As stated in my last post, my household was down to one Xbox 360 temporarily (until the arrival of my beautiful baby) and therefore I found myself searching the web for downloadable PC games that would occupy me for more than five minutes. But what should I get? Did I want a puzzler, an adventure, an action game? Then it came to me – a few years ago everyone lived off god games with a new Tycoon or Settlers-esque type of game emerging constantly, so I found the Virtual Villagers trilogy.
Virtual Villagers is a completely non-violent god game in which settlers need your help as they set up a community and research on what appears to be an otherwise empty island. Although the original didn’t hold my interest for that long, the second game, with its increased options and many puzzles to solve, I found to be completely addictive. There are 16 puzzles to complete with each needing various technologies and skills in order to uncover them. With the ability to train your people in any one of five areas at a time a lot of organisation is required as your population grows. Once a villager masters three skills you get a lovely totem pole in order for future generations to remember them.
Then I moved on to the third part, which regardless of my new Xbox 360 being so so shiny in the corner I am still playing. The addition of weather in this game is just what the series needed. So I began to think, what happened to all the good god games? These days all we get is poor remakes (Populous DS) or “blah blah blah” tycoon 57. Where are the good new ideas? Most of the god games out there aren’t worth their salt and surely with all this fabulous new technology at our finger tips, there must be something new and exciting we can come up with! So come on developers – it’s time for a revival! It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed playing god and now I’ve had a reminder I want more! More power! Mwah ha ha ha! Ok, I’m going to retreat to play Peggle to dampen my dictator spirits now…
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