Overlord II Preview
Man, I love games that let me be evil. More evil than I am in everyday life I mean. Who can deny the pleasure of hearing a strangled whimper after a well-placed kick? I don't have minions of my own (yet) but until I do, Overlord II, coming to us from Dutch developer Triumph Studios, will satisfy my fiendish urges.
The first Overlord filled that void for those of us who find throttling scrawny, bat-like creatures hilarious. Alas, like all good things, it came to an end. As I saw last night at the Codemasters Gamer's Day Event in San Francisco, this summer's Overlord II starts the malevolence all over again when you play as the previous Overlord's unwitting offspring. You've been whisked away to a shadowy Netherworld by the current Roman-inspired Empire, an empire based on reason, determined to stamp out all magical remnants. At game start, you're in a sort of limbo with no sense of your lineage or your past until the last of your father's loyal minions arrives and sets you on the path to destiny. From then on, your mission in life is to overthrow the current regime and replace it with your own subterranean kingdom.
The Codemasters demo (which was supposed to be hands-on but strangely, wasn't) was on Xbox 360 and focused on two distinct levels: the first set in a hilly winter wonderland full of snow-covered trees and smoking igloos and the second set outside a Roman fortress in a Tuscan-inspired landscape. The first thing I noticed is that the controls of the game are almost identical to those in the first Overlord, but they've been refined and made more accessible. Most actions are a one-button press so there's no more sifting through clunky menus. Back too are the four familiar minion types: the red ranged, the green rogues, the brown tanks and the blue healers. They've been new-and-improved though and this go-round they're easier to call and control, have better pathfinding and hooeee—they have mounts! The only ones shown in the demo were some nasty looking wolves ridden by the brown minions. (Red and green minions are also slated to have mounts but the types have yet to be unannounced.) Taming mounts is as easy as firing a minion at any nearby bloodthirsty wolf and mounts look to be fairly useful in game since they have special abilities. Wolves, for instance, can jump large gaps and make certain puzzle elements accessible. They can also be used as a sort of protection for your unmounted minions during battle.
In addition to mounts, all minions have had their AI spruced up so they know their jobs better as evidenced by the organized way they swarm their targets. Efforts have also been made to address pathfinding issues, one of the biggest complaints about the minions in the first Overlord game. Minions get stuck much less often when you call them back to you and if you're too far away from them, they'll teleport directly to your life force pool for easy retrieval.
Although the game is called Overlord, there's no question in this version that the minions are the stars. In Overlord II you can cast a Possession spell which separates the minion horde from the Overlord and changes the camera's point of view to over-the-minion-shoulder. We saw this spell at work in the demo in a Tuscany-inspired level centered on a Roman fortress. The spell's effect was very cool, temporarily turning the sun-drenched sky and landscape black. Once possessed, the minions set about infiltrating and conquering the fortress by stealthily swiping a stack of centurion outfits and taking over the fortress catapult. It looked like a lot of fun (although I didn't get to try it myself) using the catapult to smash the fortress gates and crush squads of centurions. With this Possession spell and the newly streamlined minion controls, you could very well play through the entire game like a general on a hill; however, if you want to get your hands dirty, you can.
Overlord II has a brand new Overlord model that's meant to address the golem-like stiffness of the previous Overlord. To me, the new one still looked pretty stiff but now he has three context-sensitive attacks and a finishing move that might motivate players to use him more. The new feature that's likely to have more of an effect on the way the game plays is the ability for gamers to choose between two different play styles: Destruction or Domination which is like choosing between “evil” and “evil light”. Triumph Studios must have realized the first game just didn't let some of us be evil enough, so now if you want to, you can use your minions to take over towns and burn the newly-destructible buildings to the ground. You can also choose to enslave towns and make their villagers work for you, but where's the fun in that? The more evil you commit, the more demonic you'll look and the stronger your Evil Presence spell (which lets you zap people with lightning like the Emperor from Star Wars) becomes.
One of the coolest things shown in the demo was that as you progress through the game and your underground kingdom grows, it breaks through the surface of the earth. You'll be herding your minions along a mountain path and suddenly come across a teleport point or possession stone blackly jutting up out of the ground like a malignant growth. Hee hee! I'm rubbing my hands together right now in evil glee.
I would have liked to have seen more of the game but what we did see looked graphically on par with the previous game if not overtly improving upon it and definitely as fun. What's also great is that writer Rhianna Pratchett (yep, she's Terry Pratchett's little girl) is back for an encore performance which guarantees that this game will be just as much of a hoot as the first one. Good graphics, better controls, smarter minions, great script writer...the stars tell me this foretells the coming of a great evil! Actually, so does the release date which is sometime this summer. Gives me just enough time to perfect my sinister cackle.
