OverLord (PC DVD)

Morally ambiguous characters are all the rage in video games nowadays, but they always tend to be violent crime games. This is essentially a cross between the old Dungeon Keeper games and Nintendo’s Pikmin, where you play a Sauron-like dark lord in a fantasy world fill of so many corrupt and unpleasant people you often end up playing the de facto hero. Like Pikmin this is a mix of third person action game and a real-time strategy, the obvious difference being you’re now in charge of a horde of goblins instead of cute little flower creatures.

Although you directly control your bad self in the game you’ve only got some simple axe attacks and magic spells. Instead your main interaction with the world is via your goblin minions. You can either target an enemy and tell them to attack or control the biggest group directly with the right stick. One of the main currencies in the game then is lifeforce, with which you can instantly generate a new minion. This can be obtained from some enemies, and also sheep, but also from innocent villagers if you want to be really nasty. Although the game may lack moral complexities the capacity for strategy is more developed, as you eventually gain the ability to set ambushes and cast spells on minions. The game’s graphics are generally attractive, even with a jarringly short draw distance, but it’s the gameplay that really impresses here with something genuinely out of the ordinary in terms of both strategy and motivation.

The Overlord has the power of concentrated badness right from the start and you'll know how much more of a total bad-ass you're becoming as the game tracks your 'corruption' throughout.

How corrupt you become depends on how you handle any given situation, your actions and how their consequences impact the game world. For example, if you and your minion horde dispose of a bunch of particularly nasty, violent Halflings that have overrun a once-peaceful village, the village's original peasant occupants will herald you as their liberator. Now each time you pass through, the peasants will welcome you as their new lord and protector, cheering your arrival and giving you offerings.

However, as an Overlord, it's worth seeing what more can be obtained from the peasants' gratitude. If you exert some proper feudal repression, they'll tremble and fall to their knees when you're in town. If you become truly mean, the poor peasants will resort to cowering in your presence, pray for their lives and even offer up their daughters in order to appease you.