Heaven & Hell ...live and let die!

Published by CDV
Developed by Madcat/eigelb
Platform: PC CD-ROM
Released - Out Now
Price : £29.99

The battle between good and evil is an eternal one but until now it's never been modelled so blatantly in a RTS. Heaven & Hell ...live and let die! In Heaven & Hell the choice is simple you either play as a good god or as an evil one. Whichever you choose though it's going to be fun as you get to unleash plagues, perform miracles and do what it takes to earn yourself as many believers as possible. Make no mistake about it this is a RTS with a difference.

The game is all about having as many believers are possible. The game map is made up of a series of towns with their own distinctive inhabitants. The goal of the game is to convert all the towns to your belief. You can't directly control the inhabitants of a land though so you're going to need some help. In order to gain believers you'll need to enlist the help of a handful of key characters who can win over the people for you. Your first step is to appoint a prophet who can converse and with your help convert the inhabitants. Throughout the game you'll be able to appoint a Baptisbon, Camelbon, Construct O' Bon, Beat-up O'Bon, Antibon, Clandibon and Boss-O'Bon if you're a good god and Baptismael, Camelmael, Beat-up-mael, Constructmael, Antimael, Clandimael, Bossmael if you decide to be an evil god. All these characters are essential in helping you convert and maintain your influence over the inhabitants.

In order to convert an inhabitant you need to earn their loyalty. Each inhabitant, and town, has a loyalty rating. The loyalty rating is shown by a gauge over the inhabitants head (by default it isn't showing but holding down the ctrl button will display the gauge or pressing the Tab button will toggle the gauge on and off). Each gauge has two thresholds. Passing the threshold to the left indicates the inhabitant could become a follower of the evil god whilst passing the threshold on the right means the inhabitant is on the way to becoming a follower of the good god. Once the threshold has been passed (that is to say once they have been impressed, by a good Baptisbon or evil Baptismael sufficiently) all that needs to be done is for them to listen to a sermon to fully become a disciple of the appropriate faith. It doesn't stop there though because once an inhabitant is converted they can pass the threshold again and become an extremist which means they will attack rival prophets.

The game has a tutorial, two campaigns, a skirmish mode for single-player and a multiplayer mode. Initially you'll only have access to the Good campaign but once you've completed it the Evil campaign will become available. If there was any hint of the game having an old testament biblical flavour to it, it is increased somewhat by the campaign scenario titles such as 'The Ten Commandments' and 'Exodus from the Desert'. Your prophet in the first scenario even goes to a mountain top to collect the commandments. Generally speaking though the gameplay has nothing to do with the bible. The skirmish games, in single-player and multiplayer modes, can be played on a collection of maps that have preset conditions or you can play on random maps. These random maps allow you to set the terrain, the number of towns, the starting capital and the victory conditions. There are four victory conditions; Create Boss O'Bon (or Bossmael), have more believers, have more mana and End of the World. Time limits can also be set and can range from 5 minutes to 2 hours.

The key resource to fuel all the actions you can carry out is mana. Miracles and any use of the Hand of Power is going to require mana so it's important to set up a large and constant supply. If the mana dries up you're probably going to lose the game. Having believers will automatically earn you mana. However as you earn more believers you're going to want increased amounts of mana available to you so it's probably best to convert some of the inhabitants' homes to mana producing factories to bring in larger amounts.

Visually this has to be one of the brightest looking RTS games of all time. The building and characters are all colourful and give the game a very pleasant look. The miracles and plagues look brilliant and it's a sight to behold when you have the one Baptisbon performing a Rainbow miracle and a rival Baptismael unleashing a fire demon or a plague of locusts in the same town. The inhabitants have a cartoonish look about them which really suits the mood of the game. The appearance of the inhabitant's homes and town changes depending on which god they follow. The trees and plants don't swing in the breeze like in some other games but nevertheless they look good.

Heaven & Hell is fine for deaf gamers. The tutorials (and instructional messages in the campaigns) are delivered in text and speech. The text is placed onto blue dialogue boxes so it's always very easy to read. You have to click on the dialogue boxes for the tutorial to continue so you can read the messages in your own time. Mission objectives can be recalled at any time so you'll never forget what you have to do. Not all the comments that come from your prophets are subtitled but this doesn't affect the gameplay in any way.

What's most refreshing about Heaven & Hell is that it's very different from most RTS games you'll have played before. The action doesn't seem as hectic as some of the usual RTS games and it would be fair to say the game is a change of pace from most RTS games out there. Above all though Heaven & Hell is fun and a title that most gamers should appreciate.

Overall Game Rating: 8.2/10
Heaven & Hell is a refreshingly different RTS that is above all fun. It might not be as hectic as the more usual RTS games but nevertheless there is a lot of enjoyment to be had as either a single-player or multiplayer game.

Deaf Gamers comment:
All important information is shown in text that you can read at your leisure. There are some omissions such as the unit comments but above all this is an enjoyable experience.