Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri™ Planetary Pack

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.

It's a little strange how ahead of its time Alpha Centauri was. This is a 4X game with climate change, rising sea levels, terrain deformation, and a unit designer where you create your own units based on the technology you have unlocked. Get used to the graphics and UI and there is a cutting edge game here that will satisfy long time 4X fans. Its mechanics are perfectly balanced; there is enough complexity for a lot of weird sandbox approaches to work, but it's not so complicated that you get overwhelmed. What really makes this game stand out though is the setting and narrative and how this is connected with the gameplay. The setting of Alpha Centauri is what makes this A LOT more than just Civilization in space. The asset (and problem) of Civilization is that it tells a story we're vaguely familiar with; history as constant progress and struggle, fire -> wheel -> nuclear bomb. It doesn't really have a story of it's own. How can there be any kind of depth to a story where Caesar is fighting Napoleon with nukes? But Alpha Centauri's story is free from our expectations. There are seven factions, each with their own ideologies and approaches, with seven leaders, each with their own character traits and agenda's. They are very well written and they all have nuance and depth. We truly don't know how the future will turn out. Flavour text for buildings and research sketch a deep, philosophical world. There is a real story here that is meshed incredibly well with gameplay. Like other classics such as Morrowind and Deus Ex, Alpha Centauri proves how vital setting and narrative is to making a classic. If you like strategy, 4X, or even just good science fiction, you will enjoy this game a lot.

Sid Meier has outdone himself. This game, I would argue, is a work of art. Though the graphics have not aged that well, the gameplay is still intact enough to for great replay value. The level of customization is beyond what most modern games do. The story, although meager, is plenty enough to keep you engaged, but does not overwhelm you with detail. Take my last playthrough; I started as the University faction, but ended up doing more conquest than actual research. I had enough planet busters to stand as a lone superpower. In the end, I swindled my way to becoming the supreme leader though conquest, manipulation, bribes, and, oh yes, research. Machiavelli would be proud. Have fun Earthlings

More in-depth options and controls than current civilization games, interesting plot and factions, and can consume hours of your life. I once made a world where I had an entire continent to myself. I then sent out saboteurs to frame other factions for attacks. I then funded a world war where everyone was fighting everyone else but I was still allies with everyone. they didn't like me being allies with their enemies, but never went against me because I gave them loans to fund their war. I bankrupted all the factions with loan debt and I never had to put any of my funding into military. I've never been able to do that again.

SMAC/SMAC works on Win 7, x64, Intel Gen1-I7 @ 3.3ghz with nVidia GTX570. All videos and in-game functionality works great, and I was VERY worried about that pre-purchase! I've NOT found a problem in-game that I experienced with my previous versions of this game. However, this game doesn't play nice towards external applications. 1> Don't bother hitting ALT-TAB, CTRL-ESC, or WIN-anything. The keys are bound to work in-game only and somehow forces Windows/Explorer to "forget" these exist while the game is running. I'm running on a quad-monitor system, but even with that monitor count, as the second point is going to mention, normal tasks of swapping windows (Alt-Tab), opening new applications (Win-R), and general navigation of your computer via keyboard becomes a pain. 2> SMAC launches to be full screen on whatever you designate as your "primary monitor" and is also run as "Always On Top". So ANY applications you have will appear UNDER the SMAC window. So if you do manage to launch an application, and if that application happens to start on your primary monitor, you CAN'T get to the application. ALT-SPACE is disabled, so you can't use the usual trick to move windows around with the usual key presses. 3> This game has sucked my time up from doing anything else productive on my computer. Two of my four monitors probably feel useless as one just tells me the time, and the other is holding all my desktop icons. ;)