Overlord sees players tasked with summoning goblins, rebuilding a fallen evil empire and ransacking otherwise peaceful towns along the way in a game with more than a whiff of Dungeon Keeper around it. Does it succeed?

From the outset Overlord is fundamentally simple; it’s a third person action RPG. Players take on the role of the eponymous Overlord and must re-establish evil’s dominion over good in the land surrounding the tower that is the Overlord’s stronghold.

Diluting this simplicity a little is the need to collect and manage “life force”, the resource gathered by the sadly (ahem) necessary bloodshed over the course of your evil campaign. Life force is essential for the management and replenishment of an evil army. It’s this mechanic that makes so much of Overlord’s brutality entirely justifiable. You’re not killing for fun; you’re killing to add to your resource pool. Killing just happens to be fun, so surely there’s less suffering overall…? [Keep telling yourself that –Jack Thompson]

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