Really old games are always better if you never go back and play them again. A tint of nostalgia washes away any and all blemishes, and you’ll only remember the good times you had with a game. I sort of wish I played Populous as a kid. I always wanted to, but never did. Populous is a name held in some sort of reverence; it’s a classic, and it was one of pioneers of the God-Game genre. We’ve seen Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, the Sims, Viva Piñata, Spore and any number of others since. It begs the question, can a near-vanilla port of a twenty year old game impress us at all?

Populous is largely devoid of story. You are a god, you have a few followers, and you want to wipe out the other gods or demons lurking around your borders. This divine drama plays out across two screens; the bottom is made up of simple coloured tiles and pegs that represent the landscape, buildings and followers. The top is the fancier version with nicer pixel graphics showing what is actually happening. Your goal is to gain enough faith power to throw a few dirty miracles at your enemy. To do this you need followers, and those followers need houses.

There’s a problem. The landscape is all messed up and bumpy. What follower would dare build a house on that! Landscaping is a big part of the game. You use the stylus and drag tiles up or down to change them. There’s a bit of a learning curve so at first it might take a bit of effort to grab the right tile. You can use the buttons if you like, which do the same job more accurately but not as fast. You will have to do a lot of landscaping in this game. It is a tedious job. Once you’ve flattened out the land you can command your follower to build a house. They will start sending you faith points if they’re happy. Don’t let them rest for too long though; you need to expand. Eject a person from a house after a time and they’ll be ready to build a new one. More faith points for you.

Battles are interesting enough; shoot off a miracle and the top screen plays a little 3D clip of a god doing their ’thang’. Your enemies will be doing the same, so a lot of your time will be spent in damage control. The battle usually ends with the Armageddon countdown. Once the timer is up, control is ripped from your hands and your followers will all converge for a final battle with evil. If you have better numbers in better health, you win.
The premise of the game is sound enough, but it’s all too outdated in reality. Inaccurate controls make simple tasks pretty painful, not to mention all the manual micro-managing that could and really should be automated; having to eject each follower from their house manually is not much fun. It can unbalance things when the enemy AI can do all of this at once. Add that to the subpar behaviour of your own followers and it can be a pretty grim situation. New players might find themselves grappling with the interface and their followers more than their enemies.

Each world is fairly vast but the limited scope of the DS screen and map mean that only a small section is presented, and it can be a bit of a pain getting where you want with camera controls that seem oversensitive. The area that is shown is represented well and simply on the bottom screen, but a zoom-out-and-in feature would have been lovely. The game features eight levels with five stages each, and a fairly lengthy tutorial. The problem is that each of these levels are quite similar. You’ll be doing the same thing again and again. That’s a good thing if you enjoy it, but variety would be nice.

The only real variety comes in the graphics. Each level has a different theme, from typical grassy fields to fiery lakes. The pixel visuals are quite endearing in a way, almost charmingly nostalgic. The miracle animations are one of the few additions to the game, and though they don’t add much it’s a welcome sign that some things were improved in the twenty first century. The music is classic midi style, though that too is showing its age and even a basic reworking would have been welcome, since the DS is capable of so much more. Most of the sound effects are appropriate, though one or two are downright annoying (followers fighting, anyone?!). It’s faithfully presented, but it wouldn’t hurt to build on that.

Populous is a classic, one that launched a genre. Not many of the young folk among us would know of it - so it is disheartening to see such a revered game being reborn as nothing much more at a time when videogames are capable of so much more. A new coat of paint, or a new soundtrack, or a redesigned interface would have been appreciated. Even better, reworked game design and improved AI. The nostalgic crowd might appreciate this game, but it still needs to perform amongst the DS’ plethora of modern games. Is that something Populous can do? I can’t see it happening in its current form.