Author: Gary C. "Mo" Morgan
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The Wargamer is proud to present Sierra Studios and Impressions Games with yet another joint Award for Exellence. Zeus: Master of Olympus is a humorous, fun, intriguing, and accessible family game that brings mythology and classic literature to life and lifts Sierra's award-winning Citybuilding Series all the way up to the lofty heights of Mount Olympus! |
Introduction & Plot
Zeus takes place in ancient Greece, where the boundaries between concrete reality and mythological fantasy: specifically where the roles and relationships between men, superheroes, monsters, and the gods, all overlap. While there is some concrete historical foundation in the ancient Greek city-state structure and the portrayal of the various city relationships across the Ionian peninsula and islands, Zeus is first and foremost a game set within a framework of Greek mythology. If you have forgotten your mythology after all these years, Zeus will rekindle your interest and re-educate you back into this world.
Kids really seem to be drawn to the subject of Greek mythology. One has only
to look at the high-quality animated productions of Homer's Odyssey
or do a quick search on the topic on Amazon to find dozens of books that appeal
to the elementary and middle school set. Mythology fuels the fires of creative
imagination, with powerful and temperamental gods, hideous monsters, heroic
human leaders, and cataclysmic natural disasters all expanding the reader's
sensibilities and paradigms. Kids really love to read the early classics and
study Greek mythology for all those reasons - they are some of the greatest
stories published and kids this age are trying to grasp the how's and why's
of what makes the world work the way it does. It is only natural that Greek
mythology and the world of ancient Greece should be a blue-ribbon setting for
the next game in the City Building Series, particularly when it can
attract younger reader-gamers to the continuous-time strategy and resource
management genre. Zeus is a game for both the young and the young at
heart. But it also models complex interrelationships throughout a broad spectrum
of human endeavor.
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The mythological gods appearing in Zeus: Master of Olympus are diverse and unique. |
Brave heroes and hideous monsters stimulate the imagination and bring adventures to life. |
Presentation
I can't help but use the word "whimsical" to describe the flavor and atmosphere of Zeus - bring a sense of humor and a conscientious decision to have FUN when you play this game. I tend to laugh periodically while playing Zeus, either when looking at the detail in some of the animated icons (look closely - several are hilarious) or clicking on individuals to hear them talk. The vocabulary, accent, and pronunciation of the characters tend to be reminiscent of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure or Wayne's World. The monsters (Hydra and Talos are two I've encountered) become like Godzilla, randomly trashing parts of the city and shooting lightning bolts at citizens and killing them - until heroes like Hercules or Jason come to the rescue. Then there is always the danger of angering Zeus! This game is fun for adults who don't take themselves too seriously and have a sense of humor, and is perfect for middle or high school kids. It's also a great parent-child game and one where gameplay can be followed up with reading and stories from mythology books or classical literature.
Impressions Games took the immensely successful Caesar III/Pharaoh/Cleopatra ancient city building game system and evolved it into a more playable, more forgiving, more fun, more imaginative, and more humorous title in that series. Zeus isn't really a "dumbed down" Pharaoh/Caesar III, but instead is a very sophisticated and different design, with a significantly re-engineered graphical user interface (GUI) and some extensive changes to gameplay that are unique and very appropriate to the subject. The isometric, continuous-time, city building strategy perspective for the game is similar to the Pharaoh line, but the Zeus icons and components are fewer in number and larger in size, just as you might compare primary school pencils or crayons to their counterparts used in the higher grades. They are a little more comfortable to grasp, a little less precise and touchy to use, and encouragingly reassuring to the user.
Installation & Technical Issues
Zeus installs in a very straightforward manner, just as Caesar III and Pharaoh did, and the player is treated to screens of superb artwork while the loading proceeds. The install sizes are all quite large and range from 410MB (minimum necessary) to 550MB (everything but videos) to 620MB (including videos).
One great point of progress is that Sierra finally allows the player to install the game to a \zeus folder, which can be located anywhere, without the requirement to install it below a \sierra directory. Unfortunately Sierra also still puts an annoying AT&T Worldcom shortcut on your desktop during installation and you get no choice in the matter.
Zeus seems to play without any malfunctions or game bugs like Cleopatra had; this one appears to be a very clean design and I didn't notice any serious complaints on the game forums for it. Zeus also does not require a patch at this time. Impressions Games released a playable demo on November 7th. The playable demo is one file and a companion media file can be downloaded which contains the opening video segment and speech files for the citizens. The playable demo must be installed in a \zeusdemo folder so the files for the demo and full-version of the game don't get commingled.
Documentation
Documentation for Zeus is nearly identical to that found in Pharaoh. A 208-page game manual just under a half-inch thick that provides narrative explanation (in the form of a story) on each area of city building and gives a short synopsis of ancient Greece and Greek mythology. A playable demo for Zeus was recently released and is a wonderful and welcome addition to the documentation; the demo helps players learn how to play and is more integrated and concise than the array of tutorials in the full game. One section omitted from the Zeus manual appendices (and was a vital part of the Pharaoh manual) was a chart that showed each structure and gave a rating of the number of flowers (positive) or garbage cans (negative) impact the structure exerted in an area. It wasn't intuitively obvious to me which cultural or hygiene structures would enhance appeal or detract from it and I learned much of this the hard way. The information from right-clicking on any structure is often less than helpful since it is vague. There are so many interrelated factors that affect appeal, it would be difficult to give the player some focused advice on specifically what to do. The appeal overlay showing tints and shades helps the player zero in on positive and negative appeal factors.
This "appeal" type wisdom is also buried in the excellent on-line help pulldowns, which are always available during play and are extremely helpful. Most of us don't play with the manual right next to the computer. Some games give you a good manual or on-line help but not both. Zeus does both, very well in each case. The excellent Zeus web site also has some intriguing information which adds play value to the game. Fan sites, such as Zeus Heaven, are also great places to learn more and discuss the game. Zeus also comes with a glossy cardstock 3-fold map on one side with a diagram of the system structure (buildings, people, and resources) for comprehending the relationships for any component of the city, including the necessary inputs and outputs. The CD, jewel case, and game box are very polished with very attractive and professional quality artwork. Zeus is a first-class product all the way, and I loved playing it and learning from it as an educational application, thanks to the excellent documentation.
REVIEW TABLE OF CONTENTS
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