Overlord [Xbox 360]

"I was interested in this game because it was developed by the dutch company Triumph Studios and because it was supposed to be somewhat like Pikmin (you see, I am dutch and I loved Pikmin). And I loved this game, all of it, from the easy first levels to the tricky boss fight at the end.

The basic gameplay is similar to Pikmin indeed, but OverLord is a little less about puzzles and a bit more about fighting (though it has a lot of cool puzzles too). Unlike Olimar, the OverLord is capable of some fighting moves himself. His minions are way more violent then Olimar's pikmin too, they kill and destroy everything in sight.

For those unfamiliar with Pikmin, let me explain the mechanics. You control the OverLord in a 3rd-person view, with your left stick. The right stick controls the group of minions, but it only controls their movement as a group. The minions automatically react to their environment, attacking enemies that you direct them too, destroying boxes, buildings, plants and killing small animals. If they find something useful, such as life force dropped from killed enemies or mana bottles, they automatically pick it up and bring it back to you. The system works great, the minions are smart enough to find the best route in most cases, but sometimes you have to steer them around obstacles. The B button triggers a horn sound that calls your army back to your side. You can also place guard marks, to make a group of minions stay at a particular place, in which case they attack nearing enemies automatically.

The game looks great, the minions are like little gremlins, it's fun to see them destroy everything and pick up weapons. There's a lot of variety in the different areas of the world. Your journey will take you through villages, dungeons, castles and large outside areas. There are some graphical glitches though: there's some popup and a few camera problems. Sometimes the camera flips around for no particular reason.

There's four types of minions. You start out with browns only. Browns are the best fighters, they can pick up anything they find and use it as a weapon, so your brown army gets stronger as you go. To be able to proceed to other areas you have to find the hives of the other minion types (I told ya it was like Pikmin). The reds can walk through fire and can throw fireballs to enemies from a distance. The blue minions can swim and also ressurrect dead minions. The greens can handle poison and have a cool jump attack.

Most puzzles are based around the different capabilites of the minion types, e.g send your blues through water to turn a wheel on the other side, lowering a bridge for you and the other minions. Or sending your reds into a fight first to kill fiery enemies, clearing the way for the rest. I really liked the puzzles, some of them taking multiple tries to find the right strategy. Strategy often meaning finding the right mix of browns, greens, red and blues in your army. You start of with an army of five, but at the end of the game I could control 35 minions.
As you progress, the focus of the game shifts from puzzles to more action and fighting. The strategy elements stays though, as it gets more and more important to make the best use of your minions when faced with different types of enemies.

Next to growing your army, you can also upgrade the OverLord himself and his castle too. Your minions find money everywhere and this money can be used to forge weapons and armor for the master. These weapons and armor can be improved by offering up some of your minions into the Forge. Nice idea, but I never used it because I never had minions to spare, on the contrary. You can also spend the money on stuff for your castle, like banners, statues, marble walkways, etc... As far as I could see this only served to unlock some extra achievements.

I took about 40 hours to complete this game and it was never boring or annoying. For the last ten or fifteen hours I felt that I was almost there, but the game kept coming up with new plot twists and surprises. OverLord is well worth the money and more importantly, well worth investing your precious hours of play time. One of the best Xbox 360 releases on the past few months. Get it, now."