Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri™ Planetary Pack

First of all: Runs smoothly on Windows 8! And the greatest News: ON Star you can choose between standard and Alien Crossfire. GOG should really mention that Alien Crossfire is in fact included :) Im really happy with this release :) thx GOG! Finally no tweakin, no third-party-patching to play this awesome game :)

Its an awesome civilization building experience, I could play it again and again. I just finished playing Civ VI and it isn't even close to as good when it comes to the actual game play. Alpha Centauri even lets you custom design units as you see fit! OMG I love that! Custom units! so at any point you can mix and match various degrees of equipment to make units stronger or able to be built faster its all up to you. The diplomacy system seems to function a lot better than many civ games as well, you're more able to make alliances and trade agreements with other countries on the alien world you share! Civ 3 is pretty good too, probably the second best one.

I must admit, this is the very first time that I've played a Sid Meiers game, but alpha centauri truly is a wonderful way to get to know this magnificent series! As a... damn, the best definition for this game should be ''Civ simulator.. but in space'' (which is... true, since it is a CIV game... but like... in space..) which is basically an entire genre that Sid Meiers created. Politics, managerial, strategical 4X, this game offers the entire experience of a managing a civilization but with a sci-fi twist. Gameplay wise, it's a blast: yes, it got a steep learning curve, but once you get it, the game opens up and becomes a thing of wonder and also you'll realized that actually the entire structure of the game is quite simple, really ( at least, that what I felt when I finally understood it). As for the rest, it follows the same pattern as for learning the gameplay, when you finally get it, you'll get how simple but deep the game truly is. Just realized that my review must look pretty... simplistic, but this is just for how I'm sincerely astonished by Sid Meiers Alpha Centuri: amazing design overall, at the same time incredible customization and a political story shaped by your decision. So, it's a big enormous yes! even if you don't like the genre, at least you should try it once in your life as a gamer, as I regret that I waited this long to try this out. A true masterpiece from the past.

The substructure of the universe regresses infinitely towards smaller and smaller components. Behind atoms we find electrons, and behind electrons, quarks. Each layer unraveled reveals new secrets, but also new mysteries. - Academician Prokhor Zakharov It's probably fair to say that this quote is a pretty good representation of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri; a game that's so complex, with so many layers, but at the same time so amazing that uncovering its many mysteries a joy each time. I have probably played this game for tens of thousands of hours over the years, ever since it was released back in '99. This is one of the few games that I always install on all of my PCs. SMAC isn't only one of the best 4X titles of all time, but it's also one of the most unique. It masterfully weaves a narrative, in a genre where this was not commonplace, further augmented by some superb voice acting. It's no surprise that several books were written based on this game. It's also full of charm, lore and some of the most fun and complex mechanics, being in some ways ahead of its time. Faction leaders aren't just some portraits with slight bonuses, but they are fully fleshed out characters with deep personalities that you get to discover a little bit more with each quote when completing a base facility, secret project, or discover a new tech. And the sheer amount of mechanics and features in the game is mind blowing. From a lot of terraforming options (to the point where you can include them in your offensive, by raising or lowering the terrain into the ocean), to a rich unit customization system (in addition to unit types, weapons and armor, there's also a large number of special abilities that can change the gameplay quite a lot), to a pretty complex diplomacy system, and a ton of base facilities, secret projects, and technologies; many of which have not been seen in any Firaxis game since. It's one of the few games that I will always come back to from time to time.

I somehow missed Alpha Centauri in the past, so I was very excited to play it. And it really is a great game, and as a note the GoG version also gives you Alien Crossfire, the expansion. You need to specifically choose that one to launch. However, the game remains quite buggy and it will often hang for no reason. There are unofficial patches available that fix a lot of these bugs and will help modernize the game resolution to widescreen. Some bugs still remain after that, but the forum has been helpful in solving them.