The World's Your Oyster (Alone in the Dark Trilogy (PC))

Member Name: Deany

Product:	Alone in the Dark Trilogy (PC)
Date:	04/10/01 (57 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Totally engrossing, Open ended gameplay

Disadvantages: Games can take days to finish

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 of a group of individuals. The father of all god-games is probably Peter Molyneux’s Populous, which appeared well over a decade ago now. In this, the gamer was, quite literally, a god with his own band of devout followers and the power to throw thunderbolts at any unbelievers who happened to get in his way. Since Populous, the god-game went through a number of evolutionary stages and the next great innovator has to be a guy called Sid Meier. He brought the god-game back to a more “human” level – in Railroad Tycoon, for example, the gamer is placed in the role of a manager of a railroad company (sounds dull, but play it for an hour and you’re addicted).

Perhaps Sid Meier’s most famous game is ‘Civilisation’, a truly genre-defining game that charts the rise of human civilisation from being a band of hunter gatherers to the first forays into space exploration. The gamer has total control over his tribe’s progress and is free to wage war, trade, establish new settlements or otherwise shape his civilisation. ‘Alpha Centauri’ can be seen as the sequel to this classic. The basic premise behind the game is that the first shipful of human space colonists to have left Earth at the end of ‘Civilisation’s’ timeline have
now arrived at their new home and it is your job to make them thrive there.

If only it were that easy. You see, your group of colonists is not the only one on the planet. On the long journey from Earth the colonists on board the ship formed a number of factions with different interests (religious, economic, military etc.) and each group is now determined to impose their skewed version of ideological paradise on the virgin planet.

The game itself begins with your group of colonists placed on a map square in the centre of a huge black expanse. The majority of the game is played from an overhead perspective on a checkerboard map and, since you have not explored the planet yet, the map is only revealed as your pieces roam over the black area. To begin with you have no idea if your fledgling colony is on an island or continent nor, perhaps more importantly, if any of your fellow faction leaders have also landed nearby. And so the first aim of the game becomes apparent – to explore and found new settlements as quickly as possible. You never know, that first attack could come at any minute.

Since you are the only player with pieces on view at the beginning of the game it is not immediately apparent that this is a turn-based strategy game. It is only once the pieces of another (computer controlled) player appear on screen (whether friend of foe) that you realise you have to wait your turn and can only make your move once the other player has finished. To those people who have never played a strategy game like this, the idea of having to wait your turn may sound a little off-putting – it hardly corresponds to the pulse quickening thrills that many people expect of a computer game – but after a short while you do not realise you are having to wait (and the waiting time is not really that long anyway). In fact, as the game progresses and you gain control over more and more pieces you are glad of every second’s thinking time
you can get.

As well as exploring, the gamer has to ensure the growth of the bases already established. A base can be placed on most forms of terrain, but some types of terrain are more beneficial than others – an area of grassland is much more suitable for farming and food production than a barren expanse of rock. You may not always have the luxury of choice when placing you bases, but ideally you need to be near grassland for food, the sea for transportation, and hills for mining and placing solar panels on hilltops. Mind you, you can always create terraformer units to improve the land near your base and carry out other improvement tasks like road building.

Once you do meet members of another faction you are suddenly confronted with a new aspect of gameplay – diplomacy. Imagine if you stumble across a solitary base in a prime location belonging to another faction. It is undefended whereas you have control of a number of attack tanks. You could take the base with ease. Do you? If you do, you will spark a war with the faction controlling the base at best. At worst, you will set in motion a series of alliances that will see half the planet suddenly declare war on you and attack you from all sides. Perhaps it would be better to obtain the radio frequency of the other factions’ commanders and engage in a little face-to-face diplomacy first. Butter them up with gifts and offers of help and you can even sign Treaties of Friendship or, better still, engage in a Pact of Brotherhood that will bring trade, military and exploration benefits to both parties.

The existence of the various factions is one of the areas of the game that I think makes it so interesting. Each faction has distinct aims and needs to be dealt with differently. Take the University, for example – if you want to get on their good side you need do nothing more than donate them a few scraps of your hard-earned research data. But try the same trick with the
militaristic Human Hive once you’ve offended them and your ‘insult’ is likely to lead to nothing short of all-out war. With seven different factions all vying for control of the planet you have to be a skilled diplomat to avoid stumbling from one conflict to the next.

And as if that wasn’t enough to worry about, there is Planet itself to contend with. It seems the planet is not too keen on having hoards of humans running all over the place and it reacts by bursting forth with the occasional toxic fungus bloom and sporadically attacking your colonies with mind worm boils.

‘Alpha Centauri’ is an excellent game purely for the seemingly endless outcomes every time you play. In one game you can spend centuries locked in a bond of friendship and trust with one faction, only to find them as your mortal enemies next time round due to a minor border violation. And there is not one set victory condition – you can choose the victory to suit your mood. Feeling particularly bellicose? Then go for all out world domination. Love the smell of money? Try winning an economic victory. Of a more spiritual frame of mind? Why not try and achieve transcendence?

One warning before I finish – this game takes a long time to play. You can quite easily play straight through the night, or spend an entire day glued to the computer monitor. So find a couple of free hours and get into it. It may seem complicated at first, but I swear that within a couple of hours you will be hooked.

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