- Title: Overlord
- Platform:Xbox 360
- Publisher: Codemasters
- Developer: Triumph Studios
- ESRB Rating: “T” for Teen
- Genre: Action RPG
- Pros: Being evil is fun; the minions are pretty funny; addictive and satisfying gameplay; nice graphics
- Cons: Pacing could be better in the middle of the game; you’re more like the Diet Coke of evil rather than someone truly evil
Features
When the game starts, you have just been resurrected by your minions, and your tower is in ruins. Your objective is to rebuild your evil tower, and put fear back into the hearts of the villagers throughout the land. You accomplish this with the help of your army of minions. There are four different minion types and while each type has a unique use, they are all equally vicious and mean spirited. The single-player campaign is fairly lengthy, and you’ll go from a smoking heap of a tower to a fully rebuilt, full staffed (with female villagers you kidnapped…), and very ominous looking tower and you’ll even pick up a mistress along the way. Life is good for the evil overlord.
Where Overlord really shines is in the humor and off kilter style of the whole game. Your minions will say and do some pretty goofy things, and it is a joy to just sit back and watch them do their work. Also, I rather enjoy this take on this fantasy world. The game pulls no punches and tells it like it is. Elves are basically whiny emo kids. And dwarves are angry beards with legs. Brilliant.
Gameplay
The first six hours or so of Overlord is very fun and very satisfying since you are constantly discovering new pieces for your tower, finding new minions, accomplishing tasks, and opening up new areas of the map. Towards the middle of the game, however, it all starts to drag a bit. You still make progress, but it is much, much slower than when you first started. It is at this point that you kind of start to notice a few flaws with the game. Controlling your minions is easy enough with the right stick, and you can easily select different types or single out just a handful to do a particular job, but the puzzles in the latter half of the game are much more complicated and require tighter controls than the game can offer. Also, it all gets a bit repetitive after a while as puzzles repeat and you kill your 10,000th sheep. It is still definitely enjoyable, but you can’t ignore some of the flaws.
Graphics and Sound
Graphically, Overlord is very easy on the eyes. The world you are trying to conquer is bright and colorful and detailed and just looks great overall. The characters, from human villagers to bloodthirsty unicorns to fat Halflings to dwarves, are all nicely detailed and look great. Your minions are particularly well presented, and have some particularly good animation. It is funny to watch them tear through a pumpkin patch and put the pumpkins on their heads, or ride a sheep around before they kill it, or drink all of the beer when they stumble onto a picnic.The sound is also very good. Solid music and sound effects pair up with good voice acting to really immerse you into the world. Again, the grunts and growls and funny catch phrases of your minions are the focus here. I particularly like the minion at your tower that just follows you around and happily tells you all of your accomplishments.
Bottom Line
