Evil deeds won't just do themselves.
Admit it; you've always wanted a little gremlin that followed you around telling you how awesome you were, no matter how many times you put a boot to its face. The kind of little minion that would tell you how great you were for dumping your girlfriend in favor of her more voluptuous sister or for choosing money over saving lives. If you just grinned a little bit, then the twisted and evil humor that defines Overlord is right up your alley. Borrowing heavily from Pikmin, Overlord takes you through a lighthearted quest to restore a dark kingdom to its former glory. On its way, Overlord carves out its own little niche both unique and enjoyable.
If you've played Pikmin before, Overlord will be about as familiar to you as your favorite pair of boxers. You play the role of a dark overlord, brought forth to control a horde of minions that wreak havoc upon the world as you work to restore your once glorious kingdom. Your pack of minions begins small, but increases in both variety and size as you progress through the game to uncover new powers, spells, and pieces of your dark tower. These little guys are the keys to your success. They fight and die for you, team up to move objects too heavy for you to lift, and provide enough laughs to make even the most angelic of us feel good about doing evil. Without them, you're helpless. This makes harvesting the essence orbs and locating spawning pits an integral part of the game.
The real success in Overlord comes from the interactions that can be had between the minions and the rest of the world. Sweep your horde over a table with a few pints of beer and the minions will drink it and then empty their bladders with a maniacal chuckle. Give them access to a pumpkin patch and they'll tear it to bits and create sweet helmets to wear. The minions are animated well, even though the overlord looks a bit stiff (If he's supposed to be so evil, why does he walk like such a tool?), and watching them smash and interact with their surroundings is a joy.
With four types of minions that each possess their own unique abilities, Overlord is primed for some fancy puzzles. For the most part, though, the game shies away from forcing gamers to use their brains. Much of the game is in fact a trial in collecting enough minions and directing them forward to overwhelm obstacles or enemies. We did come across a decent number of puzzles, but these are few and far between, and the ones we didn't encounter weren't particularly challenging. In fact, much of the thinking in Overlord comes from being lost as you try to figure out where to head next. An in-game map would have greatly reduced this issue, but then the game would be about as straightforward and linear as they come. If you know what you're doing, you can easily beat the game in under 15 hours.
And getting lost in the world is one of the best parts about Overlord. The detailed environments, clever missions, and quirky inhabitants are all as interesting as they are visually appealing. Exploring the world as you seek to improve your dark tower and please your mistress (Good or evil, it's your choice as to which to take home. Bonus!) remains interesting for hours on end, even though the puzzle design isn't the most intriguing. There's a lot packed into Overlord that all encourages completists to have a go at nailing every optional task.
The controls for Overlord generally work well. With the camera always mapped to the mouse, one doesn't ever have to worry about your view jostling about like you do when playing with a controller. Most orders for minion control can be given with just the mouse buttons and scroll wheel which keeps things simple, although controlling their movements directly causes you to relinquish control of the camera, which can result in a bit of confusion. This only happens occasionally though, and the overall control scheme is quite fluid. After spending an extensive amount of time with the Xbox 360 version, I can say for sure that this game is more suited to a keyboard and mouse than a controller.
Even with a good control scheme, maneuvering your horde isn't always a walk in the park. Giving the little critters commands is a cinch. Whether they follow them or not is another question. The path-finding in Overlord isn't the best and you'll often find the minions running directly towards a target on the far side of an obstacle, only to get caught and not be able to find their way around. This happens a lot with orders to go down thin paths when your overlord isn't directly lined up with where you'd like to send the minions. It also happens with enemies who can't figure out how best to move to attack you and wind up shaking in one place or getting caught on ledges.
A lot of work could have been done on the enemy AI, in fact, particularly for the boss battles. Many bosses rely on patterned attacks, but those that don't are easily fooled. We had one lose us entirely, causing it to give up and stand in one place, as we stood next to it attacking. Even the toughest enemies are unable to adapt to your attack patterns no matter how many times you repeat them, allowing you to use cheesy tactics with abandon.
Overlord is a visually, and for the most part, aurally pleasing game. The visual style feels ripped straight out of Fable with a healthy dose of The Lord of the Rings thrown in for good measure. The dwarves, elves, and Sauron-esque overlord aren't particularly original, but Codemaster's take on them is. There's a great deal of voice acting that is done quite well, though it could have been coded a bit better. Most non-player characters (NPCs) have speech triggered by your character crossing a specific point on the ground. Walk past a vendor and he asks if your minions are for sale. Cross paths with an NPC in one village and he'll decry his leader. It sounds nice the first time, but if you're lost (and you often are) you'll walk past the same NPC numerous times in short order making the single line of dialogue shift from funny to annoying. Still, Overlord does not disappoint the eyes and ears.
On top of the sufficiently extensive and deep single player mode are several online multiplayer options. There's a co-op survival test and two versus modes. These play fairly similarly to the campaign except for the ever present enemy overlord vying for resources through strategy and upfront attacks. Unsurprisingly, compared to the single player game these online features feel light and unsatisfying. If you absolutely must have more Overlord after exhausting the single player game, these will do the trick. However, you'll probably spend the vast majority of your Overlord gaming time with the single player game.
The PC version of Overlord runs significantly smoother than its Xbox 360 cousin. On both an XP and new Vista rig, the game ran cleanly with a solid framerate even when we pushed all of the details to the max. At a high resolution with full texture detail and anti-aliasing, Overlord looks great. More importantly, the PC version of Overlord didn't display any of the quirks we found on Xbox 360 and the game-breaking bug has already been patched. Aside from the aforementioned AI and path-finding issues, Overlord played without a hitch for us.
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