Overlord Planning on Dominating the Wii

Overlord was last year's hit from Codemasters, a game which puts you in control of a fellow of a great many evil deeds, who in turn controls quite a few minions. The hook for this game was that while you controlled the Overlord directly in order to spread your chaos and destruction throughout the land, you had no direct control over your minions. Instead, you had to rely on specific commands you could give the Overlord, which would in turn command the minions in where to go. This often lead to some humorous battles ending in smashed pumpkins on minion heads, sheep being set aflame, and many other funny scenarios.

Climax Studios is working on a sort of prequel for Overlord which will be a Wii-exclusive release. Dark Legend plants you in the boots of the Overlord yet again, but this time in his younger days of commanding minions to bring death in destruction. Along with the new platform, Dark Legend will bring new gameplay mechanics. The game looks quite a bit like the original Overlord, which is quite the accomplishment given the Wii's hardware compared to that of the 360, or PC. However, the gameplay has changed quite a bit. Paths in the original Overlord were pretty linear and guided you through the game, but this is not the case in Dark Legend as it has more open spaces for your to explore. Dark Legend also gives the player direct control of the minion, with the ability to point them in the precise direction you want them to go with the Wii-mote.

Aside from the controls, Dark Legend seems as if it will play quite a bit like the original game. You'll be completing a variety of different quests in the same fantasy world, with your minions causing chaos and wreaking havoc along the way. Another great aspect of Dark Legend is the ability to choke your minions. You can pick a minion from your horde and violently choke him until his eyes glow yellow. After you let the minion go, he'll act as a sort of rocket, which will automatically hone in on any nearby enemies and detonate on impact. As with the older game, the color of the minion will have an effect on what the bomb does when it detonates. Regular brown minions will detonate like a normal bomb, while your colored minions will have added effects such as healing and area effect explosions with napalm effects.

Overlord: Dark Legend is scheduled for release sometime in 2009.

Find out more about this and other upcoming Wii releases at Are you a Wiiener?

Reuters - U.S. health officials have uncovered trace amounts of the chemical melamine in one sample of infant formula sold in the United States, a Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

Rock Band And Novelty In Gaming

This game is a landmark. In years to come, we will look back at this game and see that this, along with Wii Fit, became the point where it all changed.
But for the life of me, I can't see what these changes are, positive or negative.

I have no doubt in my mind that both Rock Band and Wii Fit are fun. Let's not confuse my writing with that of a negative review of these games. For me these games are the catalyst for something much more.

For anyone who doesn't know, Rock Band has the same basic music concept as Guitar Hero. Coloured bars fall from the top of the screen in time with the music, and you have to hit the corresponding colour while strumming your guitar. Except Rock Back have also added a drum kit peripheral, and a singing part, which works much the same as Sing Star for the PS2. And Wii Fit is a series of mini games, all using the Balance Board peripheral, a flat quadrangle split into four pressure sensitive areas. This is all dressed up into a miracle fitness regime, in which you can have fun and lose weight.

I'm not entirely sure why these games cause such an unsettling feeling in my stomach, but they do.

For a minor history lesson, I can tell you firstly that these types of games have been around for a very long time. The guitar peripheral concept has been around in a franchise called Guitar Mania, and so too has the idea of a drum peripheral, in Drum Mania. These are not the only, and probably not the first examples, but they are the most well known after Guitar Hero. These games were limited mostly to arcades. Western arcades have all but died, whereas in Japan these machines still prevail (there's one being used in Lost in Translation), but that's another rant for another time. The Wii Balance Board is a relatively new idea, but having its roots in the Joyboard, a peripheral released in 1982. The peripherals on offer are not a new thing, so no, it's not that that's bothering me.

Large peripherals for controlling games have been around as long as games themselves. Nintendo's Robotic Operating Buddy for example. They have always had the major problem of costing an absolute bomb, especially in the light of regular priced games. 70 on Wii Fit, or 40 on GTA IV? A full Rock Band setup is going to set you back in the region of 150. That's a heavy hit for a video game, but you can buy the different parts separately, making your wallet take a slightly less insulting blow, but a blow nonetheless. But gamers do have a large disposable income, so I don't doubt for a minute that people will pay this price, even if it leaves a slightly bitter taste in their mouths, so no, it's not that that's bothering me, either.

I think, and this is a concept very deeply rooted within my brain, like a psychiatric disorder, that these games signal the next wave of novelty gaming (pejorative). I'm not sure I see myself as a "hard-core" gamer. I don't feel the need to play games' expert modes, for example. But I will strive for 100% completion, and I will attempt to play the best possible game of Halo/Super Smash Bros./Ikaruga/Guitar Hero that I can possibly play, ever motivated towards perfection. And what I see these novelty games as, is an influx of the casual gamer. We've already had a huge influx of the casual gamer in the DS and Wii, and we can already see the repercussions of that. Shelf after shelf of movie and TV tie-in games; poorly produced bilge in the attempt to make a quick buck out of the nave and gullible.

People had fun playing Wii Sports and Wii Play, so 3rd parties produce more compilations of sports and mini games. People enjoyed brain training, and so we have a catalogue of third party brain training software.

OK granted, it's going to be fairly hard for a third party company to create a clone of Rock Band that people will actually be stupid enough to buy; this game seems pretty contained in itself. But it will still bring a lot of new gamers to the fold, and these new gamers are eventually going to get bored of Rock Band and want another game. Off they pop down to Game (...don't get me started on Game) to buy another game, and what are they more likely to walk out with? The Orange Box? Bio Shock? No, Iron Man, or the Lost video game, because as a new gamer, the only concepts they have in their mind are from other media, and they feel more comfortable spending their cash on a concept they are aware of, than the "unheard of" Crackdown.

But I think more than this, the thing that is getting me the most exasperated, is that for video games to finally get the world-wide recognition that they have been denied for so long, we have had to rely on novelty: The Wii and DS, and games with crazy peripherals. Like a circus clown with a trumpet running up to you in the street, shouting "Video games are fun! You see, look! Su Doku!"

From the mouth of Fenton Bailey. Find his blog at http://fentonbailey.blogspot.com

AP - Brooke Burke could be the one who wins "Dancing With the Stars." The 37-year-old model-actress and her professional partner, Derek Hough, dominated the popular ABC dancing competition's final round Monday night, receiving a combined score of 58 out of 60 from the judges.