If there’s one thing that video games have done over the past few years, it’s giving players the opportunities to play as anti heroes versus the good guy all of the time. Remember in the days of the 8-bit NES when you played heroes like Link, Samus, or even Mario? These were always the “good guys”, and they always went to tackle the bad guys and save a princess, the world, even the universe. Well, soon games started appearing more as time went on like Populous or Legacy of Kain that showed gamers that sometimes, it’s good to be bad. The most recent entry into the whole concept of good and evil comes in the form of the PC title Heaven and Hell, which allows you to pick the side you are most comfortable with and spread your words of good tidings or evil chaos throughout the world.

Heaven & Hell (H&H) plays out control wise like other titles in an RTS kind of category, only with very simplified commands. The object is to travel the mission based campaign mode (or complete the objectives in single player mode) by using your prophet to go from town to town or village to village performing miracles (or tragedies depending on who you are playing with) and preaching to the masses to have population convert to follow you. If these acts of God or the devil don’t work, you can even create soldiers to follow you around for protection or to smack some people into place to help them “see the light”, so to speak. The more followers you have and the happier they are, the more mana you produce. What’s mana you ask?

Well, once your people have been converted, the next step is to keep them happy, since the only way to perform miracles, conversions, and holy visions is through the use of mana. Mana is also used to help create new soldiers or guards to help your prophet or defend the village against attack or have other characters than your prophets do things like morale boosting or converting new followers to their army. The way to get mana is through converting people to followers of you, which in turn changes their dwelling to reflect their beliefs. Once the dwelling has been changed, you can either convert it to a mana producer or a mana enforcer. Producers make more mana obviously, while enforcers are things like food or weapons to help keep your villagers happy. The people are your basic source of power in H&H, since if your opponent converts them; they convert their household and mana to their side. Mana enforcers help to keep their faith in you, but there are other things you can do as well like preaching sermons, showing your miracles, or even the occasional divine pat on the head (or scaly handed pimp slap, if you are playing as the evil side).

One of the things that I found to be a little strange in the way that this game was made was in the fact that the simplistic options and overall presentation of the game seems very easy or seems that it caters to a gamer who might be getting into RTS style games for the first time. There are not a whole lot of options for the prophets to do, except for a few miracles and some other things like lightning bolts or plagues of frogs, so it would seem like picking the game up would be very simplistic. Well, a quick hop into the single player mode before playing the campaign (even after doing the tutorial) can prove to be extremely confusing and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The first time I played H&H I did this, and wound up turning it off and playing something else because it just didn’t, well … like I said … make sense. I couldn’t figure out what to do or who did what, and after losing all of my mana, my soldiers, and getting rocks thrown at my prophet, I figured I’d walk away and try again later.

Playing the campaign mode is definitely the better way to actually get into H&H for the first time, since you only start out as the good side and there is a little voice to guide you through new things to do and it helps you to get into the game mechanics. The downside to this though is that after playing through a few of the missions and seeing the simplistic play, lack of character options, and overall plot of the game in action, things start to get very repetitive. Travel from town to town by day (or night if you are the evil side), try to convert new followers, keep them happy, protect them, move to the next town, etc. etc. Once the game play is mastered, it’s not to hard to run through and the repetitive nature of the overall game (even though there are some other things to do in some missions) may not make people too excited to play the evil side after all since it’s just the same concept all over again.

Lastly, the AI leaves a lot to be desired at times, and the fact that some characters cannot be directly controlled doesn’t help. A lot of the game I was using my divine hand to pick up wandering people to try and gather them to one place to preach to them, and they of course would sometimes hang out for a minute and then start wandering back to where they came from. There were also times where soldiers that you have no direct control over would march in and start beating a neutral person (which helps them to convert to your side), even after his good / evil faith meter was as far as it would go to my side. The problem here is that the person would be listening to a sermon so I could convert him, then my own soldier would march up and start wailing on him. This meant that his attention was broken and he didn’t convert, so I’d have to try again. In addition, the lack of overall options seems to make you almost helpless under attack sometimes, since most of what I was doing was letting my soldiers run around and try to repel enemies while I just kept making rainbows trying to keep everyone happy. 

Graphically, H&H does OK. Many of the environments tend to have the same desert of grassy appearance and look the same, and these will often change as you go about converting citizens. There are some funny additions, like the cartoony dust cloud, stars, and a limb or two when the somewhat “Wallace and Grommit” looking characters get into fights with one another which roll around the screen, and the spell effects like rainbows or fiery demons that appear as a testament to your greatness. Citizens tend to just meander aimlessly about in their daily lives, and while there are a lot of repeated character textures, some have their own unique appearance. There is also a day and night transition, and of course good flourishes in the light while evil grows stronger in the dark.

Overall, I think that there was a good idea here that just didn’t wind up being what it could be. The change of pace from the standard Warcraft or Age of Mythology RTS was a decent diversion up front, and the Monty Python style humor brought out a chuckle here and there from me. The overall aspect and enjoyment of the game didn’t last too long though, as the overly simplistic and repetitive gameplay gradually just got too dull, even playing as the opposite side, and even the single player missions just felt like the same old thing after getting the game controls and idea down.      

Gameplay: 6.1
The simple and scaled down options seem to be made for newer players into this kind of market, but the confusing nature of the game if you don’t play the campaign first can quickly get frustrating. The first few plays is fun, and some RTS players may find it to be a change from the norm, but the less than good AI and same kind of thing over and over again will probably not appeal to a lot of people for too long.

Graphics: 7.1
The characters have many repeat models, and looked very similar to something from the movie “Chicken Run”, and the game is presented in a cartoon fashion which was interesting given the subject matter. The landscapes themselves seemed to look the same from stage to stage, but will change in areas as dwellings convert to your belief. There were some good humorous effects added in, like the comic strip fighting cloud or the evil commander whipping out a battle-axe guitar and ripping off some heavy metal chords to get his troops rallied.

Sound: 7.4
The overall voices and such were done pretty well, and the dialogue reminded me of something from a Monty Python film. There were some sound effects added in for spells, like the buzzing of insects or the crack of lightning, and even heavenly or demonic rock music playing as commanders tried to get their troops energized.

Difficulty: Easy
While it can be confusing if you just hop in and start playing, there is a tutorial to help you get the bare basics and a voice to help you get things in the campaign mode. I went with easy on this one though since once you’ve got it down, it’s not too hard to go through.

Concept: 6.8
I really think that the whole idea behind H&H could have really produced a great game, like Populous was back in the SNES days. I think that there were some good ideas that were implemented here, I just think that the execution could have been a little better and some overall mixing of mission options and different play options could have been done.

Multiplayer: N/A
There is a multiplayer mode that you can do, but I couldn’t find anyone to play with online after a few days so I can’t really say anything about it.

Overall: 6.4
RTS fans may get some game time out of it, but the overall issues that I mentioned in the review may wind up hindering the overall long term experience and overall replay value. I did enjoy the game to an extent, and thought that the sense of humor was good and some of the ideas that were used were creative. If you’re an RTS fan, you may want to grab a demo prior to purchasing it. If you’re new to the RTS market, I’d definitely suggest trying the demo out before buying it.