But maybe the point is that they don’t want to shoehorn you into certain playstyles, maybe they want every game to be a choose your own four-X-ture Hentzau: That’s part of the AI personality that’s existed since Civ IV, I think – Montezuma is always a warmongering dick, Isabella is your best friend if you’re the same religion as her and a rampaging terror if you’re not etc. After a lot of play you do begin to notice some common threads between factions – Space France will always race into a tech lead, Space America will have three massive cities, Space Russia will make godawful decisions, but it’s nothing intrinsic to their bonuses. Jim: I realised at some point that they’d found my notebooks from when I was 12 and pinched the names I wrote on pretend maps.
#BEST CIVILIZATION BEYOND EARTH BACKGROUNDS FREE#
You’ve got Space France, Space Russia, Space China, all with indistinguishable minor bonuses to their gameplay like “10% stronger in combat” or “Gets a free tech every 10 social policies” – bonuses so small that their impact on how a game unfolds is minimal, like Firaxis were terrified of letting the player have any fun with their faction. Hentzau: The factions are just so underwhelmingly generic. We’ve already referred to it off-hand a few times but it’s bizarre how little effort has been put into fleshing out this world. Jim: And some of that is true, certainly. I came to the conclusion after two playthroughs that the game was too limited to allow for really different playstyles, and that the differences between the factions were superficial at best.
That implies there’s going to be more, which is interesting because I’ve burned out on it after just twenty. And yet, I’ve actually enjoyed these first thirty hours, there’s a decent game below the blank, botoxed facade So really I should find myself despising this. Jim: Yeah I found Colonization boring and I hated Civ 5 because…I’m still not really sure why but it is really deep-seated at this point. And I hatedthat version of Colonization, so I’m not often inclined to be kind to it. Hentzau: Oh, I’d argue that actually went further in distinguishing itself from Civ IV. Jim: It’s very similar to the Civ 4: Colonization experience, really. Probably 60, 70% of Beyond Earth is you doing the exact same things you did in Civilization V, except with a palette swap. It’s six hundred years in the future, but you’re still building farms, sending out explorers to find goody huts and generating culture to buy social policies. Beyond Earth boasts several features to distinguish it from its parent franchise, but nearly all of them are half-baked or just flat-out inconsequential. Hentzau: Yes, that’s rather sad, isn’t it. You touch down, have a look around and realise you’ve accidentally landed in a game of Civ 5. Jim: Well I mean the blurb is you and your fine faction being sent into deepest space to make Earth 2.0. Hentzau: Jim, why not quickly sum up what Beyond Earth is about. But now I shall be…the only man…BEYOND IT Jim: I am the only man on Earth to hold that title, according to my Steam Friends list. Jim liked Endless Legend, so you’re getting both sides of the coin here. Given my recent tendency to randomly dislike 4xes for almost entirely subjective reasons, I have dragooned Jim into writing this review with me. What surprises me, however - and especially so for a Firaxis title - is that even if you take SMAC out of the equation, even when you compare Beyond Earth to the modern Civilization franchise that spawned it, I think it fundamentally still isn’t a very good game.
Beyond Earth was never going to live up to Alpha Centauri’s better qualities, both real and imagined, and I’ve tried to take this into account when playing the thing Beyond Earth should be judged on its own merits, not the nostalgia-fuelled remembrance of a sixteen year-old predecessor. It’s doomed because no matter how good Firaxis made this game, by setting it around the colonisation of an alien world it draws inevitable comparison with one of Firaxis’ very first products: Alpha Centauri, a game that’s rightfully regarded as one of the genre’s absolute classics. Beyond Earth is a doomed-from-the-start attempt to shift the familiar Civilization empire-building action into the future.
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