Jinzor

To all turn-based strategy, 4x lovers (such as myself), I highly recommend this game. It's the best thing out before the release of Sid Meier's: Beyond Earth. Anyone who is wondering what this game is like, I'll give you a brief idea on what it is like by saying that it feels like Civilization V with a few major differences, such as: 1. Random tech trees for each faction - you also discover new technologies after every era you pass through, to give a sense of wonder of the future 2. Unit stacks - infinite number of units per tile; like Civilization IV's stacks of death. The game has actually balanced it so that attacking with stacks is less beneficial; bombardments hurt all units within a stack, flanking (putting units next to each other in separate tiles) gives an attack/defensive bonus. 3. Customisable units - yes, you have a unit workshop and can fit different weapons/bonuses/abilities on them. There are a lot of different chassis to research (e.g. infantry, fast-attack vehicle, tank, watercraft, and more). 4. Planet wildlife - at the beginning of the game, they are not hostile. However, the wildlife can get more and more aggressive if factions fight against them, or produce a lot of pollution. They may then become the equivalant of barbarians, or even worse (if aggressive enough, they can launch a full-scale invasion on humans, threatening everyone. It could prove to be a good tactic, for militaristic players, to annoy the local wildlife so that peaceful players are threatened with annihilation). There are multiple types of wildlife, ranging from practically harmless little xenomorph drones to gigantic aquatic monstrosities. 5. City management - it works something like this; morale (happiness) is local, rather than national. Local morale has an affect on local growth, and local growth depends on whether or not you have enough food stockpiled (food pool is national). Growth is also affected by habitual space; if you don't have enough space, migration to other cities (ones which have more habitual space) will occur. Production requires minerals (also stockpiled nationally). If you run out of minerals, production will be hindered but not stopped completely. Science is gathered normally (1 scientist = +1 science). There are buildings, natural resources and tile improvements which produce percentage increases and/or a small increase in that stat. You can also move your citizen's roles (there are four roles; farmer (food resource collector), miner (mineral resource collector), worker (city producer) and scientist (science producer)) around manually, and they will automatically go to the highest yielding tile. There are other factors as well (such as wars, pollution etc), but that's just the gist of it. 6. Alien invasion - around turn 200 (normal pace), an alien force (size depends on how difficult you set difficulty level/alien aggression level) invades the planet and the world has to rally together to fight them off. It's a nice twist and a breath of fresh air, especially if the local wildlife is almost extinct by that time or if you have been playing a peaceful up until that time. In addition, the game's presentation is very nice (introduction video, graphics, artwork, quote voice overs), soundtrack is great, UI is intuitive and smooth, optimisation is smooth as well; never lags or crashes (runs a lot better than Civilization V). The game is, amazingly, roughly 500MB, so it's a very fast download. What can I say which is bad about the game? Well, currently, the game has more focus on combat than Civilization. The game still needs, in my opinion, to add more content which aligns the player to a more non-combat style of gameplay (e.g. something similar to culture with wonders). There are multiple victory conditions other than conquest, such as economic and research victories, but it'd be nice to have more. There is also no indication of how far ahead you are when compared with your opponents, until the last few turns before your, or your opponent's, imminent victory, warning the player. The good news is that the developers have pledged to add more content to Pandora: First Contact, maybe in the form of expansions, if it proves to be successful. So far I think the game has been successful, hence the Steam release (the game was released months before Steam). For people hoping this to be the next Alpha Centauri, I wouldn't get your hopes too high. The game is good, and it is very similar to AC in some respects, but it's not exactly the same (e.g. no mind worms). Judge it for what it is. I played a lot of AC back in the day, and I thoroughly enjoy this game for what it is. If you're still not convinced, or somewhat unsure whether or not to pay for the full price of £22 or $36, just wait for the eventual sale. I'd definitely call you a madman for not getting it then.

Two points are awarded for major features and one point is awarded for minor features of the game (positive or negative points). Positive Points:

The review I was going to write was going to be longer than 5000 characters, so I am just going to list the positives and negatives of this game. Positives: â

Before I start the review, I would just like to say something. All of these posts, all of these negative reviews which are criticising the game's supposedly use of "spyware" to spy on your computer are complete and utter b******t. I've played this game for almost 5 years already and I have had no side effects from playing this game at all. GameSpy is included in this game to track the record of how long you play and also to advertise things on those billboards ingame. Also, who the hell cares if there is an advertisement for something in the game? (which isn't all the time anyway, only on specific weeks) There is advertisement EVERYWHERE these days. O.K, now on to the review. Battlefield 2142 is, in a way, like Battlefield 2... but only a lot better. It now has 2 gamemodes: Conquest: The classic gamemode for the battlefield series. Each team is given a certain amount of respawns for players (called "tickets") and you have to capture flags across the map (to either spawn in that area or to gain access to certain vehicles which also spawn there). There are even game modes, like "Assault Lines" where a team has one/both teams have capturable main bases (if all the other flags are captured by the other team). Titan: This is the new gamemode featured. Basically, both teams start with a big flying battleship (called a Titan) with AA + Ground cannons, a hanger (which spawns air vehicles) and an infantry pod (capsule) launcher (you get in there and you're launched out like a rocket, you can then guide your way to where you want to go in the air... well, you can't go ANYWHERE when you get launched. You have a certain amount of time until your pod falls to the ground. When your pod crashes to the ground, you either have to catch a ride or run to the destination you wish to go to). Both teams have to try and destroy the opposing team's Titan in order to win the game. They do this by capturing missile silos which automatically launch missiles every 5 minutes against Titans -*Stops*- I could go on forever explaining the gamemode, just search "Titan Tutorial 2142" on Google/YouTube. So with the addition of this new game mode, the game already has more replayability than Battlefield 2. You can play the original Conquest mode + Titan. The concept for the game is great. The idea of a federated European Union fighting against a newly created Pan Asian Coalition (rather than it being just another America (Blue + Better/Organised Equipment) vs Russia (Red + Worst/Unorganised Equipment) gives it an original feeling than most FPSs out there at the moment. Both factions have slight differences, such as the EU mainly use bullets, grey camoflauge, blocky vehicles/equipment + are a bit more traditional while the PAC use plasma bullets (they're not really lasers, they still feel like normal bullets but with just a higher pitched "bang" sound + a blue muzzle flash), black camoflauge, curvy vehicles/equipment + technologically advanced vehicles (such as the hover tank and hover speeder in the Northern Strike maps). You can easily distinguish from which side a player is based on the looks of them. You have the ability to customize what your class should be equipped with which is also better than Battlefield 2 (which gave you a fixed type of equipment and fixed armour type with each class). You also unlock more equipment/weapons as you rank up (there are 41 ranks. There are an extra 3 ranks, but they're for really dedicated/pro players which are ranked high in the global leaderboard). Balancing is also great in this game, ignore what some people have said before about this. There are no jet fighters in this game, just VTOL helicopters (which are actually combination of a jet fighter and a helicopter) which I think is a good thing. In Battlefield 2, any map which gave each side 1 or 2 jets was a complete ****. Experienced pilots would basically kill EVERYONE with their side guns, missiles and bombs. In Battlefield 2142, experienced pilots can be taken down more easily with the improvements in ground AA turrets (EMP rockets + plasma cannons/Titan AA gun which are just big Gatling guns), the AA bazooka (like a Stinger) and other (e.g. the secondary turret for the battlewalkers has smaller gatling guns and EMP rockets). There are many more good things, but the number of characters I've used are almost over the limit, so I'm going to end it. 10/10 - Great game.