Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri™ Planetary Pack

Wish modern 4X games had what Alpha Centauri had: governors, unit design, as many economy/government choices, the UN, riots that basically took out a whole city, and as good storied opponents. Apart from not having resources from Civ 3 on-wards, this game still stands up pretty well. Though I think the best resource system was in Beyond Earth, since it had a limited amount of resources that were necessary. I will still bring this up on a WINE virtual desktop window occasionally to play Datajack Roze or the Peacekeepers. Santiago and Morgan were fun to play as well.

This was the one game that almost kept me from ever upgrading my Mac, and I am now spending far too much time playing it again. So fun, and so much variety from one game to the next, and the next, etc. It is amazing that this game is still so playable after all these years. So many other vintage games feel so clunky after playing the new games, but this one is just as good as ever.

Since purchasing this game and putting the hours into it to fully figure it out I can honestly say it is one of the greatest games I have ever played. For fans of the Civilization series this game is a no brainer, but almost any sci-fi fan fan would enjoy it's combination of fascinating discovery, alien landscapes and military conquest. Do yourself a favor and try this awesome game.

So, I just got my PhD, and I'd like to write about how SMAC helped me start on my way. When I got my first computer, SMAC was among the first games I played on it, and I returned to it again and again throughout the years. What I like best are the science quotes, which paint a believable picture of the struggle for survival and for ideological supremacy; they are from varied authors (real world or fictional), from varied points of view, and are presented without partisan framing from the game - one can interpret them, more or less, as they want. At first, I was interested in Yang's daring at "Looking God in the eye", then turned away from the careless brutality, and appreciated the wisdom in Zakharov's description of a scientist; I then added the cynical enjoyment at picturing the Academician's personal residence's bathtub full with retroviral weapons. While by no means comprehensive or even sufficient, the game's window into philosophy kept me interested - both in school and in private - and made learning the stuff in real life _fun_. Add to that the amazing way the AI behaves, pantomiming different personalities, gameplay that feels amazing both when eking out basic survival and when taking over the planet, and you get an amazing game. In my opinion, it is among the best; only Planescape: Torment and Homeworld (original + Quick Historical and Technical Briefing) hold, in my preferences, similar places. The expansion is, gameplay-wise, very fun. But the added quotes are far weaker than those in the original game. I advise playing the original a few times, and trying out the expansion in multiplayer. If you play on Windows, there are some .exe modifications which improve the gameplay, UI and AI (SMAX and Yitzi's patch, at the time of writing). It works on wine quite well, and the Linux binary runs quite well (although crashing with some display compositors, so wine is the way). Oh: my favourite poem is from this game.

The level of predictive programming and legitimate scientific and geopolitical insights in this game are stellar and stunning. The gameplay has always been a top ten for me.