Revival 2
|
| Revival 2

Everything comes back around again. Kids are wearing those fluorescent clothes and off-the-shoulder tops with whorish eye make-up, just like folk did in the '80s. For 15 years or so, all that stuff was rubbish, but for a couple of months it’s cool again.

God games used to be ten-a-penny, but aside from occasional (and notable) examples such as Townsmen 6 and Civilization IV, it's a sparsely populated genre nowadays. Revival 2 is here to remind us what used to be cool in the gaming world.

The first question is whether this sequel is reviving Revival, or whether it’s a return to a forgotten gaming genre? In some ways those are one and the same, but what Revival 2 really seems to be aiming for is a more accurate recreation of the Populous and Powermonger style games than its predecessor managed, and it does so quite admirably.

You’re given the task of… actually, I’m not entirely sure what your overall task is. Perhaps that’s no bad thing, since building a civilisation is probably an ongoing duty for a reasonably attentive deity, and Revival 2 certainly moves forward with each and every step.

Which makes this a complex game. Even the tutorial is quite difficult. You begin by learning a few basics of building a culture out of the raw material of the earth – adding schools and farmland to existing hamlets, helping them to grow to accommodate more worshippers, then tending to their needs as disease and famine evolve along with the number of inhabitants.

Naturally, it wouldn’t be a game of conquest and expansion without placing as much emphasis on the military as you do on agriculture, though it’s actually a pleasant surprise to discover that warmongering isn’t the primary concern. The far reaching growth of your society takes precedence, which is admittedly a little slower paced at times, but adds some depth to the gameplay.

Controls are the real issue, however. The game has gone isometric, which is undeniably more in keeping with the god sim genre, but makes it pretty irksome positioning the cursor where you need it. Selecting and operating characters and items (such as weapons) is also quite a chore, with different buttons selecting and deselecting, while movement differs depending on the type of terrain you’re currently crossing.

Ending a turn is equally nebulous, often requiring you to skip ahead significant chunks of time until a building, or other asset, has been constructed, while at other times you struggle to get enough moves together to explore the area around your settlement.

If Revival 2 has one underlying flaw, it’s probably that it’s far overreaching the scope of possibility. There’s simply too much going on, without any really clear objectives, and while this might appeal to a PC gamer who loves to get their teeth into a complex tech-tree, it’s hard to see how the game hopes to appeal to the pocket gamer.

Revival 2

A vast and disorganised game that’s hard not to be impressed by due to its sheer scale and boundless reach, but with irksome controls, reams of text to read through and indistinct objectives, it’s difficult to find the strength of will to give the game the attention it demands
Score
Spanner Spencer
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.