This is just my initial impression and may change as I play more. Project Hospital tries to simulate a real hospital and as such is a lot more dreary than the comical approaches in Theme Hospital and Two Point Hospital. Unfortunately the game feels very unfinished, like the early stage of an early access game moreso than a finished release. It does however run decently and has consistent visuals, even though it feels slow because it runs in real time. Right from the get go you're presented with a messy UI that's designed in such a way that you have to drag the mouse all over the screen because all the panels and information you need is spread all over the place and don't open anywhere near where you click. On a large monitor and/or at high resolution this quickly becomes annoying. Construction is very clunky, requires a lot of clicks, and doesn't have shortcut keys like we're used to from other building games. The way to build rooms is unintuitive and illogical at best, and changing the size of a room requires starting the process over from scratch, and yet there does not appear to be any way to shrink a room or delete it once it's placed. Many items that are required to be placed together are seperate placeables, which means more clicking for no reason. They could just as easily have been one object.
Cultures are slow town-building games with a lot of micromanagement. As is typical of German games, building your town is the main focus and although there is soldiers and combat, it is an insignificant component that is greatly simplified. You do need exuberant amounts of patience to play these as they're even slower than the Settlers games, but they're still more worth your time than anything you can find for your mobile. The GOG version, although the DRM has been removed, has several technical problems that makes it rather frustrating to attempt to play it: - The default volume level is excruciatingly loud and the music volume slider doesn't work - it's way too loud no matter what (even the mute option doesn't work). - Although you can increase the resolution to modern levels (though you're still limited to 8 and 16 bit colours), the setting isn't saved and the game returns to 1024x768 whenever you exit it. - The shortcut keys are wrong - several of them don't correspond with the manual and are set to non-alphanumeric keys, which makes it guesswork to figure out what keys they actually are on, and since they can't be reconfigured makes them unusable for anyone with a Nordic keyboard or any other keyboard layout that uses 3-5 characters per key (because the game uses character input instead of key scan, and doesn't respond to Shift/Alt/Ctrl etc key-combinations). In other words: You cannot use things like the speed control key which makes the game basically unplayable - it's way too slow on normal speed.
I loved SMAC when it came out originally and it remains the one game in the Civ family that I've played the most. Since I've lost my CDs I had to get in on GOG when it finally showed up. Although it technically isn't a Civilization game, it was headed by Sid Meier himself when he disagreed with MicroProse on what direction the Civilization games should go after Civ II. SMAC represents a unique take on the 4X genre with a great story, customizable units, and an overall feel of everything working perfectly the way it should. Unlike the failed and boring approach that is Beyond Earth, SMAC has interesting factions, a fairly belivable tech tree and environment, a planet that reacts to your actions. and it all combines to make an engaging game that truly stands out as being done right. Although it's not really intended that way, AC basically answers the question of what happens after you win the space victory in Civilization. SMAC remains a must-have and must-play for all 4X fans. Even if it doesn't have the many diplomacy and trade layers that were added with Civ 4 and 5, it still has many features (and a lot of charm) that are sorely missed from the "real" Civ games or any of the many clones that have sprouted. It also shows just how well a game can be made when it's done for love of the game, and not for love of money.
