Oh and… I’m back.

Overlord II Review

Okay, let’s talk about video games. A few years ago, a little company called “Codemasters” released an equally little game called Overlord. It was met with mixed response; some reviewers really dug it, and others, well, just didn’t get it. IGN, for example, was one of the latter, though you wouldn’t know it given their recent review for Overlord 2.

            The thing about the first Overlord was that it was like reading Giambattista Vico instead of Descartes, and seeing an alternate and wonderful way that games could have gone. Now, obviously, this new path wasn’t as developed as the same old trail that games like Halo, Madden, Metal Gear and so on stood on, but it was, well, new. And I’ve always been a big supporter of new frontiers, especially when the old frontiers are so old that they’re stagnant.

            Of course, Overlord was a far from perfect game. But here’s the breakdown of the good: you play as basically Sauron from Lord of the Rings with little gremlins instead of Orcs running around to do your evil bidding. The gremlins, bluntly called minions, are controlled via the left joystick in a giant, semi-autonomous cluster that leaps, smashes, beats and loots whatever you direct it into. Whichever is appropriate. The right stick controls the Overlord, who, if you power him up, becomes a potently dangerous force of his own, with sword, axe, or Sauron-like mace.

            What brought it all together was the attitude: the minions take genuine joy in whatever evil you have them execute in your name, whether it be looting and burning the countryside, beating down Halflings, dwarves and townsfolk, or sacrificing themselves by jumping into a giant vat of molten iron to make your armor stronger. My little heart melted at their gleeful cries of “Treasure! For yooou!”, “Maaasta!”, and when they found something they could use, “For me!” while plopping a pumpkin down on their heads.

The world in which these little terrors lived was as colorful as they were, a brightly inversed spoof of High Fantasy, in which unicorns are just white horses with a bloody horn, Halflings are the scourge of the dale and dwarves are, well, dwarves. But more dickishly. On the further end of it all were the Heroes, the white-knights of legend after the tales had run out, putting on weight and imposing their obnoxiously high and mighty agenda on the fiefdoms. It just made you want to beat everything with a giant mace and then burn it to the ground. Thank goodness you brought a giant mace, and some fire.

The bad, then. First, the minions on the left joystick meant a fixed camera, and less than perfect auto shift. Second, minions could die, and they took their weapons and armor with them. While not intrinsically bad by itself (I would expect some penalty for death) it became a little ridiculous when you throw insta-kills into the picture, in all their glory, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as in fire, poison, beneath a boss, or, most frustratingly, touching water. In any capacity. Plus, they’d follow you in, like lemmings on an island. The steady increase in these sorts of death zones later in the game made it frustrating in the extreme, when you’re A-Squad was annihilated by, essentially, a deep puddle and you were left with a bunch of unarmed noobs. It got to the point where you’d just buff the hell out of your Overlord and leave your team at home.

But all that’s behind us now, and really I only talked about all that for context, so I could talk about this. So. Needless to say, the cultists had their way and an Overlord II was released. Thank God. Let me be perfectly clear, I loved Overlord. For all my bitching, I really only gripe because I care enough about its existence to wanted it to perfect its experience. And, apparently, I’m not alone: see, Codemasters addressed pretty much every gripe that its players asserted from the first game, which is a rare virtue in game-makers. It almost makes you believe that games are still made for gamers, and not merely created cynically for cash alone.

They fine-tuned the controls so that to move your minions you had to push up on the joystick, whereas left, right and back were camera controls until the horde was activated. They added a “River Styx”-esque revive station, manned by an adorable little minion death, scythe and all. They fixed the minion A.I. and basically touched up all the problem areas. All this gave way to the much more polished experience of Overlord II, complete with a few addendums, like mounts, formations, a few new minion powers, et cetera, et cetera.

So, was Overlord II the perfect experience I was hoping for?

Unfortunately, no. But before I talk about why I’d just like to add that, again, these complaints are out of love. If anything, this game was even more fun to play than the last one, and I really appreciate all the work that Codemasters put into it. Honestly. No sarcasm.

First, and most importantly: insta-death remains, rearing its hideous face. While a little less painful than Overlord the first, there are still sections that are teeth-grindingly frustrating due to the high chance of losing over half of your highly polished team. While the gesture of adding the revive station is much appreciated, the better your minion, the more it costs to revive them. Meaning that mass slaughter late in the game, where it is most crucial that they are revived (and, for that matter, where they are most likely to be mass slaughtered), becomes very, very expensive.

Second, while the red minions have been ridiculously improved, hurling handfuls of genuinely damaging fire at soldiers until they actually were set alight (doing damage over time, happy shiver), the greens, on the other hand, have been utterly nerfed. The greens were perhaps one of the most enjoyable groups from the first game, as they leaped with gusto onto whoever was nearby, dealing massive damage as they plunged their claws into the hapless enemy’s back and hissing. In OII, they don’t err on the side of back-stabbing. Instead, if they’re controlled less than perfectly (i.e. don’t approach from the exact behind), they try to go toe to toe in an all-out melee fight and refuse to do their actually damaging attack. Also, apparently they’re made of feathers and soap, because one, possibly two hits results in their messy demise. Basically, I got used to the idea that greens were expendable and disposable, and I pretty much stopped using them except where the game expressly forces me to.

Finally, while the lines between the two alignments, “Destruction” and “Domination” have been much improved and refined, the actual effect on the game is that it has become far more linear. The decisions that are made merely define your motivation, rather than the act itself. Rebels have stolen the town’s food supply and are stealing a ship to escape. Domination: stop the rebels and get a ship. Destruction: go get your ship. Oh, that the rebels have. You should probably deal with that too. Also, the pillaging, destruction and so on, becomes distinctly final. Houses remain burned down, people remain dead. Like real life. I don’t want real life that that turns, essentially, conquered towns into wastelands. But everything else respawns, including treasure chests. So why deprive me, a domination overlord, of the fun of pillaging and looting?

            For fear of becoming too involved in my bitching, let me wrap it up. I advise you buy Overlord, and Overlord II if you want a unique gaming experience. Maybe not at full price, if you don’t dig it like I dig it. It might make you old-school frustrated, which really only means that it hooks you, with a barb.

Rythm to the Hymn: A Sonnet

Deafened orbs: the sun turns, particles turn.

What comes before defines the new again.

No different are we, in darkness yearn

For orbits’ change, for meaning wound in spin.

 

Beating hearts and beating fists, carved in past,

Carved in hottest love—relief in walls of men.

Still steam rises, still mountains fall to chaff;

Each kiss is kissed anew, each lost too fast.

 

Though the darkness waits, to the light we thrall.

It speaks, over silence: love of substance

In the vacuum—in the dark—where the call

Would not be, if only for a steady rhythm

Beating, beating in the orbital arc:

Steadily rises the echoing Hymn.

Day Thirty: Long Last

The suns turn, blind to one another?

No, circling, dancers, lovers, rivals,

Burning in the cold,

Aching in the numb,

Animals in the sky structured with

Dark and light, mathematics in the dark,

Poetry in light.

And we, blind to one another?

No, the stars circle, like dancers, like lovers,

Like our rivals, defined in Kelvin and men,

And so that stars hope, and the sky

So filled with animals and folk,

So that the grandest are held

In the smallests’ regard,

So shall the lovers turn:

Us, and ours.

 

I wanted to have something really epic for the last day. But it was just taking forever. Still, this’ll do.

 

Love, all. Obviously, I won’t stop posting, but this category will have one more concluding wrap-up post and then that’s it.

Day Twenty-Nine: Nearly the End!

The music that plays in this over-grown bar—hard rock on cold nights

and that tune you always seemed to know—with a little static dancing in the new

neon lights, sometimes even the walls seem to glow.

In those god-blessed moments we can see where our folks spent

all the time when they were young,

as the music plays out like love in the sun.

But then, the stubborn old gents and bitter young sons,

they can’t keep up with the tune or in their moments of pain

tell themselves it’s not music,

as the chorus starts up again.

When the cool evening comes they’ll remember the sun,

And the love that they were convinced they were missing.

Though the rest may see what it was said there’d be,

We each see something different in the light off the walls,

And whisper a different truth into the empty halls,

While hoping and hoping for someone to call—

We’re all just looking for something to heft.

But the jukebox keeps playing; but when we thought we were staying

It turns out that we had already left.

Day Twenty-Eight: A really short poem

Taught To Be Free

Freedom cost nothing but the chains are very expensive,

And freedom can only be seen through their keyholes.

we build

We build our own chains, throw them off and build again—

Left to our own devices, we will only fashion ever more vices:

We were never taught how to be free.

Day Twenty-Seven: Another Excerpt

While her suitcase lies threadbare and still packed, Karen lies in bed and listens to her mother talking about her through the wall. This is all that she has left of her life: a suitcase full of pictures and a house full of rumors.

            “Poor girl,” she hears, only slightly muffled by the flower-print fabric wallpaper. “thank goodness she’s home, after what happened…”

            When she was younger, hotter, she would go to bed early and sit, just listening to her parent’s conversation as they talked about her. Only when the subject changed, if it did, would she fall asleep.

            “… such a sweet thing, couldn’t have asked for a better daughter you know, but couldn’t find a good man to save her life…”

            A good man to save her life. Karen rolls onto her belly, like she did with John so she wouldn’t wake him with her wriggling, and wonders what her parents talked about while she was away. Looking back with older eyes, she understands that she couldn’t have been the only topic of conversation, just the one she paid attention too. Of course, now she was the center of attention in the same way a corpse is at a funeral.

            The tears come, too easily. Perfunctorily.

 She wraps a pillow around her head, and fixates on the window.

            “I’m just glad she’s home. ‘Specially with the storms coming.” Through the pillow. She could never drown out what other people thought of her.

Day Twenty Five and Six: A Brief Word On the Relations Between Foxes and Coyotes

There are five species of canids in North America, three of which are classified as endangered. The coyote, by comparison, boasts nineteen subspecies in North America. None of these are endangered. Foxes are quick, reclusive and above all solitary predators, and the smaller of the two. The coyote, on the other hand, hunt in unstable packs or in loose pairs, and have been known to snatch dogs from right under their owner’s nose.

            Neither coyote nor fox is a naturally dominant species. Coyotes, in particular, flourish in areas where wolves have been eradicated, replacing them in a rougher, less disciplined capacity, and hunting similar prey, albeit less effectively. So less effectively, in fact, that human trash or domesticated animals make, like the coyotes themselves, for makeshift replacements of a bona fide counterpart.

            Foxes also fulfill the ecological niche that damaged wolf populations leave open, but in a much more limited capacity. Foxes are not large predators. They do not hunt in packs, and so larger prey such as deer or pets are left alone. They could almost be described as modest: they live only where the environment can support them, occasionally and infrequently stooping to trash raids, and avoiding interaction with humans.

            Neither one of them will inhabit the area of the other. They fulfill such similar roles in all their capacities, only their attitude seems to set them apart. In most Indian cultures, even the myths reflect this. The coyote is clever and tricky, like the god Loki in Norse mythology, often causing trouble that only he can offer a way out of. He is humorous but also greedy and desirous of things above his station, a capacity often offered to him by his wise, kind brother wolf.

            The fox, by comparison, has a rich Eastern history, in which the kitsune can transform into humans and back. In Western culture they too are creatures of trickery, but opt for cunning instead of mere cleverness. ‘Foxy’ in the United States has come to be synonymous with ‘sexy,’ though indeed both creatures share an odd affiliation with sexuality. While the mythology of the fox is more subtle, he is much more entwined with man, appearing in many stories, recent and old, as a character incarnate, puns in the name notwithstanding.

            Though they do not seem to have any confrontations, one can’t live with the other. Their roles are too similar. The fox inhabit the border-land, where survival meets dignity, if it could be called that. Flashes of red in the night is all that most see of a fox in their area, and usually there are plenty of rabbits, squirrels and other small prey around as a token of modulating behavior on the part of the fox. The fox will never use up its resources.

            The coyote is much more intrusive, living wherever it can, among us and off of us, hunting like wolves occasionally but not wolves–fearless. If pets disappear, coyotes might be the culprit. It fulfills its own niche and encroaches on others, presumptuous of its place and ultimately all the more successful for it. With Brother Wolf gone, the coyote remains a creature of hunger and the freedom to seek it out.

            But it will never live with a fox.

Day Twenty-Four: Outside Experience

I forgot to ask you “Why?” before

you took my hand and

broke the sky.

And though the sky goes to infinity,

you never took me farther than

we could see.

Below us lay a looming light: the sun! such a fixture once,

but from above seems just

a light.

To our left, an embrace of shadow, and we dallied:

though the moon still seems mysterious,

not from distance but

from barrenness.

I don’t know if you noticed, but the stars are the pinpoints of my interest,

Who lost their light at my behest,

or flicker in the night, all for the best (though I know you took it grudgingly)

for my earthly moon and listening stars’ sweet intent:

(at least when the darkness touches parchment)

for there never was much to write about light,

nor about the suffocating lack in black.

But these objects we study,

Caught between us, the question, and my answer,

will never come in time but only in

your hand in mine, where you hung

us high upon the ground, the highest,

where so many merely lie.

Day Twenty Three: So many times I haven’t copped out!

Started a new story, moving away from sci-fi because I feel like I’ve been seperated from what makes a story, well, good. Anyway, still working on it.

Also, 38 Most Common Writing Mistakes is an incredible purchase.