Sid Meier's Civilization®: Beyond Earth™

My initial impressions are it has the Civ juice. Not sure what all the complaints are about.

Imagine your favorite soda—the full sugar version specifically. Tastes great? Of course it does! But have you ever seen one of those images showing you just how much sugar is actually in that stuff? It's nauseating, to put it lightly. The drink hasn't changed at all, but now it's less appetizing because you see it for what it is. Yeah, everyone and their mom knew all along that Mug Root Beer was slowly killing you, but that harsh reality was dwarfed by the immediate "hit" of the taste and marketing of the drink. The imagery of shoveling 50 grams of high fructose corn syrup, a glass of water, and "caramel color" (whatever that is) is too visceral to cope with, so we choose to ignore it. [spoiler]Have I ever told you I'm fun at parties?[/spoiler] Civilization V's references to real history merely serve to hide that it's a machine designed in a lab to make the grains of sand fall through the hourglass of your life at record pace. The humor one finds in the leaders, wonders, combat, etc. are all predicated on the fact that they're all grounded in the common vernacular of pop history (a cartoon-ified version, sure). [spoiler]Like, REALLY fun[/spoiler] Beyond Earth eschews that charm because it has no history to build off of. BE is a far-future game, so those historical references that carried Civ V can't be made here. The game feels foreign, not in the good kind of foreign in that you're stepping into a rich, yet-to-be-explored fictional realm full of wonder (see LotR, ASoIaF, Blade Runner) but the bad kind of foreign in that it's like a LLM's outline for a fictional future. Bland, uninspired, and lacking any cultural touchstones to use as a contextual foundation to relate to and build upon. The problem with BE is that it's similar to Civ V, but you're forced to see the reality of what you've been shoveling in your mouth the whole time you were playing Civ V. I used to grind out achievements in V as a pastime and now I can't play [i]any[/i] 4X games because the thought of burning free time on 'em makes me queasy. I contemplated giving BE a sincere thumbs up because it was one of many games that helped me realize I've been wasting my life consuming slop. It made me much more grateful for the games that [i]are[/i] worth my time.

Loved Civ 5 and still play via vox populi mod but can't stand this game. The tutorial in Beyond Earth was never reviewed by someone who wasn't a developer of the game. The developers worked hard to make an in-depth game but after over 100 turns I still have no clue what I'm doing. When the game has no meaning the interest level quickly wanes. If you want a cheap game and like solving riddles of how the game is supposed to work, then play it. For the rest of us who wanted a strategy game that was just enjoyable as Civ, forget it - this one blows.

Epic

Опять жуки

This is a Spiritual Successor to Alpha Centauri and I do enjoy it, but they removed a lot of automation from Formers(Workers) and govenors of the Cities(Which could auto build city structures for you). These are the main 2 things I miss from the original. While I hope for a new one that will bring back these features. I do like this game better then Civilization due to all the new tech and alien/sci-fi twists on the game.

If alpha centauri got drunk and had a baby this would be it

Extremely punitive!