Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth

Despite appearances, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri was never just “Civilization II in space.” It had a number of unique mechanics, plus lore and characters delivered with astonishingly intelligent writing, all of which put it at the top of the 4X genre. Its spiritual successor, Civilization: Beyond Earth, is in a similar relationship with Civilization V, though it only gets as far as the unique mechanics. Specifically, it has a huge emphasis on orbital units, victory conditions that defy simple categorization, and a three-pronged upgrade system that represents your faction’s relationship with technology and alien life. The mechanics that are pulled directly from Civ5 include its best feature: tactical hexagonal combat, including the improvements introduced by expansions, as well as more adept opponent AI. Whether this makes for a worthy successor is debatable; it’s a great game, but it’s not great in the same way as its inspiration.

Beyond Earth continues a worrying pattern for its series. The feature creep has gotten so severe that each new installment has to pick and choose which mechanics to carry over. While this is understandable, the developers seem to assign each component equal significance regardless of how central it feels to the formula. As such, diplomacy has been scaled back once again, and the usefulness of culture as a resource has been weakened. The latter is emblematic of how artistically dry the game is. It has an unusually majestic soundtrack, but its characters, factions, and even tech tree all manage to be incredibly forgettable. It tries to integrate a degree of narrative into the open-ended gameplay, as Alpha Centauri did, but without that game’s impeccable wordcraft, it barely even registers as a feature.