Cesar Saez @Cornholio

Sid Meier's Civilization (Windows 3.x)

Civilization for Windows - a great game...

The Good
This game has, in my opinion, a few points over the DOS-version: - The screens with discoveries and things can be clicked away. Rather than having to wait for it to fully fade in, you just click thus get more time to play the game. - Extra tribes? I think there are more tribes to play than in the DOS-version, but not sure since I haven't played the DOS one in a while now (still have it on my hard-disk though). - The mouse works in the Windows version. Having an usb-mouse means DOS won't let me use it... and the DOS version can be run under Windows, but the mouse responds much slower and dodgier. - It looks better... While this is not a gameplay-issue (gameplay is great in both versions), it does help that this version looks a bit better.

The Bad
There is only one point I didn't like so far: - It seems impossible to find working cheats for the Windows-version! Unlike the "counterpart" of Civilization (both Dos and Windows versions), Colonization which has well-documented cheats that can be found just about everywhere, for Civilization only the DOS cheats keep turning up in websearches...

The Bottom Line
All in all I would say this is a great game that has earned it's merits. Both DOS and Windows versions feature a great gameplay that guarantees you'll be playing them for hours, but the Windows-version described here would be the version I am rooting for in a comparison, due to the fact that for me it's a bit more streamlined. Anyways, I'm going back into the search to find some cheats... I know they exist, I used them years ago.

By Cesar Saez on October 6, 2003

Into the Void (DOS)

Great game, hard to find!

The Good
The pro's of this game are :
- Gameplay (turn-based) is simple, intuitive, easy to learn yet not too easy.
- Graphics are simple yet very likeable, and the animations give it just that little bit of extra jazz.
- The AI is pretty well-balanced... you won't find yourself up against a mastermind, but neither an enemy that simply tries to outnumber and rush you...
- Sounds are adequate for their purpose, and personally I even liked the sounds....
Every facility had it's own noises... from the bubbling sounds in the research facility/laboratory to the clanking of hammers and other related sounds in the factories... there was even some humor in the sounds.
- Replayability : A high replayability-factor due to the humor, and the fact that every time the galaxy changes..
Overall the game left a solid, decent impression.... or at least the demo did.... I've been looking for this game for the past 5 years, to no avail... not in shops, not on auction-sites.... and more recently not on abandonware-sites.... it would appear that history has planned to let this gem sink away into the sands of times unnoticed.

The Bad
The con's of this game : Well, it's a good game.... but let's be critical about it, for objectivity's sake...

• Though this didn't happen to me personally, I can imagine someone finding the sounds and graphics repetitive.

• Exploration interface : The interface used to switch to the exploration screen (or actually, the exploration screen itself) could've been integrated a bit better into the other options. For example, in Pax Imperia one simply clicked a wormhole or a location on a starmap.

In this game, one is taken into a separate screen where one has to scroll through solarsystems, and without some experience in using this screen a player could get lost.... though it feels pretty natural once you see the logic behind it and get the feel of it.

• AI could've been just a bit spicier.... in the demo, the AI was not bad... but it could've been just a bit more of a challenge. This was however compensated by having to deal with some random events like security-teams getting lost... but again, these, too, could've been a bit more spicier and use some more variety.
  
  The Bottom Line
  Decent, solid, enjoyable, replayable, hard to find. Even contacting the company itself didn't have the desired effect of at least finding out where I might be able to purchase it.

The e-bay link on Mobygames doesn't work, Amazon only has a book from the startrek-series that shares the same title, well, to cut things short : I've been looking for this game for 5 years, and still nothing!

By Cesar Saez on December 29, 2002