MichaelJHuman
07-10-07, 01:15 PM
Hopefully, it's ok to post XBox-360 game reviews here.
I have almost completed Overlord, here are my thoughts on it.
The basic gameplay revolves around properly controlling your minions to solve simple puzzles, and kill the enemy creatures. You need to kill enemies to gain lifeforce to create minions. You get spells, which are limited, but pretty useful, especially higher level fire spells. There is some room for exploration, but mostly the game is linear. Even though the game is fairly linear, and you usually walk along paths, in at least one area, a map would have been helpful; I wasted quite a lot of time backtracking in one area. At some points in the game, you get to make an 'evil' or 'good' choice. I can't say what the effect of these are, but the evil choice will often confer a benefit like more minions, or gold etc.
Graphics : Pretty standard; one nice thing is that they don't seem too dark. I don't personally like dark games. The graphics on the minions alter when they find weapons which is fun
Gameplay : Very good. Perhaps too easy at times, but that's not always a bad thing for time pressed gamers. I am 40+, and don't mind a game I can complete in under a month. NO MAP, which can be very frustrating in some spots. Fairly linear, but most of these games are. Maps are path based, meaning you follow set paths, but they do branch out. Some harder to find powerups requiring a little thought, which is cool.
Control : Sometimes, controlling your minions is tough; but usually they do what you want. You will want to take advantage of the gaurd flags; just make sure all the stragglers are next to you, or your minions will often fail to group up at the flag, and surge ahead (and often die). It's awkwards sometimes to select objects...you can cycle through them, but there are often too many targets for this to work well. Controlling yourself (the overlord,) works well, though. Combat is simple, just keep hitting the A button, you will auto target nearbye enemies.
Replay : Limited, but I have not tried multi-player. Looks like they might create some downloadable content; no way to tell whether this will improve replay value. You might want to play once being totally evil, and again being totally good just to see if this makes a difference in cut scenes, etc.
Overall : Probably the most addictive 360 game I have played to date. Maybe the minions are too cute, maybe I just like this style of game. It was FUN. Which for me, is why I play games. So I give it a very high score. It might be to easy for some people, or they may just not like this style of game play.
Score : 9 out of 10
I have almost completed Overlord, here are my thoughts on it.
The basic gameplay revolves around properly controlling your minions to solve simple puzzles, and kill the enemy creatures. You need to kill enemies to gain lifeforce to create minions. You get spells, which are limited, but pretty useful, especially higher level fire spells. There is some room for exploration, but mostly the game is linear. Even though the game is fairly linear, and you usually walk along paths, in at least one area, a map would have been helpful; I wasted quite a lot of time backtracking in one area. At some points in the game, you get to make an 'evil' or 'good' choice. I can't say what the effect of these are, but the evil choice will often confer a benefit like more minions, or gold etc.
Graphics : Pretty standard; one nice thing is that they don't seem too dark. I don't personally like dark games. The graphics on the minions alter when they find weapons which is fun
Gameplay : Very good. Perhaps too easy at times, but that's not always a bad thing for time pressed gamers. I am 40+, and don't mind a game I can complete in under a month. NO MAP, which can be very frustrating in some spots. Fairly linear, but most of these games are. Maps are path based, meaning you follow set paths, but they do branch out. Some harder to find powerups requiring a little thought, which is cool.
Control : Sometimes, controlling your minions is tough; but usually they do what you want. You will want to take advantage of the gaurd flags; just make sure all the stragglers are next to you, or your minions will often fail to group up at the flag, and surge ahead (and often die). It's awkwards sometimes to select objects...you can cycle through them, but there are often too many targets for this to work well. Controlling yourself (the overlord,) works well, though. Combat is simple, just keep hitting the A button, you will auto target nearbye enemies.
Replay : Limited, but I have not tried multi-player. Looks like they might create some downloadable content; no way to tell whether this will improve replay value. You might want to play once being totally evil, and again being totally good just to see if this makes a difference in cut scenes, etc.
Overall : Probably the most addictive 360 game I have played to date. Maybe the minions are too cute, maybe I just like this style of game. It was FUN. Which for me, is why I play games. So I give it a very high score. It might be to easy for some people, or they may just not like this style of game play.
Score : 9 out of 10