Overlord II Review (Xbox 360)

Many actors have confirmed in past interviews that playing a bad guy in a movie or TV show is a lot of fun. You get to do all the things you wouldn’t normally do and get paid for it. While you might not get paid for playing Overlord II—though some of us are, so to speak (sorry)—you can get the same thrill of doing nasty things for fun and merriment. Oh, there’ll surely be some who’ll look down their noses or shun you (and Overlord II), but you just keep on fighting the bad fight. Someone has to…

From the moment you start up the game and are eased into the action as a grammar school-aged overlord-to-be (or a derisive “witch boy,” as he’s commonly called by other school kids and townsfolk—they just don’t understand) and see his glowing eyes and pointy pile of hair, you know that you’re in for a roller-coaster ride of humorous and gaming. It’s a rare combination in video games, and while Overlord II doesn’t have any side-buster laughs, it does at least put a smile on your face at times and occasionally will get you to snicker or snort.

No actual pandas—or overlords—were harmed in this game.

Examples of this are when you cross paths with the plus-sized mermaids (with their…uh, second-floor balconies a bit too large for the awnings, if you get my drift), the many encounters with the rainbow-clad party of elves wanting to save all of the “fluffy” creatures and, yes, even the times you have to clear your path by taking out those same fluffy creatures—rabbit, seal and panda bears, the latter being definitely fluffy and especially life-threatening. I have a feeling Codemasters and developer Triumph Studio (and, by proxy, we) will be hearing from PETA on this one, the latest in its seemingly current mission to clean up video games (despite the lack of brutality and blood that comes with the various kreature-killing that gets done).

As I said in my review of the first Overlord, it’s was a game that did its best not to land in a single genre and it also was mostly a gameplay mix between “Gauntlet (though with a full 3-D presentation) that mixes in the wild concept of Nintendo’s innovative Pikmin.” That same description works for this sequel. If you enjoyed the caricatured characters of the initial game, you’ll probably like this one for more of the same. And I also criticized the original for “some weak spots in the design and execution” and that “the concept is there in spades; it’s the execution that doesn’t go the distance.” That’s one criticism that doesn’t quite match the premier Overlord, but there are still things that don’t work out as well as they should.

For instance, many 3-D games suffer at the hands of their camera, and Overlord II is a good example. There are times when you’ll be leading your pack of “Gremlins”-like minions (in appearance and in sound) through the world, when suddenly the camera will zoom in, because you’ve moved into a narrow passage or enclosed area. It’s more a cosmetic annoyance when that happens, but with control often being tightly connected to the camera, it’s more than cosmetic when you’re locked on a character in a battle, and the camera does a radical swing of closer to 180 degrees as it tries to stay locked, which can throw off the desired movement of your character.

It gets a little worse when you’re being pounded and can’t lock on the right adversary to stop the beating, because the locking system doesn’t always targets the closest one or doesn’t move the targeting to the enemy you want to switch to. Suffice it to say that it’s much better than the first game, which was very sloppy with a number of its aspects, but there are still glitches here—just not as many and not generally as severe.

But when it goes right, it’s a lot of fun. It’s very Diablo-like in its playability, in that it often throws a lot of opposition at you, but with a full complement of minions and a powerful weapon, you’ll usually cut through them nicely. When you lose some minions, there’s almost always a place to refill your supply just around the corner. If you’re low on health or mana, they may not be as close as minion dispensers, but there are plenty of transport gates that also boost your gauges when you get close to one. The puzzles aren’t incredibly intricate, and they don’t force you to go back and forth across the map for you to complete them. And, yes, there is a nice, detailed map provided, which enables you to see where objectives are located (with big exclamation-point icons) and to track the status of your various active quests.

Your overlord often gets a little hot under the collar.

There are also plenty of upgrades that were made in Overlord II from its predecessor. First, it looks like the basic game is just bigger than the first, with hours of action (expanded by a lot of cutscenes, though they can be as much fun as the gameplay…or skipped with the tap on the A Button). There’s more that you can do outside the main and side quests as well, such as resurrecting previously lost minions (for a cost, but with their at-death experience level intact, which enables you to bring back a more powerful batch of assistants, if you want to pay for it). Forging weapons and armor is certainly helpful when things get tougher, and you’ll be able to pop back and forth between areas to blast crates, barrels and casks for all of the various currency you need to make those purchases. Also, the multiplayer component has been boosted with four games—two “versus” and two “cooperative”—for those who are interested in getting busy outside the main questing portion of the game with or against a friend.

Sure, there are some glitches and foibles, but some of the best games (Grand Theft Auto, for instance) have a lot of those and still provide plenty of enjoyment. While Overlord II might not match up as evenly as GTA in the glitch-to-enjoyment ratio, it certainly does entertain during its closer-to-greatness gameplay. The key is that Codemasters and Triumph improved the gameplay experience, so hopefully they’ll nail down the loose ends by the time the next Overlord is ready to rule.

Review PS3 Game - Ghostbusters

US, June 8, 2009 - Let's get this out of the way: I'm a Ghostbusters Super-Fan. It's my favorite movie, I own a jumpsuit, a movie-accurate Proton Pack and I even cried during an episode of Extreme Ghostbusters when Slimer accidentally killed Eduardo... keep in mind that this was a cartoon that aired when I was in high school. Personally, I like the idea of people reviewing games from franchises they love because I feel like they'll be tougher on a property than your average reviewer, but that's my opinion. You're an IGN reader -- you get pissed when a non-fan reviews a game and you get pissed when an admitted fan reviews a game, so there's no way to win.

Anyway, still here? Awesome; Ghostbusters: The Video Game is very good.


Are you a god? Watch our video review.Set in 1991, two years after the events of Ghostbusters 2, this title finds the boys in gray moving onto the next chapter in the world of paranormal investigations and eliminations -- namely, expanding the team. You'll join the squad as an experimental weapons technician with the sole purpose of testing Egon's latest Proton Pack modifications. Within moments of showing up on the job, a strange wave of ghostly energy emanates from a museum packing a Gozer exhibit and spreads across New York City. The spiritual spike gets every ghoul in the five boroughs riled up, the boys get to work and a devious master plan is set in motion.

This game is meant to be the third movie in the franchise, and with that in mind, we have to talk about presentation right off the bat. The game opens detailing the ghostly explosion in a beautiful cutscene -- all the computer-generated movies look great with lots of detail and animations -- and we're launched into the Ghostbusters theme just like when the Gray Lady scared the librarian in the first movie and when Dana caught up to Oscar's carriage in the second film. These nifty scenes will continue along with the soundtrack from the original movie throughout the game and setup the tale. There are dips in this presentation value -- which I'll get to in a bit -- but these touches are pulled right from the movie and drop you into this third-person shooter with a specific story to tell (i.e. don't expect to choose your next job GTA-style).

To immerse you in the experience, your noob Ghostbuster character doesn't speak and isn't given a name other than "rookie." In the game, it's explained that this nameless move is to keep the core four from getting attached in case a device goes haywire and puts the whippersnapper out of commission, but in reality, it's so you can just sit back and play your part as the real Ghostbusters banter with each other in the tech-heavy dialogue and comedic one-liners you'd expect.

Maybe now you'll never slime a guy with a positron collider, huh?

For me, this works quite well. If you haven't been paying attention, the four original Ghostbusters (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson) are back to lend their voices along with the team's receptionist (Annie Potts) and the dickless wonder known as Walter Peck (William Atherton) so you really don't need some new guy getting in the way of the dialogue, which was penned in part by the films' original writers Aykroyd and Ramis. I'm sure many would want to create their own character, but when you see some of the facial animations in the CG cutscenes and how the experience plays as a whole, I think you'll forgive the omission.

OK. So, the game feels a lot like a movie -- we've even got a new love interest for Venkman in Dr. Ilyssa Selwyn, who is voiced by Alyssa Milano -- but you're probably more concerned with how it plays. A third-person shooter, your Ghostbusters experience is told from the behind-the-back perspective. Rather than have the screen littered with health bars and HUDs (the screen will get red as you take damage and display a running damage total as you blast objects in an environment), your Proton Pack will serve as your hub of in-game information. By monitoring the meter on the right side of the device, you can see how close to overheating you are; yes, to give you some restraints, liberties were taken with the device so that you now have to vent the pack to keep it from overheating and taking you out of the game for an extended period of time.

The pack is also your visual representation for which weapon mode you are in. Rather than limit you to just a proton stream, Egon will have outfitted your pack with a total of four firing modes by the time all is said and done. The first mode is the classic Proton Pack from the movies but packs a Boson Dart (a ball of condensed energy that explodes on impact) as a secondary fire. By tapping left on your D-pad, you'll switch to your dark matter functions, which causes some blue lights and gizmos to pop out of the pack. These dark blue attacks include the shotgun-like Shock Blast and Stasis Stream that slows enemies to a crawl. The Meson Collider is assigned to Right on the D-Pad -- which causes an antenna crackling with electricity to come out of the pack -- and tags a ghoul with a tracker and then rapidly fires particles at the enemy. Finally, the Slime Blower is down on the D-Pad and can be used to coat enemies and objects in positively charged goo or as a Slime Tether that draws two objects together. This beaut turns the four red lights green and causes a slime reservoir to rise out of the pack.