Overlord is simply a game that gets a lot of things right – and doesn’t really get anything wrong.
Story
Being a simple game at heart, it’s totally understandable that Overlord doesn’t really bother fleshing out any kind of real story. The real heart of the game is the ability to be completely and utterly evil, and this is what the game focuses on. To that effect, there’s a very basic structure here that basically involves the fact that you’re the Overlord of an evil domain that was ransacked and removed from the power of your predecessor. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to build your domain back into power and then buy new upgrades for your stronghold, all while searching the land to amass a new army of Minions. There are a few additions to this basic structure along the way, but none of them really shake things up to any noticeable degree, so it’s easy to take them with a grain of salt and just keep playing. The simple story, in turn, makes it very easy to focus on what the game is really about. The Minions.
Gameplay
Overlord’s gameplay centers around the player controlling his (or her) very own small army of Minions; mindless, utterly brainless, and ready-to-please little gremlin like things that do all of your bidding. There are four different variations to these minions: brown minions are great at melee combat; blues can swim (while the others can’t) and can raise their fallen comrades from the dead; reds toss fireballs; and greens are immune to poison. Most of the game’s puzzle and strategic gameplay revolves around all of these strengths and weaknesses in some way, so most of figuring out how to take down whatever’s in front of you is about figuring out what that particular obstacle’s weakness is and exploiting it with the required minion type. A few of the larger obstacles in the game will require more than one minion type, but to the game’s credit the control makes is incredibly easy to manage more than one type of minion at a time.
For the most part, the game is designed on either platform to make real use of the Xbox 360 controller. Controlling your Overlord is as simple as moving the left stick to navigate the game world. Like most recent PC games to utilize the Xinput framework to leverage the Xbox 360 controller, all of the in-game prompts will use the same color-coded icons that game would running natively on the Xbox 360, so you’re never really lost on what to push or move. Pulling the left trigger allows you to lock on to different targets in the game world and pulling the right trigger sends your minion horde out to attack whatever is directly in front of you. If you don’t want to send the entire horde, don’t hold the trigger down – just press it a few times and the number of corresponding minions will be sent out. Finally, in perhaps one of the most genius design choices ever chosen by a development team, the minions all match the colors of the four letter buttons on the face of the Xbox 360 controller. If you hold down the right shoulder button and then press one of the face buttons on the controller, you’ll get to select only the matching minion color. This allows you to perform more specific roles in the game world, such as getting rid of a poison cloud with your green minions without poisoning the rest of the colors to death. It also allows you to pull off two part commands, which will be required at certain times during the game. For instance, suppose there’s a monster waiting between you and a piece of treasure and the treasure is in a body of water. Well, assuming that the monster itself is on dry land, you could send your brown and green minions to keep it busy while you send your blue minions in to the water to extract your loot. To make things easier, the game allows you to click the right analog stick to zoom out the game to a more traditional “real-time strategy” view and then use the right stick to more accurately control whatever color horde (or the entire horde if you wish). If you press the Y button you’re controlling a horde, they’ll be given a guard marker which tells them to stay there until you call them back. So if you place a guard marker for the green and brown minions mentioned above, you won’t have to worry about them getting in the way of the blue minions gathering your treasure.
The great thing about all of this is that the controls in Overlord are laid out superbly. You’re never fighting your fingers to press a button, even in the direst situations and because of the simplicity of the control scheme; it’s easy to fluidly give out commands to your minion hordes in battle. And because the control scheme and game mechanics are simple overall, Overlord is a game that’s easy to pick up for practically any age and should apply just as well to the younger audience as it does to the older.
Presentation
Overlord doesn’t skimp on the presentation. The game makes full use of the latest techniques brought about by Shader Model 3.0 and in order to run the game in its full glory, you’ll need a fairly powerful high-end video card. To this degree, the Xbox 360 version will be more appealing to those that don’t want to spend the time and effort upgrading their PC or worrying about it to begin with. There are slight differences between the two – the PC version tends to have more detail objects scattered about and the PC version carries a larger degree of grass than the 360 does. On either platform, the game looks and sounds superb. The world is all very surreal and bright looking, with a diverse color palette and a large variety of different architecture styles scattered throughout. Over the course of the game, you’ll see everything for a lush farmland to a dying Elvin forest, to a superbly done beach cave that’s teaming with blue tones and great water effects. There’s not a single part of the game that’s looks blurry, grainy, or undercooked.
The voice acting though is perhaps what makes the presentation shine in Overlord. The Minions are a blast to listen to in action, spouting things like, “For the master!” “Burn, pillage, destroy!” and “Taking positions!” over the course of the game. While they do repeat themselves a lot, the quality of the voice acting for the minions and the subtle nuance sounds of each make it so that they never get old. The blue minions will gurgle as if they’re choking on water and will blow bubble out of their noses, the red minions will hack and cough as though they’ve got bronchitis, and the green minions will wave their hands in front of their noses as if they’ve farted and it really stinks. The various peasants throughout the game are voiced a degree that sounds just right – they’re totally overboard, but they’re not annoying and almost every one of them will likely say something that has you either giggling or outright laughing. There’s also the fact that the ambience effects in Overlord are outstanding. If you’ve got a surround sound setup, you’ll be immensely impressed by what you hear.