Evil, what would the world be without it? Movies, television and videogames would be much less entertaining for sure. Without evil, who would the good guys fight to defeat? Especially in fantasy based entertainment, where you can rest assured that an evil being of terrible power will rise from his fiery domain to wreak havoc upon the unsuspecting world, until a band of brave heroes confront him before all is lost. Overlord turns this well-worn premise on its ear and allows you to step into the ironclad boots of the evil one himself. And it just might answer the obvious question, why does he want to destroy the world anyway? Because it's FUN!

You play as the "Overlord" (duh) whose job it is to regain your lost powers, rebuild your ruined tower, seek revenge upon the heroes who defeated your evil predecessor, and generally strike fear into the hearts of all mankind. By this description so far it might seem like Overlord is a very dark game full of mature subject matter and violence. But actually the game is quite humorous and rather cute.

"Tolkienesque" is a silly word used rather liberally these days to describe anything that has a fantasy storyline or setting, or just happens to have some sword fights. In the case of Overlord, however, this description is actually appropriate. It's not a blatant Lord of the Rings ripoff, however, rather it's a clever parody of the classic fantasy novels by J.R.R. Tolkien. The Overlord himself is the spitting image of Sauron from the LOTR movies. Also, you will encounter many other beings straight out of Middle Earth like elves, dwarves and of course "halflings" (I guess the word "Hobbit" is copyrighted.). The first town you visit in the game is named "Spree", obviously a parody of the town of Bree in Tolkien's novels. There's many inside jokes at the expense of LOTR, which will go right over your head if (shame on you) you've never seen the movies or read the books.

At this point in videogame technology, great looking graphics in videogames is pretty much standard fare. Overlord is no different. It looks an awful lot like Fable, but with updated graphics. The grass sways in the wind, the water looks nice and wet, and the foliage of the trees cast shadows on the ground. I can think of nothing wrong with the visuals, nor can I think of anything particularly right about them either. The graphics are just fine.

Gameplay-wise, Overlord is hard to describe. It's sort of an action/realtime strategy/puzzler with a hint of RPG. It will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played Pikmin for the Nintendo Gamecube, since it's basically the same game. You, as the Overlord, have the dominion over small gremlin-like creatures called "minions".

You can assemble small armies of minions by summoning them from aptly named minion portals. Your minions will do most of the heavy lifting for you (literally) by picking up various items and carrying them like ants back to the nearest portal leading to your tower or turning cranks to open doors and raise bridges. There are many different types of objects to collect such as statues which give the Overlord magic spells or allows you to summon more minions, huge bags of gold with which you can spend to upgrade the Overlord's armor and weapons, minion hives which give you access to different types of minions with unique powers. The larger the object, the more minions thatare required to move it.

Although the Overlord can attack and use offensive magic spells, your minions will do most of the fighting for you. Just direct them towards an enemy and they will gang up on it and in most cases dispatch them very quickly. They also can be directed towards barrels, crates, vases etc., which they will proceed to smash to bits. Inside these smashables they will often find armor and weapons which they will equip on themselves, thus increasing their defense and attack power.

You start out with only brown minions, which are hardy fighters, but have no other special abilities. As the game progresses you will gain access to three more types. Reds can throw fireballs from a distance and remove burning obstacles from your path. Greens can jump onto the backs of enemies to attack and remove poisonous clouds from your path, and blues can resurrect fallen minions and cross water obstacles. These different types of minion could have added a lot of strategy to the game, but their abilities really aren't that useful other than to get past obstacles. Most of the time you will probably be using only browns since all of the other minions get killed at the drop of a hat.

I think it's the controls that ruin the usefulness of the minion's special abilities. This game uses every button on the controller and it does not seem to be enough. You use the right analog stick to control your minions, while the left stick controls the Overlord. You can select which type of minion you want to control, in which case the others will follow behind the Overlord, or you can simply control them all at the same time which will inevitably lead to all but your browns getting killed when you send them to attack an enemy. It's just too difficult to switch minions and direct them where you need them in the heat of battle. Also the camera controls leave a lot to be desired, since you can't rotate or look up and down; instead all you can do is snap the camera behind the Overlord or zoom out.

But Overlord is not all about combat. There are also puzzle elements as well. Sadly, this element of the game is not implemented that well either. Most of the "puzzles" are no-brainers like sending a troop of blues across a pond to retrieve an item, or using some reds to clear burning debris so you can pass. There are occasionally some well thought-out puzzles like having to distract some vicious birds by sending a minion to steal one of their eggs. But these smarter puzzles are rare.

I think one of my favorite things about Overlord was the minions themselves. While they are supposed to be evil little devils, they are actually totally adorable. When they find a weapon or armor they dance and say things like, "That mine!" or "Niiice!" When they pick up gold or a powerup they bring it to the Overlord with outstretched hands and say things like, "For da Overlord!" My one gripe is that their comments are repetitive; I just listed half of the things they can say. But still even after the hundredth time hearing them cackle when they find a weapon I still thought it was mighty cute and funny.

There are some light RPG elements involved as well. You can upgrade the Overlord's equipment by tossing minions into a forge along with spending gold. The number of minions required to upgrade something to the maximum is quite steep. But you can always make more minions by fighting enemies and acquiring the colored orbs they leave behind. But more interesting is the ability to make choices between good and evil as you progress through the game. The Overlord has a corruption meter, which goes higher when you choose the evil path. So the game does have a bit of replay value because you might want to complete the game once with 0% corruption and again with 100% corruption.

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