... and counting. Still I wanted to add my review as well. Why? For one because it is one of the two games that brought me to sign up at gog.com But why do I fully recommend this game? I'm just talking about the second part and I'm trying really hard to leave all nostalgia out it. Okay, if you like round based play the game is intuitive and fun. It is easy to build up your colonies, conduct espionage, design your own ships, recruit infamous star captains, launch webs of intrigue and strategically fight your battles so that none of these things feel like a tedious chore. This is something even modern games lack. There is always some part of the game (mostly annyoing Minigames) that are chores rather than fun gameplay. So, do you like Science-Fiction? Did you watch Star Trek or Star Wars and thought: "Wait a minute, I can do better than this!" With just a tad of imagination you can forge your own Empire. Build an entire fleet of Death Stars and anihilate all Rebels while your favorite mp3 player plays the "Imperal March" in the background. But maybe you are a Cybernetic Nerd and would liked the Borg Hive Mind and assimilate the population telling them "Resitance is futile!" Maybe you wanted to play as the Arachnids or as Space Marines, or win Starship Trooper style - whatever you fancy this game will cater your need. But the brilliant thing is: It is intuitive enough to play, the graphics have aged rather well, some details are still very nice and the controls are user friendly enough not to be in your way of your ascenion and total domination of all known space.
I played Space Colony without HD about a year ago and since I had problems running it on my new PC I just bought this HD version. I just want to talk about the HD version, I agree with most of the others who reviewed the gameplay. I give 4 Stars out of 5 because the High Definition is done nicely but leaves room for minor improvements. 16:9 widescreen (1920x1080) Resolution is supported and on my 27" it looks big enough not to be searching the needle in the haystack. No Binoculars needed. Very good! The Menu, start and loading screens don't use the high resolution though. This isn't really much of problem it just reminds you how old the game is. Black Borders anyone? The worse thing is that the video sequences have also remained small. Some "full screen" scaling would have been nice. Granted they look sharper in small scale, but with the huge black border around them they seem smaller than YouTube Clips. Where is the full screen button? Thankfully you normally don't play such games for the video sequences but it still feels like some minor changes like full screen scaling or resolution switching would have improved the HD feeling a little better. Game play wise - let me just add one thing : The game is fun if you like the personalities of your crew. I just love Stig, the Space Biker so I enjoyed Space Colony. Stig rules!
