Populous: The Beginning

In Populous: The Beginning (Electronic Arts), you are a Shaman with god-like aspirations. You must guide your people to victory over the enemy – followers of rival Shamans. You gain followers, either by using spells to convert wildmen and tribesmen, or by building huts and filling them with followers, who eventually reproduce. You aim to make them worship the ground you walk on, then you wield your earth-shattering powers to wreak havoc and hold them under your command. You can turn up the heat of battle with erupting volcanoes, or summon the skies to rain fire on your rivals. You can spread plagues among non-believers, or direct a tornado into the heart of enemy tribes.

MY OPINION

I found Populous: The Beginning to be a lighthearted, challenging and visually stunning strategy game. The game scores big points on presentation by using a fully 3D world that is wrapped around an actual globe, instead of using the usual flat map. The music isn’t very inspiring, with a faint soundtrack in the background which only gets going when you enter combat. I also found the sound effects a little bit dull.

However, Populous: The Beginning poses quite a challenge. A lot of the missions are very puzzle-orientated, which is quite to my liking. I found that I could, on occasions, get deep into this game and not want to stop.

The manual is an utter joke. Tiny pamphlets may be sufficient for action games, but any company producing a strategy title should know better than to scrimp on the manual.

SCREENSHOTS

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