(16th January 2000)
It's good to be evil.
Peter Molyneux's swansong from Bullfrog was almost the ultimate Sim game, there were enough variables and icons and creatures and problems and challanges and secrets and tricks and levels and new things to keep most gamers happy for quite a while, long enough for Bullfrog to put together The Deeper Dungeons extension and also long enough for them to stick a 3D engine on it, tweak it a bit and called it DK2. So what next? Well, DK2 was probably what DK1 would have been if they had had more time (and gosh did it take a while to finish).
And that seems to be my point, The "old" Bullfrog were able to lose deadlines by years in order to produce the works of art which sold by the millions, but now, well, Dungeon Keeper 1 was the last original game they released. Everything since has been sequels, and that is not a good thing, Bullfrog have always been at their best when creating brand new games. Theme Park, Magic Carpet, Syndicate, Populous... they have all been created by Bullfrog, and for each, the sequal was almost the same games with a 3D engine and other bits added on, and in the case of Theme Park Worlds, bits being taken away.
But to return to the point momentartily, The history of Bullfrog has been decining of late, and to be quite honest, if it were any other developer, I would bother following this at all.
(23 October 2000)
And I really shouldn't have done. It's been Back-burner'd. Another five years, maybe :-)