Cultures

"The Vikings have landed.."

I bought the game thinking that it's going to be like The Settlers, which I rather enjoyed, and to be frank, I'm a tad (and that's undercutting it) disappointed.

First off, the game comes with these default campaigns and scenarios. If you're playing the campaign (there is only 13 episodes of it), you will be playing as Bjarni, and your quest is to find the scattered pieces of the fallen sun so you can restore prosperity and happiness to the village. OR you can play the individual scenarios provided.

I have not gone too deep in the campaign, so I will leave off my comments for that, but I do have major bones to pick with the scenarios. I mean, what the hell is with the buildings that's all over the place? Aren't I suppose to be the one setting up the village? And managing it so I can fulfill the goals? I mean seriously, the building, and setting ups are one of the biggest fun part of games of this genre, and THEY DID IT FOR YOU ALREADY! Yeesh.. Oh of course you do have to build other stuff and all that, but that's not the point, the point is, they murder your chance to set up the settlements all by yourself, and that just blows.

Well, it's not all bad though, I'll admit. Some aspects of the game are rather interesting, like the marriage system. Once a Viking is of age, you can nudge him to go find a girl (any single girl he can find) and marry her, after which, they'll proceed to have kids. This may seem perverted (it actually isn't, really), but it's rather fun to watch the whole process, from the courtship to when the little babies starts crawling outside the house (you can't really see anything except tiny hearts, so it's not like voyeur or anything).

A really refreshing point is that in the game, each Viking is unique, he/she has their own name and physical appearance. I thought that was really cool, even though it really doesn't matter what they're named, it really doesn't make an ounce of difference to the player.

I like the babies, and that's pretty much all that I like about the game. It doesn't really appeal to me even after I made the effort to try to get into it. I uninstalled Cultures after getting totally disgusted (about 2-4 hours, I don't know, time flies when you're bitching) by it. Perhaps I have been too judgmental, but Cultures just isn't interesting enough for me to want to understand it better.

Replayability? Um yeah, maybe when my life gets too deliriously happy, I'll play it again so I can balance up the ying/yang, but otherwise no.

*** UPDATE ***

My life actually got deliriously happy (two of my three reviews made the ''new and noteworthy list'' on top of everything else), so I reinstalled the game and ran through it again.

I guess I should apologize for being too harsh on my first go. A quick check shows that not all the scenarios are ''pre-setupped'', however, that still didn't change my opinions on the game, there's still not much to do, it's still as boring and the babies still remains the most interesting part of the game.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/29/02, Updated 08/10/02