Gaming Signal: Preview: Overlord

Preview: Overlord

I've been playing the PC version of Overlord and thought I'd share my impressions. The game sets you up as an evil overlord who can summon a set of minions to do your bidding. You use them to do most of the dirty work - ransacking things, killing do-gooders like halflings and elves, and carrying heavy items for you. You can wade in and help out in the battles if you want - but most of the action is designed to be done by them. The premise is that you were killed by seven heroes and now your back and have to extract vengeance upon them. You also have to rebuild your dark tower by acquiring things like a forge, power sources, etc. You also have to regain control of the different types of minions and the lost artifacts. If it sounds like Dungeon Keeper then think again - it's nothing like that.

It's a great premise, and you can choose to be Lawful Evil (for example, helping the humans because they will end up helping you later) or Chaotic Evil (killing everything in site.) It's also a fun game, with the different minion types (there are 4 - a heavy combat minion, a fire minion, poison minion, and a water minion) and limited overall number at any one time giving you some rock-paper-scissors puzzles. The minion graphics are fantastic - they pickup random objects while fighting and use them instead of the default club. It's so cool to see a minion kill an undead rat and take the head for a helm, or another kill a skeleton and pickup it's severed arm and use that. After a boss fight, my minion took the boss' gold crown and wore that for a while (until the minion was killed, sadly.) And the textures are nothing short of spectacular - easily some of the best dungeon settings I've ever seen even. The audio is good too with the minions whooping and yelling during combat and when looting. It's cool.

The game is not quite like anything I've seen. It has elements of an RTS (no doubt many people think it is one) but it isn't really, because you can have a maximum of only 50 minions out at once (and that only at the end of the game if you do every side quest and grind out some forged items) so it plays a lot smaller and more personal than most RTS (like C&C3). It has platformer style puzzles - a major surprise because I didn't expect it. It also has boss fights which so far have been interesting if not super.

One of the oddest parts is the control scheme on the PC. It wasn't until I saw it was available for the 360 that I realized why the system was so unique. You have to hold down the left and right mouse buttons and move the mouse to 'sweep' your minions around the battlefield. It's a concession I bet comes from using the triggers or something on the 360 controllers while using a joystick to move them. It works, but it's very unique - and frankly not necessary with a PC mouse. I could easily just click on the ground and control a minion that way - but that would make the game way too easy because the control system is built into the game difficulty for some of the puzzles - sad really, but not necessarily less fun.

If you are interested in a game that isn't a cookie-cutter sequel of everything you've seen before, Overlord is a good choice. And if you have a 360, I think you'd find it a very experience that's tailored to that platform.