Strategy Gaming Online - Reviews : Alpha Centauri

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REVIEWS

box.gif (15377 bytes) Alpha Centauri (Reply to original review)

DEVELOPER : Firaxis
PUBLISHER : EA

Requirements:
Pen. 133MHz, 16 MB of RAM

Recommend:
Pen. 166MHz, 32 MB of RAM

First of all, let me say that no one should really need to think twice about whether this is a worthwhile addition to your game library or not. The final score, from someone who found the game to be a letdown, was 8.5! Wow! Can it be said any better than that? Someone who didn't like the setting (and there's not much you can do about that) still thought it was worth a score of 8.5. We all have our personal likes and dislikes. Me, I just don't like non- violent games. Nothing personal, they just don't do anything for me. Hence, Railroad Tycoon and SimCity just aren't my cup of tea. That doesn't mean they aren't great games. They are. And so is SMAC.

Yes, SMAC is alien. It's sci-fi. Keeping that in mind, all the new names make sense. Nutritients? Minerals? Psych? Mind worms? Colony pods? Yeah, they're all new. At first, they make you feel totally lost. Guess what? Having just landed on an alien planet, that's probably VERY apropriate! (Some of the changes were probably to ward off a copyright lawsuit, too. I think that's a pity, and I agree that some things could have had better names. Still, you get used to them pretty quickly.)

I disagree about the technologies/wonders in the original Civilization being instantly recognizable. So, what did the pyramids REALLY do? Yes, you recognize the name. The function, one the other hand (and that is far more important) really isn't. Darwin's voyage gives you two bonus techs? How's that intuitive? You still had to learn by playing the game and reading the manual.

This time around, you don't know what to expect. Everything is new. Everything is different. I like it that way. Of course, you can still read the manual and learn about all the technologies in advance if you like. You can learn everything just like you did in Civilization. If you wish. If you are like me, you like to be surprised - and SMAC offers far more in this respect than did Civilization. Not only is all the tech alien, but you can also toggle a few game options that prevents you from selecting specific research goals. This eliminates the advantage a human player can gain over the AI by making sure to research strategically important technologies (like railroads in Civilization). Instead, you tell the computer to focus on a certain area of research. You just don't know exactly what the result will be in advance. Or you can do it Civilization-style. SMAC lets you choose.

This is one of the strong points of SMAC. There are more rules to change from within the game itself, as well as by altering the text files that accompany the game. You can make it all-out war by dis- allowing all other victory conditions. You can turn off most of the random events by eliminating pods (equivalent to the small huts in Civilization) everywhere but near your starting position. You can also change most of the text and modifiers for the different factions in the game. SMAC is very configurable and I don't understand why Mr. Sage thinks SMAC isn't as easily customizable as Civilization was. To me, it looks like it is far superior to the original in this respect.

The one letdown (for me, anyway) in SMAC is the graphics. Well, guess what? It took me all of 20 mins or so to customize the game with new terrain that looks a lot brighter and more colorful than the original art. I like it a lot better this way, and it was very easy to do (for the record, I changed the dark-brown soil to a lighter shade of brown for better contrast and then I made the fungus more distinctly red). How's that for easily customizable? Now, this doesn't quite bring the graphics up to the same quality as in Civilization II. They're still a bit dark. And still a bit simplified.

The reason the graphics are simplified is that they are now in 3D! Doesn't sound like much, you say? Well, the 3D nature of the terrain actually affects the gameplay! In addition to the familiar building of farms, mines and roads, you now have to worry about raising/lowering terrain, improving the production of sea squares (by building kelp farms, tidal harnesses and mining platforms), decreasing the rockiness of squares and placing "super-improvements". You can play god and raise an island out of the sea, and the old global warming now actually submerges land. To top it all off, you have weapons that will make huge craters (resulting in a basin, or perhaps a new Atlantis that sinks beneath the waves of the ocean). Make no mistake about it, there is a LOT of things going on here, and a lot of things you can do to the world itself. And, BTW, forests aren't rare. At least not in my games. I plant new forests, because that is a very good thing to do for a number of reasons.

And the fungus? Of no real worth? Hmmm. Did you all read the manual? There's some very interesting tactical implications of being in fungus, and depending on your strategy, fungus can be friend or foe. It's definitely not the one-sided impediment Mr. Sage seems to think it is. All in all, yes - the world does grow on you. I felt kind of the same as Mr. Sage during my first game. Then, all the nuances started to become apparent and they make a whole world of a difference. The world is complex (a lot more so than in Civilization) and dynamic and IMHO engrossing.

There are a few more things that makes this game great. Units are customizable. You have a unit workshop where you put together the units you want to build from the building blocks provided by the technology you've researched. You have multiple ways to win (five) and you can have allied victories. The social engineering choices that replace the government choices in Civilization are far harder to make. Basically, there's a down side to everything. Conversely, there is also an up side to almost everything. By comparison, Civilization is black and white while SMAC is in full colour. That's what repeated playings did show me, and SMAC definitely seems like it's going to remain on my hard drive long after Civilization is gone (if either one of them is ever removed, that is).

The one thing that detracts from the game (apart from the graphics) is the problems that some people have had to get it to work. We have had problems with sound and crashes, and SMAC seems less forgiving than most other titles. There have also been reports of some rather serious bugs that may or may not occur in all games.

For the record, I am a long-time Civilization player. I don't know how someone who has never played Civilization would react to SMAC. SMAC is also complex enough that it will lose some people that just can't grasp it all. Still, it is a lot that Civilization isn't.

Reviewed by Patrik Manlig

Summary
Pros: More complex than Civ. Very customizable. No easy black/white decisions. Multiple paths to victory. Cons: Lackluster graphics. Alien environment may alienate players.
Interface : 8	Gameplay : 10	Graphics : 7
Audio : 8	Multiplayer : 9	Overall : 9.5