Ok, so I have been very lax in the writing of this review…not sure why, but it happens. Overlord, the game that was to bring evil back to gaming so to speak. I won’t go into the whole, “You play an evil Overlord who is trying to rebuild his shattered empire by gathering not only his strengths, minions, and wealth back, but you also seek revenge against those ‘Heroes’ who put you in the grave in the first place” type of description. Instead, I’ll leave that for those other sites.

Instead, I prefer to look at the game as an experience. My definition of experience is dependent on the following questions I ask myself while playing a game. Did I have fun, was the game play smooth (ie was it buggy, good/bad controls and/or interface, etc), was I able to enjoy it with my buddies, would I want to play through this game again, and did I feel like I got my money’s worth. I’ll expand upon each of these (scoring each on a ten scale) so hopefully you can see where I am coming from. Pretty simple stuff.

Fun (7/10)

Over all the game is pretty fun. When I first played the demo, I thought the game was a hack and slasher (well technically the minions did most of the hacking and slashing) but made me laugh so off to testing the game I went. The truth of this game is that it is really a sort of hackin’slash puzzle game. The puzzles are where you post your minions to overcome the various obstacles (pronounced ahb’stah’culls) in the game. While that is pretty fun, it does get old after doing it for over 10-11 hours. Don’t get me wrong, I did not sit for that long at one go…ok, maybe once I did but after that once I was totally burned out of the game for like a week! Needless to say, the puzzles begin to get old the longer you play the game.

To match up with the puzzles, you of course need minions which are gained by harvesting essence from living creatures. Cool at first, not so cool when you need to make that cool new sword or armor (which require 100′s perhaps 1000′s of minions to complete all the sets, unless you use the bug of saving your game just before your minions jump into the kiln and then reload the game…costing you almost nothing in minions and upgrading your item…and yes I did that) as well as go out and adventure. Towards the end of the game, I began to feel like I was back playing World of Warcraft again trying to gain one faction or another. BUT if you hang in there and create your ultimate armor and weapon, then it becomes a bit different story. You become less “dependent” on your minions and can actually just go and kick some butt yourself (and sometimes faster), thus saving the minions for those puzzles that require their use.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not beating this game down because it has a lot of puzzles. Most of which were really cool and actually made you think it through which is cool. Overall I really had a good time with the game, and as you have probably read everywhere, the minions chat is hilarious and really never gets old.

Game Play (8/10)

Overlord is a pretty well designed game overall. The use of your right stick to move your minions makes it a breeze to control, and most of the other controls felt natural. Unfortunately, while use of the right stick was used for moving your minions, you had to use it in combination with the left bumper…err right bumper…one of the bumpers (I always screwed it up while playing too) to move your camera around. It’s annoying, but not game breaking. The game lacks any sort of map, which was at times infuriating due to the confusion of the layout of the land…there are a LOT of switch backs etc in the game, just to add to the level of confusion.

As to bugs, well beyond the one I mentioned above for crafting, I really only ever ran into two. The first was the “stuck” minions issue. Some reason they would just get stuck, at times on nothing at all and other times on roots, branches, etc. The old forest was horrible for this. The only other bug I encountered was the “sex scene” bug. Basically when you upgrade the tower enough, your mistress asks to see you in the bedchambers and there is a G rated sex scene. Which was fine, but then when I upgraded the tower again, I kept getting the message that “Mistress Rose would like to see you in your chambers, Lord.” Thinking it was my chance to score again, I went to the bedroom to be stood up by the Mistress. Unfortunately my servant never got the memo that she wasn’t coming and constantly reminded me that she was waiting…ironically, once she was standing next to me and my servant minion Gnarl while he was telling me she wanted to see me in the chambers.

Co-op/Multi-Player (4/10)

Unfortunately the game only has few modes of multi-player, Pillage, Slaughter, and Survival modes. Neither of which are “long lasting” fun for me. While Codemasters has promised to have an upgrade download via Xbox Live soon that will allow for split screen play and new maps, it just seems that online play was an after thought. The only Co-op mode is that of survival, and it is just that…stay alive…no real long term game play really. Perhaps there is more to the various modes, I personally only dabbled in them and quickly came to the conclusion that they were not for me.

Replayability (3/10)

There are two different endings…that’s it…the game is pretty linear and while you can play the game as the ultimate good Evil Overlord type or the evil Evil Overlord type (evil requiring you to “farm faction” by killing thousands of your peasants) the game doesn’t really offer enough alternate story arcs to merit much replay. Honestly, the best way would be to play through as a good type of Evil Overlord and then go back to one of your saves and just begin farming evil until you max it out and complete the story that way. Would I ever do that…not likely no, but you might…

Money for Value (6/10)

I give it 6 out of 10 because I have spent cash on games that absolutely sucked. This game doesn’t suck, but it just doesn’t have the oomph to merit spending cash on it. At the end of the day, it a: isn’t very evil and b: becomes a drink coaster after you completed the story line through (ok, maybe it becomes the coaster after those 3 people out there completed the game through both times to see both endings).

Last W3rd

I have to say that I did enjoy playing through the game, a lot. I especially enjoyed the dwarfs (I use dwarfs and not dwarves because these are clearly dwarfs influenced by UK based Games Workshop’s Bugman’s Rangers) The area was challenging, and I enjoy nothing more than killing me some stumpies! There was a bit of a surprise at the ending that is revealed when you fight the last boss, the Wizard. And while it may catch a few people off, I don’t believe it was a complete shocker when the truth is finally revealed to you. My personal opinion on this game is go out and rent it…you’ll have a great time playing it through, and if nothing else, you’ll laugh a lot playing it.

Mr. Johnson

Game Score: 56%

Rent or Buy: RENT