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awesomerob
02-05-12 04:31 PM
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pacman1755
02-06-12 09:33 PM
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Welcome to Populous

 
Game's Ratings
Overall
Graphics
Sound
Addictiveness
Depth
Story
Difficulty
Average User Score
8.1
9
4.5
9
8
3.5
6
awesomerob's Score
7
10
3
8
8
3
5

02-05-12 04:31 PM
awesomerob is Offline
| ID: 540197 | 1031 Words

awesomerob
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Welcome to populous

Welcome to populous. The words will stick in your mind as you play one of the first games in its genre, no doubt going on to inspire games such as Black and White, Tropico and Settlers.

Why those words I hear you ask? Quite simply because of the terrible quality sound file of some guy saying those words as you start up the game. The same terrible quality sound that gets the juices flowing in any self confessed retro gaming geek, which is rather reminiscent of the "Sega" in sonic or the "rise from your grave" in altered beast. If Populous was a guy, it would be the strong silent type, certainly a man of few words, but it can't half pack a punch if your not careful

Populous throws you into an Ancient world of good versus evil, where you play not as man, but as God. A big blue god (presumably the good one) against a big red one (likewise, presumably the bad one).  Now I would certainly be cautious when starting because it doesn't give you much preparation time, but to be fair, the first level really is a dodle. The aim of the game is simple. To rid the world of your enemies, allowing your followers to thrive. Not as simple as you may think as you have no direct control over your people, a race of blonde haired people (worryingly much like Aryans). Rather you can control the land around them and the environment in general. Other than that, there is no story. Kill the bad guys, total world domination is definitely the only thing on the agenda!

So, how do you take over a world when you have no direct control over your people? Simple enough really, you control them indirectly. You have a little hand, the hand of God as it were, and you use it to scroll around the map and to cast spells. By far the thing you'll be doing the most is making the land rise and fall. Your people will need a flat fertile land on which to build houses on. So, using your pointy God finger, you will need to go and find your people and poke the floor around them to make it nice and flat. The flatter the land, the higher quality houses/castles they will build. The more castles your people build, the more Godly powers you will have at your disposal. Occasionally you will have to break their houses to wake them up and make them build more. Other than this, you will have to opportunity to cast other powers, such as earthquakes, mountains, floods etc... all which hinder your opponent. Whilst doing this, the other God will be doing the exact same thing to try and get his little scruffy black haired vagabond race to prosper over yours. The controls are simple yet amazingly awkward and you will spend hours desperately chasing the bad guys to try and drown them in the sea because they always seem to walk slightly faster than you can move you cursor. Killing the enemy one man at a time is not recommended as you can only move the floor when your people or their structures are in your view. You can make knights to crusade for you, although this does not always work for some obscure reason. On a plus side, all of the spells look fairly self explanatory, and the power bar is likewise easy to understand, so once you familiarise yourself with the controls, you'll be poking things and creating volcanoes in no time. When you are ready, you can cast Armageddon. This causes everyone to join together and fight one final epic battle royale, so only do this when you have the upper hand!

In terms of the graphical beauty, I must say I'm impressed. For a master system, it has done well for itself, the designers clearly knew what they were doing. No obvious glitches I've picked up either so hats off to it there. Now the sound on the other hand, hard to judge. I say that because the sounds are great, there's just not many of them. After the promise of the starting music, there is in fact, no more music to look forward to. In many ways this is much better than having really annoying music, at least you can listen to your own music whilst playing this game. In the way of sound effects, there's hardly any. People make a joyous beeping sound when they get in a fight and it makes funny noises when you cast some spells, that's about it. All in all, a very quiet, almost quaint world.

Where it really excels is in challenge, This is the pitfall most retro games fall into if any. They are normally either boringly easy or manically impossible. This game hits the nail on the head very well but does so in a surprising, if not rather unique way. It relies on the system of levels, one harder than the previous. Nothing new here, but in order to make sure the difficulty does not suddenly raise unexpectedly, they have made not 5, not 10 but 5000 levels. Yes that's 5000 levels! I have never played a game with 5000 levels before, I'm not sure if the game producers even thought anyone would bother to actually complete this game, although I would love to hear from anyone who has gone through all 5000, although I doubt they will have much to say after sitting and quietly poking the floor for years on end in silence.

This is definitely a game for a quite Sunday afternoon. If you are looking for something with some wacky challenges or one with an actual ending then you can comfortably pass this by, but if like me, you were a big fan of the creativity that Lego used to bring (and of course still does) then you will love the simplicity of this game and the joy that it has to bring and will happily spend hours in the many beautiful landscapes it has available, creating lovely environments for your devote followers to populate.
Welcome to populous

Welcome to populous. The words will stick in your mind as you play one of the first games in its genre, no doubt going on to inspire games such as Black and White, Tropico and Settlers.

Why those words I hear you ask? Quite simply because of the terrible quality sound file of some guy saying those words as you start up the game. The same terrible quality sound that gets the juices flowing in any self confessed retro gaming geek, which is rather reminiscent of the "Sega" in sonic or the "rise from your grave" in altered beast. If Populous was a guy, it would be the strong silent type, certainly a man of few words, but it can't half pack a punch if your not careful

Populous throws you into an Ancient world of good versus evil, where you play not as man, but as God. A big blue god (presumably the good one) against a big red one (likewise, presumably the bad one).  Now I would certainly be cautious when starting because it doesn't give you much preparation time, but to be fair, the first level really is a dodle. The aim of the game is simple. To rid the world of your enemies, allowing your followers to thrive. Not as simple as you may think as you have no direct control over your people, a race of blonde haired people (worryingly much like Aryans). Rather you can control the land around them and the environment in general. Other than that, there is no story. Kill the bad guys, total world domination is definitely the only thing on the agenda!

So, how do you take over a world when you have no direct control over your people? Simple enough really, you control them indirectly. You have a little hand, the hand of God as it were, and you use it to scroll around the map and to cast spells. By far the thing you'll be doing the most is making the land rise and fall. Your people will need a flat fertile land on which to build houses on. So, using your pointy God finger, you will need to go and find your people and poke the floor around them to make it nice and flat. The flatter the land, the higher quality houses/castles they will build. The more castles your people build, the more Godly powers you will have at your disposal. Occasionally you will have to break their houses to wake them up and make them build more. Other than this, you will have to opportunity to cast other powers, such as earthquakes, mountains, floods etc... all which hinder your opponent. Whilst doing this, the other God will be doing the exact same thing to try and get his little scruffy black haired vagabond race to prosper over yours. The controls are simple yet amazingly awkward and you will spend hours desperately chasing the bad guys to try and drown them in the sea because they always seem to walk slightly faster than you can move you cursor. Killing the enemy one man at a time is not recommended as you can only move the floor when your people or their structures are in your view. You can make knights to crusade for you, although this does not always work for some obscure reason. On a plus side, all of the spells look fairly self explanatory, and the power bar is likewise easy to understand, so once you familiarise yourself with the controls, you'll be poking things and creating volcanoes in no time. When you are ready, you can cast Armageddon. This causes everyone to join together and fight one final epic battle royale, so only do this when you have the upper hand!

In terms of the graphical beauty, I must say I'm impressed. For a master system, it has done well for itself, the designers clearly knew what they were doing. No obvious glitches I've picked up either so hats off to it there. Now the sound on the other hand, hard to judge. I say that because the sounds are great, there's just not many of them. After the promise of the starting music, there is in fact, no more music to look forward to. In many ways this is much better than having really annoying music, at least you can listen to your own music whilst playing this game. In the way of sound effects, there's hardly any. People make a joyous beeping sound when they get in a fight and it makes funny noises when you cast some spells, that's about it. All in all, a very quiet, almost quaint world.

Where it really excels is in challenge, This is the pitfall most retro games fall into if any. They are normally either boringly easy or manically impossible. This game hits the nail on the head very well but does so in a surprising, if not rather unique way. It relies on the system of levels, one harder than the previous. Nothing new here, but in order to make sure the difficulty does not suddenly raise unexpectedly, they have made not 5, not 10 but 5000 levels. Yes that's 5000 levels! I have never played a game with 5000 levels before, I'm not sure if the game producers even thought anyone would bother to actually complete this game, although I would love to hear from anyone who has gone through all 5000, although I doubt they will have much to say after sitting and quietly poking the floor for years on end in silence.

This is definitely a game for a quite Sunday afternoon. If you are looking for something with some wacky challenges or one with an actual ending then you can comfortably pass this by, but if like me, you were a big fan of the creativity that Lego used to bring (and of course still does) then you will love the simplicity of this game and the joy that it has to bring and will happily spend hours in the many beautiful landscapes it has available, creating lovely environments for your devote followers to populate.
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(edited by awesomerob on 02-06-12 01:34 PM)    

02-06-12 09:33 PM
pacman1755 is Offline
| ID: 540661 | 25 Words

pacman1755
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I never really tried this game before, but it sounds like a pretty good game, I might try it out when I have free time.
I never really tried this game before, but it sounds like a pretty good game, I might try it out when I have free time.
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