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Wednesday, December 24, 2008 |
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Populous
By Lard @ 4:23 PM :: 1089 Views ::  :: DS
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Populous DS is a port of the original Populous, from 1989. It’s the first of a series of “god” type games from Peter Molyneaux, including this and, later, Black and White. The basic gist of the game is you are a god, trying to build up your worshipers and make them powerful enough to smite other gods and their worshipers.
On the DS, the bottom screen is your “action” screen where you make all your actions, and your top screen is the fancy action graphics screen, as per usual on the DS. The graphics are cute, but pretty basic. They’ve been given a gloss over, but not a major update, though there are some neat cut scenes when you perform certain attacks.
The meat of the game is its game play. The game starts you off with some really excellent tutorials about how to use the various functions of the game. They’re clear and concise and give you a really good overview of the kinds of things you need to do in the game by letting you practice, step by step, each one of the functions that the tutorial talks about.
Once you’re done the tutorials, you start off with a new campaign. The controls have been re-jigged so that they are fully used with the stylus. This actually works quite well, as it’s mainly a point and click style interface to begin with. Things like lowering the land (necessary for building houses for your worshipers) come intuitively quite quickly.
During the game, you are basically juggling three tasks. Altering terrain to build houses, watching your worshiper's health via their spirit score and making sure they stay inside long enough to worship you and boost your Psyche energy, which is used to perform miracles. These miracles can either be something beneficial for your worshipers, or detrimental for your opposition, such as a magical attack to wipe out your opponent’s followers. The only problem with this is that you’re basically juggling the same three tasks throughout the whole game without any other real variety in game play. It is quite easy to get into a rhythm however, which can be both good and bad, as it makes instinctive game play fun, but also routine. The lack of variety is what hurts the game, as you take on god after god throughout the single player campaign. Populous DS also comes with a 4 player Wi-Fi option, so the idea of playing against your friends, even with the slightly truncated game play might be more appealing.
I’m slightly torn at what score to give Populous. On the one hand, it works really well with the DS interface, and the stylus is an ideal way to interact with the game’s interface. It’s also fun in short bursts. On the other hand, it does get kind of old fairly soon as the game does feel a bit antiquated, because of the lack of depth. It’s by no means a terrible game; it just lacks that certain something that keeps you up late at night, long after you should have gone to bed. Worth checking out if you’re curious or feeling nostalgic, but take off the rose-colored glasses before you start playing.
7/10
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