Overlord (Xbox 360)

...£45. I had read about Overlord late last year with several reviews stating its similarity to a popular standard Xbox game Fable, a game I enjoyed quite passionately. Not of course that I would ever, ever play console games.

As the Overlord you awake from a slumber to find all things bad destroyed and you the only bad guy in town capable of bearing the title, with of course a few contenders for the crown. Your role as Overlord starts ...
...game aimed at being bad; Overlord to some degree ticks the boxes, but to others it seems an awful lot like your being good, saving villagers from potential bad guys. I soon found the justice (as I see it) approach to rectifying something as bad as you is once saving the villagers from a bad guy to go in and slaughter a few just to assure you that you're not being "too good."

Assembling an army is quite good, you must first ... more

I'm incredibly tight fisted, I'm not going to spend £40 on a game; so when play.com announced their January Sale which included a chunk of Xbox 360 games I decided to have a look. What would have cost me £45 a couple of months back now cost me £17.99 and to add to that I managed to get another couple of games too all under £45. I had read about Overlord late last year with several reviews stating its similarity to a popular standard Xbox game Fable, a game I enjoyed quite passionately. Not of course that I would ever, ever play console games.

As the Overlord you awake from a slumber to find all things bad destroyed and you the only bad guy in town capable of bearing the title, with of course a few contenders for the crown. Your role as Overlord starts with building an army, involves your rebuilding of a decimated castle, and most importantly dominating the land making sure that you are the person in control of everything.

As someone a bit evil at the heart I enjoy a game aimed at being bad; Overlord to some degree ticks the boxes, but to others it seems an awful lot like your being good, saving villagers from potential bad guys. I soon found the justice (as I see it) approach to rectifying something as bad as you is once saving the villagers from a bad guy to go in and slaughter a few just to assure you that you're not being "too good."

Assembling an army is quite good, you must first find a hive (the storage for your army) then once that has been done you can slaughter little fluffy sheep, bugs, and humans to make your army, each death makes you a little minion; the more you kill the more bigger your army gets, but when it comes to humans don't kill too many, you need to have something to rule over after all.

Another great aspect is getting yourself a wife, and then deciding whether to keep her or not when more tempting offers land on your plate.

Overlord gives a few laughs, most of which come from your little army of dwarf type characters. As they travel the land they bring you treasures shouting "For you Master" or "for the Overlord", or the one that always makes me giggle "That's mine" as they fight over the odd strewn weapon found in a pot somewhere. They laugh and scream while killing, and faithfully scamper along behind you or ahead of you when it comes to protecting you. Your minions are faithful, so much so that they are actually prepared to lay their lives down for you.

The characters are great, and the game is highly addictive but it's not without flaw. Occasionally the camera angle sticks in the wrong place and while pushing a button reverts this to its original setting sometimes you could have died before things return back to the standard setting. The second thing is that Overlord is like a memory test, parts of the puzzle are not initially clear. Later in the game however from almost out of the blue you need to remember where you saw a small item, maybe as far back as 60 hours ago; great if you're a young game player but when you're getting on like me it's difficult to remember where you saw these things. As a result I find myself travelling back across what seems like hours of maps trying to find that missing part of the equation, and this is the only part of the game that annoys me, and actually makes me a bit mad; and this is sad because I play games to relieve a bit of stress.
The graphics are great, the lands seem endless. There is an online option allowing you to play the game on a global scale, but to be honest I'm loving playing the game so much I have hardly touched the online aspect. I have spent probably as much as 100 hours playing the game (yeah I know I'm slow) but a sort of free play option allows you to go off and do other things, and despite being annoyed at times I'm sure there is 100 hours left for me to play (being less than halfway through). The irony is that a £45 game given to me at Christmas took me 6 hours to complete, while this budget game has given me hours more pleasure, a few laughs and the opportunity to test my brain a bit. Overlord is good stuff and a good price, I highly recommend it. 

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