Others say...

"To Time Consuming; Annoyingly Long Game Length 12 to 25 hours until finish;"
The artistic renderings some are quite good; it is sometimes better to just watch the movies (secret base project completions); the game length of play is annoyingly long;

But if you play for an hour or so once in a while you can gradually see how it develops over time;

They spent a lot of time making the game; I like it best of all the civilization builder games by Firaxis;

In spite of long game length of time playing; I think it was well done artistically and the game play is quite good;



"Alpha Cenauri"
In 1991, Microprose release Sid Meier's Civilization, a game like no other the world had ever played. It's innovative take on developing technology and advancing a civilization took the world by storm. It won Game of the Year in 1992 (Computer Gaming World) and Best Consumer Entertainment Program in 1991 (Software Publishers Association). This was only the beginning of its success.

850,000 copies later, it has entered game history. Few computer gamers haven't played it, and it's legacy is going strong.

In 1996, Sid Meier, Jeff Briggs, and Brian Reynolds banded together to form Firaxis games (named after a musical piece by Jeff Briggs). Why the sudden break with Microprose? I haven't heard an official story, and I wouldn't dream of promoting rumors . . .

The fact remains that Sid Meiers left, without Civilization. The first release Firaxis had was Sid Meier's Gettysburg. Now, Alpha Centauri is the second release.

This game continues the old tradition of Civilization and Civilization II. You build cities, develop technologies and form strategic pacts, all in the old familiar fashion. But does it do justice to it's presitgious lineage? Drum roll please . . .

Yes.

That is not a resounding yes, but a yes nevertheless. I enjoyed this game immensely. I did tired of it more quickly than it's predecessors, however. I couldn't say whether that has to do with the quality of the game, or if it's just because I've done all this before. Needless to say, I haven't met my goal of winning it every way possible on the hardest level. I'm sure I`ll never meet the goal of winning with every faction.

So what is the game like?

We'll its just like all the others. You don't see the buildings being build on you city display, but you can set up ques of buildings. You can also set three different governers, allowing you to set a governer with the same priorities as technology. Want to go to war? Set all of your governers to Conquest. Want to spread out? Set them to Explore. Want to build? You guessed it. Set them to Build.

In most of the games in the past, I'd rather hammer a nail through my hand than use their governers. Alpha Centauri is the first on the really won me over. The stupid things they do a rare enough to cause less headache than doing all the work myself.

The game looks much like it's predecessors. The graphics are better, but that's to be expected. Game play is essentially the same.

This game has a lot of fun moments. The story line to the plot (it does have a story line), is interesting, if not compellingly presented. Each new achievement give a quote, some of them pretty funny. My favorite is the Recycling Tanks: "It is every citizen's final duty, to go into the tanks . . ." Soylent Green anyone? A close second is the blatantly Microsoft based add with the tag line "Where do you want your node today?"

To get the full impact of this game, win by transcendence. Only in this way, will you see the storyline played out to conclusion.

Bottom line? I liked it. You will too, if your not looking for something different. It doesn't matter how many innovations went into the technology, the game concept was not particularly innovative. I've seen people who loved it and people who got sick of it in ten minutes, because they had played so many hours on it's predecessors. You'll have to decide which kind of person you are.

"Still Works Great In WinXP"
I played this game a LOT when it came out in early 1999. Recently, in March 2007, I've gone back to it. I thought it might be helpful to some people to learn that the game works just fine in Windows XP. At first, I wasted a lot of time trying to get XP to run it in Win98 mode; or to follow complicated instructions translated from the German that I found on the net; or to install the latest patches, including one that Firaxis created specifically for WinXP.

None of that worked for me.

But I found that if you just install the original CD (in my case, I think it's version 1.01j) it works fine. When you start the game, at first you get a black screen with two white rectangles. One assumes that one is hosed when one sees that. And one would be wrong! Just click the left rectangle! It starts the start sequence, and after that everything works perfectly.

This really is a cool game, way ahead of lots of more recent stuff. The sci-fi elements are very well represented. It's very interesting. I recommend playing on the Huge Map of Planet--and expect a long game.

"One of the games that turned me on to turn based strategy"
This is a classic. I loved this game, and spent hour after hour playing it. As noted in many of the other reviews, I fell into the state of "just one more turn" - often to the neglect of eating, drinking or sleep. But hey, who needs that? I have missed this game quite a bit, as I have never been able to get it to work with the XP patch, or to run in '98 mode. I too hope this will get a second look by Sid Meier, and get revamped for XP/Vista. Certainly a game that still receives such high marks should be given another life.

"I didn;t get the item"
I didn't get the item I purchased. The retailer said the item was lost, or stolen while being shipped. Fortunately, I have full refund.

 

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  Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

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What our customer's say!

"Civilization goes Asimov goes FUSION!", Let us first dispense with the tedious details that pull this game down from perfection: The AI can be erratic at times, and faction leader personalities are not always followed. It is a surreal experience to hear Lady Deirdre of the Gaians boast that she now has access to Planet Buster missiles, or to try, and fail, to persuade Pravin Lal into a peaceful cessation of hostilities. Planet, while a characterful actor in its own right, can occasionally become tedious, and one wonders why it would feel the need to attack a faction that has, over the cause of the game, produced exactly zero points of ecological damage, and which relies exclusively on hybrid Chiron/Terran forests for resources, using mind worms in numbers far greater than my own. The game also tends to grow repetitive, rewarding only the player on a full-scale war heading or the one walling him- or herself onto an island, there to spend all his or her time researching rare and rewarding technologies and building bigger, better bases. There are also not enough automation options for Former units, thus disallowing a player, such as myself, who solely contructs forests, from automating it, instead forcing us to manually input each and every order. "Move here - remove fungus - flatten terrain - plant forest - build road - construct sensor array/bunker/what have you" is not the ideal way to spend an entertaining afternoon. The game also has an astonishingly punishing learning curve, leading this player to discount the game as boring for a full year before discovering how engrossing it actually is.

Let us then move over onto the positive qualities which Alpha Centauri, does, indeed, possess - the most obvious being the addictive quality inherent in the concept. The game induces that condition colloquially reknowned as "Just One More Turn Syndrome", where, upon giving oneself the eponymous admonishment, one tends to spend the entire evening and night playing instead. And, of course, upon recognizing this, one inevitably thinks "This is it. I will turn this computer off now... just after I finish this one turn" - and discovers that it is now 10 o'clock in the morning, and you have missed classes or work today. The game also features very deep and rewarding gameplay - having owned it for several years, this player still occasionally experiences new discoveries. Faction diplomacy offers more options than you will ever use, and all you will ever desire, if only the other players would accept your offers. Factions are well-designed and realistically portrayed for the most part, ignoring the contrivance of seven markedly distinct and dissimilar philosophies amongst the seven most influential individuals aboard the UNS Unity as being under artistic license. The backstory inbetween the game's release date and Planetfall is incredibly detailed, if difficult to track down, most of the in-game references being mere clues.

This, in turn, brings us to the subject of one of the primary virtues of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - the quotes. The game is figuratively speaking jam-packed with small blurbs, whether quoted from an actual, historical source, a fictional historical source or one of the faction leaders themselves in one of their numerous books. These are for the most part insightful, often thought-provoking and always appropriate to the technology, base facility or secret project in question, from the silly-sounding but forebodingly double-edged limerick and snippet of nursery rhyme used to introduce the "Cyborg Factory" or the "Dream Twister" Secret Projects, respectively, to the profound and inspiring pieces of rhetoric introducing the "Human Genome Project". However, one of the best aspects of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is the way it takes logical and predictable future technological developments, adds some reasonable extrapolated ones, and puts in just a touch of mysticism - sufficient to spice it up a bit, but insufficient to radically alter the vision of the future. Alpha Centauri's finest side was, and remains, its up-to-date actuality and apartisan exploration of the different aspects of human ideology, ambition and aspiration.

A true classic, worth the purchase even to play through it only once and hear all the clips.

"Apha Centauri", I bought this game at a EB store. It was one of the most interesting civ games I have ever played. It had verry good game concpts and I played for hours on end. And that was about 7 to 10 years ago. I still remeber playing it. But then again I like all civ games. It got 4 stars over all. But I only got 3 stars of fun out of it. I finaly got burnt out on it and traded it. And I have nothing but good memories from playing it. Planting forest and reaserching biomorphic fugi. And the wierd mind worms which took the place of barbains. Differnt factions such as chairman yang of the hive and more cool stuff.

"GREAT GAME", The graphics are great for their time, not bad at all even though its old. The gameplay is great: turn based strategy. I have spent way too many hours of my life playing this game! On top of that, it is really cheap here on amazon. I lost my first copy, so I bought another one, that is how much I like this game. Similar to other Sid Meier strategy games like civilization.

"Still the best, after all these years", This is still he best Civilization game even though it is not called that. I own all Civs and all expansions and while I like Civ IV immensely, this is the most playable. The factions are truly different. Playing with Gaia, for example, requires completely different strategy. The units can be designed as you wish, a feature that doesn't exist in any other version of Civ. You can create your own "flying laser Bronco" and give it your own name. The victory conditions are all truly reachable. The graphics show a bit of the game's age but are still very acceptable. The production queues are easily manageable and the AI for production control is easily controlled making it the best version to manage large civilizations and not having to worry about little details and focus on the game itself.

"One of the best turn based strategy games", This is a classic game. It is one of the definitive best turn based strategy games ever created.

Alpha Centauri is a Sid Meier game, although it was designed by Brian Reynolds. It takes a lot of what Civilization had at the time (like Civ3 or 2 was the last Civ game to come out before this) and added much more depth to the game world. Just the details like videos and quotes for technology advances. You could create your own units, so I had crazy stuff like troop transports that can make orbital insertions, or insanely expensive aircraft which can ignore all base defenses. I even upgraded the supply crawlers to move faster and be better than relying on terraformers to make a base more profitable.

The best thing this has over Civ is that it takes place after Civilization, in the future. So you are actually discovering new units and technologies instead of the same old, same old: start with cavemen, move to the Castle age, Industrial, and finally Modern age. Theres none of that nonsense. Its science fiction and even has a storyline which unfolds as the game progresses.




 
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Read this reviews before You buy...

"Lasted a long time", Alpha Centauri is perhaps one of the best strategy games ever. I really like the way you can change your environment with the formers. I usually create rover formers and run with those. They're the same as rovers only can move 2 squares instead of the usual one so you do more faster!@!@

I start at the edge of my continent and continuously raise terrain adding new area that I can plant colony pods on. Simple by today's standards, but I just can't stop playing it!!

"Exciting and Engaging", A friend let me borrow a demo cd with this game on it when I was thirteen. For two years I was addicted to this game until I got a new computer and no longer had the demo. Unfortunately I was only playing the demo so did not get to play all of the characters or go the whole game through so finally, at age nineteen, I stumbled upon the game here on Amazon and must say that the full version is double the excitement of the demo. It has a few new characters and a few missing ones from the demo. Two of my favorite factions "the progenitors" and "the nautilus" were cut out of the full version of the game that I have so I was dissapointed there but otherwise this is a very engaging game that I reccomend to anyone interested in colonizing their own new world and fighting for it against other very unique and objective driven factions with their own different personalities.

"If like Sci-Fi games or Civilization games, then you'll LOVE this game!", I don't really know where to begin, but perhaps a good place to start would be to discuss the in-depth story this game has. There is a SERIES of books based off of this game! Sid Meier's as a company in my opinion did not do enough to hype this game, because this game is SO MUCH BETTER than civilization!!! It's like civilization of the future! They should take this game and ADD IT to the Civilization as a future technology expansion, like have different planets you could zoom into and run. Isn't that really the next step for civilization anyways? MARS! ALPHA CENTAURI! THE MOON! Ect. lol There are a few things you have to get used to in this game, like for example, you can CUSTOMIZE yor units with different armor, weapons, ect. and they build fast/slower depending on how much they cost ect. So you see how it can get a little tricky, but you can leave everything standard if you want. Like I said this game has TONS of depth and in my opinion is BETTER than Civilzation 4 (which I have and am not happy with) Civ 4 is too much hype and not enough game play. It's fun, but Alpha Centauri just DOES IT BETTER. This game draws you in and keeps you telling yourself, 'Just one more turn'. Until 8 hours have gone by and you're thinking to yourself, 'Just ONE MORE turn.' lol I don't know what else to say about this game except I'm hoping to acquire the expansion pack and I hope that Sid Meier's gets a clue and makes a 2nd version of this game.

"It still holds up", I still play this game even today, in the era of games like Civilization IV and Age of Empires III, and other strategy games that require two NASA supercomputers and the blood of a virgin to run properly. That is the test of a truly great game folks, that even years after you got it, it's STILL installed on your computer, or rather that every new computer you get has this game on it.

"Simply The Best",
All the five star reviews (which of course are the majority) are exactly correct. This game has made its way onto three of my computers over the years, and it will no doubt be installed on my future computer. If it ever stops working on modern operating systems (no problems with XP) than I shall keep my current rig (P3 800 PCI Geforce2...) so I can always play this game, along with the other best PC games ever: Thief 1&2, System Shock 1&2, Deus Ex and Baldur's Gate 2.

I wish Brian Reynolds would sell one of his kids to get the A.C. copyright and remake this gem.....

Chuck

 
 
 

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