Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Matt Mumma

There are many visions of the future. Most of them are not pretty. Galactic Civilizations2: Dark Avatar is no exception. Well, I mean to say bleak because the game looks pretty cool. In only a year, the next chapter from Dread Lords, this campaign has you cleaning up the mess. By mess I mean the vast number of depleted Civilizations that fought back the Dread Lords from the previous war. Now it is up to you, as Drengin /dren’ jin/, to conquer and enslave them. However, something isn’t quite right with a sect of Drengin known as the Korath. Can you take care of two birds with one stone? Or might this bird be living on a sleeping dragon who shall not appreciate being pelted by your puny existence?

The graphics in this one are still very nice, and with some improvements over the last one. While there is still the same basic interface with a flat map and “fog of war,” there has been a concerted effort to make planets round, smooth, and show activity.

In fact, you can see ships and moons in orbit, and they even take shade when circling around the dark side of the planet. The planets themselves aren’t usually too much to look at from space, but the Stars have nice texture options rather than the bland colored-light bulb look of old. Getting down onto the planet’s surface is still the flat grid with your list of building options on the right. Depending on the planet’s quality, one has limited squares to place these buildings to help the people live and be productive to your Civilization as a whole. Farms, factories, labs, embassies, and the like can be placed any green square on the map with the occasional bonus to a particular discipline. Thank the stars there aren’t zoning laws.

The planetary screen is a bulging cornucopia of information that will assist you in managing the place, or make you insane with numberific glee; whichever is better. On top, there are statistics for food production, approval ratings, income, spending, maintenance costs, and planetary influence. Oh yeah, and population. *twitch* Below the layout, you see information about the highlighted square on the map and bonuses it may provide. There are more numbers pertaining to industry, research, food, morale, and influence yields. *giggle* Last but not least is the Build Queue which shows you what’s currently under production and what items are scheduled next. Yet, with all of that information, there is clean spacing and distribution and a completely legible font.

I rather miss the swirling galaxies and star lines of Ascendancy, but the flat maps are quite functional. You can zoom in and see the details of your starships, or zoom way back for the big picture displayed in colorful symbols. You can tell good planets from bad ones and ships from asteroids from far above the galaxy. At the very bottom you know exactly when a research project is over, how much cash you have, and whether or not that number is increasing or decreasing by its color. There is a sort of power-meter to help you gauge your progress, and a bunch more numbers about how you’re doing.

No, I am not cold, thank you. Is there such a thing as a crooked jacket? Stupid doctors.

The music is still a nice score with lots of soothing melodies and the vocalists are quite good while you wait for the game to load. They keep it minimalist from there. In game there is a nice dramatic harmony in the background, but aside from a few beeps, clicks and the occasional explosion there is not much noise in the game at all. There are no blasts from engines as your fleet cuts the parsecs of space; no cheers of victory, or jeers of failure. However, when there are fleets fighting other fleets – fleet being more than one ship grouped together as a single unit – there is a battle cut scene and every weapon seems to have its own distinct sound, and the wrenching noise of a ship coming apart is very nice. It might have been good to have some more voice acting when interacting with other species, but at least it wasn’t done for the sake of doing it. Sometimes less is more.

The game can still be largely controlled by the mouse alone. These mouse clicks can be done quickly and without fear of accidentally clicking the wrong thing very often. It was very rare that I clicked poorly, and rarer still that it cost me anything serious. Everything is flat and pieced together logically. There are multiple ways to get to many areas so one does not have to worry about lengthy linear process to get to a game function. For example, if I’m looking at a particular planet and I want to build a ship the option is right there in the upper right. Also, if I’m looking at the galaxy as a whole, zoomed out, I can click a planet and go into ship building without first going to the planetary interface. That is, so long as you remembered to build a star port. *wince*

The research tree is fairly simple to navigate, and if you zoom back on that you can see what an exhausting amount of research one can do. But while you are zoomed out you can only see colors and not much about each branch of research. You can find a happy middle-ground and see a good cross-section of the tree and manage to read the individual disciplines, but never too much of it at once. That’s probably in your best interest anyway because there is a boggling number of things one can do research for, and, no, ketchup viscosity is not one of them. So much for realism, but it is a science fiction title. I would have enjoyed some scroll tabs along the bottom and side so I didn’t have to “grab and fling” the screen to move around. Yet it isn’t too large of a hassle to deal with from the main view.

Fear not ye keyboard jockeys, there are shortcut keys too, and a handy little reference guide to boot. So if your mouser skills are a little soft, you can accomplish quite a bit without needing to bother with one. You can play the entire game with just one hand, but why would you want to?

I won’t say why you want to play one handed, but what a game! How is that for a segue? And if you skipped to this part, shame on you. Anyway, this game is a whole lot of fun. I had to be forcibly pried from my laptop to take time to write this review, and I am worried that the game is somehow plotting against me while distracted. Sure there is only so much one can do with AI, but the game is pretty good at what it does.

You start with a home planet and a starter fleet. Early off, you do the resource/break-out to gather resources and your bearings on the map. Order the workers to mine asteroid belts, create habitats on new planets, get the scientists in gear, and so forth. Once you do run into another species there is a pop-up that introduces you to them. You can begin dialogue, but early on you do not get much respect.

There is a whole section of the game dedicated to diplomacy. Xeno-research to start then leads to xeno-communications, new forms of government and economic theory. Simply having the galactic version of the silver tongue isn’t all you need. Diplomacy is the front for two items: military power, and information. More important is the power of information, and what better way to obtain info than espionage. As leader you can divert a portion of your economy into training spies, and then use them to gather intelligence from others you have encountered; friend and foe alike. You may also need them for counter-intelligence to “nullify” spies trying to peek into your backyard. The great thing about the intelligence field is some of the free research you can get. The bad thing is that is can grow very expensive very quickly.

That leads me into the economy model in the game, or “It’s the economy, stupid.” I am no Econ professor and it shows very quickly. Sure I can plant a dozen factories on a planet’s surface and crank out the war machine, but I need bodies to fill the factories. Well ok we’ll build a couple farms and feed them and they will multiply. Oh no! They want to be happy too; bloody peasants. Ok, here have an entertainment center. You think that should cover things, but after coming back from a crusade your approval rating is in the toilet. I am still trying to figure out how to make them happy, productive, little tax-payers, and still make a profit to bloom the flowers of research and war. 

You can be a nasty little tyrant and ignore the masses, but they do have the power to revolt and walk away which will make you a nasty little tyrant that has to wash his/her own dishes. Practice your deficit spending until you’re red in the books, but go too low and you will be forced to balance the sheet. You can adjust taxes, spending, division of spending into the branches of military, social, and research, and it all affects how fast you produce toys like Zero-G Sports Arenas, Warp Drive, and Disruptor Cannons.

It is a constant challenge, and it takes certain types of people to really love that. Sick people like me. However, once you get the hang of things you can really make something good amongst these stars. The curve is not steep, but it does go up a long ways.

The game is never the same twice. Your research needs change, your resources change, your enemies change. Even the campaign has multiple paths so if you blow it you can go on and try to recover some dignity. Because it is turn based there is no frantic clicking and cursing. There is some planning necessary so you don’t waste your turns. With all the multi-tasking involved, that planning can go for naught very quickly so have a notepad and pencil handy or there may be cursing.

Even so, with the options available for races, governments, and galaxy sizes/density you simply will not experience the same game back to back. You can even design your own ships from the ground up. That will keep you engrossed for hours by itself. Use the pre-made templates, and tweak them a bit. I’m not just talking about weapons and armor tweaking. I am saying you can make ships from scratch from several dozen components. You want tubes? We got tubes. Discs? Absolutely. Antennae, compartments, girders, wings, claws… Go as crazy as your imagination and display adapter (and perhaps significant other) can handle. I have!

GalCiv2 is a great game. It’s detailed, well thought out, and planned. It has real science in it. It has real politics in it. It has drama and it has humor. It is a lot of fun and very thought provoking at the same time. You have an opportunity to play a role as the leader of your people. You can be benevolent or tyrannical, giving or greedy, and still win. It might not come out pretty, or even what some others may consider ethical, but it is possible.

It would be that much better if there was a multiplayer option. Games might last for months in a play-by-email format, but I think it would only increase the audience wanting to give this a try. The simple fact that they don’t use DRM on the discs proves that they know they have a good thing going and aren’t going to let the appearance of greed destroy the long-term vision of the franchise.

Gaming Trend Score

90

1. Graphics: 89
2. Audio: 75
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 95
5. Value/Replay: 96
6. OVERALL:90