Despite the runaway success of Nintendo's Wii, it's been a deceptively difficult couple of years for the videogames industry as a whole. An unforgiving economic climate has seen that landmark brands synonymous with the sector - companies and properties that any gamer with a past will have felt, at one time or another, some sense of allegiance to - have withered and died or damn near disappeared at a time when the overriding perception is perversely that games and thus development budgets and the risk inherent in them must grow quantitatively to meet the increasing expectations of consumers. Cliff Blezenski's oft-quoted Gears of War 2 mantra has come to be a striking sign of the times: bigger, better and more bad-ass is more or less exactly what the majority of this generation's games have aspired to be - and two out of three ain't bad, don't get me wrong - but when the size and in-your-face immediacy of an experience trumps, as it so often does, that last, elusive element - fun, of course - you begin to suspect the moral of the story espoused by Epic Games' fun-loving figurehead has been, by now, diminished almost into insignificance.

There is hope, though; a great many of the industry's greats are gone, but some have come at this latest wave of gaming innovation with a different tack, and of those, a precious few have even flourished. In the Summer of 2007, just as the longstanding founders of Codemasters were bought out by an equity group and the situation seemed to be make or break, the company released Overlord, effectively answering the question that had been on everyone's lips. It was Codemasters' most successful new IP in a long time - and for good reason. Overlord wasn't terribly pretty; it wasn't without its fair share of flaws; but what it was, was fun, in abundance. Initially available only on Xbox 360, although joined later with an added-value expansion packed in on PS3, Overlord cast its broad spectrum of players in the role of the title character, a nameless leader tasked with destroying or dominating a facetious fantasy world with the inimitable aid of his minion army. Equal parts action, puzzle and strategy, only the most embittered Overlords could fail to delight in the simple pleasures of the game's singular play mechanic, which is wreaking havoc on an endlessly destructible kingdom, watching the very world burn down around you as you pillage your way to progress. To paraphrase Gnarl - the oldest and wisest of the Underworld's minions - it was good to be bad, but better still to be truly evil, and, brilliantly, those were the only points on the moral compass to which you could align; goody two-shoes gamers need not have applied. A little wanton destruction in our entertainment is rewarding enough as is, so building a whole game around the concept, as Triumph Studios did with the original Overlord, proved to be a uniquely rewarding experience. At that, it might very well be the reason that Codemasters live on.

This is good news for those who are keen to see some of the names they remember so fondly from their first forays into the medium continue [Codies' were responsible for an endless slew of classics on the Speccy and C64 - Dizzy, anyone? Wistful Ed], and even better is that Overlord II is in every sense a superior product. It is, more than somewhat ironically, bigger, better and more bad-ass than its predecessor. The playing fields are substantially larger this time out, many of the technical kinks that held the first Overlord back have been ironed out, and lest this sequel fail to meet CliffyB's third measure of schoolboy success, there's a four-way to indulge in, too. Now this - and I don't just mean the sex - is exactly what I'm talking about: fun.

You aren't ordering armies around from the get-go, however; you begin with a modest few brown minions at your behest, the game's most basic units: brawlers, bashers, boxers all. At your command, they attack enemies, destroy environmental objects and bring you treasure. They're brainless, brawny brutes, the browns - order them into water and every one will drown - but to start with, so long as you steer them clear of any suspect puddles, they serve your introductory objectives well enough. After you and your first minions have conquered a town or two, you come upon some other more advanced units. Reds are next-to useless in the thick of battle but a vital means of support when assisting your browns from a distance with their fireballs; greens are your stealth units, able to cloak on guard markers and savage enemies when attacking from the rear; and blues, meanwhile, can swim, and run invisible through enemies. Retrieve one hive or another and the corresponding colour of minions can be conveniently summoned from spawn points that erupt into the fantasy environment as you arrive at key locations.

Of course, an infinite supply of minions would fly in the face of any notion of challenge, thus you must harvest the life force of the enemies that your rank and file defeat - although 'enemies' is perhaps overstating some of the opposition: aside from the Empire soldiers and archers and elves that your Overlord faces off against, you can also take exception to all sorts of fluffy, endangered creatures, including but hardly limited to baby seals, peacocks and giant pandas. You can largely ignore the friendlier fauna, but Gnarl's advice plays into the experience a second time out; it's good to be bad, beating up the stooges who dare to lift a finger against you while leaving the loveliest animals be, but better - for your growing army, in this case - to be truly wicked. In any case, each unit of life-force represents a single minion to call upon when the time comes, and these are far from the only collectible to hunt for throughout Overlord II; hunter-gatherer types will find their natural inclinations amply rewarded. There are red gems and rare dark crystals that, in conjunction with a little money and sometimes a few willing sacrificial minions to oil the wheels of Giblet's armoury, you can use to make powerful new weapons, stat-boosting accessories and upgrades for your minion barracks. You come across health and mana upgrades for your Overlord too, in the form of artefacts that you must return to the underworld, magical catalysts used to upgrade your spells, not to mention command totems, which increase the size of your gremlin-esque army until your ranks swell to near fifty minions simultaneously. You don't need to collect everything to make it through the dozen or more hours of Overlord II, either; and it's just as well, as many of the most useful upgrades are sadly rather tiresome to access, buried deep in the bowels of your subterranean domain where long walks and load screens abound. Take just a little time out from raining fire and brimstone down upon your enemies to score a select few pick-ups though and you'll find the progression of the difficulty curve parallels your own power, as the fluffy animals and basic brawlers of the game's early stages become something of a rarity further through the campaign. As the Empire musters its power against your encroaching force, more challenging units use shields, spikes, fiery arrows and bombs to take your Overlord down. You must use your magicks and minions, as well as wolves, spiders and salamanders - their unique mounts - both efficiently and effectively in order to overcome some particularly tricky enemy formations.

When the action-packed carnage at the heart of Overlord II lets up, it's for a few good reasons. Frequent puzzle sequences wherein you must utilise the specific strengths of a particular variety of minion to overcome some environmental obstacle are a nice change of pace from the delightful if somewhat repetitive rampages that make up the majority of the experience. From time to time, your Overlord must also take control of catapults and ballista to destroy otherwise impassable barricades, but these are by the numbers pace-changers at best. There's an ill-advised boat segment too, the less said about which, the better. Surely the best of Overlord II's set pieces, however, come of the possession stones you find on your travels; these powerful relics allow you to become one of the cannon-fodder creatures for a short time. You can dress your minions in soldier outfits, for instance, to fool the Empire guard into letting you over a drawbridge, and beyond progress alone, the whimsical spectacle of thirty-some midget minions dressed in red and gold uniforms as their Mike Patton-esque ensemble trot out an inspirational tune is reward enough for your troubles. Another highlight is the extended green minion stealth section, which requires that you learn guard patrol routes and carefully avoid security camera equivalents as you retrieve a hive from a high security facility. It's Metal Gear Minion, for all intents and purposes, and it makes for a brilliant time.

Surprisingly, most of Overlord II works without a hitch. It's a big game and it has problems, of course, but the incremental improvements that Triumph Studios have made upon their debut console effort make its sequel far less chaotic than you might imagine. To start with, there's a mini-map now, and though the larger corresponding sub menu map is frustratingly inflexible, there's at least far less aimlessness to your adventures than there was before. You'll find it easier going, too; although there are moments where you might curse the thinly-spread checkpoint system or the inexact path-finding, Overlord II is in these regards notably more user friendly than its predecessor: you'll lose your minions for no apparent reason far less often, and only occasionally have to retread your steps. The controls, too, have been refined. You move the Overlord around with the left stick, while the right controls the camera and your minions. You can attack and assign targets for your minions with the shoulder triggers, while the face buttons are for your evil avatar's magic and melee attacks. Much of the needless complexity that brought the original Overlord down has been done away with in one fell swoop; less commonplace requirements are now context-sensitive. The only technical problem obnoxious enough to really take note of is the errant camera. You might think that some control over your perspective is better than none, but the placement of both minion and camera control on a single analogue stick is a strikingly poor design decision, make no mistake. You'll mean to unhitch the camera from some naughty geometry to better see the battlefield ahead and instead sweep your rainbow of an army into the spiked shields of a nearby enemy formation. It's easy enough to recall your minions when the controls have outfoxed you so, but you'll misdirect them often enough that micro-managing your point of view becomes a real chore.

Visually, Overlord II is nothing to write home about. From a distance the vistas are impressive enough, but they're backdrops alone; up close and personal, everything short of the endearingly evil minions loses its sheen, jarring with the painterly surrounding environs. The vast majority of assets and objects bring to mind mediocre console ports of open world games such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and while Overlord II is big, its scale has nothing on such staggering endeavours. The sounds, in their way, are much like the sights; the few musical themes are suitable, however sparse; weapons clunk and cannonballs explode appropriately; and the voice actors ham it up appropriately. Ultimately, however, nothing much stands out.

In fact, for such an excellent game, a great deal of Overlord II is strikingly average. Apparently, for instance, there's a whole lot of plot going on: by all means, take a gander at the baffling depths of story better conveyed in Wikipedia entries than the game itself. Although clearly not meant to be taken seriously, the capricious narrative of Overlord II pales in comparison to Heavenly Sword writer Rhianna Pratchett's earlier efforts: it's a fun bit of fluff, nothing more. The game mechanics aren't particularly original, nor can the end result lean overly much on looks. So far, so insipid - but evil, as Gnarl asserts, always finds a way. Overlord II isn't some handsome, smooth-talking stranger, yet it's buoyed by a wicked sense of humour and an overriding awareness that above all things, what really counts is fun, that deceptively simple thing so many games this generation have been too busy overreaching to remember. If you're after an intricately-structured, character-driven odyssey into the underworld then look away; but although Overlord II is inelegant in many senses and outright clumsy in a few, the overall experience is more than the sum of its parts, and stands as a very convincing argument that first and foremost among the many factors that can make or break a game, fun factor is, as it once was, absolutely key.

Reviewed by Niall Rough for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).