Cross-platform development is perhaps finally coming out of its slump of the last few years. Each platform has born the brunt of sloppy ports, but developers are beginning to show signs of taking far more care when they intend their game to appear on 360, PS3 and PC at once. This gets trickier when you want to catch the Wii and DS market, mind you, and often the result is extremely compromised versions of the original, possibly with a couple of lazy hand/stylus-waggling mini-games. Or there's Codemasters' approach with Overlord, making three completely different games.
For those unfamiliar, the Overlord games have you control a cruel, evil figure who lords over a gang of minions. Your primary interaction with the game is to send off your critters to do your bidding, while able to muck in on the action when needs must.
Overlord: Dark Legend is a prequel to the first Overlord game, seeing the origins of the hatred between Elves and Dwarfs. Much like the first game you control a newly promoted Overlord who is a bit younger, in fact he looks a bit like a student in armor until you upgrade.
It's a good change for the system. This type of game looks like it will work really well on the system.
Now let's just see if it sells.
Level7: Despite great criticism from both the press and players sold the first Overlord game no huge quantities. Codemasters did however give the series another chance. Original developers Triumph Studios therefore carved up Overlord 2 to PS3 and 360, while Climax Studios was commissioned to program a Wii and the DS version.
It doesn't look great. By applying the well-worn Wii formatting trick of liberating much of the grandeur and personality from a game series to make way for some arbitrary remote-wiggling interaction, the English developers have apparently designated their target market as the sort of immature sadists who believe pulling wings from insects constitutes a pastime.
