Populous

"Very, Very Complicated"

Gameplay: 5/10

Populous was one of the games that started the god-game genre, and it really wasn't much, especially compared to other games of its genre on the SNES (such as Simcity).
The whole idea of the game is that you are some kind of god who tells the people what to do, as well as being able to do things such as form the land and make life easier for your people.

However, the controls make this task near impossible. Rather than making some kind of menu (as seen in ActRaiser and ActRaiser 2's god-game mode) that allows you to access anything from it, they decided to put the actual gameplay screen in a small square in the center, with all the individual tool buttons surrounding it. The actual view of the people and land literally takes up less than an eighth of the screen. The different tools are so hard to tell apart that even with the manual in my hands it was difficult to figure out. The cursor you use to select the object you want to interact with is really difficult to set on one spot (it's almost like the cursor on a graphing calculator). When you want to view the whole world map, and all you can see is the one little square at a time, it can get quite annoying, especially once you get to the point where the computer player(s) start attacking your remote settlements, and you're busy fixing something else.

Another thing that really annoys me is that while you are still building your first house, the computer has finished with their military and is on you before you can assemble a force to deal with them. That, and when you actually can fight evenly, you have to order each individual unit, where the computer manages to move their units in a group and attack you.

Sound: 4/10
Other than the occasional sound effect, you won't hear much. Bring a CD while you're playing.

Graphics: 4/10
Populous's graphics really aren't anything special, or anything you haven't seen before in an SNES game. The people look like the classic SNES sprite, and everything looks like it was made for 16 bit. However, this game's graphics are nowhere near those of other games made around the same time it was.

Buy/Rent: If you really want to, buy it.

A game that was formed from a good idea, but not executed as well as it could have been.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/08/02, Updated 11/08/02