Review

Overlord: Dark Legend

By Heather Bartron
June 30, 2009 11:06 AM PST
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One part real-time strategy, one part third-person hack-and-slash, Overlord: Dark Legend aims to satiate any Wii gamer's craving for something evil.

As Heather puts it, Dark Legend is the "diet soda of the Overlord series" and doesn't quite pack the same punch as Overlord I & II. Still, Overlord: Dark Legend is an admirable effort for the Wii on Codemasters' part, and good, malevolent fun for all.

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The Diet Coke of Evil

As the game begins, you find yourself in a sort of Cinderella situation. Your older siblings hate your face and pretty much everything else about you. To make things worse, your father is journeying in a far away land and has left you to fend for yourself. On the bright side, however, you can now eat dessert before dinner. Things take off when you find a strange light at the end of the tunnel -- or are those the flames of hell? The mysterious light turns out to be the armor of the Overlord, which when equipped, gives you full control over an army of nasty minions to do your bidding. Newly crowned and full of anger, the real game begins.

The controls work well in Dark Legend. The joystick moves the dark master, Overlord, and B sends the minions packing to the target dictated by what the Wiimote is currently aimed at. Holding A summons your little terrors back to you where tapping A brings back them back one at a time. Your personal attacks as the dark lord of pain aren't that varied: Z is your melee and pressing the D-pad expels magical powers that you rack up over the course of the game. As you progress, you'll discover runes that constitute as new powers in your arsenal. When I was fully aware of my powers later on, I came to enjoy using them to add a little flavor to my bland "mash Z" strategy.