Populous™: The Beginning

One of my favorite games as a kid! My best friend and I only ever had the three-mission demo, but we must have played through those three levels a thousand times! It was a complete blast from the past when I found Populous: The Beginning here on GOG. Plus I finally get to play the full game some 20 years later lol! It's like being 9 years old again! This game was clearly influential to games made after it such as Black and White and deserves to be immortalized as one of the best of it's genre. And for only $5.99, this game belongs in everyone's library. Whether you remember it from when you were younger or you've never played it before, this game will hook you in the second you cast that first lightning bolt!

I hesitated to buy it, because I tried to play it a few years ago and it didn't recognized my 3d card, the colours was messed up, and the HUD was sticking out from the screen, so it was unplayable. I've found some dll-s that almost fixed it, but the water was still white, so I gave up. But I've bought it and installed it trough the Galaxy launcher (because in the past the launcher somehow miraculously fixed the crashing and messed up colors in KKND). And now it is working just fine. So if something in not working, try installing it with the launcher. But a few words about the game itself. It was one of my favourite games as a child. The intro is still the best video game intro ever. Don't expect a Starcraft like strategy with hotkeys and stuff, but this is the only game when I can put a volcano in the center of the enemy base, or kill the enemy shaman with a fireball and get it's mana.

Worked perfectly fine for me. I really enjoyed this game as a young teen, and now I discover it again after about 20 years. It’s so fun and silly. When you think about it, an all male tribe led by a powerful female, a tribe that’’breeds’’ other male warriors without intercourse, it’s just silly, but it’s damn original. Everything from the animations to the options of spells, it’s so wacky that I simply fell in love with this game from the start. I spend between 2 to 5 hours per mission analysing the game mechanics, bugs and work-arounds just out of passion and a felling of nostalgia about how programming was done back then. It’s a real treat to play old-skool games like this gem right here!

The whole of GoG.com's existance was purely for this moment. Now that Populous is here they can stop. They've done the best work they'll ever do, bringing this game back to me.

The only reason I haven't gotten back into Populous was it's horrible support for any new PC... with this, my happiness level has risen exponentially. For those new to the series, Populous is a combination of RTS and God Game, with you as a powerful Shaman leading a tribe to glory. The gameplay is quite innovative even compared to modern games, and the sheer variety of maps and available methods of winning are astounding.