Triumph Studios haven’t perhaps managed to resolve that dilemma as successfully as I’d hoped but they have succeeded in producing a game that’s worth taking a look at, whether you enjoyed or disliked the previous outing.

Set many years after the first game the original Overlord’s Dark Tower has been destroyed, the big guy himself has gone missing and his minions have been left without a leader.

Your character, charmingly nicknamed “Witch Boy” by the locals, is spotted as a potential new overlord by Gnarl, the minion equivalent of Simon Cowell. Your recruitment fortuitously coincides with the arrival of a very Roman-like invasion force which gives you a chance to impress your new Yoda as your make a hasty retreat to the safety of the Netherworld.

Fast forward ten or fifteen years and you’re all grown up. Your evil lair is complete and you’ve been trained in the dark ways of Overlording. It’s now time to venture back into the world and reclaim your domain from the evil (but not quite as evil as you) empire.

Just as in the first game, you control both your Overlord and his hoard of minions; commanding them to attack targets, setting them to guard particular points and sweeping them around the world ahead of you.

You have four different types of gremlin-like creature at your disposal. The browns are tough fighters who excel at direct combat. Green minions prefer a more stealthy approach, utilising their invisibility powers and acrobatic prowess. The reds are masters of fire, making them most suitable for ranged combat. Your blues are extremely magical. They can “blink” past enemies undetected and also have the power to resurrect dead comrades.

Now, I need to make one thing clear before I go any further in this review. I was a huge fan of the original Overlord game and I think that experience has clouded my judgement about the sequel… but not in the way you might think.

You see, you get the impression that they wanted everything to be bigger in Overlord II. Instead of a dark tower you get a huge Netherworld realm as your home. Instead of one mistress you can now have three. There are more spells, upgrades and collectables. Your minions have extra powers and can now ride mounts. But bigger does not necessarily mean better. The strengths of the first game haven’t necessarily been amplified by the additions and many of the issues that marred the original still exist in this second incarnation. If anything they have made things more complicated rather than hone in and accentuate what was so great about the first title.

Your minions are still the stars of the game though. They’re just as cute and as funny as before (but annoyingly seem more reluctant to pick up items). As well as the improvement in their individual abilities they can now collectively power catapults and crew rafts and boats. Even with their new talents the focus this time around is less on puzzle solving and more on actual combat. Unfortunately targeting enemies and objects in the game is just as awkward as before but navigating the world is made easier by the very welcome inclusion of a map system.

Overlord II’s story and dialogue is funny but it’s not quite as amusing as the original game. There are laughs to be had from the citizens of the Empire being portrayed as obese, spoilt, lazy holiday makers and by the depiction of elves as nature loving rainbow warrior hippies, but it seems like there’s a lot less mickey-taking this time around. I suppose the original game had exhausted most of the possibilities for humour with its pretty comprehensive send up of the familiar fantasy genre races. The enemies in this sequel often seem far too generic and the boss battles aren’t quite as interesting or memorable.

Don’t get me wrong when Overlord II is great, it is just as good as the first game ever was, but it’s not until you get your full complement of minions towards the end of the game that things really start to kick up a gear. Newcomers will probably appreciate the slow introduction to each minion type and their powers. Experienced Overlords might be frustrated that things don’t get more complicated sooner.

As in the original there are several multiplayer modes. I don’t feel that I’ve played them enough to really comment on them, due to difficulties finding matches this long after release, but if you’ve got a friend with a copy of the game then I think you could have quite a bit of fun. There are two competitive modes (Pillage and Dominate) and two cooperative modes (Survival and Invasion).

The people who loved the first game will probably have the most complaints about this sequel but will ultimately forgive its flaws. Those who missed the original adventure may well enjoy Overlord II. It’s a game that, despite its shortcomings, still succeeds in being different enough to the usual run-of-the-mill fantasy fare to make it worth trying.

This was the first time I’d played Crackdown as it came out well before I got a 360.

Crackdown is what I’d call a “Ronseal” game. It does exactly what it says on the box. It doesn’t set out to be particularly big or clever, it just wants you to love it because it’s fun.

It’s a game that you can spend as little or as much time with as you like. At no point do you feel forced to complete what would traditionally be considered the “side missions”; the road and rooftop races, the stunt challenges and orb collection.

I thought that the different ways you could approach and tackle the gang bosses made things a little more interesting although I’m thankful that the developers didn’t try and shoehorn in stealth game elements.

I was playing on one of the easier modes so my strategy consisted of quickly running to wherever the bosses were and repeatedly kicking them until they keeled over. It worked on every single guy except the big cheese at the end. He accidently killed himself by falling off his little pagoda. Such an anti-climax.

I’m not usually a big fan of hundreds of collectible items in games but there is just something addictive about Crackdown’s orb system. There’s a real empirical benefit to collecting the orbs but no requirement to find all of them. They are also cleverly placed so you can always see another orb to aim for.

Crackdown gives you a great big playground to race, run and jump around. As you can pick up a brand new copy of the game for about £13, or a fiver pre-owned, there’s really no reason why everyone shouldn’t give it a try. As long as you don’t expect a deep, meaningful story (or indeed any story) I can’t see how you’d be disappointed.

You can listen to this month’s CGUK Replay show, featuring Shoinan, Major Lag, Johnus Maximus, Foyble, Dits & Xantiriad, by clicking here. If you’d like to help select the Replay game for August then please visit this section of the CGUK.com forums.

Fast forward twenty or so years to 2009 and Lego Battles for the Nintendo DS attempts to bring childhood play sessions like mine to life in digital form. The game might feature the familiar Travellers Tales branding but rest assured it is not merely another iteration of the series that has taken on Star Wars, Batman and Indiana Jones. Lego Battles is actually an RTS, a real time strategy game, based around some of the familiar classic Lego kits.

You lead your plastic troops through six story modes with over ninety levels based around the Lego castles, pirates and space themes. The chapters of each story are linked together by cut-scenes featuring all the mildly amusing, over the top, plastic emoting we’ve come to expect from the modern Lego titles.

No matter where your campaign takes place the basics stay the same. Your key units are the hero and the builder. You hero unit has special combat powers and their survival is usually vital for mission success. Your builders are the resource gathers. They also construct the buildings that increase the size of your army and produce troops and vehicles.

Game play is extremely straightforward. One screen on the DS features a map or details of the unit you have selected and the other shows your current location on the battlefield. You simply drag your stylus over units to select them and then tap where you want them to move or the action you want them to carry out.

Missions include seeking out certain objects on the map, defending areas from attack and hunting down and destroying enemy facilities. The pirate levels add a bit more depth to proceedings requiring the use of ships both to move troops around and also to engage the enemy in simple naval combat.

The game’s story adventures are fun but it’s the free play mode that really brings back memories of the childhood battles I mentioned previously. In free play you can put together your own personal selection of units from any of the sets you’ve unlocked. You can have knights and pirates fighting alongside each other, your archers can go up against laser pistol wielding spacemen and your dragons can take on starfighters. Local DS to DS multi-card play allows you to battle a friend rather than the game’s AI.

Although featuring a very different play mechanic, Lego Battles shares some elements in common with Travellers Tales’ Lego platforming games. There are oodles of collectibles lying around to be discovered on each map. There’s the familiar minikits, red “cheat” bricks and also blue Lego studs that are the currency for purchasing new maps and characters.

Lego Battles contains a lot of great ideas with just a few hiccups in the implementation department. For starters, the simple graphics allow a lot of action on screen but they don’t really make the most of the license. The mini-figures lose some of their charm when reduced to tiny sprites and it can be hard to tell the difference between friend and foe, particularly in the heat of battle. Experienced Real Time Strategy players will find some aspects of unit selection frustrating and the fact that their troops are also generally pretty poor at navigating around obstacles on the map.

Despite the niggling annoyances as a portable RTS Lego Battles is worth a look, especially if you’re a fan of other simplified strategy offerings such as Halo Wars. With so many missions and so many unlockables there’s plenty in the game to keep you, or your little general-in-training, occupied for quite some time.

Playing through The Knights of the Nine content was a really interesting experience for me as it meant revisiting a game that I hadn’t played for well over a year.

Now, there are some games that you can just jump right back into but I don’t think Oblivion is one of them. I’d like to think I was a veteran player, having spent over seventy hours on the game, but I’d forgotten so much… like what spells I had access to, what weapons I used to use, where my house (with my stash of equipment) was and…erm… exactly what it was I’d done to upset the guards in every city in the land. Luckily that last problem was more a case of mistaken identity and , in general, the process of acclimatising was made a little easier having just played Fallout 3.

I found the Knights of the Nine quests themselves to be a short, enjoyable, set of self-contained missions, very reminiscent of some of the Arthurian Grail quests.

There were some interesting set pieces and a good mix of content… some missions were very short, others were longer and more challenging… I enjoyed the fact that they weren’t all combat focused… Some included clever little puzzles… simple things like turning statues and choosing specific paths across floors… but they added variation to what, otherwise, would’ve just been a collection of “run to the end of the dungeon, kill the boss, grab the magical item” adventures.

Playing through the quests did bring to light a few complaints I have regarding Oblivion… The close weapon combat is really pretty naff and usually involves repeatedly tapping the attack button whilst desperately trying to turn around to face your enemy so your blows actually land. Although far from perfect, Fable II has shown what you can do with a single-button attack… in Oblivion I just never felt like I was having a proper swordfight… the animation is also just too samey and simplistic.

However, it’s still a great game… no matter what our potato headed friend over on the skinflint podcast might think… Having finished all the achievements on Oblivion, I would never have gone back and played the Knights of the Nine without an incentive… so my thanks go to all the Replay listeners for voting for it.

You can listen to this month’s CGUK Replay featuring The Mehwarrior, Major Lag, Johnus Maximus, & Xantiriad by clicking here. If you’d like to help select the Replay game for June then please visit this section of the CGUK.com forums.

My own personal definition of art is any work to which I feel a strong emotional or intellectual connection. Flower fits that description perfectly. Remember that dream of flying you had as a kid? That’s what Flower feels like to me.

You start by blowing off a single petal from a flower. Using the Sixaxis, you gently sweep it round the visually stunning landscapes, colliding with other buds, collecting more blossom as you go, building up a swirling coloured entourage behind you. As you collect more petals, additional flowers bloom and new areas of the land become available.

Swooping through the air, soaring high on the wind and rushing through the sun-drenched grass it’s an incredible feeling. The controls, simple gentle movements on the motion sensitive control pad together with a single button press to introduce more wind, work extremely well when you eventually learn to relax and calmly coax your petals around the game world.

An amazing symphony of music, colours and emotions, the whole game feels like a selection of orchestral movements brought to life. Each level offers something different in terms of mood, structure and pace.

Considering that you are doing little more than sweeping a flowery cursor around the screen, the developers still manage to introduce new gameplay elements that keep things interesting all the way through. There are even hidden flowers and trophies on offer for those looking for more traditional game challenges.

The game actually has a story. Starting with he exhilaratingly natural experience of the first level, it gradually introduces more man-made elements until the whole game becomes much darker and, quite strangely, actually a little scary. It builds towards a joyful, jubilant and triumphant ending where you happily restore order to the land.

Some may complain about the price tag and whether the title has any real replayability. As I spent over three hours solidly playing Flower the first time I loaded it up I already feel like I have had my money’s worth and I’m convinced that I’ll be going back to try and find some of the hidden flowers.

Like beauty, art is very much in the eye of the beholder so I can understand that this game may not appeal to everyone. You might also have been put off games like this after Linger in Shadows. Believe me, that game is a mere collection of childish scribblings compared to this title.

Flower is a stunning piece of art, not a bad little game, and the first experience I’ve had on the PS3 that I truly believe I couldn’t get on any other system.

Little more than a re-skinned Star Wars: Battlefront, it would be easy to moan about this game from a Tolkien fan’s perspective. It feels like it’s been made by a team who have pieced together their knowledge of Middle Earth from movie trailers. Giving mystic powers, magical swords and invisibility to every random character under the sun turns the whole thing into generic fantasy fare, making it completely unworthy of the license. I don’t know how this ever got approved by the Tolkien Estate.

But my real problem with the game isn’t that it’s not faithful to the books or films, in fact the non-canonical evil timeline is the best thing about the title. My objection is that this is just a bad game – even by last generation’s standards. In my opinion, the old Playstation 2 Lord of the Rings games are better than this title.

Resisting the temptation to stop the review there, I’ll give you a brief overview of the game mechanics. There are four classes of character. The warrior hacks and slashes his way through enemies with his sword, utilising a throwing axe to knock down distant opponents. The archer unsurprisingly excels at ranged combat and has a variety of specially charged arrows at his disposal.

The mage’s magic arsenal includes a flame attack, a healing spell, a pretty useful ground smash attack and what can be most accurately described as “Star Wars Force Lightning”. The final class is the scout who is able to cloak himself in shadows and sneakily backstab enemies.

At certain points in the game you’ll earn control of one of the major characters from the films whose powers either directly mimic or combine those of the four basic classes. There are also various mounts (such as Oliphants) and controllable creatures (such as trolls and ents) that can be used on specific maps.

It all sounds great in theory. However the control schemes used for the various classes are awful. It feels like the developer just threw dice to assign the moves on the controller, which leaves you constantly fumbling around trying to remember which particular combinations of triggers and buttons activate your special attacks. Combat is incredibly laboured and clunky with long animation times (during which the enemy has plenty of chance to move out of the way) and the collision detection feels well off.

The camera is also more than a little bit rubbish. With no way of locking onto your enemy you regularly find yourself slashing wildly off screen at an opponent you can’t see or, even worse, completely missing your intended target altogether.

Although the environments are pretty well designed, and instantly recognisable from the film, the game suffers from sub-par visuals overall. The character models are of lower resolution than you’d usually expect to see on the 360 (even allowing for the amount of enemies that are on the screen at anyone time), everything is a bit murky and it’s often hard to pick out enemies from allies.

Soundtrack wise it’s pretty impressive, but that’s because the game utilises Howard Shore’s fantastic movie score. The voice acting, though, is really hit and miss. I’m assured, from reliable sources that it’s Hugo “Elrond” Weaving doing the main voiceover but I think they must have got the rest of the cast from down the local job centre.

The game features two single player campaign modes, offline split screen co-op and online multiplayer. Rather tellingly the multiplayer modes receive top billing on the game’s menu screen.

The campaign modes aren’t bad. The first basically sees you re-enacting key parts of the battles from the Two Towers and the Return of the King movies. Missions mostly involve fighting your way to control points, successfully capturing them and then either running off and doing the same at another control point or finding and killing a particular character. There is some enjoyment to be had from these sections but on occasions it degenerates into something resembling either an unorganised playground game of king of the castle (with everyone piling into the control points) or a strange run-around reminiscent of a Benny Hill episode (where you spend a lot of time chasing your assassination target until he accidently falls off a cliff).

The second “alternate ending” campaign is quite interesting as it basically explores what might have happened if Gollum hadn’t stopped Frodo from succumbing to the power of the One Ring. It’s hard, though, to take some of these missions seriously when major heavyweight hitters like The Witch King, the Balrog and even Lord Sauron himself are little more than slightly beefed up re-skins of the existing four character classes.

I didn’t hate everything about the game. It’s nice to be reminded of a great movie trilogy and playing as some of the famous characters was fun at times. The game also chucks out achievement points like they’re going out of fashion. Even though the game was bad I still managed to make my way to the end of the two campaigns with over six hundred points in the bank. I just felt more than a little short-changed by what had the potential to be a brilliant title, taking some of the things from the last generation’s tie-in games and upgrading the experience for the current, more-powerful consoles.

As a budget title or a downloadable game they could’ve got away with what really is little more than a quick rehash of Star Wars: Battlefront. It’s just about passable as a rental. It’s unbelievable that they’re asking people to pay full price for this tosh though. It’s not good enough for Battlefront fans and it’s certainly not good enough for followers of the Lord of the Rings.

Avoid Lord of the Rings: Conquest like the plague. There are so many other, better games of this kind that you can spend your hard earned cash on.

Treyarch’s Spider-Man 2 provided the template and set the bar that all other Spidey titles are judged by. Players expect to be able to web-swing their way through a virtual New York, right from the tallest skyscraper all the way down to the city streets. And of course Spider-Man must also be able to do whatever a spider can. Spinning webs any size, catching thieves just like… well, you know the rest.

Freed from the shackles of a cinematic tie-in, the developers had the perfect chance to let their imaginations run wild and come up with a great original story. What they’ve produced is interesting but fairly lightweight. Thinly stretched over three chapters the pacing is pretty pedestrian and they could’ve done with including some decent side arcs to pad things out.

The extraterrestrial oil slick, Venom has returned (somehow). This time the alien goo is not satisfied bonding with a single host, it has all of humanity in its sights. Obviously it’s up to our hero, Spider-Man to stop him.
Unfortunately Spidey’s gone and got himself partially re-infected by the symbiote, which has given him back his powerful black suit but has also made him more susceptible to taking part in cringe worthy dance montages (there’s a “I hate the Spider-Man 3 movie” reference for you). Web of Shadows features the usual appearances from Marvel B-listers as well as a few star turns from more well known characters like Wolverine.

The game does away with a lot of the superfluous trappings of previous titles. Gone are the timed races, thrill rides, bomb missions and tricks. Rather than eight billion different sorts of collectables there’s now only one type. It’s easy to see. It improves your health. It’s worth collecting. (There’s still a lot of them, though.)

Web swinging has improved… or rather its gone back to what it used to be like before they went and made it over complicated. Sticking to buildings is a little more difficult that it needs to be, the camera sometimes decides to go wandering off on holiday, but you really shouldn’t have many problems manoeuvring your friendly neighbourhood web-head around the city.

The new combat system works well. There are three different types of attacks; punch, ranged and web strike. You can switch smoothly between aerial, ground and wall moves using your web strikes to chain combos as you go. Whether you take the time to learn all the different attack combinations or just bash buttons randomly, you’ll still find it relatively easy to dispatch most enemies in a visually impressive and varied manner. In tricky situations you can also call upon one of the supporting heroes (or villains) to come to your aid.

A single click on the left thumbstick switches between Spidey’s red and black suits. Each has their own particular powers. The red suit’s attacks tend to be more acrobatic and it allows you to regenerate health quicker. The black suit is physically stronger giving you the ability to pick up and throw cars, but this often causes civilian casualties. There is a powers upgrade system, fuelled by experience points, but unless you favour a particular suit (and enjoy constant micro-management) you might as well just turn the auto-upgrade mode on.

The red and black suit concept is also used in other areas of the game. Your choice of supporting characters is determined by your actions towards civilians. Rescue them to earn “good” red points, let them perish for “evil” black points. Every so often the main storyline presents you with a moral choice where, once again, you have to choose between red and black options. Your decisions don’t really change the overall shape of the narrative but the slight variations may be enough to encourage a second play through.

The missions might well put you off that second play through, though. The main story ones are well designed and are quite fun. Boss battles are generally enjoyable, although the developers do seem to like making you repeat the same set of actions at least twice. It’s the side missions that will bore you to tears.

You see, because there are no extra plot arcs the only other thing to do in the game, to gain experience, are the optional tasks your superhero mentors give you. They present you with an almost endless shopping list, asking you to kill, for example, ten of a certain type of creature, then twenty, then thirty. Or they tell you to go and save five civilians, then ten, then twenty. You get the idea? These missions are virtually the same in each section of the game, just with differently skinned enemies. I was really good in the first two chapters and tried hard to complete all of these missions (there’s an achievement for finishing all sixty tasks after all) but eventually I was bored silly, ignored them and just pushed on with the main storyline.

Almost the entire game takes place outside in the open, but not particularly detailed, recreation of Marvel’s New York City. There are no cramped, confined internal locations like in previous games. This is good in one way, because the series’ web swinging controls have never really worked well indoors, but it does make things a little monotonous, particularly by the time you get to the third and final act. The limited number of different villain types also adds to the overall feeling of déjà vu.

Possibly the worst part of the game, in my humble opinion, is the voice acting. Talent like Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helfer and The Wire’s Robert Wisdom (in particular) lend a bit of class to the proceedings, but their good work is totally undermined by the awful miscasting of the rather key role of Spider-Man himself. He just doesn’t sound anything like Spidey should. It’s a casting mistake second only to Nolan North’s appearance as the titular Prince of Persia.

With all the bad points I’ve just mentioned you might get the impression that Spider-Man Web of Shadows is an awful game. It’s not. It’s just as enjoyable, to be honest, as Treyarch’s previous Spidey titles. You really will feel like Spider-Man, swinging through the city and bouncing your attacks from one villain to another. Unfortunately, it’s just not different enough a game to win over any new fans.

It’s also a pretty easy and pretty short title, especially if you have little interest in the optional missions or collecting all the spider tokens. There are multiple endings, which technically require four run-throughs to view (or two with clever saving), but apart from seeing different cut-scenes there’s not really much to tempt you to go back.

If you’ve played a Spider-Man game before you’ll already know if you’ll like this. Fans of the series should definitely check it out as a rental but diehard Spidey-haters would be best steering well clear.