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This week, it’s good to be bad. The recent announcement that Manhunt 2 will be banned in the UK has confirmed that the problem of violence in videogames isn't going to go away any time soon. Nor should it. While it's easy to clamour against The Man's wanton censorship, some things really are a little too nasty. Not only that, but the ways in which our taboos shape culture is an important process for a functioning society. In the case of Manhunt 2 it seems that the unrelenting nastiness of the game wasn't properly excused by its context: there wasn't reason enough for being bad. Of course, that's not always the case and games have a long, proud tradition of letting you be evil. Well, evil up to a point. Overlord, which is something like a fantasy crossbreed of bug-herding Nintendo game Pikmin, and the classic evil management game Dungeon Keeper, isn't really nasty, even if you are the bad guy. Instead it's something rather like pantomime evil. You do wipe out halflings and elves, but you do so in a charmingly (and disarmingly) camp fashion. You, as Overlord, might cut a threatening figure with your spiky helmet and glowing eyes, but the rest of the game seems to want to be included in the next iteration of Shrek. Nor do the “good” guys really cut much saintly mustard. The halfling king, although ostensibly good, is fat beyond all imagining, and, well, he really has it coming.  The game's challenges all involve running around in person, as the Overlord, defeating sequences of enemies and puzzles. You can't do it alone, however, and you'll need to summon various forms of goblin to do your bidding. This is where the parallels with Pikmin come in: where Pikmin saw you commanding a swarm of living-plant things, in Overlord you're hurling an endless army of goblins into the world. They're so cute and gleeful in the tasks you set them that you can't ever really feel glum (or guilty) while trying to take over the world. I suspect that being bad has been more fun elsewhere, but Overlord is so relaxing and engaging that I can't help but recommend it to all.
Jim Rossignol
Overlord is out now on PC and Xbox 360.
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