Overlord

At which point the sober thing would be to spin off to talk about how all this enables a series of accessible yet enthralling puzzles - the minions moving where you can't get to, or whatever. But that's deceptive, because while it's true, this it's not a sober game at all. It's a happy game. When you get up to controlling thirty of the squeaky little creatures, you feel something like a teacher on a school trip with the bottom set. You kind of set them loose, and havoc results. Like every RPG ever, boxes contain items... but it's a whole lot more interesting when there's a mob of Gollum-squeaky creatures smashing up shit and bringing the best bits to you ("FOR YOU!" they yelp, offering up golden trinkets, an enormous grin on their little diseased faces).

Not that they'll settle for that - they find weapons? They'll pick them up, and use them themselves. Keep any given group alive for a long time and they'll become an increasingly heterogeneous mass. The guy with the axe - fine. But what about the one with a pumpkin on his head or brandishing a zombie's forearm? From the first second of the game proper, where you lead the first mob into bucolic fields to just slaughter defenceless fleece, it's a pleasure to be in their company. More than the script (generally witty and sharp, if occasionally undercut by an iffy voice-actor) or the graphic design (a brother to Fable's faux-fantasy charm), the constant capering of your charges is what gives the game its personality. That is, they have a lot of personality and so does the game.

Problems? Well, as the intro says, anyone expecting genuine evil will be a bit disappointed. In fact, there's a number of your tasks which may as well be what a hero does (when you're collecting an uppity princess' luggage, you do wonder whether Sauron had to put up with this stuff). It even kind of becomes the joke. Especially early on, there's a fairly obvious irony in that everyone else in the world is assuming that you're this brave hero when in fact you're clearly a sociopath. The tone's set in an initial cruelty, where you raze a farmer's house and he's grateful for it. Put it like this: it's not going to join Manhunt 2 on the public enemy lists.

The real problems with the game are more mechanistic. Surprisingly, despite the fact the minion controls take over the right thumb-stick's traditional role as a manual-camera-shifter (that's the technical term, don't you know) there's only occasional problems with the camera position. What's more annoying is the occasional imprecision in the monster control. The Blues' ability proves especially useless, as they'll prioritise gathering treasure and killing over collected their fallen companions. The big-bosses lean towards the underwhelming rather than the tiresomely repetitive kill-crazy, which is the better choice of the two evils. It saves its unpunishment for elsewhere, especially as the game progresses - a twitch can lead to losing most of your horde on a fireplace if you're not paying attention. When making your way across a desert is less perilous than making your way around a kitchen, something's gone wrong. Probably its biggest failing is the lack of an in-game map function. While one comes with the manual... well, it's not 1991 any more, guys.

It's easy to forgive. Overlord may remind the more experienced gamer of a mass of things, but it's only so identifiable as they're conventions which relatively few games have used successfully. And when a few quick clicks send a spindly-limbed wave heading over to cause havoc, it's its own thing. As much of a monster as you are, when you see a powerful succubus flying through the air, covered by your little green guys, holding on with one hand and stabbing desperately with the other, you end up feeling... well, a little parental.