Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

The Good
Civilization is my favorite game for PC, so I love this game. The borders are just a great idea. Diplomacy works great! The atmosphere is great! Multiplayer gaming is great, atleast in a LAN.

The Bad
The game has bugs and other "features". And the end game can be very boring.

The Bottom Line
Command your men in a Civilization like manner in the near future!

The Good
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (SMAC) is one title that had not failed to disappoint. It is just as enjoyable as the "official" Civ series, and more. The interface, although not much changed from the Civ games, has been touched up to perfection. Game play is intuitive. That fact is highly impressive. The early levels provide in-depth explanations on almost every aspect of the game, which makes flattens the learning curve. Help is even more comprehensive than Civ II. Battles are also well balanced. The units in SMAC can be customized extensively, because each unit is a combination of components. This makes the creation of good defensive units or special offensive units a new possibility. It always feels good to create a customized AA unit just as the needlejets come in and get crushed by anti-aircraft defense. The game plotline is amazingly superb. When a character that contolled one of my units was killed by a unit of a foreign base, the game renamed the base in her honour when I captured it (yeah, characters, although in reality one never notices them). The Secret Project (Wonder) movies are great, ranging from the hilarious (Network Backbone is a great joke on Microsoft) to the beautiful (Telepathic Matrix is a great one to watch) to the macabre (Neural Amplifer and Dream Twister freaky guy). Although some of these items seem to be extraneous, they do not take away from the great play. This is definitely one of those stay-up-all-night games!

The Bad
SMAC is great, but it isn't perfect. The graphics are much more drabby and dark than Civ II. As one review put it, one seems to be fighting over a blob of "plum pudding". Units are hard to distinguish, although this is not totally the fault of Firaxis, as extensive unit customization means that it is inevitable that some units look similar in order for components to fit a wide range of units. Nevertheless, sending an infantry unit to take out a base just to find that it's an artillery unit and won't kill anyone really sucks! Finally, if you're looking for innovations, there really aren't that much in this game. Almost everything has a counterpart in Civ II.

The Bottom Line
This is a great game to have. It's definitely addicting because it's such an in-depth game to play, and if you get bored, there are plenty of online mulitplayer resources out there. I find the all-night SMAC sessions better than the Civ II session, if only for the plot. =)

The Good
The game starts where Civilization II stopped, a spaceship speeding to Alpha Centuri. In the game it is a UN mission not the winning nation. There is a rebellion on board and the ship splits into 7 factions: Green, UN, Capitalist, Militaristic, Religious, Collective … Each one can found a colonies, build military units, research technology, make money, trade technology with others, and explore the map (and find pods seeded by the mother ship with goodies inside).

I liked the boarders which stop allies building near you and enemies crossing your borders with out making war. Also the fact that one power becomes strong making the game more difficult, and the fact you can ask an ally to concentrate an attack on a specific colony. In this game colonies actually fall unlike Civilization II. Weak nations seek alliance instead of being hostile. The food box reduces if you build child care, hospital etc… This is good, Civ II really missed out on Medical advances speeding population growth. All these features would have made Civilization II much better.

Others features include nerve stapling, alien monoliths and psychic attacks by native live forms. There are many government types and you can pick or choose features of each.

The Bad
The future technology, wonders and units don’t do much for me, they are difficult to understand and put me off the game. The terrain is also strange and off putting.

The Bottom Line
Some good points but no match to Civilization II.