Virtual Villagers review

The Mac gaming scene has been quiet of late. So while we wait for the next raft of big-name titles such as Battlefield 2142 and Command & Conquer 3, veteran Mac game publisher Aspyr has unleashed a couple of less conventional games to tide us over.

The first is Virtual Villagers, which, as you may have guessed, puts you in charge of a troop of virtual villagers. The premise is that the villagers were washed up on an island after surviving a volcanic eruption. They must now learn how to survive by becoming farmers, builders, scientists and parents. You guide them in their quest by moving them around the map - drop a villager on to a fruit bush and they become a forager; drop a man on to a woman and they may make a baby (yes, it really is that contrived).

The graphics would have looked cutting edge on a Commodore 64, and most of the games on that platform had infinitely superior gameplay. It would be embarrassing to compare this game with the gems of the resource-management sim genre, such as the Age of Empires series and Tropico. So it may be fairer to view Virtual Villagers as an educational resource that encourages kids to learn about the basics of survival. But with its extremely dated graphics and limited gameplay, it couldn't be less engaging.

The game's one unique feature is that it runs in 'true real time', which means that events continue to unfold even when you're not playing or your computer is switched off. This means that if you forget to play for a while, and you probably will, when you come back, most of your villagers will be dead.

Next we have Travelogue 360 Paris, which promises to 'amaze your eyes, tax your brain and challenge your inner sleuth' as you embark on a 'voyage of discovery in Paris'. It's meant to combine an adventure game with a travel guide to teach kids and tourists about the sites of the French capital.

What greets you when you start up the game is an unbelievably dated interface reminiscent of those post-Myst days of the mid-1990s when a few QuickTime VR panoramic photos in a game were enough to provide sufficient wow factor to enthrall its audience. Travelogue 360's developer, Big Fish Games, seems not to have noticed that graphical and interactive technology have moved on somewhat in the past 12 years.

What you end up with is essentially a series of panoramic still images of Parisian scenes, in which the extent of the sleuthing is locating a bunch of random objects - there were certainly no chimpanzees around last time we visited the Eiffel Tower. Complete the task at each scene by finding all the listed objects, and you are 'rewarded' with a fun fact about Paris, which you could have found out in much more depth and context with a few seconds on Google.

The level of complexity is about suitable for the under sixes, but the chances of this game maintaining any five-year-old's attention for more than 30 seconds are about as likely as Nemo staying lost.

So while we appreciate Aspyr's efforts to keep Mac gaming alive during this quiet patch, all those endless Sims expansion packs suddenly seem more appealing.