Overlord comes from nowhere and delights

By Justin McElroy
The Herald-Dispatch

Well, this is a nice surprise.

“Overlord,” for the Xbox 360 and the PC, really came out of nowhere for me, which is pretty common for a new intellectual property. Imagine my delight then at finding a funny, well-crafted and original game where before there was only my ignorance.

“Overlord” puts you in control of the antiest of anti-heroes: A real, genuine bad guy. You wake up from a dirt nap to find that the medieval world you’ve awoken in is just too nice for your liking and you set about rebuilding it in your evil image.

Thankfully, you won’t be alone, as you’ve got a literal army of evil minions at your disposal. Best described as big gremlins, they sleep in the belly of the earth until you find the need to summon them for nefarious deeds.

Most of your interaction with the world will be through the minions, which come in different flavors (brown for beating up (relative) bad guys, red for tossing fire balls, etc.). It’s surprisingly satisfying to be up against a couple of evil Halflings and send a wave of minions out with a wave of your hand to take care of your light work. It feels fresh in a way that not a lot of things do, these days.

Graphically, it’s a peach, with a fun art style that admittedly lifts a lot from “Fable.” To be honest, there’s a lot about the presentation that “Overlord” owes to Peter Molyneux’s excellent RPG, but I like that game a lot so I consider that a plus.

On the downside, the game’s quest structure is pretty bad. Often, I’d be wandering around with no idea where to go, or I’d unexpectedly complete a quest without even really knowing I was on said quest.

Though the quest themselves aren’t particularly satisfying, the playing of the game most certainly is … and isn’t that what really matters?