With the taste of bile still fresh in my mouth from Ghostbusters, I've forged on to something new - clubbing baby seals in Overlord II. I rather enjoyed the first Overlord, with it's cross between Pikmin-esque minion control and third person action. The humor of the original Overlord was it's absolute saving grace, and thankfully Rhianna Pratchett has returned in the sequel as writer.

Overlord tossed you into the fire quite quickly, and Overlord 2 keeps up the tradition. After a short (sadly) training mission as an evil Overchild, it gets right into slaughtering animals for life force and causing general destruction amongst the plebes. They've also added a mount system (wolf riders), allowing them to traverse gaps and move a bit quicker. As always, a few quick points...



* Very Fable-esque style art direction, same as the first game. Enjoyable and appropriate.
* Noticeable framerate drops when multiple minions on screen, I remember having a bit of this in the first, but not on this scale. Nothing game breaking, just a bit of chop.
* Wonky controls are back, it appears that Triumph did nothing to change this. Minions are a bit annoying to control, granted this early in the game it hasn't been a problem.
* Hilarious rasta/hippy elves.
* Appears to be a bit more dark than the first, definitely getting a more "evil Overlord" vibe than the first.



We're sitting at par for the course here, nothing new or groundbreaking to draw in new folks. It's a bit disappointing, as the first had such character and unrealized potential - I was really hoping they'd wow me with the follow up. I'd have a hard time recommending it over the original Overlord to newcomers, as this doesn't appear (so far) to be any vast improvement.

In short, if you haven't played Overlord, play the original first (it's dirt cheap now). If you liked Overlord, this is more of the same. If you hated Overlord, move along, nothing to see here.