by Igor - October 23, 2003

Heaven & Hell is yet another �Good vs. Evil� RTS. The main goal of the game is similar to that of Black & White and Populous. You travel around villages, and using the �hand of god� you convert people over to your belief until all of the land is transformed into a utopian Heaven or Hell.

Yet it seems dull

I started out being very excited about Heaven & Hell, and I thought it would definitely be some kind of RTS similar to that of Black & White 2 (except maybe 2d). I thought you could control units like in Age of Empires (that is directly), and then use your god powers when need be.

I was wrong. The game is quite more shallow then that; to achieve the main goal, which I stated earlier, is a matter of taking a few �prophets� (you may convert any villager into one of these) and have them use their �powers� (which, may I mention they have a limited amount of) to persuade/trick/bully into accepting the good (or evil) belief.

Once the villager is converted to your side, you will have access to his building. As fun as that may sound, all you can do with it is turn it into a �Mana Producer� or an �Enforcer.� The latter will cause your villager to become a fanatic, and cause him to throw rocks at enemy villagers/prophets. That�s pretty much it for the village�s automated defenses.

The buildings themselves are built by spending an amount of mana (Heck, everything costs mana � converting to prophets, using skills, using god powers). The trick is that once you build a mana producer it will slowly give you more mana back then you spent on it. In fact, you can get so many mana producers that towards the end of a campaign�s mission you will be getting mana so fast you won�t be able to spend it fast enough no matter how much you try.

The enemy does try to hinder your efforts though (however weak and frail they may be); they can send in a �warrior� prophet (who recruits his side�s villagers to do his bidding) which can attack enemy prophets (and send them back to Heaven/Hell) or bully villagers into joining your respective belief.

You may have noticed that I haven�t mentioned much of the difference between choosing Heaven or Hell. That�s because there isn�t. Both sides have essentially the same god powers (a few plagues, a few that do damage to an area, and one that lets you pick up villagers) and the same prophets (albeit with different suffixes at the end, i.e. Baptismael instead of Baptismon), although they do have different graphics. Maybe the developers were trying to replicate the �opposite sides of the spectrum� effect, but I for one was not hoping for such an unequivocal way to play the game.
 

A cartoonish look

H&H tries to create a cartoonish look for the game. The characters could almost be mistaken as taken from the infamous Wallace & Gromit. In fact, to reassert the cartoonish look the developers decided to make all the characters, buildings (well, the whole game) using sprites. Although this could be a good idea, there is too little variety between the NPCs and the buildings. The textures are the worst culprit here, they are very repetitive and sometimes you may confuse one part of the map for another if you are not playing close attention.

They talk!

It�s amazing to hear the prophets actually talk back to you, because you don�t really see their mouths moving. Sometimes, you can tell who is talking though, because of his tone of voice (good or evil), and because it was probably because you made him talk (by giving the unit a command). That�s pretty much all I can say about the sound though, because it is not at all distinct from that of other games�. No EAX support, no magnificent symphonies playing in the background.

Fun? If only.

After playing this game a few times, you will want to put it away and wish you had never acquired it. The missions are consistently the same, with the objective being to conquer all the enemy villagers over to your side.

You�d think that this could be bearable if the multiplayer was interesting. Interestingly enough, people seem to have realized how dull the game is and decided to uninstall the game before even getting to the multiplayer portion. In other words, what I am saying is that nobody was playing multiplayer at the same time I was (if anyone tried playing it at all).

It could�ve been better

There is not much more to say, the game could�ve been better. The fact that it is overly simplistic does not help when you add into account the dim-witted AI. Did I mention they do the same thing over and over again, such as sending their prophets to only one village, or never thinking of using their god powers? Such is the blight of this game.

In a nutshell

Had this game cost a little bit less, I could�ve heartily recommended you to buy it to your kid. It�s simple, it�s fun for the first few times, and it has cartoonish graphics that the kids will love. But as the case may be, the game costs $30 (and I just don�t see how it can compete with other newer RTS such as Savage, which are almost as cheap). I recommend you steer clear of it, and if anyone mentions it -- tell them you have no idea what they�re talking. Of course you can try being adventurous and fish this game out of the bargain bin (where it just might end up in a few weeks).