Morally ambiguous characters are all the rage in video games nowadays, but they always tend to be violent crime games. This is essentially a cross between the old Dungeon Keeper games and Nintendo’s Pikmin, where you play a Sauron-like dark lord in a fantasy world fill of so many corrupt and unpleasant people you often end up playing the de facto hero. Like Pikmin this is a mix of third person action game and a real-time strategy, the obvious difference being you’re now in charge of a horde of goblins instead of cute little flower creatures.
Although you directly control your bad self in the game you’ve only got some simple axe attacks and magic spells. Instead your main interaction with the world is via your goblin minions. You can either target an enemy and tell them to attack or control the biggest group directly with the right stick. One of the main currencies in the game then is lifeforce, with which you can instantly generate a new minion. This can be obtained from some enemies, and also sheep, but also from innocent villagers if you want to be really nasty. Although the game may lack moral complexities the capacity for strategy is more developed, as you eventually gain the ability to set ambushes and cast spells on minions. The game’s graphics are generally attractive, even with a jarringly short draw distance, but it’s the gameplay that really impresses here with something genuinely out of the ordinary in terms of both strategy and motivation.
Harrison Dent 
