Case in point: Heaven & Hell, a title recently published by CDV software, famed publishers of the DailyGame favorite, Blitzkrieg. Heaven and Hell (or H&H as I’m calling it from here on, since I’m a lazy typist with a heavy review schedule) carries an ESRB rating of "E." That’s an "E" as in "Everyone." That type of rating means that this game is basically safe for anyone to play as it has no blood, gore, extreme violence, swearing or anything that could possibly offend anyone, save the atheists, who might have a problem with the deity themes in the game.

There’s a reason H&H got this rating, as it appears to be a God game for kids that mistakenly was marketed to adults. Maybe the developers didn’t mean it that way, but the simplistic gameplay, cartoony graphics, basic controls and overall silly feel make me think it’s perfect for that wee kiddies, and as such, that’s how I’m going to try and look at it in this review. That’s not to say you won’t learn plenty about H&H if you’re an adult looking to add it to your collection, it’s just that I think many people are looking at it from a purely "mature" perspective, and losing sight of its possible positioning as a fun title for kids.

H&H is about playing God, or at least playing as "a" God. You start the game as a good God, who makes his people happy by, and I’m not kidding here, patting them on the head. After finishing the main campaign, you can play the game again as the evil God, who will frequently deliver smackdowns, letting his evil minions know that they are one step away from a permanent magma bath in "the hot place." The gameplay follows that of older titles such as Populous, with your deity building towns, recruiting followers and waging a war on the dark God. To win the game, you’ll simply need more followers than your opponent. To get those followers, you task your main prophet to convert the locals, who may or may not already believe in you. While some of the locals may believe in you, that doesn’t mean they have faith in you as their sole deity, so it’s up to your prophet to bring about conversions. To convert the locals, you tell your prophet to perform minor miracles (frequently consisting of creating rainbows over villages…not terribly impressive to players, but big hits with the local populace) and generate more prophets. The more prophets you create, the more villagers you can quickly turn to your belief system. The prophets do more than convert the unwashed, however, they also serve as agents of construction and creators of military might.

As your followers increase, you’ll need to build more homes for them and places of worship. Without adequate food, housing and care from you, their core belief in you will fade, and they’ll slip away, becoming either neutral or evil in the process. As they slip away, you’ll lose power, which is obviously a bad thing. So you’ve got to keep pumping out prophets, miracles, housing, food and armies to keep your people safe and sound. Every now and again, you’ll have to remember to send a little affirmation down to your people, delivered in the form of pats on the head from God. Being that this is a war amongst deities, you have to also try to weaken your opposition. There are several ways to do this; from unleashing your military might upon his followers to simply egging his prophets. If you’re feeling particularly nasty, there’s always a plague or two you can throw his way. But all of these cost you power, measured in units of Mana, and the more Mana you spend on these little tidbits of fun, the less you have available to spend on your own people.

The game controls couldn’t be simpler, as you use your giant hand cursor to click on objects and direct them. You’ll frequently use "the hand of God" for patting villagers on the head or flinging them across the village. You can also use your hand to herd villagers towards your prophet, thus boosting the reach of his messages. There are some control issues which cause you to select the wrong unit or send the right unit the wrong way, but you can get the hang of things quickly to prevent this from happening after about a half hour.

There’s one huge problem with the gameplay, and that’s the AI, which is terribly stupid. Opposing prophets can walk alongside one another without ever noticing the silliness of the situation and unit pathing is poorly implemented. You can have a straight path from point A to point B, and your prophet will instead take a route around a mountain sometimes to cover the distance. Your worshippers can be pretty stupid, too, as they typically just roam about town like drunken ants with no apparent destination in mind, forcing you to herd them up with the hand of God. As far as overall strategic intelligence goes, the AI has none; it’s a cakewalk to defeat all the missions in this game. For younger kids this game might be a challenge, but any adult gamer worth his/her RTS gaming salt will quickly deliver a sound beating to the AI.

Graphically, H&H is like being sucked into the Candy Land universe. Everything is big, bright and cheery with minimal texturing and animation. It doesn’t look bad, but it certainly doesn’t look all that good either. The spell effects are the high point in the graphics as they can be pretty enjoyable to watch from time to time.

The sound is just as unimpressive as the graphics. There’s nothing really notable worth mentioning, save the random spell effect or two that sounds as cool as it might look. Other than that, it’s got "generic audio clip-art" written all over it.

If you’re a gamer who likes to get several "plays" out of one title, you can pretty much scratch H&H off your wish list. Due to the positively weak AI, you’ll quickly tear through most levels in no time. And while you can finish the game and come back to play as the evil Deity, there’s no reason to do so since the game doesn’t change all that much for the evil side. Younger kids, who typically play a few levels, leave the game for a few days, come back and play a few more levels might be fine with the limited replay (since once they finish a game, how often do they return to play through again?) but any adult gamer will find the game too easy and have no reason to return to it after the first go-round.

If H&H was designed as a kid’s game for the under 12 set, then CDV has a reasonable success on their hands. I’d consider buying it for my son, if he were old enough for gaming (a three month old has problems with computers, as you can imagine), but adults will tire quickly of the game and move on to deeper RTS’ titles such as Savage or Command and Conquer. Heaven and Hell offers some fresh ideas for RTS gaming, but they aren’t backed by any deep gameplay. If I were to give this game a "kids score," it would garner an overall of 7, maybe a 7.5, but since it’s marketed as an adult title, it only gets a 6.0 as it lacks enough compelling gameplay to keep the grown-up gamer interested for any length of time.