noclues@ucscf.UCSC.EDU (98844000) (03/20/91)
I bought 'Overlord' a few weeks ago, and have played it a total of six times. The first time, I figured out the game mechanics. The second, I defeated 'Wotok'. The third, I defeated 'Smine.' The fourth time I suffered a minor setback against 'Krart', before realizing I needed only two other planets, in addition to my starbase, to win the game. After that, I defeated 'Krart' on the fifth game, and on the sixth game defeated 'Rorn.' The game, while graphically impressive, basically boils down to a tedious strategy of holding your starbase, one volcano planet, and one metropolis or tropical world (build center, fuel center, and money center - thats all you need), and raping every other planet you format for resources and people. Then when your money builds up, wear the computers starbase down with massed troop assaults. There was little challenge in any of this, in fact some aspects (such as the fact you cannot commission enough platoons to match the enemies starbase defense force - you must repeatedly assault it) were just mindless repetition. I thought "Empire" and "Star Control" were a bit easy, this game was ridiculously so. Other parts of the game I did not like were: No starship combat. You can park any number of troop transports (called Battle Cruisers in the game, although they do not participate in any combat) above an enemy planet and then send them in at your leisure, without fear of them being attacked. In fact, you can actually leave them in the docking bays of an enemy planet, and retrieve them later (the computer not only won't destroy them, it can't). Predictable game events. The game has a series of events and disasters that take place. The sequence is always the same, and always on the same time schedule. Once you know how it runs, you can not only plan around them, some of the technology "advances" you can actually plan for. This made an already easy game even easier. Useless troop aggressiveness setting / enemy strength indicators. I never found a single use for increasing my troops agressiveness level - the casualties that result are never worth it (unless you are trying to kill off a platoon). The number value for enemy troop strength is almost useless - the last two opponent's troops fight at better than their indicated strength, making what looks like a sufficient attack / defense force in reality just a quick defeat. I basically added 1/3 to the enemy troop strength number when planning attacks or defenses. The enemy warning messages in response to your actions are just game fluff - the computer does not seem to modify its actions (or hold off attacking until you do) in response to your own. In fact, with 'Rorn', the computer starts off with a massive troop force and almost immediately moves some of it (somehow defying normal troop transport fuel range limits) next to your newly formatted planets to take them over, regardless of what you have done prior to that. This, plus the limit on the number of platoons you can have, seems to limit your strategies to holding just two essential planets, rather than trying to expand and conquer. This makes for a rather dull game. The ending screens are tastelessly violent. I'm well known for being more than inclined to such, but somehow I found the deaths the commander dealt to each of his supposedly challenging opponents offensive. I know its just a game, but if I was a commander who fought a long, challenging battle against an opponent I'd think that opponent would deserve a bit more respect than to haul him across the galaxy just to sneer at him as you shoot half his skull off / melt him with a laser / kick him into a trap door covered pit. To make matters worse, when I defeated 'Rorn', the game locked up when trying to load the ending screen. This is either a program bug or just poor quality control, either way it was just one more strike against the game for me. In my opinion, 'Overlord' was another $40 wasted. Buy 'Reach For The Stars', its a far better game if you can still find it. ------------------------------------------------------------------ |"I didn't expect a Spanish Inquisition." | Robert Stetler | |"No one EXPECTS the Spanish Inquisition !" | UCSC Gaming Mutant | | -Monty Python | | ------------------------------------------------------------------ | Video game addiction is treatable, but who wants to be cured ? | ------------------------------------------------------------------