Settlers II: Down at Fraggle Rock Demo

<strong>[ Demo ]</strong>

<p>There's a freshly released demo for <a href="http://www.thesettlers.com/uk/home.php" title="Settlers">Settlers II: The Next Generation</a>. It's all in German, but you're not going to let a little thing like that stop you, right?</p><p>Download: <a href="http://www.gamershell.com/news/31210.html" title="Demo">Settlers II Demo</a></p><p>Spotted @ <a href="http://www.bluesnews.com">Blues News</a></p>

 

Of course not.
But I'm doubtful about the 3D approach... is this high-end stuff really necessary? S2 was a great game without fancy stuff, some gameplay tweaks and some polish would have been enough imo. We'll see..

 

So did you try the demo? Are the muppet people as scary as they look?

 

It's still waiting on the hdd, hope to have time for it tomorrow.
Considering the screens it's not very promising, the cuddlesome folks which made Die Siedler so lovely seem to be gone.
But at least the horses have default armor, most of them. .)

 

I just played it for an hour, first impression is good!

They kept the game mechanics very oldschool, means it's still complex and relaxing at the same time. And building effective road layouts is still a tough job, don't know if it is good, but that's how Settlers always was. The interface is pretty intuitive. For example RM closes popups and deletes messages while LM on a message brings you to the event, in the main map RM+move rotates and tilts the camera, Mwheel zooms and so on.. just like it should be. The music so far is a nice medieval track, I like it. It got boring after a while but I guess in the final game there will be more choice and if it's made in the same style it will be good.

There are some oddities, probably because it's only a demo (by the way, demo.. you can play a game for 90 mins, then it's over). After building a watchtower and waiting til a little man walks into it the game say "tower manned", but there is no guard on top of it. Or the main building/townhall/whatever is called "Hauptquartier", doesn't fit the setting imo, but that's nitpicking.. ok..

3D still sucks. Just when my hunter was about to kill his first sweet looking bambi (they are everywhere.. yikes!) a huge mountain blocked my view, kill was over when I turned to view, thanks a lot. Overall it's like in HOMMV, it looks nice but it contributes nothing to gameplay. It just disturbs the gameflow having to rotate the view to see everything!
Oh, graphics.. yes, very pretty. The muppets look funny and stupid, I'm satisfied.

The final release will come with 10 campaign missions, 10 maps for endless game and 8 maps for multiplay, allowing 6 players to settle via LAN or interweb. Release date should be in early September.
It will stay on my watchlist, that's for sure.

 

Sounds intriguing. Hopefully they'll be releasing an english demo sometime soon.

 

English Demo