ALPHA CENTAURI - Games - http://maxpages.com/strategyforum/Alpha

OVERALL: 93%

The Basics:
I think it was at a party about six years ago that I first stumbled into my addiction. We'd been having a good time, with a few things going on, and then some guy holds it out, and says, "Ya gotta try this." We were game, after all we were young, and nothing could beat us. We'd tried it all, and we'd had our moments on the downward spiral, but we were still cool. Assured, hjHe opened the package, delivered the shot into the hole, and we slowly dissolved into mind-numbing bliss.

Does it sound like I should be taking a couple of eggs out about right now, and asking Any Questions? To tell the truth, I'm not sure I shouldn't, but we're not talking crack, coke, or heroin right now, kiddies. We're talking the most addictive mental candy ever... Sid Meier's Civilization.

I spent countless hours of my life dedicated to the game, held conversations based solely around it, dreamed about it, and still to this day have shunned its direct sequel in fear that I would repeat the same ritual. I'd had my time with Sid, and I didn't want to come back… I had a life, friends, people to see, things to do, bills to pay. I knew once I was in his grasp again I wouldn't be able to free myself.

And I was right. Years and a perfected-on-the-first-but-didn't-continue-the-story sequel later, I held in my greedy little hands Alpha Centuari, the sequel of my dreams and nightmares. I held and played the ultimate in addictive substances, and have now created a new support group made up of myself, my friends, and anyone else lucky enough to pick up this game.

Yes, my name is Payne, and I'm a Centaholic... wanna make something of it?

The Plot:
At the end of the Civilization, if you didn't conquer everyone, you were tantalized by the story of a successful space journey to our nearest habitable planet, Alpha Centuari. The game, of course, takes off from that.

The starship Unity made it almost to the Planet before things got bad. Systems failed, and the people were fragmented into seven distinct factions. But unlike regular Real Time Strategy games, or other Sid Meier games, the differences here were not about culture, but about philosophy. Seven ideologies, often played to their extreme, were to lead man on the exploration of their new world, which was named in an absolute fit of brilliance Planet. Guess calling our world Earth because it was made of dirt wasn't bad enough for some…

Unoriginal names for planets aside, the seven factions make planetfall, and then begin to build their new civilizations on the surface of Planet. Each faction gets distinct advantages and disadvantages, but at heart it's the player's choice to choose that which most closely represents his or her own heart. The various factions are:

-The University of Planet: A group of philosophers, dreamers, scientists, and others, dedicated to learning anyway they can. Think of Hitler's Nazi scientists during WWII.

-Gaia's Stepdaughters: Hippies with guns, determined to stop Planet from suffering the same fate as Earth.

-Morgan Industries: The industrialists have made it here as well, and they see a new world ripe for profit.

-U.N. Peacekeepers: The almost-middle-of-the-road group, determined to try and keep some kind of sanity in this new world.

-The Spartans: Much as their name indicates, these are survivalists who believe that only by perfecting the art of war can this world be tamed in the name of humanity.

-The Lords Believers: Religion will never die, and these puritan-meet-Robert Tilton very devout and dedicated followers are determined to keep it that way.

-The Human Hive: The product of a bizarre and interesting social experiment, in which the concept of self is destroyed by careful breeding, mental balancing, and brainwashing, creating a ant-hive like organism made of humans.

The plot tells the tale of these factions growing, fighting, developing, all while something keeps happening to the planet around them. Alien flora and fauna grow at a rapid rate, and various signs suggest that the dominant life form on Planet might be transforming into a huge, sentient being. How you, and your fellow colonists, develop with or against it makes up a large portion of the plot, and so I won't give anything away, but it's certainly a very developed story line in what is usually a non-linear game.

And of course, for those more violent among us, you can always conquer everyone and ask questions about sentient fungus later.

Graphics:
What? No mega powerful 3D engine? No colored lighting? I don't have to have a 3Dfx card to play?

Yep, that's right. The engine behind Alpha Centuari, while graphically impressive, is more focused on showing cross-sections of a 3D-leveled but otherwise 2D world, complete with high resolution units, buildings, and terrian. It's all very attractive, and it's well done, but let's face it the fun of Sid Meier's games have never been in the graphics. They're good, and some of the 'Event Occurred' paintings are downright beautiful, but it's gameplay that this is all about. So let's get to it!

Gameplay:
What? Oh yeah, it's good. Ya want more? Can't you see I'm playing here? C'mon, just a bit more. I just need to get all these planet busters lined up, and smash them all before they can decide it's an atrocity. That'll teach em to steal my technology.

Oh, you're still there, are ya? Okay, okay just a few more minutes, then I'll get to ya, I promise.

Hey! Give that back! Alright, alright, you win! Let's talk about gameplay.

Alpha Centuari is like smoking the most addictive thing in the world and having eight mouths to do it with. It's so hard to stop. Sleep seems unimportant, and you'll find yourself wondering what it's going to be like to go to work or school the next day with only two hours or less of it. Homework, housework, talking to friends (unless they're also playing the game), everything just disappears into a haze. Between a heavy work schedule recently, and this marvelous game, I've been delaying other reviews that I hope to have to you guys soon.

The gameplay is simple, so intuitive it's all point, click, and occasionally memorize the shortcuts on the keyboard. Move your units from area to another, build cities, terraform areas, develop farms, drill mines and boreholes it's all at the touch of your fingers, and referenced, indexed, and easy to look up in the online Datalinks section. Like Civilization I and II, the game is based around a brilliant combination of resource management, people management, military conquest, technological advancement, budgeting, and other previously tedious but now FUN!FUN!!FUN!!! tasks.

It's really impossible to describe. The gameplay is simple, direct, turn-based but not annoyingly so, and like Chess is simple to learn but very difficult to master, especially with the difficulty turned to one of the higher levels.

Mutliplayer gaming is a bit different than many people may be ready for, since it takes both time and huge chunks of forethinking patience to defeat a good opponent. Games can sometimes last hours, and a unlike fast-action First Person Shooters, can't be jumped in and out of and still maintain the high level of satisfaction the game can normally provide. If you're up for an afternoon of thinking, clever plotting, and more strategy than you can shake a Risk board at, multiplayer Alpha Centuari can be a blast.

Sound:
Alpha Centuari isn't really about sound, either, but it does of job of it, with some extremely superb voice acting reading some excellent quotes (some written for the game, others from Thoreau, Kant, Aristotle, and other big names from the World Of Philosophy). The gameplay sound effects themselves are good, but often become repetitive, since battle produces only two sets of noises: psi battle and convential warfare. Only extreme weapons like the Planet Buster get their own sound effects, but in general the quality of the quotes and the voice acting more than makes up for it.

The music itself is MIDI, and is very adaptive to changes in the game. It's well written, adds rather than become grating after a long period of exposure. I've found myself humming the songs on occasion, which is a good indication they have a way of worming themselves into your mind.

Bugs and Performance:
Alpha Centuari is proof of the "Keep It Simple, Stupid" saying I have yet to find a machine equipped with the minimum specs and working drivers that can't run this game, and run it with great performance. Systems with 32 megs of RAM might experience occasional swapping, but if you've upgraded to the now-standard 64, you should be more than fine.

Final Thoughts:
Alpha Centuari is the most addictive game I've ever played, managing to hook me deeper than even Civilization did with its intellectual sophistication, slick plot, and cool feel. But if you'll pardon me, I'm off to my support group now right after a few more turns yeah, just after a few more turns.

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