Monocause
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2008
- Messages
- 3,656
I've been playing these for the last few days.
While Molyneux is an obnoxious fellow and the Fable series are a blasphemy, I've got to give him some cred as being one of the most creative folks in the VG industry. His inflated ego might have something to do with him pushing forward his ideas. Here's an interesting tidbit from the Populous 2 manual:
That much he admits. But let's say it: populous games were awesome and offered surprising amounts of depth. First dozen or so levels you're going to play are bound to be piss-poor easy, the fun starts later on. A fun fact of how many things were hidden in these seemingly simplistic games was how your deity avatar's choice in POP2 changed the AI tactics. Didn't know about it earlier and thought it was fluff, however the manual stated it had an effect - so I changed my avatar and reloaded level no. 148 a couple of times. True to the manual, depending on my avatar the AI was more all-out aggressive or defensive, building up and spamming harmful effects on my land. Sometimes even trying to drown my folks.
Black&White could be seen as effective continuation of the concept in Populous. The first game I found to be simply a pain in the arse, overglorified Tamagotchi. Some concepts were great, the creature, the way you were expected to creatively use your surroundings - but most of the game boiled down to trying to teach the creature some stupid shit and go all FFUUU when you fail to do so for 30 minutes. Seeing screenshots of huge-ass creatures made me wonder how was it possible that people spent hours on the game. I found it frustrating, even more so when I realised how awesome some of the concepts were and how much they got screwed up by making it needlessly complex to teach your creature to store the grain in the depot instead of throwing it around or taking a dump on the nearest villager.
Just started giving BW2 a try and it seems infinitely better than the first one. Some RTS elements were added while the insanely boring and tedious tamagotchi parts were ditched. Now you know what you're doing with your creature and know how will it react to various stimuli. Someone somewhere probably called it dumbed down, but I don't see how removing 'features' like playing cat-and-mouse with an AI you cannot predict because you have almost no cues as to how it works dumbing down. Some much needed hotkeys were added (like the leash one, thank the Gods). Town management was expanded and made less stupid (fe. pop growth is no longer always a bad thing like in the first game where all you got for it was dwindling wood supply and food problems). Your creature picking up someone doesn't end with that someone becoming a breeder too.
Comment away. I'm especially interested in your thoughts about BW2 since I like what I've seen of the early game and would like to know if I am to brace myself for a disappointment.
While Molyneux is an obnoxious fellow and the Fable series are a blasphemy, I've got to give him some cred as being one of the most creative folks in the VG industry. His inflated ego might have something to do with him pushing forward his ideas. Here's an interesting tidbit from the Populous 2 manual:
That much he admits. But let's say it: populous games were awesome and offered surprising amounts of depth. First dozen or so levels you're going to play are bound to be piss-poor easy, the fun starts later on. A fun fact of how many things were hidden in these seemingly simplistic games was how your deity avatar's choice in POP2 changed the AI tactics. Didn't know about it earlier and thought it was fluff, however the manual stated it had an effect - so I changed my avatar and reloaded level no. 148 a couple of times. True to the manual, depending on my avatar the AI was more all-out aggressive or defensive, building up and spamming harmful effects on my land. Sometimes even trying to drown my folks.
Black&White could be seen as effective continuation of the concept in Populous. The first game I found to be simply a pain in the arse, overglorified Tamagotchi. Some concepts were great, the creature, the way you were expected to creatively use your surroundings - but most of the game boiled down to trying to teach the creature some stupid shit and go all FFUUU when you fail to do so for 30 minutes. Seeing screenshots of huge-ass creatures made me wonder how was it possible that people spent hours on the game. I found it frustrating, even more so when I realised how awesome some of the concepts were and how much they got screwed up by making it needlessly complex to teach your creature to store the grain in the depot instead of throwing it around or taking a dump on the nearest villager.
Just started giving BW2 a try and it seems infinitely better than the first one. Some RTS elements were added while the insanely boring and tedious tamagotchi parts were ditched. Now you know what you're doing with your creature and know how will it react to various stimuli. Someone somewhere probably called it dumbed down, but I don't see how removing 'features' like playing cat-and-mouse with an AI you cannot predict because you have almost no cues as to how it works dumbing down. Some much needed hotkeys were added (like the leash one, thank the Gods). Town management was expanded and made less stupid (fe. pop growth is no longer always a bad thing like in the first game where all you got for it was dwindling wood supply and food problems). Your creature picking up someone doesn't end with that someone becoming a breeder too.
Comment away. I'm especially interested in your thoughts about BW2 since I like what I've seen of the early game and would like to know if I am to brace myself for a disappointment.
