Choose life
By Ahchay

Ah, morality. It exists, it seems, purely to be twisted.

I'm sure I don't really need to go into what Overlord is, you're as capable as I of looking at the cover, playing the demo, and concluding that this is fundamentally Pikmin with a makeover courtesy of Dungeon Keeper.

And that really is all I can find to say about the game. You get brown Pikmi- Sorry, Minions - which are your general workers, Red ones which are immune to fire, Blue ones for water and so forth. There's even an entirely superfluous plot which involves collecting pieces of your ruined Spaceshi- Sorry, Castle and returning it to a central hub.

Pumpkins, why is it always pumpkins?

But that's only half the story. Because, underneath all of the half-successful comedy this game has a point to make. Morality, after all, is there to be twisted...

The question this game asks is a simple one. What is good, and what is evil?

From the outset, you are tasked with saving farms, and businesses, and even entire towns. You're supposed to be Capital-E-Evil, and here you are helping the common man to get by.

Bob-a-job

The traditional fantasy good guys - you know, Elves, Hobbits, Knights and so on - are all present and correct, but here they're shown as interfering nuisances, putting their noses in where they're not wanted and trampling over the ordinary, non-magical, working classes in blind furtherance of their causes.

And the only thing that stands in their way is an evil, possibly demonic, Overlord in thrall to a bureaucratic machine that is little understood, has it's own agenda and views him as little more than a convenient figurehead. So, not at all like modern democracy then.

Should go down a storm in the US.

2007

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