Overlord
Overlord
It's nice having the day off from work...I spent most of my morning finishing up the game Overlord so that finally the game gets a review on here.
Overlord comes to us from Triumph Studios of the Netherlands (the Age of Wonders series) and is published by Codemasters of Britain. Released on the Xbox 360 and PC in July the game can be agreed upon by critics as being fun, if not really fun for the first time player.
The game puts you into the shoes of the most evil and vile Overlord to ever walk the lands of the world. Besides just being the baddest of the baddest, as Overlord you can control hordes of minions to carry out your every wish...which involves mostly killing, turning cranks, and carrying massive objects.
Review:
- Graphics
On the Xbox 360 Overlord looks quite good. Light and shadow are beautiful and the varying environments of the game all effectively give off each settings natural feel and structure. For instance the haunted Elven forest of Evernight is filled with shadow and dark/evil foliage, the serene grass and hill country of the Mellow Hills is bright, green with life, and has a very light-hearted feel to it.
These environments feel only more alive when their elements are added upon by the kind of friends and foes that live within the domain. Characters are unique and there are plenty of different kinds of them - all totally different from one another.
Some of the best visual moments of the game are when evil starts creeping in (aka when your corruption % goes up). A nice scary fog will hang around evil places and depending on how you decide to treat the environment it will adapt to your influence (i.e. burning down trees, killing innocents, destroying homes, burning crops, etc).
Even your magic skills are very pretty to watch...especially any of your fire spells. Explosions, smoke, spells, and fire all look really great in this game.
All in all Overlord somewhat has the same feel as the game Fable did...it's actually quite alike to it but don't make the mistake of thinking these two games are alike outside of maybe 3 or 4 visual similarities.
One of the biggest upsets on my part was that you never get to see your Overlord tower looming threateningly above the lands...even though you can purchase outer upgrades for your tower (i.e spikes, crowns, etc) you only ever get to see the outside of your tower when the camera zooms out as you enter one of the 4 rooms of your tower.
Graphically the game is really nice - actually quite impressive. One of the best things about Overlord is what I mentioned earlier...the uniqueness of the different domains/environments. Due to great visual creativeness and skill each domain is great to look at in their own ways.
Overlord does however have a few glitch problems and framerates slow a bit when too much action is taking place at once (especially if you're toting around 30 minions who are fighting 3 or 4 large enemies plus you're using magic).
Graphics = 10/10
- Gameplay
What makes Overlord so special is its unique gameplay mechanics. As Overlord you control hordes of little minions who will carry out whatever mission you send them on. Most of the time these missions will be fighting or turning cranks. So, let's first talk about the minions shall we...
Minions - in Overlord the player will find that to get anywhere in the game he has to effectively use his minions: small creatures that are loyal to the point of dying instead of not carrying (or attempting to) out your will.
There are 4 kinds of minions: Browns (fighters) Reds (fire resistant/ranged), Greens (poison resistant/camouflage/effective killers when on enemy's back), and Blues (extremely weak/water resistant/can revive fallen minions). You start the game with only Browns but as the game progresses you eventually find all the other "minion tribes" by the game's halfway point.
Besides fighting and turning cranks each minion also has a useful role. Reds can swallow up fire that may block your path, Greens can swallow up poisonous clouds and plants, and Blues can simply swim. Since each minion tribe has its uses you'll find yourself toting around numbers of each tribe when you have all of them...many quests require the use of all different types to overcome certain enemies and obstacles.
Minions can also be upgraded. If there's anything besides fighting you'll use them for it's certainly destroying barrels, chests, and other assorted breakables in the environment. About 90% of the time breakable objects will drop armor, weapons, and equipment that your minions can wear and use - thus making them stronger and increasing your minion hordes toughness. Unfortunately, when these equipped minions die their armor and weapons go with them - thus surviving minions do not get to then pick up these objects. It should also be noted that Browns seem to be the only ones who can use pretty much 85% of the equipment. Reds, Greens, and Blues all can use certain forms of armor they comes across but never any weapons.
Minion AI is something all on it's own. It can be described as "retarded" which can be expected of small demonic creatures who bow to their masters wishes no matter what. Minions will be smart enough to pick up objects useful to them and you, and have enough smarts to fights an incoming enemy without command but they lack the smarts to run away, dodge, or do certain actions automatically without you telling them (one of the most annoying being that Blues will NOT revive fallen minions during combat unless you stop what you're doing to order them forwards). Simply put if you were to order forward a collection of Brown minions at a pile of wood on fire...they'd get right in there and burn themselves to a crisp - just b/c you told them to.
When a simple wave of the hand isn't enough the player can "sweep minions". This basically means that the Overlord takes full control over the horde's movements and can move them across narrow bridges, through small holes, and thus open doors and gates so that the player may enter or the sweep mechanic can be used to position different minion types to carry out a better job (i.e. positioning Greens behind an enemy so that they can jump on it's back for a vastly more effective kill or positioning Reds above an enemy to rain down fire upon them).
Overall the minion concept is really cool and somewhat makes Overlord not only a nice adventure game but also adds to the feeling that even though it may be repetitive the game does have a lot of puzzle game in it.
The only trouble I've had with the minion control is being able to switch back and forth between the tribes quickly.
Another part of the gameplay that's worth mentioning is the concept of Corruption. In the game you can play through it in two ways: 1. As an Evil/Good Overlord or 2. As an Evil/Evil Overlord
Corruption - As you play Overlord you'll discover that while the game is pretty linear at times you can by all means just teleport yourself to a given domain and raise some hell fire.
If you want you can kill peasants, burn houses, ransack houses, and set things ablaze. You'll also come across certain moments in quests where you'll have the choice to perform either the evil/good act or the evil/evil act. These can range from moments where you decide to keep something for yourself as opposed to giving it back to the people, killing characters that helped you out, stealing gold, or my favorite releasing Elven prisoners only to have them get eaten by giant slugs!
All of these actions will increase or decrease your Corruption % and your environment will begin to change around you given that %. This is most prominent in your tower...as your % increases the inside of your tower will become more evil looking which is kind of cool.
Other Stuff - There are other mechanics of the game that are somewhat interesting. Here's a short list of small (sometimes meaningless) bits of Overlord's play:
- The ability to have a mistress (opens your private quarters and can upgrade certain minions)
- Retrieving smelters for your forge (provides 3 kinds of Overlord equipment)
- Forging armor, weapons, and helmets from 3 different metal types (steel, durium, and arcanium)
- Upgrading armor, weapons, and helmets with minion sacrifices (adding magical abilities to these objects)
- A fighting room in your tower which allows you to manifest enemies you've encountered in the game world for a fight or two (allowing you to come up with better fighting strategies, etc).
- Ability to upgrade your tower's look (adding thrones, banners, carpets, statues, etc for gold)
For the most part these are all somewhat useless mechanics that don't have any sort of use or bigger role in the actual game.
Overlord's gameplay is quite different and unique but I find myself questioning the purpose of some things...while it seems nice to have them there and despite the fact that these abilities do add something to the game the pay off still doesn't seem satisfactory to me.
Gameplay = 7/10
- Audio
If there's one thing that's almost flawless about Overlord it's the voice acting and music. Minions and other characters say some pretty funny things and add to that somewhat "comedic" feel to Overlord however sometimes the lines do get a little old yet somehow it's never too old when your minions scream, yell, howl, and make funny noises while they fight or perform tasks.
The music is another strong point. The soundtrack and background music change to fit the environments so well that it's worth mentioning. Like the visual aspects of the game, the music was well chosen and created uniquely for each kind of environment you'll fight your way through.
Audio = 5/5
- Replay Value
Like most games I've reviewed, Overlord is only worth playing through again and again if you're either really into the game or really are into the whole Xbox 360 achievements.
However if you play the game out in one way or the other (Evil/Good or Evil/Evil) it would be worth it to try and play it again making different choices than the first time through just to see how the different the game can play out or feel for you.
Also - even though this is not a for sure kind of thing...the game makers have announced that they plan to release patches, updates, etc on both the PC and Xbox 360 (downloadable on game start-up). Adding certain maps, monsters, objects, etc to the multiplayer portion of the game but also there's a rumor that another chapter or two of the single player game will become available (nice!)
Replay Value = 3/5
- Story/Plot
There really is not solid story in Overlord. Basically you seem to be some sort of "grown" evil being that gets unearthed at the beginning of the game to replace the recently fallen evil doer.
From there the game makes you go out into the world and bring back important objects that will help piece your evil tower together. After that though the game becomes a meaningless string of quests and missions that will happen to appear when you trigger them via entering new areas.
If there is a larger and more important point to Overlord it certainly gets lost in translation. Yet somehow the gameplay and such make up a little bit for this ignorance to story.
Story/Plot = 7/10
Conclusion:
While there are a number of negative aspects of Overlord don't take them the wrong way or take them as a sign of "keep away". The game is quite fun and it gets even better when you realize that no other game out there feels like this one does.
While the name of the game is being evil though...there's only a limited amount of evil you can carry out in your time here in Overlord. One of the biggest restrictions of course is the fact that Overlord is rated T for Teen. There's no blood here, curse words, or nasty death scenes to relish in all your evil glory here...it would've been nice to see a wicked M version of this title though.
If you're even remotely interested in Overlord I would recommend either borrowing from a friend or renting it first. Better yet play the demo (link below) and if you seem to like that than by all means you should purchase the game. If you're still not too sure however I'd wait till it falls in price to maybe between 30 - 40 bucks.
Final Score = 32/40 or 80%
Links:
The Overlord site:
http://www.codemasters.com/overlord/index.php
Gamespot's Review:
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/acti...summary;review
Link to the demo download for PC:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/ov...d_6172322.html
To buy Overlord on the 360:
http://www.amazon.com/Warner-Bros-Ov...4875735&sr=8-1
Originally Posted by VOP2288
