Evil Always Finds A Way - By Danny Clarke

For anyone who has children, or doesn’t want to really grow up, we have the Despicable Me films.  In these films we were introduced to a race named Minions,  but this isn’t my first encounter with anything named as such.  Back around 2007,  there was a video game released on the PC and the X-Box 360.  While a year later this game was released on the PS3.  It is this that I’m going to be discussing today. In Overlord you control an massive armor wearing character where all you can see is his glowing eyes through a helmet.

The Overlord: The Scourge of Evil and not in any way Sauron

Since 2007 there have been 4 games that have been released over multiple games consoles Overlord/Overlord: Raising Hell and Overlord 2 have been released on the PC, X-Box 360 and PS3.  Overlord: Dark Legend was released on the Nintendo Wii, while Overlord: Minions was released on the Nintendo DS.  All of the games where written by Rhianna Pratchett who back in 2008 won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) best video game script award.  Rhianna (daughter of the later, great Terry Pratchett) also wrote such games as Tomb Raider and Mirror's Edge. There are ladles of  of dark humor in the series, such as Minions who love sheep in the 1st game, and seal pups in the sequel and will do anything to hurt them.

Since I have only played Overlord: Raising Hell and Overlord 2 from start to finish I will be going into more detail about these games.  While I only give a brief overview of the other 2 games.

Overlord/Overlord: Raising Hell
The first Overlord game is the only game in the series to have DLC content which continues on from the original game, so when Overlord: Rising Hell was released on PS3, it contained both the full game and it’s DLC.  The story goes: the original Overlord was killed by eight heroes,  the last of which was badly injured and left to die after the raid of the Dark Tower.  After the Overlord’s demise the surviving heroes following the lead of the Wizard who brought them together to purge the lands of evil, managed to convince the them to loot the Dark Tower and follow the 7 deadly sins.  We are introduced to characters such as Melvin Underbelly, who follows the path of Gluttony, and Sir William the Black who lives the ways of Lust.  The other heroes follow the rest of the deadly sins until they are corrupted by their own power and wealth and believed they were better than everyone else.

Melvin Underbelly

Sir William The Black

After the Dark Tower was plundered of all of it’s riches,  An elderly minion named Gnarl saw a potential of the Fallen Hero, and so ordered his fellows to place the him in a sarcophagus deep in the Dark Tower’s foundations.  Years later Gnarl and the other minions revived the Fallen Hero and crowned him the new Overlord.  Gnarl acts as a mentor and a narrator to the gamer to inform you what has happened to the predecessor, the lands that he dominated over and the powers of the Dark Tower.  But, to take back control over the lands now dominated by the 7 Heroes you must reunite all the Minion Tribes scattered during the pillaging, rebuild the Dark Tower, take control of the lands and kill each of the 7 Heroes along the way to avenge your predecessor. 

Gnarl the minion master, the leader of the minion tribes.

To help you along the way of becoming the most devilish person in the known lands, you have minions you can control and help you battle anything and everything along the way and Gnarl, who has more intelligence than the rest of the horde.  The Minions that are sent into battle with the Overlord are stupid and only have one thing on their mind..... and that’s sheep.  The Minions do whatever the Overlord commands them to do although in some situations they do just go off and fight anything that is consider a threat towards their Master. 

The Minions are split into 4 tribes each tribe having their own strengths and weaknesses.  You can summon them from their own colour of pit, and they become your horde although you are only limited to so many minions in your army,  so to defeat your enemies you need to be strategic.

The Browns are the first tribe you have access to.  The Browns are the strongest minions you have access to, as they are general fighters, they will wear any armour and wield any weapon this could range from wearing a bucket on their heads and wielding a broom as a weapon until they find better equipment to use.  The brown minions can’t go through water, fire or poison so to take over the lands they need help.

The Reds are second tribe which can be used but you have to find the red hive before you can use them.  The Reds are not as strong as the Brown but when the Reds work together they are a powerful force where they can set fire to your opponents.  The Reds can walk through fire and can be used to absorb fires.

The Green are the third tribe which can be used but you have to find the Red Hive before you can use them.  The Greens are stronger than the Reds and are used for stealth attacks.  If the Greens stay still or are placed at a place marker they will go invisible and will stay invisible until commanded or someone is foolish enough to walk past them.  The Greens poison they enemies and do more damage to enemies but only if they are attached to the enemies back.  The Greens can walk through poison gases and absorb poison clouds.

The Blues the fourth Minion that you can use but once again, you have to find the hive before you can use them.  The Blue are the weakest of the tribes, and don’t fight unless they are ordered to fight by the Overlord.  The blue minions are the only minions who can resurrect minions who have fallen in battle.  The Blues are the only ones that can swim and use magic abilities to fight elves.

The Minions can be sacrificed to recover your health or magic so you can carry on conquering the game world.  If you sacrifice your Minions on your armour or weapons, you summon more to your horde.  While if you sacrifice Reds on a weapon that weapon will now gain fire damage for example.

With the horde of Minions by your side you travel to place to place to pillage and take back the lands.   Along the way, you find your Mistress who help spends your money on updating the Dark Tower.  Some of the places you can visit are Mellow Hills, Heaven’s Peak and Evernight Forest, to name a few.  Each area has tasks for you to do,  and these tasks can range from recovering food for villagers who live in the small village of Spree.  But,  when you are doing these tasks you have a choice of being evil or really evil, so when you are recovering the food for the Spree villagers you can either take the food for the minions or you can let the villagers of Spree have it.  Like most games where you have a choice of being good or evil it can affect your abilities,  for example the magic you can use.

Evernight forest one of the many places you can terrorize along the way on your evil adventures.

After the defeat of the 7 heroes,  Gnarl informs you that there are evil energies coming from each of your defeated domains.  After investigating the dark energies in each of the lands, a portal leads to alternative version where people are tortured or are forced to work.  Each of the 7 defeated heroes are being punished for their deadly sins, so Melvin Underbelly keeps on eating until he explodes and the process starts all over again,  so you need to use the heroes deadly sins to progress further into abyss.

Overlord 2

Overlord 2 continues on from Overlord: Raising Hell where you control "Overlad" who later eventually becomes the new Overlord.  Overlord 2 controls exactly like the first game with some improvements, the Overlord can take control of a minion who can lead the horde of minions over an area where He cannot follow because of His size.  The Minions can be in disguise, so they can sneak into a camp and cause more mischief and mayhem along the way.

The new Overlord as a small child before becoming the towering force

 The 3 Minion tribes now have access to animals which can be mounted.  The Browns can ride wolves, while the Reds ride salamanders and the Greens ride spiders.   When the "Overlad" becomes the new Overlord, the gamer has 2 choices to make, either dominate or destroy anyone who opposes you.

The story behind Overlord 2 is where you go up against a glorious empire which is the equivalent of the Roman Empire.  Since the dark tower and the surrounding area where destroyed by the cataclysm the Overlord now resides in the netherworld tower which is the equivalent to Hell.  The areas where we can terrorize in this game consist of Nordberg and Empire heartlands to name a few.  Like in the previous game you have tasks to complete along the way before you take over each area of the game.

Art for the Empire Heartlands

Overlord: Dark Rising and Overlord: Minions
These games tell the story of the 1st Overlord with this game being on the Nintendo Wii, the storytelling is based on a fairy tale.  With the Wii having motion control you can shake up the minions until they explode so the brown minions explode with a huge impact, the red minions explodes into flames that ignites nearby enemies, the green minions explodes with a green poisonous gas and the blue minions enhances all the minions and they will be resurrected when they are defeated.  While in Overlord Minions you control 4 minions called Giblet (Brown), Blaze (Red), Stench (Green) and Zap (Blue) and you control the minions by using the touch screen on the Nintendo DS, so with this game the player is actually the Overlord.

Danny Clark is long-time Auto Assembly volunteer, can be heard cackling in all and any Live Lock-In shows, and lives in fear the The Pointing Finger, a demonic entity that has plagued his life since he was 12.