4X games - a bit of a rant
From
Peter Huebner@21:1/5 to
All on Mon Dec 14 17:53:27 2015
I bought 3 new 4x games this year. Anno 2070, Sid Meyer's Beyond Earth
and Galactic Civilizations III. Oh, and one slightly older one in Age of Wonders III.
Seriously: I am underwhelmed with the possible exception of the latter.
Anno 2070 has nothing much new to offer, except for submarines and the
tech development that is more opaque than a bathrub of overcooked
spaghetti, at least in the mid-later game. Other than that it's same
old, same old, population-threshold triggered availability of new
buildings and vessels.
What it does have however is Ubisoft's Uplay and I've had that shit
itself once so I had to find out were to download and reinstall it from,
and I've run into Ubi's servers being down and "sorry chum, you can't
play your game right now until we get our shit together". That does not
go down well with me. I have not touched it since week 3 or so.
Incidentally I think 1404 was prettier and more fun.
Civilization Beyond Earth. Yes, this is not Alpha Centauri, that's for
sure. I actually like the game for what it is, it is stable, you get
your little quests, you steer for victory.
Alas: this game is sparse in options. There just isn't all that much
you can do, each flavour (there are 3 flavours, purity, superiority and harmony)) has different looking units, but they all do the same. They
have similar paths to victory, and if you choose one flavour you're
pretty much tied to one path (other than conquest). And diplomacy is
just as damn stupid as it was in Civ 2 where the senate forced you into
peace with some maverick that kept attacking you, over and over and
over again. Here, the computer opponents come begging for resources in
exchange for 'favours'. Except that favours buy you nothing in return.
Worse, don't expect them to like you better or develop any kind of
loyalty once you have done them a dozen favours. Then you get some AI
leader who's chosen purity (basically that's the anti-alien flavour)
make a representation that you should stop killing aliens (while they
massacre them left and right) and there are what - 4? - different types
of aliens? Oh and 2 kinds of alien fish. You are kidding me. Not to
mention that they never advance from where they start at the beginning
of the game. The only reason I am not playing Alien Crossfire instead is
that I can't find the damned disk.
Galciv III - I don't get it. I JUST DON'T GET IT. It's bug ugly. I used
to play Galciv 2 fairly well zoomed out and you got a very good idea
of what was going on, what you were doing, what was there -- not so in
Galciv III. I have yet to see anything really new, any bright ideas
beyond a little tinkering.
And all three of these are BLATANTLY OBVIOUSLY angling for you to buy
yet another expansion at the same price as the full game, and probably
some DLC as well, just to get some CONTENT into the game. All three are
very short on content.
Of the three I play Beyond Earth -- it's easy, it's predictable, and it
works well at keeping me at it until I am tired enough to be able to
sleep. But really, it's nothing to write home about - unless you want to express disappointment.
AoW 3 is what it is. I play it from time to time. It certainly has more
content than the other three combined, it also has tactical combat and
a certain rpg element in developing heroes and troups that has more
variety than the other above named games. However, it's not a game I
play every day, or even every week.
Know what? I am having much more fun with Fall from Heaven 2. Still now. Dwarves, Amurites, Elves ... so much variety. So much more content.
So much more to explore, exploit, .... exterminate. Fireball casting mud golems! Archers with fireballs that can cast stone wall, slow, haste.
Govannon making the rounds teaching magic to everyone. Ents even.
Today one of my cities was attacked by a King Kong sized Orang Utan.
Don't even remember ever seeing that before...
Pity all that creativity didn't make it over to Stardock's Fallen
Enchantress. Which by now has two more iterations as full price games in Legendary Heroes and Sorcerer King. I bought the second, but I'm not
going further, and now Stardock wants $100 bucks off me for the
privilege to be a 'founder' for some new project. I don't think so.
Come to that, I'd go to Kickstarter and expect better value for money.
What the Big Boys are turning out is extruded mass production, and cheap plastic.
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From
Ross Ridge@21:1/5 to
p.w.huebner@gmail.com on Tue Dec 15 17:54:45 2015
Peter Huebner <
p.w.huebner@gmail.com> wrote:
I bought 3 new 4x games this year. Anno 2070, Sid Meyer's Beyond Earth
and Galactic Civilizations III. Oh, and one slightly older one in Age of >Wonders III.
Seriously: I am underwhelmed with the possible exception of the latter.
Yah, there doesn't semm to be that much in the way of good 4X games
these days. I haven't tried any of the games you mentioned, only Age
of Wonders IIIs sounds worth buying. The others haven't managed to grab
my interest. Beyond Earth doesn't sound like its different enough from Civilization V to be worth it. I never really liked Galactic Civilization
II, the AI was too much of a pushover. Anno 2070 is just too expensive.
These days I mainly play other kinds of strategy games. Have you tried
any Paradox's grand strategy games? Crusader Kings 2 is the biggest DLC
whore there is, but the base game alone is pretty deep. In a different direction there's the Total War series, you can pick up one the better
ones, Medieval II: Total War for $1 as part of the current Humble Weekly Bundle. (Only about 44 hours left on that though.)
Ross Ridge
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