Many years ago in a very dark time, a group of heroes banded together and saved the land from the evil Overlord and his rule from the Dark Tower. The dark power of the Overlord has been spread to the heroes; causing them to become corrupt and making many of the local peasants wish for the return of the slain Overlords return. In the ruins of the Dark Tower, minions of the previous Overlord find your shrivelled body and believe you to be the return of their evil master, thus pledging their loyalty to your very command.
You will be forgiven if the intro and back story sounds familiar as the whole game plays very close to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, almost as a parody.
In the game you control an armoured being called the Overlord, who has god like powers and the ability to control a horde of multi-skilled minions on the battlefield. The minions will generally hang around you until you command them to either attack or ransack the local areas, they will do most of the fighting for you, but if they are having trouble some of the larger enemies, you are able to wade in with your sword swinging, taking out the tougher bosses, but keeping an eye on your health gauge, once enemies have been disposed of, your minions will gather the riches left over, from money, energy, to weaponry, the Overlords weaponry is taken back to the forge to be fashioned into better and more effective weaponry, the smaller weapons are collected by the minions, for example they will put on pumpkins for helmets and carry around pitchforks and any other weapon they can find. As the Overlord you are also able to obtain magical power like fireballs, shields that knock back your enemies and berserk spells for your minions.
The minions come in four varieties and are controlled using the right thumb stick for direction or the right trigger to send them into battle. The Browns like nothing more than hand to hand fighting, jumping on the back of enemies trying to get as many hits before being thrown off, the Reds are like archers, preferring to attack from a distance with projectile fire balls, the Greens are master assassins and the Blues are able to swim and also resurrect fallen comrades. Most of the humour of the game come from these little critters, they way that they interact with the environment an characters is fun, harassing villagers, drinking booze and getting drunk to getting stabbed by a rampaging unicorn.
The main aim of the game is to regain control of your land that surrounds the Dark Tower; at each level hub there is the ability to summon whichever minion you require (as long as you have freed them). Each area boss is as disgusting as the last, the first being a gluttonous blob that used to be a halfling (think Frodo after way too many pies). Throughout the game are sub quests, like collecting parts for the Dark Tower or helping the local peasants with their troubles. This is another original part to the game play, you can either be plain evil and kill all of the heroes and their followers who have done wrong, or be really evil and kill all of the moaning villagers and steal their food and gold. Either way you go will offer different outcomes and achievements.
Overlord will last a long time with its mix of action and puzzles and with different paths to take will allow a worthy reason to play the game again. Though the graphics are not amazing, the game play is, and there is no way an old generation console would of handled the amount of separate animation of each character and ability to control the Overlord and minions separately.
