Playstation 3 Review: Overlord II

Sometimes, there are things you dream about doing, but real life somehow gets in the way. Many individuals dream about getting that special girl or guy they’ve adored in TV and Film. Others, dream about living the Vinny Chase “Entourage” lifestyle. And, some just dream about taking over the world. Ruling the world is a dream that various arch-villains and nemeses from myths, books, comics, cartoons and screen have held dear for countless centuries. Without the dream, there would be no Roman Empire – which, coincidentally, is the type of world you’ll seek to conquer in Overlord II. This game is about taking over the world, one hokey village at a time.

Overlord II is a PG-13 story about a tiny imp who garners the attention of a group of sycophant gremlins in search of an Overlord to rule them and invariably wreak havoc on the world. You’ll control four types of little beasties who love nothing more than to obey your every command. Don’t expect to see any blood or guts on your rise to the top; the terror and destruction is limited to a cartoony and all-together humorous level of antics befitting of an evil version of Dennis the Menace. Unfortunately, the humorous activity of world domination loses momentum through quirky controls. From the moment you start playing Overlord II, you’ll quickly learn that with great power comes great development snafus. Poorly designed camera controls and minions lacking in AI make Overlord II a tedious gaming experience.

You star as the personality-devoid Overlord in a mission to fight a Roman Empire like faction and several Rastafarian-wannabe Elfs from the 60s. After growing up from an imp into an armor-wearing-gremlin Lord, you embark on a linear adventure to grow your minions and become the Overlord you’ve always dreamt of becoming. Even though you’re the Overlord, you don’t have any real interaction with the story. The voice over is limited to your minions and narrating vizier who, together, give this game its personality. You’ll hear several quips from your minions as they bash through countless chests and steal clothes from children. Yes, despite the PG-13 tone, is a level of subtext here that is surprisingly rated R. Instead of just stealing a pile of stray clothes, you will send your minions inside of a house to corner a group of children and then snatch the clothes right off their backs. The children will complain about being cold, but, hey, you are the Overlord. You can do that. For the majority of the game, the narrating vizier will pull your strings and tell you what to do. So, although you’re an Overlord, you often come off as his figurehead.

The Overlord has only two uninspiring attacks: an axe attack and a magic attack. You can only set one magic attack at a time, and it’s mostly a cheesy effect that makes you wonder why your minions are following in the first place. The real joy of this game comes from controlling your minions. You’ll use the right thumb stick to send your minions into battle. These overzealous little pawns will activate heavy machinery for you (like catapults), attack ships, hold down runaway villagers so you can control them and even sing marching tunes on your way to a raid. You control your minions with the right thumbstick, which also handles your look-controls. Unfortunately, trying to do two things at once for the thumbstick is just about as patting your head and rubbing your stomach. So, don’t expect the most fluid interaction. On a positive note, if you ever dreamt of just being a plain-old minion, the game allows you to transform into one for certain quests which is a nice change of pace.

Big Armored body… No personality

Overlord II has about 20 hours of gameplay, during which you’ll control four different types of minions. There are the brown minions are hand-to-hand-brute-force fighters. Then there are the red minions who take care of long range attacks by throwing fire. You have your stealthy green minions for the sneak attacks. And, finally there are the blue minions who use magic and apparently learned to swim, when their cousins didn’t. You’ll really appreciate the blues when you get to them. During the first few hours of gameplay, your brown minions will take it upon themselves to always wander close to the water, or just dive right in. Unfortunately, they can’t swim and they’re too dumb to realize it until they’ve drowned. Minions also have corresponding land mounts that they can use, like fire lizards and wolves.

The real fun-killer in Overlord II is the buggy camera moves. Gamers will have to constantly press the L2 button to adjust their camera. The camera angles tend to swing at just the wrong time with every move. Most of the time, you may find yourself looking in the wrong direction or your character will disappear from the screen all together. Just as quirky is the targeting system. From time to time you’ll try to aim at a particular human and find yourself scrolling endlessly to get to your intended target.

There are a wide variety of settings in Overlord II that help to immerse you in this comical world. You’ll have snow capped mountains and dense jungles, all drawn along the humorous cartoony side. The graphics are great to see, but the camera jolts will take away from the experience. Also, you’ll find that several settings are reused. There is a lot of backtracking in this game. Your vizier will urge you to go back to places you already passed through. Unfortunately, going backwards is a bore since most of the time you’ve already cleared the area. There are the occasional instances where there will be a wandering seal for you to bash or a gnome for you to squish. This is another one of the many fun activities in Overlord II. Bullying baby seals and counting away the death of hundreds of mini gnomes, that look like rats, is just fun, albeit demented.

The online play has four modes. There are two co-op modes: Arena, which is something like Horde mode in Gears of War and Invasion, where you face a Centurion. The two versus modes include: Dominate, where you capture zones like a King of the Hill match, and Plunder, where you hoard gold using war machines and ships. Unfortunately, there’s not much of a community on the Playstation Network for this. So, buying the game for the online is a negligible benefit.

Overlord II has its entertaining moments, as you live the dream of world domination. There’s something about controlling lively childlike minions that is just fun. However, overwhelming quirky camera moves and poor minion AI hurt this title from being the funfest it could have been. If Codemasters decides to make a third installment, I hope they rebuild the engine from the ground up. Also, giving the actual Overlord a personality wouldn’t hurt either. If I’m the Overlord, I want to make the rules, not some scrawny vizier who lets me do the work while he makes the clever quips.