![]() ![]() ![]() In some ways, the game has gone so far out of its way to avoid upsetting old hands that it has succeeded in making itself as inaccessible to newcomers as possible, barring coating the packaging in razor blades. This goes a long way to explaining some of the unnecessary complexities of the title, with countless menus of micromanagement making it so hugely user-unfriendly that newcomers will be simply overwhelmed. I missed out on the original Colonization, but have been reliably informed that this is largely a straight conversion with a fresh coat of paint. There's no going out with a whimper here, like in many strategy games, so you'll see the most exciting scenes before the end credits roll.Īll of this sounds great, but I would still urge caution. It's rightly exhilarating the game intelligently creates this perfect storm scenario to lead up to the epic final encounters. Constant requests such as, "Can I have 500 gold for the glory of the nation?" and "I'll take that treasure off your hands for a 50% commission," gradually make you hate the monarch you're supposed to want God to save, and it's a genius mechanism to push you toward the winning conditions: establish independence.Īt the stage when your colony has established enough power to refuse to tidy its bedroom and do its homework, your parent nation will throw all of its military might at you, and the game becomes a bloodbath, no matter how cautiously you played it up until this point. But that's okay because over your shoulder, your King is constantly badgering you like a needy partner in a long-distance relationship. While the indigenous populations seem quite happy to live alongside you, you will gradually begin to take over the lands, convert their people with missionaries and even wipe them out in the name of taking the finite resources for yourself. Of course, this glory comes at the expense of those who already live on the continent. As you sail your boat around the grid, the mysterious new world takes shape, and it's up to you to create your own slice of paradise for the glory of your nation. As such, you start with just a simple boat on a square of blue on a black screen. While Civ deals in everything from the day we arrived on the planet ("and blinking stepped into the sun" - sing along, kids) to the day in the future where we start a space colony, Colonization takes the slightly less ambitious aim of concentrating on the embarrassing part of European history, where several nations decided it'd be fun to take on a new continent and screw over the natives by mining their resources and establishing European identities on foreign soil. While Civilization has gone through several sequels and spin-offs on a variety of platforms, Colonization has gone curiously unloved ? a fact that upsets or relieves many enthusiasts, depending on their trust in Meier's ability to not ruin his cult classic.Ĭolonization is a microcosm of the Civilization experience, but no less involved as a consequence. ![]() Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization is a very similar game, and it's no surprise that this remake is appearing as a total conversion for the latest Civ. Colonization, originally released in 1994 when my PC proudly boasted a hard drive that's 80 times smaller than my current MP3 player, was a strategy release from the desk of Sid Meier, he of Civilization fame. A re-release of a 14-year-old game may not be at the top of most people's "must-haves of 2008" lists, but it was for a fairly vocal minority. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |