Tuesday, January 16, 2007

GalCiv2, SotS, SEV: a 4X Comparison

A good summation of 4x space games that were released in 2006.

GalCiv2, SotS, SEV: a 4X Comparison
After the fiasco of Master of Orion 3, which certainly didn't do any good for the genre of Space Strategy games (or 4X games), three new titles finally appeared this year: Galactic Civilizations 2 (GalCiv2), Sword of the Stars (SotS), and Space Empires V (SEV). Among these, two are obviously sequels and this ratio can easily be taken as the magic formula which is currently the trend in gaming industry: No more than one third true innovation. The aim of this comparative review is to give anyone interested in such games an insight into what are the weaknesses and strengths of each so that he can vote with his money. However, I think that anyone truly interested in the genre will end up with all three of them, simply because each one is far from being the disappointment MOO3 was.

X-COM: UFO Defense


Recently, I have been playing another old favorite.

There is still plenty of community activity surrounding this game.

The sequels weren't all that hot but the original is still a lot of fun to play.

It does have the annoyance of the random crash to desktop bug.

There have been many attempts to clone it but none have truly succeeded yet.