smash down obstacles that block your way, operate wheels to unlock gates, attack enemies, retrieve objects, or search for gold and new weaponry. Theyve got some reasonable intelligence, capable of finding their own way around obstacles, and Im yet to see them get stuck whilst following me. Theyll also follow your orders quite closing, through to completion, with only the rare occasion arising where I had to order them to do the same action more than once.
Controlling your minions is fairly straightforward. You gain more minions by retrieving life essences that are left behind when a creature is slain. This adds to the number of Minions that youre able to call upon, with a maximum number of Minions that you can control at any one time determined by how far into the game you are and what you have collected, which increase the number of Minions that you can have under your control at any one time. You can issue quick orders with the tap of the right trigger, or give more detailed orders by actually controlling the movement of your minions using the right analogue stick, directing them to exactly where you want them to go. If you have several different types of Minions under your control, you can select to control a particular type specifically, allowing you to carry out activities that are best suited to a particular Minion type while the rest of your followers stand by patiently.
Youll meet some interesting folks along your journey, some of which offer some humorous outlooks on the events. The occasional village, township or gathering location that you visit is often filled with lively characters. While you cant interact with them, which is a bit of a shame, some will shout out some funny one-liners as you pass while others will quickly get on your nerves as they repeat the same annoying line each time you pass.
The game gives you the option of acting evil or being kind. To murder an entire township of its inhabitants, or rescue them from death by retrieving their food that was stolen by other evil creatures? Once you have rescue said food, do you keep it for yourself, killing all witnesses and leaving a township to perish, or do you give it back to them and become a hero? There are both advantages and disadvantages with taking both routes; killing innocents allows you to farm more life essence to help build your army and strength, while letting them live will make the township like you, and not try kill you. There isnt a huge focus on the whole good or bad choice, as its not too often when youre faced with making the decision, and the consequences or advantages usually arent all that significant to worry about.
Tacked on to the side of the single player game is a fairly poor online multiplayer offering, in which you can battle hordes of incoming monsters using your Minions either with or against an opposing player. There are three different game types to be played, ranging from gaining points for killing creatures, including your opposing Overlord, on the level, as well as another involving collecting as much gold as possible, with the other focusing on a co-op survival match of sorts. We didnt find any particular engaging, and judging from the severe lack of anyone online playing the multiplayer, it seems most people agree.
Much like its gameplay, Overlords presentation is pleasantly simplistic and imaginative, sporting the usual cartoonish artistry that youd come to expect from a game of this nature. Environment detail is simple yet detailed, with character designs offering a typical over-the-top style to them that looks fantastic. Its not going to win any rewards for being the best looking game, but it certainly doesnt disappoint. Likewise can be said for the games voice acting; the Minions voice-over work is tops and something to be remembered, with the majority of the characters you come across also sporting some quality voice work.
If youre looking for something a little different, Overlord is worth a look. Its light-hearted presentation, solid gameplay and decent story is a refreshing change from the usual aurora of action-adventure games to grace our consoles over recent times.
