Platform: Xbox 360 Company: Codemasters Think about Dungeon Keeper crossed with Pikmin, you have Overlord, will you rise to power as the most evil being in the land? Or will you become the most evil and corrupt being in the land? Graphics: Graphically this game could have done better, the landscapes look good, with a great amount of detail put into them, each area of the game has undergone so much work that not only do they look different from one area to another, but they feel different. Plus the fact that the game is able to cope with a lot going on at once without a single slow-down is very impressive. The main downside of the graphics are the characters, all the characters in the game apart from the main character look like they were done in a huge rush, the bodies are all out of proportion, with limbs being too big for their body and they hands just looking like hexagonal sausages on the end of a bun. None of the characters in the game actually look that smooth because of the rush job on the graphics. Sound: This game has very little to offer in the way of sound, you get a bit of ambient noise from the area you're currently wreaking havoc through, but that's about it, your minions will make the occasional silly noises, more often when they're told to do something or find an item, the voices themselves are very limited, almost all the innocent characters in the game have the same voice as their same-gender comrades, which makes running through a village of farmers rather tedious. When you go rampaging and killing hordes of enemies, their death screams are fun to begin with in a sadistic way but again they repeat over and over they just get boring. Gameplay: This is the redeeming part of the game, you get to be as evil as you like, there's nothing you're not allowed to do in the game, there's really nothing better for a giggle than breaking a gate down and sending a small army of imps into a field to chase down and kill the herd of sheep inhabiting said field. The way the game is designed has the feel of Dungeon Keeper with commanding your minions to do your bidding rather than doing it yourself, even has some of the traditional evil ruler/minion humour to go with it. It has a gameplay feel very similar to Pikmin as well, different colours of minions preform different roles for you in the game and it's up to you to use your minion limit effectively to build up the best balance of colours to roll over anything that gets in your way. Storyline: The storyline is a fresh breath of air in the world of tradition, rather than being an up and coming hero who will eventually overthrow the evil lord and bring peace to the land, you ARE the evil lord, you start off with a ruined tower, a few minions and basic equipment. Using the land around your tower you need to change that, kill the heroes that killed your predecessor and establish yourself as the new evil overlord to rule with a black iron fist. Overall scores: Graphics 6/10 Sound 3/10 Gameplay 9/10 Storyline 8/10 Total 6/10 In conclusion this game isn't the best out there, but it's unique in many ways and will provide some decent entertainment for someone who wants to unwind and get a chance to actually be as evil as they want. I hope you found this review helpful and informative
I would like to add that I have the PC version, and it's highly scalable. It can run on some pretty sub par machinery. I have it running on a P4 1.5ghz with 256mb's of RAMBUS ram. It runs, a bit choppy, but good enough. I also have it running on my good computer (one from THIS decade) and it looks like a totally different game. I think thats a nice feature, considering most modern games.
