Startopia

The Good
Originality is scarce nowadays, with recycled ideas all over the gaming scene. Watching something fresh and new is very exciting. Startopia is fresh.
The game recycles many old ideas from Dungeon Keeper, Theme Hospital and Theme Park, but it has many new ones that make the game different from his ancestors. There are many areas you'll need to cover at once: crew recruitment, room and space management, trading with passing spaceships, and even conquering new sectors in the station. The interface combines all of those fields to easy to find, easy to use, friendly looking buttons, most of them one mouse click away.
Another GENIUS idea is the BioDeck. A third of your station is devoted to growing plants, and when you enter it you have four new buttons: land height, moisture, heat and water. By using these buttons you can create fascinating terrains, each growing its unique plants and attracting its unique races. You can build a high, snow-peaked mountain, looming above a nice pool, whose shore is as dry as a desert, and when the plants start blooming you end up with an amazing graphical display.

The Bad
The battle scenes quickly become very crowded, with lasers flying all over the place. Although they're not very fancy, thirty warriors battling each other lower the game speed considerably.

The Bottom Line
An excellent game that all gamers should at least try, and probably purchase.