Overlord review (PC)

There you are, lying all snug and happy under the ground. Enjoying a well earned rest in death, when, all of a sudden the earth above you moves and some freaky little imp type creature is thrusting acid in your eyes. Not your average morning wake up I'll grant you, but when you are set to be the next evil Overlord you soon find not much about your life follows the nine to five routine.

Overlord on the PC is quirky, fun, engaging and humorous, I could probably stop this review here and be satisfied that I have outlined why you should play this game, but i won't. Because if there is some bizarre reason that the idea of being an evil dictator sending minions out to destroy everything in your path doesn't fill you with glee, then i am going to need to use the rest of this review to convince you.

Bringing Evil back

The concept behind the game is simple, the last overlord died, and someone needs to replace him, that someone is you. Unfortunately during the period between leaders a new race of creatures known as halflings have invaded the lands and are terrorizing all the local peasants, which of course is terrible, I mean terrorizing people is your job. And so your task? Clear out the halflings and restore evil and menace to the land.

This is an interestingly restricted-free roaming affair, you progress through several different levels each with a collection of tasks that must be completed. You'll need to go back and forth between them in order to achieve all the objectives set out in front of you, and find the various hidden objects scattered around. Although you are free to roam the various areas at your leisure you quickly find that each task has a 'starting point' and as soon as you find that completing it becomes somewhat linear. This doesn't detract from the experience at all, in fact if anything it helps. You have the feeling of freedom, wandering round destroying sheep, as well as feeling like you can always step straight back into the storyline and progress the game.

Pumpkin Hats

Helping you along your way are your faithful minions, you have four types of minions under your control distinguished by their colour. Each class of minion with their own special abilities, the Browns who are grunt fighters, Blues who can revive falling comrades and Reds and Greens who can work with fire and poisons. The minions are a great element of this game, and frequently make you smile whilst playing through. Their lives are completely at you disposal, to the point where they will gladly sacrifice themselves at a shrine in order to increase your health. They will fly into battle at your whim taking on enemies ranging from Trolls to rats to pumpkins. Your minions will run around picking up anything that looks useful and either, bringing it back to you if it is something you can use (the life force of fallen enemies used to summon more minions, or gold) or picking it up to use themselves (weapons found in crates and barrels or pumpkins and rat skulls to use as helmets).

So your main purpose here is to trek through the lands, removing the halflings and working your way up the chain until you find the person in charge of their little invasion, simple enough, but that's not all there is to being an evil overlord you know. I mean what is the point pillaging the land and collecting all the gold you can get your hands on if there isn't anything to spend it on, well luckily there is. Back at your tower, you base of evil operations, things are in a pretty sorry state. Various objects which should reside within your towers walls have been scattered throughout the lands, locating them and instructing your minions to carry them back to your tower (they really do come in useful for all sorts) will see you rewarded in a variety of ways, increased health, extra Mana (used for casting spells) extra spells to add to your repertoire as well as a number of useful little tools which can be used to create new weapons and armour, which of course will cost you gold to actually produce.

Misguided Minions

However, storyline and Game play isn't everything, there are also the controls and graphics to consider. Graphically this looks good, the lands are well textured with vibrant colours. There is a good mix between rolling countryside, caves, forests, villages, towns and cities. Enemies and your minions are well designed, though a little repetitive at times, all the halflings, with the the exception of storyline 'boss' style characters, look exactly the same. The same goes for Elves and other races you encounter. None of this gets in the way of the game, in fact to be honest i didn't even notice this until several hours into playing.

The one area that does let this game down is the control system, on the whole it works well but there are little niggles which can sometimes get in the way of your enjoyment. The control system is relatively simple, sure there are a large number of usable key commands but only a much smaller subset of these is really required to play the game. The mouse is extensively used for controlling your minions, the left mouse key used to send them off to a task whilst the right mouse key recalls them. However my issue here is that you cannot tell them specifically what to do, just send them off in a general direction. I frequently found myself sending minions to revive their falling comrades only to watch them head off and start breaking up crates and barrels whilst others fell in battle around them. You also have the ability to set Guard points, a waypoint which holds your minions in one place. One section of the game instructs you to use this to guide your minions through a puzzle, which simply did not work. Setting the first waypoint was fine but upon cancelling this all your minions return to you before you have a chance to take control and send them to their next destination, maybe I was using this incorrectly but certainly nothing in the in-game instructions suggested i was.

However, control niggles aside this is a great game. There's imagination in the storyline, context and setting, humour throughout and plenty of fun to be had. Go on, give in to the dark side.