Intelligent Game Reviews

How long have you been playing computer games? If like me its been a long time, you probably have fond memories of the original Populous. I know I do. I played through every single level, and there were a lot, on my Sega Master System console. You played one of two competing gods and used your divine powers like floods, volcanoes, and the ability to raise and lower land to guide your followers to ultimate victory over the forces of the competition. Life was good as a diety.

In Populous: The Beginning you play the part of a tribal shaman on her way to becoming this all powerful god. In a way, that makes this game a prequel, but with all the improvements that Bullfrog could muster after nearly a decade of change in PC game technology.

Basics of Play

The original Populous was perhaps the first of the real time strategy games as we have come to know them. And it’s offspring is squarely a real time strategy offering itself, but with a few important differences.

Rather than focusing on resource gathering and unit construction, the focus of Populous: The Beginning is on your Shaman. The Shaman is your in game representation and can wield a variety of spells that help you on your way to ridding the world of the unbelievers. Spells are charged using mana, which is generated by the prayers of your followers. The more followers you have the faster the mana rolls in and the more often you can cast your spells.

So, the focus is on increasing your population. You do this in two ways. First, you can build huts to house your followers. They will slowly breed more followers. These basic tribesmen can then train to become warriors, priests, fire warriors and spies, the four unit types in the game.

Warriors are your basic sword wielding combat unit, more effective than a tribesman by being more specialized. Priests can convert enemy units by preaching to them. When they get close to an enemy warrior or tribesman they begin to preach. The enemies will sit and listen, and eventually, be converted to your cause. The more priests you have within range to preach, the faster the conversion. Of course, while this is happening opposing preachers and Shamen can kill your preacher, releasing the units. Spies can walk unseen into the enemy camp, steal wood and generally make a nuisance of themselves, while fire warriors are more powerful combat units.

Still, despite these units, your followers are really more properly thought of as auxiliary forces to keep the other guys away from your Shaman and as mana generators. With mana coming in fast enough your Shaman is the true force to be reckoned with. Spells range from the quick charging ability to convert wild men (neutral units) to your religion to devastating area effect spells like volcano and Angel of Death.

With these and other spells such as lightning your Shaman is a powerful fighting force. Thus the acquisition of spells and the collection of mana is of crucial import. Each of the scenarios introduces a new spell or two which is typically key to victory there. To acquire the spells you must generally pray at totems or in enemy controlled temples. Figuring out how to make this happen while holding off your foes is how you make victory possible. Indeed, it isn’t usually the best plan to just build a bunch of warriors and rush in where fools fear to tread.

The various levels are each fairly different. The best levels are more puzzle-like, with an often time critical component rather than pure build and destroy fests. These levels actually were a lot of fun, it’s too bad there weren’t more along those lines. Unfortunately they don’t have a lot of replay value.

Like any modern real time game you can select units, group them, create way points and camera positions to move to and queue units for construction (tribesman train at huts to become different unit types). Combat between your followers is fast paced and, like any game of this type, fine control is impossible. Generally you throw your mob at the other guy with your shaman along to provide support by blasting enemy units, structures and the opposing shaman with devastating spells.

On the down side, I did not really like the control interface. It has been taken, more or less intact from Dungeon Keeper. You get alert icons which pile up, usually way to quickly to pay much attention to. The left side of the screen shows a small picture of where in the world you are looking and allows you to order your followers to build structures, select units and cast spells with your Shaman. I found it overly difficult to use, and even highlighting units on screen was problematic in the rounded globe. The look was cool, but it definitely got in the way. I found I was regularly looking at things from the wrong angle, through a large mountain for example, and rotating, scrolling and trying to direct your forces all at once was a pain in the posterior more often than not.

There are no difficulty settings in Populous: The Beginning. That always annoys me in real time strategy games, but this is not a game that is too difficult at least. You can control the game speed, something that comes in handy. The enemy AI is competent, if uninspired.

Unlike the original Populous, which could satisfy your gaming urges for hundreds of hours over many levels, Populous: The Beginning is pretty short. I managed to finish all of the single player maps in only about 22 hours of play. There have been reports of players finishing in less 12 hours. That’s not a lot of game play for $50. There really needed to be more levels included at the very least.

In the final analysis, the game that started the real time strategy game development craze has bred a sequel that feels all too derivative, despite its innovations. I liked the spells, the 3D graphics were cool, and some of the levels were pretty cool. But, the game play just felt too much like any other real time game in the end and less like the oh so fun original game that I remember with such pleasure. Maybe I’ll break out the old console and give it another spin.

Playing Against Actual Humans

Populous: The Beginning supports multiplayer games over a modem, IPX LAN, or the Internet with up to four players. Game play is, unfortunately, not all that spectacular. There are only five maps, and games typically degenerate into contests of who can get more warriors and priests the fastest. Because the pace of combat is so frantic, it is hard to control your forces, so a huge battle ensues and the person left standing wins. With more than two players things are a bit more interesting, since you can’t just bash someone and hope to recover, but in the end I was disappointed.

Electronic Arts have designed a dedicated Populous: The Beginning multiplayer server so it is easy to find opponents. That’s a great idea that more companies should emulate. Unfortunately the server is pretty unreliable. When you do finally manage to connect game play is frequently interrupted by a crash during the game. That makes life pretty miserable in multiplayer. Praying for patches is all we can do now.

Graphics, Sound, etc.

The visuals are one of the best aspects of Populous: The Beginning. The world is a true 3D globe which can be rotated and seen from any vantage point. It’s also ultimately morphable. Spells can change the landscape, raising and lowering land, flooding areas, causing fire to rain from the sky or a volcano to rise in the middle of an enemy town with lava flowing and fires raging. It all looks really cool, especially with a Direct3D compatible video card.

Sound effects are nothing if unexceptional. They are appropriate to the environment, but lacked the appeal of your minions in Dungeon Keeper, another Bullfrog game. Music on the other hand was pre
tty good. It is kept in the background but adds to the game environment nicely.

The manual was a bit on the poor side, it did a less than stellar job of presenting how to play the game and was woefully short. Even so, the built in tutorials give you the basics of how to play and control your forces well enough, the foldout quick reference card gives you all the commands at a glance, and the in game encyclopedia gives help on the interface, spells and your forces which is a big help once you find out how it all works.

The Verdict

While the original Populous in some ways showed the way forward as one of the first real time strategy games, this effort, despite some novel ideas, seems altogether derivative in the area that matters most: game play. Sure, it’s neat to play on a true 3D globe, the spells are cool and game play is fast paced, but ultimately the interface makes it hard to play well, there are way too few levels in the single player campaign and multiplayer quickly degenerates into one massive battle that decides the game. If you’re really into real time strategy games you might well find the innovations of Populous: The Beginning rescue it from oblivion, but for fans of the original it is more than just a little disappointing.

Populous: The Beginning Screenshots

Attack! It’s tough to control combat, it is fast and the units are tiny and hard to click on.	Oops, it seems while I was wreaking havoc on my enemy, an attack did some damage to my settlement.
Behold the power of my righteous wrath! A little volcano amidst the town of an enemy brings a smile to any Shaman’s face.	The world overview screen lets you see more quickly where temples and other resources are, as well as enemy locations.

If you're using the above images on your website, please link back: <a href="http://intelligames.nodblog.com/populous-the-beginning-review/">Populous: The Beginning Review</a> Thank you!