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Fight For The Top 50 2014 - Civilization: Beyond Earth
Thanks to Steam, 4X games are experiencing a sort of renaissance. Since it’s easy to spend a ridiculous amount of time on strategy titles, picking and playing the right one can be a daunting task.
Civilization: Beyond Earth may not be incredibly ambitious in changing many of the things that make Civilization V a fantastic game, but it certainly nails the strategy-in-space aspect in an easy to understand, hard to master format. While it may not be the sequel to Alpha Centauri, there’s a lot going on in Beyond Earth that makes it a new and interesting dive into the classic Civilization format.
Learn more about the Game Informer Fight For the Top 50 Challenge 2014.
With affinity and the tech web, more choices are possible than ever before in creating a customized colony that can handle the dangerous indigenous alien lifeforms and miasma alongside other colonists. One of my personal favorites in Civilization: Beyond Earth is the Harmony affinity, allowing the player to embrace and even become alien life over the course of a game, fueling the colony with the miasma that punishes humans and creating monstrous alien beasts. Coupled with the fact that a higher Harmony player can send down the wrath of siege worms on opposing colonies, Harmony is a fantastic and interesting way to play.
This highlights one of the big draws of Beyond Earth for me, instead of simply getting a unique unit during a certain age or being pigeonholed into a specific playstyle based on your nation, the affinity system allows for completely different playstyles and approaches toward the traditional divide and conquer or tech and turtle strategies.
Fight for the Top 50
While I certainly don’t think that Civilization: Beyond Earth will have to fight hard to land a spot in our Top 50, as the lone PC editor here sometimes the games I play aren’t on the radar for many of the other editors. Matt Miller is a great pick to take off into space and offer his own take on the sci-fi Civilization title.
Miller was given one day to play Civilization: Beyond Earth. Come back tomorrow to see his impressions at 1 PM CST and find out if it will get his support for Game Informer’s Top 50 Games of the Year.
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