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Molyneux Talks Reviving Classic Games
Gamespot has a few words with Lionhead's Peter Molyneux, who looks back on some of the great games of the past in the days before the Leipzig Conference, where he is slated to give a keynote. Along with some commentary on modern gaming, Molyneux discusses a wish to reimagine titles like Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and Syndicate. Great ideas ... if he ever gets the chance to make them come true.
I loved Dungeon Keeper. I always cursed EA for buying up good franchises and then never using them. Especially the ones from Origin and Bullfrog.
Oh yeah. I would hope they keep it as small squads. It would be sweet to have multiple people playing on a squad. No more of your shotgunner getting nailed by a sniper while you're got your attention on another player.
After realising how much I missed it, I bought Populous second hand a few months ago. What makes it so good is that it has everything a good real-time strategy game should, and nothing more. If only someone were to remake it on modern hardware, with photo-realistic castles and fluid water, but no changes whatsoever to the gameplay, I'd buy it in an instant.
I think the only 2 of his games that I've played were Populous on the SNES I think and Dungeon Keeper. Populous on the SNES could have used some work. I could see how it would have been much better on the computer though. I don't mind some minor changes other than updating graphics and the engine. I don't like series that tend to stick too closely to the status quo. My thought on that is the Civ series. Other than updated graphics and engine, there wasn't much new other than culture was added in Civ3. My biggest dislike of the Civ series was always Alpha Centuria was released before Civ 3 and its tech engine and unit builder made anything in Civ feel dated. The Civ series should have had a unit builder. You should have been able to choose which animals to domesitic and breed different riding animals other than just elephants and horses. (You should have been able to ride big cats or train war bears or maybe even ride cows/bulls into battle.) Other thing is mixing and matching weapons. If I want tigers pulling my chariots and shooting fire arrows, I should be able to train and build the units. Well enough of my Civ rants.
I'll need to dig up a copy of populous. It was a cross between an early age of empires and a regional sim earth with a computer god to play against. Now that I think about it, an updated Populous could make an awesome multiplayer game or maybe even an online game. You'd just start everyone off with a single hut and villager and go from there playing against others. You could have a polythesic religion where you let allies villagers into your turf or maybe spread religion around like Civ culture a bit. Or you could be monothesic where if they were of a different religion your followers would automatically kill or injure villagers of another religion.