Attention Ready Up Minions! The time has come to fall to your knees and cower before your Masters like the wretches you are. That’s right, Overlord II has landed and we’re offering you the chance to get your unworthy hands on not one but five Xbox 360 promo copies of this sadistic, despotic and hilarious sequel.

What am I looking at? Uh, nothing Sir, nothing at all...

Overlord II picks up where the original left off, casting you as the Overlad, son of the first game’s sinister protagonist. It’s up to you to escape from daddy’s tyrannical shadow by summoning your minion hordes and using them to deface, destroy and enslave everything that dares to stick its nose over the horizon. There are a variety of minions for you to summon and direct, each with their own specialities and vulnerabilities, so you’ll need to use your head if you’re going to create maximum carnage with minimum losses.

Oh yeah, did I mention that you can club baby seals? A seemingly victimless crime... until their parents track you down

The trademark humour returns, with the minions providing a constant soundtrack of gleeful cackling and off-colour quips. The developers have made an effort to take criticisms on board in order to expand and improve on the first game, so a few things are different the second time around. Triumph Studios decided that there wasn’t quite enough evil in the original and as such have adapted the ‘good vs evil’ choice system to a more ‘evil vs evil’ set of alternatives. New factions have appeared in the absence of the Overlord’s iron fist, and you will have an Empire of anti-magic users to cast your wicked spells on and a race of environmentally-friendly elves to trample like dandelions ‘neath your mighty tread. Whatever your favourite flavour of death and destruction, you’ll be sure to find enough malice and mayhem in Overlord II to satisfy your monstrous appetite. Evil always finds a way…

The Overlords of Codemasters have granted Ready Up 5 copies of Overlord II on Xbox 360 to give away!

Just answer this simple question to be in with a chance of winning:

Overlord II is out now for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, but on what system can you play the new spin off title Overlord: Minions?

a) Nintendo DS
b) Sony PSP
c) Wonderswan Color

Send your answer to this email address to be entered into the draw. Competition closes Friday 10th July and you must be 16 or over to enter.

Don’t bother getting your hopes up, don’t bother dreaming of glory and the flash of cameras focused on you and don’t bother thinking you will get to exhibit all those skills you have tried to finely hone in the gym. Why? Well I have a secret to share with you. I’m the best. It’s as simple as that. When I step on the canvas nobody can touch me, my right hook is unstoppable and my tactics are second to none. My team in the corner are the best there are, my fans are the loudest and I’ve been everywhere from London to Manila sending people to the canvas in pain with their mouth full of blood. Ali said boxing was a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up, but he never reckoned on me lacing up.

I’ve spoken before about difficulty in games, mostly because it seems that with the technology leaps getting smaller we will have to look at other ways of ageing games and one such way is difficulty. Undoubtedly with gaming now utterly mainstream the notion that games should be able to be completed by everybody is a popular one. Why should you be unable to have the complete experience you paid for purely because either you aren’t good enough or the game is too tough? It’s a valid and strong argument, one that isn’t likely to go away now that Nintendo are contemplating games that play themselves at difficult sections, but I am here to provide the opposing view. As you may have guessed from my intro it comes from the sweet science, more specifically EA’s Fight Night Round 4.

The game maps your face in pretty well and now that its career mode is more realistic, you can really get into the moment and engage with your virtual boxing life. I’ve literally just finished playing a game, my mouth is dry and I’m bouncing about whilst typing this out of sheer adrenaline as the fight was that good. I won in the fifth, five rounds of letting him punch himself tired before one punch out the corner finished him. The game is probably the most realistic depiction of a sport I’ve seen outwith golf games and this fight more than any other proved that. I started very poorly, my usual tactic of landing fast light punches wasn’t working as his defence was far too strong but my corner pointed me to this. I had to move around and work any gap I could find and eventually I spotted a sore spot on his face which I managed to turn into a small cut. Not enough to stop the fight but enough to make him change his defence, protecting it more meaning I could go back to my original plan and start to pick away at him. He started to get reckless and punched his stamina away, leaving me to finish him with one punch reasonably early on. When I sent him sprawling I celebrated like I was in the ring, mainly because I was damn proud of myself. It was a difficult fight, I had to think and the game gave me little help. It was just me and my corner, if I wasn’t good enough I would have lost… the judges’ results proved this as until that punch, I was being outfought. Yet if it was easier, if it’d told me to go for the cut or if the AI had held back to let me into it would I have felt that good? Would I right now feel like I’d just sent Foreman to the ground in Zaire? The fact I had to work for it meant it was more than a game, it was a challenge and it tapped into the competitive side that’s in all of us.

If games continue on this spiral then we’ll lose that forever in favour of letting those who aren’t talented in, but in doing that the experience would be diluted. You are all very lucky that I’m still here then, because as long as I’m in the ring on Xbox Live then the challenge of a lifetime will still be around. There’s a fine line between boxing and chaos, and I’ll send you from one to the other.

It’s no secret that I love freedom in games, the chance to shape the world as I see fit, to play at being God (or god, depending on what religion you may follow). Deus ex machina, if ya like. Saying that, I find I’m a person that follows the same path every time - I limit my own freedom through choice, I suppose. It’s a strange thing to realise. I’ve tried the way of “evil”, ever since Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic maybe, and I always revert back to kind. I’ve played many games to develop this love of freedom and maybe that is the ultimate escape, to experience that feeling of power, that (sometimes) hideous strength, that I don’t in real life; a thought that fascinates me!

But I know that this power is actually limited by the developer’s whim; if you had full freedom, the story would not work, the world would break. The only game I’ve seen to have such… bravery is The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Here I could make mistakes, typically by bumping off a major character, and the world would go on. I had an impact but the world didn’t end because it didn’t revolve around me. This also rankled with me. Why? I could become the head of several organizations but could be dismissed by those of lower rank due to a simple act of theft, for instance. I swear, it was an accident… the power meant nothing in the end, I affected naught.

Life lesson #5: Don't try and mug someone with a mohawk and/or floating island

I played Morrowind and I dreamt of what could be when I heard word of a sequel. I envisaged a world where I could, if I wanted, found a town that I had designed… don’t judge me! I wished to have the chance to recruit a handpicked band of mercenaries, of various skills (that I could choose to specialise) and wreak havoc or the opposite on the countryside. I realise now that sounds like an MMO setup… but at the time of my wish I was not so savvy about games as I am now. I hungered to unite all the Dunmer Houses under MY rule! I fantasised about having a castle or something with a cornucopia of rooms for such things as alchemy and weapons training… and various other purposes. I wanted the chance to perform these little acts of power that could shape the world and affect the lives of those I encountered. But that wish was lost in Oblivion… Oblivion. Where the enemies levelled up with me, even if they should pose no challenge to a pimped-out Nord. Where I was brought down to Earth Cyrodiil with a bump because I couldn’t levitate.

Someday that game may exist beyond my dreams; until then, I’ll keep imagining.

Power. Give me more power.