CULTURES

                 Reviewed by Carolyn Brown

Cultures was developed by the German company 'Funatics', and a
number of the development team originally worked for Blue Byte on
the Settlers series.

The basic storyline of the game is introduced in the opening
cinematic sequence, and consists of a tale of a small Viking
village whose people are starving due to the failure of their
crops, caused apparently by the Sun having disappeared. One day
they witness a meteor split into six pieces before crashing to the
ground, and they decide that if they can gather the pieces of this
'sunstone', this will encourage the return of the sun. So, they
set out to find the pieces and end up making landfall in America,
or Vinland as they call it.

Each episode starts with a few villagers clustered around the
beached remains of their longship, which serves them as a store.
The aim is to start each male Viking on a career path which will
eventually lead to his being able to make weapons with which to
slaughter the unsuspecting native Americans. To this estimable
end, you have to start by giving each one a job, for example, a
hunter, fisherman, farmer, building constructor.  Then you marry
off those that you can, usually not many as there are always far
less women to start with than men, and you have to get them each a
tent constructed. Once you have done all this you have to think
about food production. You start with a farmer, construct his
simple little farm, he works on it for a few minutes, then becomes
qualified to take the next step up the career ladder, which is a
miller. You then build him a mill, and after a few more minutes he
can become a baker. You then build him a bakery and a well. While
all this is going on you have to make sure that you have enough
Vikings to step into the shoes of those who have been promoted, so
you order the women to have children - you can decide whether they
are male or female. This means building more houses (which have to
be near the workplace), and it goes on and on in similar vein for
all the job opportunities. This micromanagement has to be repeated
each time for each new episode and rapidly becomes a chore,
especially as the people display absolutely no intelligence
whatsoever. For instance, the baker will have a bakery full of
flour and water, but if he and the rest are hungry he will just
moan about it and starve them all to death rather than get of his
backside and produce the bread which would save them.

Eventually, you will be able to get your people to manufacture
weapons of war and build a fort. Then you can recruit soldiers.
(You don't want to recruit your military too early, though, as
they haven't the sense to feed themselves, and will wander out of
their fort if they are hungry, and moan. You have to direct them
to the nearest source of food and tell them to eat. This becomes
boring). Once you have enough soldiers, you send them off to
conquer the neighbouring Indian village. This aspect of the game
did not endear itself to me. The native Americans, or 'Vinlanders'
as the game calls them, are rather grotesque stereotypes of Red
Indians, and they are invariably referred to by the narrator at
the start of each episode as 'cowards'. The next unpleasantness is
when your troops start killing the villagers. In the 'Settlers'
games only the soldiers fight, but in 'Cultures' the whole village
has to be massacred before you can win the scenario. I was
genuinely quite shocked the first time my brave lads demolished a
building and out ran many women and children, only to be mown down
by the Vikings as they tried to escape. It was just so out of
place in what is supposed to be a 'fun' strategy game, and if this
is the German idea of fun then it is not for me, I'm afraid.

I should say that you can also trade with friendly tribes, but
this aspect of the game is not very well developed and I hardly
bothered with it, unless I absolutely had to.

In the game's favour, the graphics are good, especially the
landscape itself, which is gorgeous, with loads of detail and rich
colouring. The music is not bad, either, with quite a few
different tunes, and these pieces are combined into several
different playlists, which you can choose if you do not want to
listen to one piece throughout each episode.

I did finish the game, the campaign part anyway, and retrieved all
six pieces of the sunstone. Sadly, I was rewarded with one of the
shortest and most disappointing 'victory' movies I have ever seen
in a game (although I don't win many games, I must admit). There
are several standalone scenarios, which I haven't tried, and I
should have mentioned that you can play online.

To sum up, this game is probably worth it if you find it for less
than a tenner. It starts out OK, but rapidly becomes tedious and
repetitive and some may find the gratuitous violence a little
off-putting, and that the slightly racist overtones leave a nasty
taste in the mouth. Or maybe I am being too harsh - it is just a
game, after all.








                              - o -