Overall 8.1 Graphics 9 Sound 4.5 Addictive 9 Story 3.5 Depth 8 Difficulty 6
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Welcome to Populous awesomerob
Welcome to populousWelcome 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 carefulPopulous 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.
Graphics 10 Sound 3 Addictive 8 Story 3 Depth 8 Difficulty 5
Review Rating: 3/5
Submitted: 02-05-12
Updated: 02-06-12
Review Replies: 1
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Pointing the Finger - The Original God Game Monkeyboy123
This was a genre defining 'God Game' and was the first of its type that I ever played. I was amazed that rather than controlling a character directly, I altered the entire landscape of a whole world that I was trying desperately to conquer.
The overall objective of Populous is to be the last man (God) standing. This means ridding the planet of all bad guys (red) so that only good guys remain (blue). Who needs a background story when you have all the powers of a God? Mwahahahaha...
There's something deeply satisfying about unleashing a carefully timed swamp which swallows up a bad guy. It's also equally terrifying to see your powerful knight charging headlong towards a trap as you desperately try to change the landscape so he can go kill enemies and burn their buildings.
You can't just have one tactic though, as the rules of the landscape change with each level. Sometimes the water is harmful and your guys drown slowly, giving you time to rescue them. Other times water is instantly fatal, meaning you can chase those baddies across the screen and give them a good dunking!
You will spend most of your time raising and lowering the ground in this way to make it hospitable for your population to rapidly expand until you overwhelm the opposition. The better buildings your people live in then the more easily they generate the mana required to carry out your Godly powers.
There are many ways to win (and lose) including gathering your forces together into one great champion knight who goes on a rampage. Or using a flood to drop everybody into the sea. Or even calling an Armageddon where all dwellings are abandoned in favour of a fight to the death in the centre of the map.
Graphics: 8While it is a colourful game with distinct worlds to fight in (especially the futuristic worlds) it is also sometimes difficult to make out exactly where you need to place your finger of God to raise and lower the land. Overall though it did well for the Sega Master System.
Sound: 6There's no real sound while you are playing the game itself, just satisfying noises as you unleash your powers on the enemy, with those same sounds striking terror into your heart as your (evil) counterpart attempts to also wipe you out. You will find yourself mimicking the 'Welcome to Populous' voice at the intro screen.
Addictiveness: 10This is one of the most addictive games ever as there five thousand levels that you progress through, slowly conquering each world.
Story: 4There is no background story, no characters to develop. But if you can imagine that the story is of you as a God conquering world after world then that is surely the greatest story ever told?
Depth: 8There are many worlds to get through and it takes time to slowly progress from the very first world, each subsequent one presenting different challenges and greater levels of difficulty.
Difficulty: 7It depends on what tactics you use, but some worlds have horrible starting locations where you really have to work fast and smart to outthink and out-pace your computer opponent.
Overall: 8This game introduced me to the God game genre and remains one of my favourite games of all time.
Graphics 8 Sound 6 Addictive 10 Story 4 Depth 8 Difficulty 7
Review Rating: 2/5
Submitted: 05-04-16
Review Replies: 2
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