Overlord (Xbox 360) Review
Posted by Steve McHugh on 08.06.2007
They're not evil just misunderstood.
Being evil is great. It’s a simple unavoidable fact. Now I don’t mean real life evil like a serial killer or something I mean Megatron evil. Yes he’s the bad guy but he’s just so damn cool that you can’t help but love him. You could call it comic book evil if that makes you feel better but being the bad guy is always more fun.
In Overlord you are the bad guy, you can choose to be either really bad or just bad but you’re still not the kind of person who wears white.
As the Overlord your job is to rule the land with an iron fist, except no one knows that yet and so you have to go around defeating the 7 heroes (the least heroic heroes ever) and generally making sure that everyone knows exactly who you are and why you just burned their house down.
Graphics
If the pictures make you think of Fable then that’s pretty much exactly what it looks like. It’s a very pretty game with some very nice areas to visit (the Elven forest is especially nice). But the one thing this game has is personality; it’s oozing with the stuff. Especially the minions. I’ll explain them in more detail in a second but they look fantastic and when you’ve got 30 of the little buggers running around destroying everything it shows just how impressive the game looks. Then there are the little touches like when they find items and equip them giving each minion an individual look. Easily one of the most charming games you can buy.
Cry havoc etc etc etc.
Gameplay
Overlord has been described as Pikmin like and that’s a fair description. You start the game with only brown minions who can hit pretty hard but that’s about it. Throughout the game you’ll get blue, red and green minions all of whom have various abilities. Greens can remove poison, reds use fire etc. You can choose to pick all of them or just one colour and order them around by just looking at what you want them to destroy or move and clicking on the right trigger. They then run off and do whatever needs to be done at that point, be it killing sheep, attacking enemies or destroying people’s homes. It’s a pretty good system and you’ll rarely get annoyed that they did something you don’t want them too. Well except the blues.
You see the blues are very weak but can heal your fallen minions except they never seem to bother with the healing and just carry out picking up treasure or other bonuses with the other minions. Maybe next time healing should be their main priority when pointing them in one direction.
As I said you can pick any 1 of the 4 types to use or all of them at once, it’s not the most flexible system but it works well enough and you can use waypoints to place a certain colour minion in one place and leave them there until you call them back. This is especially useful with the greens, who become invisible when stationary so they can ambush anyone coming near them.
The main problem with minion control isn’t actually the minions fault. Sometimes you’ll see something you can reach but you’ll need to take over the minions themselves and you do this with the right stick. It’s actually a very good idea but it does leave one huge problem. There’s no camera control so it stays in one place until you reset it with the back buttons. It’s a very clunky system for camera control and often will lead to some very frustrating moments when you’re fighting enemies and can’t see what’s going on.
The minions do everything for you, primarily because the Overlord is quite weak. He can’t jump and gets killed easily if you use him to attack everything so it’s best if you keep him back and let your minions do all the work. This includes a variety of puzzles, which are always straightforward and don’t really test you at all. But that’s the point because you just want to get back to kicking everything’s ass.
The other problem with the game is the total lack of an in-game map, meaning you have no idea where you are or where you’re meant to go. You get one in the box but really that’s not good enough. These days a map is a necessity, especially in a game as big as this. And the lack of one really does cause some frustration when you can’t figure out where you’re meant to go.
This is, at the same time, both incredibly cute and disturbing.
Sound
The music is…well its just okay. Nothing more, nothing less. However, the voice acting is fantastic. The minions really come to life when they start giving things to you whilst saying ‘for the overlord’ in a squeaky voice. And the rest of the cast is excellent too. The story is also genuinely funny, especially as everyone thinks you’re this big hero who has come to save them. Mostly this is because everyone is pretty stupid, which in itself is fairly funny.
Lasting Appeal
Well about 15 hours for the main story, more if you do the side-quests and you’ll probably play it through more than once just to see how evil you can be. In fact to get all of the achievements you need to play more than once anyway. Then there’s some multi-player battles which are fairly good fun. There’s also the promise of downloadable content which is a nice touch.
Hi ho! Hi ho! It's off to kill we go.
Fun Factor
This game is all about having fun, it oozes charm and personality like very few games can manage. It’s also one of the most genuinely funny games I’ve ever played and you will laugh out loud at least once. The first time you send minions to destroy a pumpkin patch and they come back with pumpkin helmets I defy you not to laugh.
The 411
Despite all of the gameplay faults this is a great game. If they can make a sequel that fixes those faults then this would be an excellent game to own but as it is it’s simply a great game that has more charm in one little minion then most games manage in the whole package.
Graphics
8.9
Everything looks very nice but the stars are the minions who look fantastic, especially when they start destroying stuff.
Gameplay
8.2
Mostly very good but no in-game map is a huge problem and the lack of camera controls hurts the game.
Sound
9.0
Okay music but excellent voice acting.
Lasting Appeal
8.0
15 hrs + and you’ve got multi-player this will last a while.
Fun Factor
9.3
Despite the faults this is a barrel of laughs and more fun then a lot of games out there.
