Review: Overlord: Raising Hell - PS3

by Nick Haywood on 18 July 2008, 11:14

Tags: Overlord: Raising Hell, Codemasters, Sony Computers Entertainment Europe (NYSE:SNE), PS3, RPG

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaofi

Add to My Vault: x

Borrows from everywhere and works!

Now it’s not a case of you strolling onto each level like Sauron from Lord of the Rings and laying about the place with a bloody great mace, no, the real action is in controlling your minions and getting them to do the dirty work for you. To this end there’s four different minion types that you need to use in combination with each other to progress. It has to be said that these take a little bit more than just some inspiration from Gremlins… but hey, who cares when it’s this much fun?

The brown minions are your melee fighters… they go in and kick the crap out of everyone, picking up what weapons they can on the way. Then there’s the blues, who are supposed to revive fallen comrades of any colour but a dodgy bit of AI sees them going for weapons and treasure first, which can ruin your strategy. Reds are your ranged weapons chaps, hurling fireballs at the enemy and are immune to fire attacks. Finally there’s the greens who can slip behind the enemy for a rear attack and can also clear the way of anything poisonous.

But before you go thinking this is a formulaic puzzle leaning toward an RPG strategy game, think again. Overlord takes that idea and sure enough delivers a game along those lines but rather than take the obvious route of giving you obstacles which only one type of minion can pass you’re actually given a fairly free reign across each level… so how you go about winning is up to you. But fairly soon on you’ll find that the build and rush technique, that has worked so well in pretty much every RTS I’ve played, just won’t work here… you have to use your minions as a cohesive group to win through the levels.

Click for larger image




Click for larger image