Overlord Minions Impressions

When you think of covert ops, you probably think of Jack Bauer, Sam Fisher, or Rya Hayabusa. Codemasters, it seems, takes a rather different view, at least judging by the Overlord covert ops team pulled together for Overlord Minions.

The Overlord may be here, but as ever, the minions are the real stars.

The premise is simple: You are set up as the titular overlord, but you control your four minions from afar as they attempt to do a variety of tasks with a slightly higher degree of subtlety than you normally manage. Each of your minions has similar attributes to those in the console games, but as you're limited to one of each at any one time, the game moves from being an action role-playing/real-time-strategy crossover firmly into the puzzle territory as you work out how to navigate the game's various puzzles.

This being Overlord, of course, it's not quite that simple; there is still a fair amount of wanton destruction and combat, but it's the puzzling side that is at the core of this game.

Your minions' abilities set up the puzzles; your green minion is unfazed by poison, for example, and the blue one doesn't mind a little water. Control is managed almost entirely with the stylus--select a minion or group on the left, and then drag the stylus along the path you want them to follow. Crossing an enemy with your stylus causes your selected minions to attack him, while doing the same to an object orders them to interact in the most sensible way.

Some the puzzles are set over a considerable area, with multiple stages to each one, requiring a certain amount of thought. The later ones we saw looked fairly challenging, though not punishingly so. If you lose a minion, you can easily replace him at one of the various spawn points, and the few essential destructible objects--such as exploding barrels--respawn too if accidentally destroyed. The game also looks promising outside of the puzzles, thanks to the light relief thrown in as the mischievous minions get debriefed by your chief minion-wrangler after each mission.

Control precision seems to be something of an issue at the current stage of development, with some more fiddly tasks being a little more of a hassle than might be ideal. It's also a shame that you need to click on each minion's icon on the left-hand side of the screen when you want to switch; simply tapping the minion you want seems like it would be infinitely easier.

We're intrigued by what we've seen of Overlord Minions so far, and it appears to be shaping up to be an interesting and well-thought-out first DS outing for the franchise that's well-suited to the diminutive handheld.