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★★★★★

“You are god. Not thee god but you are a god in a world...”

written by SRRAE. on 05/12/2002

Good Points
Excellent graphics. Unique control and easy. Very helpful guides. Unlimited possibilities.

Bad Points
Game may seem too slow for some people.

General Comments
You are god. Not thee god but you are a god in a world controlled by a number of gods. Are you a good god or a bad god? Well that is entirely up to you! Yes, gone are the days where you have to follow the story line to continue till the next level. You have goals to complete, but you can do what ever you want to achieve them.
You start off as a neutral god, neither good nor bad, in control of a small village, the more people worship you the stronger you get. How do you get them to worship you. Either by cruel or kind and with the help of a magical creature who aids you on your tasks. Also to help you is your conscience which talk to you giving you ideas on what you could do. You good conscience is a well spoken little white bearded man floating on a cloud, while your bad conscience is a little New York flying red devil in a black G-String.
Lets start with the villagers. The are a number of different tribes, some live in wooden huts, some medieval stone houses, some brick almost mediterranean houses, who either worship a god or no god. If a few people in the village worship you, you get a circle of influence inside which you and do your deeds like throw cast spells, throw rock, or even people! The more people worship you the larger area you can influence. You get more people believing in you by impressing them. You can help them by using magic to grow forests, make it rain on crops and trees to make them grow faster or heal the sick. You can also move people around your influence area and designate them jobs by putting them near certain objects. For example, putting a man and woman together with make them breeders and produce babies who will grow and worship you, more magic for you then. Put people in fields and they will be come farmers who will look after the fields and put the grain into a food storage, people in a by a forest will cut trees for houses, to name a few. There are also builders and workshop people who make crates which you combine to make houses, temples, fields and others, when you place them down the builders get to work making the building where you placed the crate. You have to have houses for your people or they will not breed.
Next onto the controls. All you have is your mouse represented by a hand on the screen and only 3 icons at the bottom of the screen used for your creature, (More on that later) and to activate your last magic spell. To activate your magic you have to move in a pattern which you are taught in the tutorials. To activate a spell you move your mouse in circles with each circle getting smaller, almost like a corkscrew effect. The shape you make will appear on the ground with light shooting up which looks very impressive. The icons will be shown on the bottom of the screen with the shape needed to activate them. At first you think that its a long way of activating a spell and you never get them right. But after a while you will know all the gestures to activate a spell and you blend one into the other, and the computer is clever enough to know what you are after. You the click on the area you want your spell to activate, and if there are people around you, you will impress them and your strength will grow. However people get bored of the same magic trick over and over until no one is bothered about it.
The idea of the game it to kill the other gods of the level. And how do you kill a god? You make people not believe in them and they will disappear. But most of the time the towns which believe in the other gods and thus keeping him alive are out of your influence area so your magic wont work there. While you are growing your own town and make you stronger, you can send out your creature to the other town.
Your creature range from a Cow, Bear, Turtle, Tiger, Ape over 9 animals if I remember. Some you get when you complete special tasks. Each creature has its own attributes. The Tiger is a better fighter but slower learner, Ape fast learner but not too good a fighter for example. You control your creature by 3 leashes, a kind one, aggressive and learning. Put the kind leash on your creature using one of the hand gestures and your creature will be kind to people, doing magic, giving them food, putting them into groups, farmer, breeder etc. and even dance for them. This helps greatly because your creature can do all of this outside your area of influence. The aggressive one is used to attack other villagers, if the villagers are wiped out completely then the god dies, and it's used to attack other god's creatures in a kung-fu fight, which is very well. Its entertaining and challenging too.
The learning leash is used to when you want to teach your creature. Do a magic trick with while he has it on and after watching it a few times will try to copy you until the get the hang of it. Your creature needs attention in the early years while it is small and in experienced and will make many mistakes, like eating people cattle and smashing houses. One time I taught my Cow how to kick a beach ball, then the Cow thought it was funny to kick a sheep over a mountain. For this I had to punish the creature, because that is not what I wanted my creature to do. To do this you have to slap your creature, it then knows that it has done wrong and will not do it again. Like wise you can praise your creature by tickling, scratching and stroking it, this means that is knows that it has done good.
I hope you are still with me because here comes the best but about the game. You can be bad or good. You can influence people by being nice, or by burning houses or throwing a few people. On the first level some ones husband has gone missing and if you find him she will give you a sacred stone. Being good you can bring him back safely and she will be thankful and give you the stone, or you can find him, kill him and place the body in front of her, smash her house and take the stone anyway. The possibilities are huge. A good way to influence people out your area is to throw fire balls over them and burn a few houses, if you want to be evil. Your creature can become evil with you, killing people, eating grain, smashing houses to help your influence.
The nice part about being good or evil is the way your creature and your control hand change. Being nice, my Cow (Yes Cow) was bright white with black patches and looked a little goofy. As evil cow, he became red and black, with huge horns and teeth and a nose ring. And instead of walking like tellytubbie with a wiggling bum action, the evil cow walked with a hunched back taking log heavy strides. This change doesn't happen all of a sudden. The hunch starts off subtle, the horns are tiny and the colour, over time, fades.
Your control hand changes too, from an nice normal looking hand to a red, evil long nailed hand.
This game has lots of life, but not enough. Once you have finished the game as a good or bad player, you should then do it again being the opposite. The on line gaming is great too, so you can play against friends or strangers over the net. I'm not an online gamer so after I completed it twice there was nothing left, although I do still play it every now and then.
If you like RGP games then this is a 100% yes for your collection. The graphics are some of the best on the PC, nice, sharp and colourful. The sound nothing too special, it sets the scene nicely and the banter between the good and bad conscience are funny. Anyway sound it not a major thing on a RPG.
You can get lost for hours in the game and you, for some reason get very attached to your creature to the point where you don't like it being hurt, which is worrying really. I wouldn't recommend this game for anyone younger than 10 or 12 not because of the content but because at times there are lots of things going on at once, too much for a younger person. However I think that they will find the first 2 or 3 levels very enjoyable before getting onto the harder levels, which they may be able to cope with.
All in all one of the best games in the world, but not everyone's cup of tea.

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