Review: ‘Civilization: Beyond Earth’ Reaches For The Stars And (Mostly) Gets There

There are strategy games, and then there are Civilization games.

While we count on entries in the 23-year-old series to give us plenty of addictive gameplay, we expect something more from them. These are Big Idea games - experiences that compress both time and space to give us a God’s-eye view of the grand tapestry of human endeavor. It’s a heavy mantle to bear, and each Civilization game has met the challenge with different results.

To many strategy buffs, the best of the bunch remains the series’ sci-fi spinoff, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, which released in 1999. Fifteen years later, Firaxis goes back to space with Civilization: Beyond Earth, and it does interesting things with the final frontier. But despite addictive gameplay and an eye trained on the future, this interstellar strategy game occasionally gets stuck in the past.

As in Alpha Centauri, the game begins with your spacecraft landing on a new planet after years in transit from Earth. Your fledgling colony – its members freshly thawed from the cryo-chambers – finds itself surrounded by hostile alien species and a toxic atmospheric gas called “miasma.” Despite the change of setting, the end goal is the same as it ever was: your civilization must become the dominant one on its world, whether through military conquest, scientific and cultural progress, or sheer enlightenment.

The familiar granaries, pyramids, and hoplites of Civilization have been replaced with Cytonurseries, Ectogenesis Pods, and LEV Tanks. Instead of wandering tribes of barbarians, you’ll be attacked by flocks of Wolf Beetles and mighty Siege Worms. Instead of stumbling upon native villages containing secret lore, your explorers might find a crashed satellite or a resource pod sent ahead from Earth.

The sci-fi style is presented well, but is inescapably less intuitive than a historical setting. It’s harder to know the value of “Transcendental Math” compared to, say, “Iron Working.” And some of the production values and extra details feel half-hearted. When you build a wonder, instead of an inspiring mini-movie, you get a lackluster line drawing. Achieve victory, and you get a simple splash screen before being dumped to the main menu. No closing cinematic, no ranking that evaluates your performance. It’s a letdown. (On the other hand, kudos to whoever wrote the witty quotes that accompany each tech upgrade.)

The interface, too, is peppered with glitches, from move orders that don’t ‘take’ to a camera that sometimes won’t stop scrolling across the map. No one annoyance is a game-killer, but cumulatively they sap some pleasure out of the experience. Civilization: Beyond Earth just doesn’t feel as slick as it should for a game created by the top developer of grand-strategy games.

But once you get into the swing of it, Civilization: Beyond Earth can be frightfully addictive, providing the familiar “just…one…more…turn” feeling that’s been drawing gamers past their bedtimes and into bogus sick days for decades. When you’re managing your armies, choosing from among multiple equally-enticing tech upgrade options, and sending your explorer off to round up one more stray pod, the absorption can become so intense as to amount to an out-of-body experience. In this respect, Civilization’s still got it.

The new ‘Affinity’ system is also impressive. Alongside the traditional tech tree, your civilization can advance along one of three Affinities, which are roughly analogous to the different governmental philosophies you could choose in older Civilizations. Focus on Harmony and your units assimilate increasingly to the environment around them – to the point that they’re actually breathing miasma and your cities start to look like insectoid, quasi-organic hives. Go down the Purity route, instead, and you’ll be clomping around in high-tech battle suits. Naturally, colonies with similar Affinities to yours will be friendlier.

Less impressive is the diplomatic gameplay, which doesn’t seem to have changed much since the 1990s. As always, you are from time to time visited by pop-up graphics of various leaders who introduce themselves to you and make demands, but the game does a poor job of conveying context. Out of the blue, a leader might ask you to go to war with some other colony you’ve barely interacted with, and no reason is given. Sometimes they’ll just pop up and say condescending things like “what matters is you are trying your best,” with no explanation of what triggered the remark.

This is fourth-grade schoolyard chatter, not global diplomacy. When you consider the diplomatic gameplay in smaller indie fare such as King of Dragon Pass, it’s a shame so little attention has been focused on this aspect of the Civilization games over the years.

Overall, Beyond Earth is a solid, workmanlike entry in the Civilization series. It’ll scratch the strategy itch, make hours feel like minutes, and alert you to a few Big Ideas along the way. But Firaxis has done - and, I hope, will do - better.

What’s Hot: Addictive ‘just one more turn’ gameplay is intact; Well-rendered sci-fi theme; Clever Affinity system

What’s Not: Clumsy interface; Arbitrary and confusing diplomatic model; Abrupt ending

You can email Gordon Cameron here.