Godus Review
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Godus Review

Our Review by Jennifer Allen on August 13th, 2014
Rating: starstarstarblankstarblankstar :: FLAWED CIVILIZATION BUILDING
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Despite the hype, Godus is another freemium civilization building game. One that's incredibly slow to progress in.

Developer: DeNa Corp/22Cans
Price: FREE
Version Reviewed: 1.2
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 5

Graphics / Sound Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar
Gameplay Rating: starstarstarblankstarblankstar
Playtime Rating: starstarblankstarblankstarblankstar
Replay Value Rating: starstarstarhalfstarblankstar

Overall Rating: starstarstarblankstarblankstar
Hello gods in training: Are you having trouble getting your civilizations off the ground or need help building up a larger collection of followers? Then take a look at our Godus Tips & Tricks guide!

I'm an old hand at the Peter Molyneux hype train. I've seen the stories of how if you plant a seed in the Fable games, you can return later on to see a tree in its place. I remember when Black & White came out and it was meant to be the ultimate God game. It wasn't. I'm forgiving, though. I buy every title and appreciate that, while all the promised goods won't be there, hopefully there'll be enough to entice me in.

Godus is probably one of the most hyped iOS releases in recent times. Does it succeed at making you feel like a God? Not really. It's quite attractive to look at and offers some much better touch-based controls than the average city/village building game, but it's still exactly that - a typical civilization/city building simulation.

Early on, Godus will seem very promising. A somewhat ambitious tutorial will ensure you lap up those lovely visuals and that intuitive control system that means you feel more in control than simply tapping everything in sight. Sculpting land is a particular joy, if a little easy to do when you're just trying to move around. A sweep here or there means you feel more involved with the process of clearing land than you would by just tapping.

Get past that though, and it soon becomes apparent that there's a lot of waiting around to do in Godus - just like with any other mobile simulation like this. In the end you're a farmer again; cultivating land and keeping your followers happy, while waiting for Belief to eventually restore, all so you can dig a hole out of a nearby cliff. Waiting around soon turns into hours rather than minutes and dropping into Godus is much more likely than spending a significant amount of time playing it. Of course you could always spend money to get ahead but, well, is that what you really want to do?

Godus goes some way to adding a storyline and structure to what's going on. A series of journeys enable you to solve simple puzzles in order to unlock new cards and stickers, which then lead to unlocking new things to do, but it's a slow process. Those journeys are almost like a simplistic game of Lemmings with you having to guide the followers to a temple, dodging evil Champions and other obstacles, all within a tight time limit. The followers are exceptionally dumb with some very iffy path-finding at times, slowing the process down all the further. It's still worth it though, for the sake of the new acquisitions.

Be patient and you'll eventually see that Godus is one of the better free-to-play simulators out there. Its control method is far superior to the tapping frenzy of others and it certainly looks glorious, but it's not the lofty efforts that we were expecting.

iPhone Screenshots

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iPad Screenshots

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