Okay, okay, so it's popular with the Europeans... so are Speedo bathing suits. Even so, 1602 AD is a pretty remarkable title even in its US beta form. Here's the layout ¿ you start with one ship, a few tools, some food and a little bit of wood and you have to start an empire. To do this, you've got to find an island, send out explorers to find out what the land is suitable for, and then decide whether or not you really want to settle there. Once you've picked a place to put down your roots, you'll need to build a warehouse (which also acts as a basic dock) in order to give your people a way to get on and off the island and to act as a central location for storage for your budding town. From here you'll have to turn your attention to resource gathering. All of this may sound familiar, and it is, but 1602 AD's distant point of view, casual interaction with the locals and epic scope really leaves you with a far more impressive feel of beatific godhood than most of the so-called god games currently on the shelf.
When your village first gets started, you'll only have access to a few buildings: the Forester's Hut, the Hunting Lodge, the Sheep Ranch, the Weaver and basic Houses (there's also a few other specialized buildings, but we're going to leave those alone for now). The functions of each of these buildings is pretty straightforward ¿ the Forester cuts down trees to make wood, the Hunting Lodge kills local wildlife to make food, the Sheep Ranch creates wool and the Weaver takes that wool and turns it into cloth. In addition to the goods that you generate from within your colony, you'll probably have to import quite a few items that your people aren't capable of making on their own. As your colony grows and prospers, your citizenry will learn how to build new structures that will better allow you to exploit the natural resources of your new home.
Most of the cool stuff you learn how to do later in the game follows the traditional grow basic substance and alter it in a factory standard. The examples I caught a look at were tobacco (which could be made into cigars), cotton (which could be made into cloth), rock (which can be made into bricks) and spices. All in all, there are more than 90 different structures in the game. If you were careful when checking out the island to begin with, you'll probably have access to one or more valuable metals which you can sell to the other chumps in the game. If you're running short on any goods, you can purchase it from the other major nations, or from one of the native tribes found from place to place in the game.
Sadly, competing nations don't always recognize the fact that you're the greatest, and refuse to trade with you, hoarding valuable goods that your people need. Fixing this problem is relatively simple ¿ you just build an army, put 'em on a warship and go beat the crap out of those passive aggressors. This is actually a lot more work than it sounds like as you'll need all sorts of different items to arm a small group of fighting men. You'll also want to build defensive fortifications in order to train your men and protect them in the event of an invasion by enemy forces. I found the setup to be just a little more complex than that in Civilization ¿ enough options to be interesting, not enough to be annoying.
In the end, what really made 1602 AD stand out in my mind was the huge number of random events that could occur during your reign. In the short time that I played, I dealt with plagues, droughts, robbers, pirates and even giant squid. After just a few hours with the game, I was hooked, a fact that may have resulted in more than one or two missed deadlines. A multiplayer mode will also be included in the final release that will enable up to four players to go head-to-head on a LAN or two players over a standard modem connection. Better still, even though the Europeans got access to this one first, we still get to act superior as the game's designers are adding a handful of new scenarios for the game that won't be available overseas. Ha! Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the game is going to hit shelves with an MSRP of $19.99. If you've got a few dollars left over from your Christmas cash, you may want to hang on to it. Unless they screw up royally between now and the game's final release this one has winner written all over it...
-- Trent C. Ward