Populous was a genre-changing masterpiece that redefined the landscape for strategy gaming and still casts a shadow over many current releases. You may be familiar with the terrain forming and resource enriching concepts that are present in such big hitters like Command & Conquer and Age of Empires; add this to the god sim qualities found in the likes of Dungeon Keeper and you'll soon realise that many of the ideas incorporated come directly from Populous. Bearing in mind that the basic gameplay of Populous DS is based upon technology that is over twenty years old, you may ask yourself how it compares to today's titles - and that's what we're here to find out.

Based upon the original PC classic from Electronic Arts (yes, they were already going strong over two decades ago), Populous DS brings a re-imagining of the classic game that pioneered the god simulation genre. Featuring touch-screen controls that utilise the dual screens, you manipulate five elementally-enriched gods, each with their own unique miracles, through an extensive single player campaign. Within the multiplayer mode, up to four players can unleash earthquakes, tidal waves and raging volcanoes upon rival players' worlds. The simplistic world manipulation and user-friendly controls remain intact and a noticeable improvement to the graphics can be spotted from the beginning, which is all very promising. Viewed on both screens from an isometric perspective, you can see the land you control in a grid-like form that can be manipulated and the top screen displays the world, complete with buildings and worshippers.

Once you get through the tutorial however, you soon realise that the levels quickly become very repetitive and the land you have to build upon doesn't really differ in layout. Sure, the graphics might change (i.e. one level is a snowfield whilst another is a magma landscape) but you end up following the same routine from start to finish every time. All you really have to do to progress is find a balance between three tasks to ensure that your community flourishes. Firstly, alter the terrain as much as you can in order to provide the best possible building opportunities; secondly, keep tabs on the health of your worshippers by viewing their spirit scores; and lastly, give your worshippers enough privacy in their homes to pray to you in order to boost your divine power, called psyche energy. Due to the simple design, your worshippers can't worship while constructing buildings but they will die if they don't have proper shelter, so you need to make sure that you look after your followers adequately.

As stated previously, there are resource building components (worshippers, buildings and psyche) that you need to expand upon to complete each level. You need worshippers to build structures and fight your enemies, as well as homes to keep your people sheltered and provide places for worship. Increasing your psyche fires up miracles (well, they're more like natural disasters) that destroy demon settlements. If you didn't know already, a meteor strike or volcano eruption doesn't do much for a settlement's longevity! Armageddon, as it's known in the game, can be initiated by you or the enemy and is basically the end battle of a level; as long as you have more followers in a good enough condition than you opponent then you're guaranteed a win as you watch your worshippers punch and slap their way to victory.

The touch screen aspect of Populous DS works very well, ensuring that the manipulation of terrain is as easy as you could possibly imagine. The landscaping is engineered via the stylus on the bottom screen, with the end result displayed on the top screen. The only minor problem to contend with is that some of the outer terrain squares are a little harder to click on to change, so you have to be a little more forceful with the blighters! Graphically, the animations are slightly improved over the original but your subjects are little more than blobs wandering around the landscape. The different landscapes add some variety to the proceeding, such as being candy-based and an innovative Nintendo-themed world, but this doesn't have any effect on the way you play. You could argue that the added novelty removes some of the involving core gameplay but I think that it reduces the monotonous nature of some of the maps. If you generate enough psyche then you can use one of the miracles on offer, which results in a flashy little movie on the top screen, a positive inclusion even if it's only aesthetic. When the movie starts, you'll realise that it's one of the few occasions that you actually hear a musical score; ambient effects are used for the most part but even these are few and far between - considering the basic design of Populous, a mood setting ambience would have helped no end.

There is no story on show that can capture your imagination either, whilst the short burst nature of the levels leaves you feeling unconnected. If you add this to the ultra simplistic mechanics and indirect interaction then Populous DS ends up feeling like nothing more than a mildly entertaining time waster. Multiplayer requires a cart each, a problem given that I can't see this being a big seller due to its slow pace and simple graphics. Considering that the game is twenty or so years old, you would have expected that the technological leap wouldn't need a separate cart each for a multiplayer game.

Populous DS is exactly as it was before but unfortunately a lot of time has passed and there are many more fulfilling god sims out there. If you feeling like wandering into the past then you could do worse than giving this a go, but there just isn't enough land in the whole of Populous to keep you interested. The addictive hook that was there at the beginning no longer holds your concentration in the year 2009; even gods aren't immortal and while Populous will always have its place in gaming history, most of its worshippers have long since moved on to the more sophisticated simulations that resulted from Populous's bold and, at the time, groundbreaking design.

Reviewed by Christopher McNally for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).