Eventually the Colony, being so far away from London's influence, got restless, rebelled and declared independence. The British in true style moved in and took it over, kicking both the Dutch and the French out of the road in the processes. Back in 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered a rather large lump of land we now know as America. The background to the game is quite straightforward. It is so massive in scope, and so absorbing that, three years on, it's still in the pc charts.Ĭolonization has a lot in common with Civilization, but it shouldn't be thought of simply as Colonization II, because although it adopts a number of the better features from its predecessor, it also breaks some fresh ground. It simulates the growth of a civilisation from its humble beginnings as a wandering tribe to a huge space-faring nation. There are so few games that come instantly to mind in this category: Elite, Lemmings, Sim City, and, of course, the immensely successful Civilization.Ĭreated by the legendary Sid Meier (the brains behind classics like Pirates and Railroad Tycoon), Civilization is a strategy game unlike any other. And finally, there are a few (very few, mind), that are undisputed classics, destined to influence other works for a long time to come: War And Peace, Heart Of Darkness, Dougal And The Blue Cat. There are a few books which, while attaining classic status, can be heavy going unless you're in the right frame of mind: Ulysses, for example, or The Naked Lunch, or in a computer games frame of reference, Harpoon. The obvious computer game counterpart is Doom. Then there are the cult books, that spring up out of nowhere but gain a huge and loyal following, like Jack Kerouac's On The Road. The majority of computer games fall into the Jackie Collins/Harold Robbins class of book: trashy, formulaic, but very popular. Do what? Draw an analogy between computer games and novels, that's what. I know that at least one literary snob is going to write in and chastise me for doing so, but I'm going to do it anyway. Oh and if you are one of those people who haven't seen the original Civilisation, it's worth knowing that this is a "turn-based" game, but it does somehow feel like a "realtime" game. Get the drift? And there there five difficulty levels (from "bloody hard" to "forget about it"), an option for creating random maps and another to make your own. (Which might not go down too well back home. (3) But you've a hidden agenda: once you have established yourself, it might be quite nice instead to cut all bonds with your mother country. (2) Your orders are simple: conquer the New Lands for your mother country in any way you see fit. You start off with a tiny, crappy ship and a budget of 1000 gold pieces. the French, the Dutch or the Spanish (there are subtle differences). (1) You play the part of either the English. ![]() But before the storyboard, just very quickly, here are the main directives of the game. You'll get a bit of information and at the same time a bit of atmosphere (hopefully). what I've done, to avoid boring everyone to death with annotations and graphs, is to devote most of the space on these three pages to a storyboard. (b) If you're not familiar with Civilisation you may be thinking I should have done loads of annotated screen shots to explain what all the icons were for - but it would have made for pretty boring reading, and at the end of the day you still wouldn't have got the "flavour" of the game. All you really need to know is that if you loved Civilisation, you'll love Colonization at least equally as much. although deeper and more complex and with a few extra bits, is still much the same as it was in Civilisation. (a) If you're familiar with Civilisation then you'll already know roughly what to expect here: the game structure in Colonization. This is going to be the shortest, least in-depth review of one of the most complex strategy games around - but I'm keeping things brief and concise for a reason.
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