Sigma Theory: Global Cold War

组织上决定了， 派你来当新世界的卡密萨玛（的小白鼠 坑爹之处在于， 这表面上这是个谍战游戏， 实际是个嘴炮游戏， 武力型特工出生入死绑回来个出工不出力的俘虏的时候， 智力型特工已经发展了三四个二五仔了， 什么？你说二五仔不长久？ 等外交好感满了科学家甚至可以白给 良好的开局包括： 一个精英智力特工、一个黑客、一个反特、一个嘴炮大师 良好的策略包括： 不要一窝蜂； 中后期不要冒任何险，反特抓捕失败就不要再试了，直接改反制； 不要忙着落井下石，优先去处理排名高的否则后期的黑科技能把你扒得毛都不剩。 智力比武力重要四倍， 这是我对游戏性的最大不满

[h1]A Unique Take on Cold War Espionage[/h1] Sigma Theory is a surprisingly addictive mix of strategy and espionage. It pulls you in fast and keeps you thinking a few steps ahead without ever feeling overwhelming. The main loop is great: hire agents, send them on missions, deal with rival countries, and race for powerful tech. Missions are easy to understand but still tense, and there’s always that moment where things can go very wrong. When plans fall apart, it actually makes the game more interesting instead of frustrating. What I liked most is how alive the world feels. Alliances shift, agents get into trouble, and unexpected events force you to adjust your strategy. Runs play out differently each time, which makes it easy to come back for another try. It’s stylish, unique, and doesn’t drag things out. There are a few rough spots, but nothing major. If you enjoy strategy games with a focus on choices and consequences, Sigma Theory is definitely worth playing. [list] [*]♉For more reviews like this, check out my[b] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/10745643/]curator page[/url][/b]. [/list]

A game that I absolutely adore. If they EVER made this into a boardgame, I'd buy it in an instant. It's got spying, exfiltration, extrajudicial chicanery. It's really tense nearing the end game, when the remaining global powers start powering up the Sigma. Unfortunately, all the game's I have played ended up with nuclear war happening, and THAT'S OKAY! I WILL PLAY AGAIN!

Good fun, It doesn't give you a lot of direction at first, but you'll figure it out. You'll enjoy it if spy/espionage is your fun.

This is a unique game, nothing quite like this in the market. It is basically a board game. You play as a boss of secret organization that tasked you to help your chosen country to win the tech rush, basically whoever earn most point the fastest win while at the same time keeping a doomdays clock as high as possible. The game itself doesn't explain itself well and the tutorial is barebone, the first wall every potential player will find it hard to overcome. But once you get the gist of it the game is very fun to play. A run took about an hour or two. The music blends in well and match with the spy theme. The random chances are there but you can guide it to your favor with preparations. There are no significant bug that I am aware while playing. No multiplayer though, there are not much point in unlocking more agents once you figure out the best agent of the role you want for the country you play. The AI does cheat with an unrealistic pace even if you are doing well. There are no room for roleplay or doing specific challenge (like pacific only or war crime only) because of the RNG which may limited your fun time of the game. There are almost no benefit or significant reward if you are doing well and get ahead of the race, like reaching a research point first or finish the entire research first, the minor trait it gives is minimal and can safely ignored. Still worth a try in my opinion, you should grab this game on sale.

TL;DR. Don't ever buy this game for its $18. If you REALLY want to try it out, you should get it at least 70% off. A scientist in my team decided to indulge in a side project to induce sapience in animals. She came back a few days later having died and uploaded her brain into a dog, which could be sent out as the best agent in the game. Another scientist came to me and demanded she get her performance heroin back. I picked the option to tell her if it's so good with enhancing performance, she should share it with the science team. She went "hell yeah" and ended up overdosing herself and a different scientist to death and instantly researched multi-dimensional gate. I sent a korean hacker to Russia so that her international hacking activities wouldn't trace back to my country. I noticed both russian scientists were bisexual and ordered her to seduce them. So she became permanently stationed in Russia keeping watch on her polycule and deleting arrest warrants in Britain, which in my mind she's doing it while sipping coffee in Star Coffee shops. (Starbucks pulled out of Russia in 2022, fun fact) This sounds incredibly fun! So why am I not recommending this game? This game is shallow as a puddle and wide as a puddle, and the puddle shrinks! In this game, you win by monopolizing the scientists using agents. Agents have 2 numerical stats (Intelligence and Strength), and traits which most gives bonuses to actions and some bypasses checks or hinders. You lose if the other AI finishes Sigma project first, there's too much global instability and nuclear war happens, or your government loses faith in you and pull funding. As the game goes on, countries drop out the Sigma and become inactive on map. I completed 3 games in 7 hours, and I am pretty sure I already did all the interesting strategies in this game. It's the same thing: acquire scientists, and stop other countries from stealing them. There are just two ways you get scientists: you either exfiltrate them out or buy them off through diplomacy. And defending your scientists is trivially easy. "But what about different builds?", you might ask. The countries have different bonuses that are trivially different. Agents? There are only two stats that ranges from 1-8. It can throw me dozens of "unique" agents, but you can only have so much variety. The traits mainly help with exfiltration, which is a series of RNG events you can't really plan for. I don't like exfiltration, which is a problem because it's a major part of the game. The only thing you're doing is you're throwing an agent in that you hope has enough positive traits to get you through. "But what about the world-altering Sigma technologies? Surely they shake things up!" Biggest disappointment, the answer is an emphatic NO. They hype up the impact of these technologies with quotes and character dialogues of them being shocked, but mechanically their impact is really lame. Most of them are just, "more health", or "+1 to a stat". You perfected cloning, so now you have a couple agents that can't die, but you have to be really dumb to get your agents killed. You can access parallel dimension, which gives 1 agent access to gate, which only thing it does is halve exfiltration so it's just not as obnoxious. The vast majority of the dialogue options and scenario text you are required to read to pick the correct option are so cookie cutter that my mind just eventually glazed over them. There are some exceptions, like the stories I laid out to you, but they are the very few exceptions. The characters and agents don't feel like real people because all their dialogues are copy-pasted. The Spouse is so unimportant that it's mind-boggling why it was included. The grave accusation that I will levy against this game is that it is nowhere as interesting as it [i]imagines[/i] itself to be. I'm happy I only paid 6 bucks for this.

Несмотря на довольно простой геймплей, Sigma Theory умеет увлечь. Игра цепляет атмосферой холодной войны, интригами и сложными моральными выборами. Отличный вариант для любителей глобальных шпионских стратегий.

This game is a class study on what NOT TO DO when making a game like this. Step 1: Make recruiting agents an RNG guessing game that results in you being forced to restart a new game over and over unless you don't want that agent or you get lucky and choose the right option. Step 2: Make enemy AI progress in their advancements at a stupidly fast rate that outpaces the player 10 to 1, making winning without rushing to steal a scientist or five within the first two in game weeks impossible. Step 3: Implement a exfiltration system that is COMPLETELY RNG and barely influenced at all by agent skills. And this is how NOT to make a game of this style...