Alone in the Dark Trilogy (PC)

I bought this game ages ago, played it to death and then somehow managed to forget about it for oh… about a year. It was only a couple of days ago when I was at a bit of a loose end that my eyes fell upon the box and I thought I would have a bash for old time’s sake. And how glad am I that I did? This is a great game, one to lose yourself in for hours at a time, and now I realise that I am in very real danger of loosing a lot of sleep over it in the very near future. So, what’s it all about? Most people are well acquainted with the concept of a “god-game” where the gamer is placed in an almost omnipotent position to direct the fate ...  Read the complete review

Sid Meier crosses another milestone in strategy games as easily as I mix my metaphors. Here is your chance to explore, discover, build and conquer in any combination on the pretext that you're divising strategies to protect the future of mankind. Anyone familiar with Civilisation and Civilisation II will be satisfied with the fact that Alpha Centauri is an advanced version in 3-D with increased interaction. For the rest of you, Alpha Centauri is a complex strategy game where you have to direct the growth of your chosen faction. There are 7 factions to chose from: University of Planet, Morgan Industries, Gaia's Stepdaughters, Spartan Federation, ...  Read the complete review

Designed by master game creator Sid Meier (the mind that brought us the seminal 'Civilization' and 'Civilization II', as well as 'Railroad Tycoon' and 'Colonization'), 'Alpha Centauri' is easily one of the greatest turn-based strategy games available for the PC. Gameplay is essentially very similar to the 'Civilization' series, each player takes it in turn to move their units, and steer the development of their settlements in terms of the buildings or military units being constructed, and in terms of the technologies being researched. While this sounds quite dull, it actually becomes highly addictive. As your ...  Read the complete review

Alpha Centuri, for the sake of those who don’t know what that is, it is Civ2’s unofficial sequel, set on the planet of Alpha Centuri. Where you would have hopefully completed the aforementioned game several times and sent many ship loads to. It starts with a mutiny of warring factions that cause the ship to crash land. You take control of one of these factions and stack out your home on this fauna-smothered planet. The entire system is exactly like Civ2. Turn based, isometric grid map, and only a few differences separate the two, hold instead of fortify. If you haven’t played Civ2, well go away and buy it, you’ll thank me for it. On the ...  Read the complete review

Christmas has now been and gone and I now find myself one copy of Alpha Centauri better off. I was intrigued by the large build up printed on the back of the box, thinking that if were even only half as good as it was made to sound then it would win the best strategy game ever! 75 technologies to discover, 60 possible base upgrades and an unbelievable and somewhat ridiculous 32000 possible unit types! In the past I had always been very sceptical of Command and Conquer spin-offs, but I must confess I have not tried any others before. I wasn’t too sure whether I should start now or not, and I even deliberated taking the box back to the shop to get £10 off ...  Read the complete review