Peter Molyneux and 22 Cans’ intended Populous heir Godus is the most miserable gaming experience I’ve had in many a year. It was so crushingly short on joy and cleverness, it seemed like a tech demo made without a design, it seemed to believe Farmville was gaming’s future, it was a betrayal of its own heritage, and it was an insult to all that had been promised. I struggled to find anything to convince me that it existed for any reason beyond making money. As an angry young man, I loathed games often. These days, I simply feel sadness and tiredness when I play a game I don’t enjoy. But Godus I loathed, and completely so. There should be no surprise, by now, at unmet promises, but the sheer scale of the oath-breaking here was breathtaking.
Now there is Godus 2.0. There are apologies. There are promises. There is talk of it being an almost ground-up rethink. It may very well be true, and certainly an attempt at salvage on this scale is to be admired. But we have been fooled so very many times before.
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