Posted September 09, 2009
Well, here's another example of game that sets standards and lays the foundation to a whole vein of gaming. Settlers 2 is probably the most famous in a family of six games. It drew much attention to the series, and for good reasons. It's pure fun, packed as a DOS game (or rather, Windows XP/Vista now).
Building upon the mechanics of an already cunning Settlers 1, at first the game looks like a cute cartoonish city building game on a lush green field, but the amount of management necessary to beat any Settlers game is impressive. Starting off with the most basic materials, you build a woodcutter's hut and farm, then with that wood and food you can start mining precious metals and coal, with these you'll have access to better tools for more advanced resources and structures and so on until you can train a military force and conquer the enemy settlement the other side of the hill. Phew! And of course they're planning the same to you, so the game does get serious eventually.
Among its many qualities, Settlers is one of those games with an overall very high fun factor, including addictive gameplay, nice graphics and sound effects and... something more. While in most games of yore you'd have your structures silently and invisibly do their jobs mathematically (even the mighty and 5-star-worthy Lords of the Realms 2 was like this), in Settlers you can actually SEE your people doing the job. You see the woodcutter going out, you hear him cutting a tree down, you see and hear the tree going down and gradually your town becoming less green because you put too many woodcutters too close, you then see your hungry woodcutter taking long and precious minutes to bring food home because you put him too far to the warehouse and so on. Settlers shines in that they took the time to make your town look like it's really alive. And that's beautiful.
And now, call me nostalgic, but I've very recently beaten Settlers 6 for the first time, and seriously, while being a great game, Settlers 2 is just as good because it doesn't feel dated in comparison to many games of its time, it has the same mechanics, even some more complexity in some fields (more maps, more resources you can craft), it plays good and it just kept its appeal for me all this time. So it's a great buy.
Building upon the mechanics of an already cunning Settlers 1, at first the game looks like a cute cartoonish city building game on a lush green field, but the amount of management necessary to beat any Settlers game is impressive. Starting off with the most basic materials, you build a woodcutter's hut and farm, then with that wood and food you can start mining precious metals and coal, with these you'll have access to better tools for more advanced resources and structures and so on until you can train a military force and conquer the enemy settlement the other side of the hill. Phew! And of course they're planning the same to you, so the game does get serious eventually.
Among its many qualities, Settlers is one of those games with an overall very high fun factor, including addictive gameplay, nice graphics and sound effects and... something more. While in most games of yore you'd have your structures silently and invisibly do their jobs mathematically (even the mighty and 5-star-worthy Lords of the Realms 2 was like this), in Settlers you can actually SEE your people doing the job. You see the woodcutter going out, you hear him cutting a tree down, you see and hear the tree going down and gradually your town becoming less green because you put too many woodcutters too close, you then see your hungry woodcutter taking long and precious minutes to bring food home because you put him too far to the warehouse and so on. Settlers shines in that they took the time to make your town look like it's really alive. And that's beautiful.
And now, call me nostalgic, but I've very recently beaten Settlers 6 for the first time, and seriously, while being a great game, Settlers 2 is just as good because it doesn't feel dated in comparison to many games of its time, it has the same mechanics, even some more complexity in some fields (more maps, more resources you can craft), it plays good and it just kept its appeal for me all this time. So it's a great buy.