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Republic the Revolution, what happened?

Jotaro

Banned
To me it is the game with the most lost potential ever. What the hell could have it been? It's a PC game that was a political simulator set in a fictious ex-Sovietic republic, and it promised to be highly innovative and to put a new unique genre on the market. It was such a clever idea and concept. I was drooling when I was following the game: an intelligent game, on politics at that, with good 3d graphics and maybe a good story! :)

I remember, I installed the game. I ran the program, and then I had to answer 10 multiple-choices based questions that would lead to build my character. I had all the concept in mind, but THIS! It reminded me of Ultima 4, and I tought it could be nothing but good. Then I'd notice: hey, the entire game is in french, and I have the american version so there must be no voices, I hope there are conversations and the game delivers tough. And then, after the eternal initial load time, I was left with the biggest WTF ever. And believe me, I saw all japanese game oddities. I was there and... what? It's all a fucking BOARD GAME! :(

The game is SO complicated to figure out how it works that about 90% of the gamers must straight uninstall the game, put it away and never look back at it. When you do understand, you watch your men walk all the way to knock to doors to recruit peoples for your political faction. And then you have dialogues. Dialogues? With no conversations? I felt like if I was playing a mimes simulator! With actual dialogue this could have been great, but this what if game to end what if games came up to nothing but frustration. But most of all it broke my heart, I tought I had found the most novel game concept ever.

Fortunately, Elixir Studios have settled on less ambitious games since then and have kept their unique twisted touch. :)
 
I bought this game the day it came out and was immediately disappointed. It was so hard to play and the way you interacted with people made no sense.
 

Screenboy

Member
I thought I had jumped into the future then reading the negative topic titles on GAF with the words 'Revolution' and 'What Happened?' in the same title.
 

Great King Bowser

Property of Kaz Harai
Wasn't the head of the development house a genius. Like, literally a really high IQ kind of genius.

I remember there being a BBC documentary about genius, and he was interviewed and he was pimping this game.
 

Jotaro

Banned
Great King Bowser said:
Wasn't the head of the development house a genius. Like, literally a really high IQ kind of genius.

I remember there being a BBC documentary about genius, and he was interviewed and he was pimping this game.

God I'd love to see such a documentary. :(
 
Great King Bowser said:
Wasn't the head of the development house a genius. Like, literally a really high IQ kind of genius.

I remember there being a BBC documentary about genius, and he was interviewed and he was pimping this game.

Demis Hassabis? He was a student of Peter Molyneux.
 

ManaByte

Banned
Way way way way way way too much micro-managing turned off almost every PC gamer. It was a good game, but you had to micro-manage everything to the point where you would rather be a politician in real life than play the game.

Their followup game, Evil Genius, has the exact same problem.

Take Dungeon Keeper, put it in a James Bond villain setting, and kill ALL the fun with an ungodly amount of micro-management and you have Evil Genius.
 

Agent Icebeezy

Welcome beautful toddler, Madison Elizabeth, to the horde!
I was following this game in PC gamer for years, then when it came out. I was so disappointed
 
Demis Hassabis is used to doing things at an early age. At four he taught himself to play chess; at 12 he was playing chess around the world having become the world’s highest rated chess player for his age; at 13 he took his GCSEs and at 15 his A levels; at 16 he got his first job as the lead programmer for what was then one of Europe’s top computer games companies, Bullfrog Productions, (during which time he co-created Theme Park – a game which went on to sell four million copies world-wide) and following on from gaining a first at Cambridge University in 1997 he set up his own computer games business, Elixir Studios, at 21.

Apparently, he was 17 when he created Theme Park with Molyneux. Lead programmer at 16 though - quite an achievement.

I had an interview at Elixir last year, which actually went quite well I thought, but took up another post with someone else before they got back to me. I was only just out of Uni at the time though so I'd imagine it'd have went to someone else with a little more experience. A boy from my class in Uni is working there atm though.
 

Azih

Member
I downloaded the demo and damn, talk about a crap user interface. Hell Europa 1400: The Guild has a more reasonable User Interface. There's something terribly wrong with a game whose 'tutorial' is a dozen static pages of telling you what each screen does.
 
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