Settlers 4 (Settlers 4 (PC))

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Product:	Settlers 4 (PC)
Date:	20.06.01 (196 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good graphics

Disadvantages: expensive for what you get

The settlers games have traditionally been blighted by the same two problems - over complexity and under achievement and at first glance, not much seems to have changed in this fourth edition. As always, the graphics are gorgeous; lush, well animated and obsorbing enough just to sit back and watch. We challenge anyone not to enjoy seeing their little baker come out of his hut, collect corn and wheat, place the dough in the oven and finally pull out a steaming hot loaf - it's like Windy Miller all over again! After a while though, the attractiveness of the graphics only draw attention to the game's fundamental futility. As you cannot directly control the movements of your peasants, why speand so much effort watching them doing the same things over and over and why make the game so ridiculously dependant on sensitive supply chains? Maintaining a settlement requires a typically Germanic attention to deatail. Unlike Age of Empires, where peasants will intelligently go about their tasks, everything in settlers requires careful supervision and no community grows without the supply chain being intact. For example, recruiting soldiers requires a tedious and involved seven-tiered production process, ranging from building and meatl construction tasks to food supply and peasant recruitment. Watching supposedly advanced economy grind to a halt because someone forgot to build a scythe is verging on the ridiculous - this is, after all a videogame and not an open university course in lateral thinking! Consequently, although the scope of the game is huge, with three nations to master and literally hundreds of buildings and tools to construct, it's the petty inconsistencies that keep popping up. For example, there are three ways of expanding your territory - occupying and enemy town (logical), building a guard tower (less so) or employing little men with shovels to walk around very slowly... digging (oh, come on!). Such is the curious world of settlers games -
a place where nothing is simple enough to work out for yourself and when something goes wrong no one ever bothers to tell you. In stark constrast to such a complex economy is the fact that 75 per cent of your men stand idly around for most of the game simply taking up space and looking untidy. With dozens of buildings to contrast and commodites to be ferried back and forth, there is nothing more infuriating than watching bread pile up in a storehouse complete woth 25 peasants staring into the distance, while your army starve to death half a mile away. So once again, tose nutty developers at BluByte have come up with a games which bristles with technical excellence but seems to think that gamers have nothing better to do with their time other than grow old and die. Everything in settlers takes forever and even battles are only worht winning because it gives you something tangible to show for an evening's patient gameplay. It will undoubtedly sell by the truckload but unless you're a settlers fan, stick to watching the kettle boil.

Summary: