The comparison should probably be Endless Legend vs. Beyond Earth. They feel very similar, sown to the UI and systems. I haven't completed a game in EL yet, but BE felt almost identical to EL when I started it up.
I wouldn't be quite as harsh, but sadly I would give this game no more than a 70.
And, once again, a strategy series resting on its laurels (like Total War) gets a pass everywhere except here. Thank Molyneux there's a mainstream gaming journalist that isn't a complete newbie shill in this genre.
Preach! This game is even more dissapointing than Wasteland2 -and that's a f-kin' achievement.
As Civ veteran and one who dearly loved Alpha Centaury, alas I can only agree to this review. It is kinda sad. :(
I 100 percent agree with this review. I love the beginning. But the 1000 decisions often required of the endgame make them all meaningless. How about "move all my units there" instead of spending 1000 clicks to accomplish the same thing. Those 1000 decisions just amount to one decision. Terrible game design. Also multiplayer doesn't work when you spend all your time waiting. They need to redesign the game from the bottom up to minimize the micromanagement required to accomplish things. Sad really how much I love the first 50 turns and how much I detest the rest of this game.
That is because the 4X becomes some lesser number of Xs over the course of a game as the discovery and expansion aspect of the game disappears. At that point, it's just a watered-down war game with loads of drudgery.
"another great firaxis game"
Civ 5 was a broken mess which reintroduced every single problem with Civ 3 into the series, along with a few of its own (not least the fact that to introduce 1UPT they had to break every single strategic element to a Civ game just to make it barely workable, and they still have neither fixed the AI nor fixed the {probably unfixable} 1UPT problem in itself). As it stands currently it is an unremarkable game at best, something along the lines of, say, Imperial Glory, middle of the road at best, frustratingly broken at worst.
"boycotting this fanboy troll"
A fanboy is somebody who gives unwarranted praise to drek, something you in your post have displayed in spades. Tom Chick, almost uniquely amongst the mainstream game reviewers (because he a) gives games his proper attentions, and b) is not swayed by free gifts, extra advertising, or other bribes like most mainstream games reviewers are), gives games a score based on his (very well formed and researched) opinion on games after playing them sufficiently to actually know the meat of them. Yes he gets things wrong, who doesn't, but he's honest, he's knowledgable and he's not easily bought.
Seriously? EL is light years beyond BE. Are we playing the same game? Very similar sown (sic) to the UI and systems? I think you need to play both games again and come back when you see how ignorant that statement is.
A bunch of professional cheerleaders and casual gamers love it, awesome. Civ ToT multilayer play-field implementation beats this hands down. Alpha Centauri beat this game hands down. Civ 4 beats this game hands down. For $12 as a DLC, it's great, but it comes NOWHERE near the quality of many past Civ games and is NOWHERE near worth the AAA title price tag.
This game has less of almost everything that made previous Civ games great. If you're a less is more minimalist hipster that thinks Bejeweled 3 is a masterpiece, then you might be satisfied with this game.
Instead of running appeals to authority and calling names, how about you refute? Give me REASONS why this garbage is better than previous games I named. I am ready for this debate because I WILL burn you to the ground with objective facts, apples to apples, without resorting to fallacies and name calling.
yeah, I sure don't want someone giving a bad review to something popular. If you don't agree with his review, that's your problem. You're allowed to have fun with the game even if you don't feel the same way as the reviewer.
Yeah Beyond earth was a downer
I agree wholeheartedly. I've played about 7 hours and experienced all the negative points from the review already. Don't know if I'll even bother to start another match after this one, because at the current state BE is just a mediocre Civ5-in-space and quite ridiculously bad compared to SMAC.
Hell, I even needed three mods to just sort out the most basic of the UI mess-ups, not including the blurry screen-syndrome...
Hopefully they'll manage to at least salvage something with the obligatory expansions and patches and make it a properly enjoyable experience. Cause at the moment it is not.
Ah, thanks for this, so they have some more use. I still kind of like the idea, but the way they work i feel they're not all they could be.
I did a little more playing since my former post and i still feel the game wasn't beta tested and released too early. A lot of the reviews come out more positive than the review above, but i feel this one represents the game best.
Uninstalled the game for now, but still hope to come back to a more satisfying game, since the series so far always managed to pull trough.
It's not just the end game, the whole title is basically a damn skin for CIV 5, its incredibly patronizing. It's like they thought, hey let's just remodel the units and re-skin the terrain, and ship it out the door. The multiplayer is filled with glitches and disconnects. It is literally Civilization V with a new skin. Not worth the money. Maybe as a DLC. And you know they are gonna make a shit ton of those for this one as well since there is only like 5 factions and none are alien. What a damn disappointment, I'm done with Firaxis.
Civ 5 sucked, and while I'm still playing this new one I have to agree it's pretty sucky so far.
Here in particular I feel disconnected from the game. IMHO it could have been much better if they focused more on the game play as an experience rather then some sort of autonomous, often laborious, simulation.
So you say "all of my friends and professional game journalists" (hopefully "professionals" that at least mastered basic punctuation and capitalization rules) implying your in some sort of knowledgeable elitist click, but then you call the guy a "fanboy"?
It takes courage to have your own opinion.
SID NEEDS to patch the AI & add 2 or 3 DLCs and sell the whole bunch of wax as a "gold edition - director's cut" before I'll buy it.
The Base Game Beyond Earth has too little content & not enough SciFi difference in various planets, different Stars with different color sunlight, planets with different gravity & different atmospheres, NO atmosphere, or toxic lava, etc.
It needs more SciFi - Not just a reskin job of Civ V.
what's the bet this guy gives Bayonetta a low score.
And the war game doesn't deliver. I had a situation where I was at war but we didn't fight any battles. I couldn't even reach my enemy's territory because of border growth of a neutral. The AI made a peace offer, giving me one of his two cities.
Tedious, isn't it?