Combine the moral choices and artistic style of "Fable" with the creature commanding of "Pikmin," throw in a healthy dose of "Lord of the Rings" influence, and you've got "Overlord," a game that shows just how fun evil can be.

"Overlord" gives players the chance to step into the spiked metal boots of a nameless, ancient evil to wreck havoc on the surrounding lands and take revenge on the group of heroes who struck down his predecessor.

It seems the tower the Overlord calls home has recently been sacked along with its master. Now it's up to players to step up and restore the tower and its master to their former glory.

But a good evil overlord doesn't dirty his heads with the actual havoc-wreaking. That's what minions are for.



Minions are impish creatures with slave-like devotion to "the master," zero regard for self-preservation and little in the way of brains - perfect for carrying out the player's every destructive whim.

Minions come in four types, each with different purpose and abilities. They can also be powered up by equipping whatever junk they find lying around, be it weapons and armor or pumpkins and rat carcasses.

While the Overlord himself has some weapons and armor, the minions do the vast majority of fighting, which is just as well because for an ancient evil the Overlord is a pretty inept at combat.

But the minions are darn good at it. When used correctly, the minions can dispose of foes large and small without difficulty. But using them correctly can sometimes be difficult, especially when trying to combine different orders for different groups of minions.

There are a lot of buttons involved, and it can make strategizing on the fly a problem that leads to unnecessary minions deaths.

Having large groups of minions all die at the same time because they didn't do what I wanted them to do caused several moments of frustration and checkpoint restarts.

Preparation seems to be the key here, setting up the minions and drawing foes into a trap works better than sending them charging into the fray.

The game is about being "evil," but it gives players a choice between being "evil" and "corrupt," which is pretty much the same as being cruel or kind to the varius NPCs that populate the game.

Even killing the heroes that overthrew the previous Overlord isn't much of an evil act. The heroes themselves have all become corrupt themselves, and stopping them is more of an act of kindness than one of evil.

Of course, no one said you had to be any better, and there is a kind of guilty pleasure in ransacking an entire town and setting the residents on fire.

It is that kind of guilty pleasure that "Overlord" delivers again and again, proving that it's good to be bad.