Space Colony
(Aspyr)
I rather drew a bad lot for my first game review in quite a while. I have to say the entire gist of Space Colony rather intrigued me. It is a combination of a Simulation lifestyle title and an Real Time Strategy title. On paper it probably sounded like a rather clever idea. And it was probably a way of moving people from normal Sims to the hard-edged RTS types games. In practice it's rather less than satisfying.
The story is pretty simple. You run a colony on various planets trying to turn it into a viable settlement that hopefully will eventually attract tourists and make some money. You get to build on the planet, protect your colony and make sure they all are all content. You may either just build in Sandbox mode, the campaign mode or single scenarios. You can also make your own scenarios or download them from the internet.
In practice of course it runs like on a pig on a machine that should run it no problem. The controls are twitchy as hell, one needs to be precise when ordering ones people to go somewhere or else. Building is fine, if you have the money and resources, but the people you control are running in molasses. The RTS bits run quickly, but the people run about as if it were a laid back Sims game with no particular rush. The view angles are rubbish and its almost impossible to see what is going on sometimes. The controls are clunky and things can get out of hand very quickly. Laying simple things like pathways can be a task in itself.
Of course, you have to keep your explorers happy and alive with oxygen, power and food. You need to keep them well rested and attentive at their duties. Assigning them to do various things like making sure things are working. Bizarre you have to keep the bloody explorers entertained as well and one of the first things you are suppose to put down after beds is a bloody dance-floor. A bank-machine is included as well for some reason. In order to keep the proper-RTS gamers happy you can install weaponry to keep the aliens at bay. Of course, anyone with have a brain know that any decent alien would kick these whingeing nitwits into the sun without breaking a sweat. You can be over-run by enemy and you entire lot will be bitching about not have enough entertainment.
Article comments
1 - boru
Sorry you didn't like the game. For anyone out there looking for a community of Space Colony fans, join us at Space Colony Forever
2 - Travis
I love the game. It is a good world and colony builder and a sim game all in one. But on the negative side it realy need some ethonol fuel cells for the androids and have them auto charge up at the bar at 200 ticks. The iridium power cores go dead and they are scrap.