![]() ![]() ![]() Image credit Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth - Published by 2K and developed by Firaxis Games. When combined with lacklustre combat between generic units, meaningless exploration of a bland alien world, and a diplomacy system that has been reduced to swapping passive bonuses, Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth lacks the “just one more turn” aspect of addictive gameplay that the Civilization franchise is infamous for, and as a result has been largely forgotten by the Civilization community, and honestly gaming community as a whole. Please note, while the names and units above are not in the game, I made them up to show an example of how absurd everything sounds in Civilization: Beyond Earth, and many of the units, buildings and technologies have even similar generic sci-fi names and grant even more indecipherable bonuses. While I am sure that researching Nano Thorum Influx Convertors means something, and my Scythe X12 will perform its Demineralization protocols better when under the influence of Firazium, none of these words mean anything. I even expect Gandhi to go nuclear, despite the real world Gandhi being a pacifist due to a long-running joke in the civilization community I know what all these things mean, and as a longtime fan of the franchise, it helps me to understand not only how I compare to others, but what I should do next.Ĭivilization: Beyond Earth, unfortunately, lacks this realism and relies almost entirely on science fiction tropes and techno-babble, resulting in discoveries that sound like they were ripped from a badly written Star Trek fan fiction. When I see a horde of barbarian musket men descending on a small outpost defended by a single swordsman, I know the outcome in the same way, I expect the American civilization to expand and Japan to attempt isolationism before going berserk on its neighbours. When I play a civilization game, progressing through the tech tree and each era means something I understand the importance of discovering horseback riding or irrigation, the world-altering effects of the Industrial Revolution and the discovery of nuclear weapons. Longtime Civilization players felt they were being served a substandard product, and honestly, after playing every title in the series multiple times, I agree with them. While Civilization: Beyond Earth is a decent enough 4X game, it is not a good Civilization game, and in the same way, a customer would feel very disappointed to receive a very decent McDonald’s burger if they had ordered Wagyu steak. What caused this disconnect between critics and players, you may ask? The answer is not that surprising. While certain DLC have scored lower than 59%, this is often very objective, with players voicing their opinion on the price of said DLC, unlike Civilization: Beyond Earth, where most negative reviews have very valid issues with the game itself, issues which for the most part persist until this day. ![]() ![]() Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth is a very difficult game to judge fairly while many critics praised the game and scored it very highly, the Civilization community has never been very fond of it, and even years later, after the Rising Tide DLC raised the overall rating considerably, it remains the lowest rated Civilization game in the history of the franchise, with just 59% of reviews being positive, a number that becomes even more alarming when you consider that the next lowest rated title is Civilization VI with 85% positive reviews and that the rest of the series enjoys a 90% or better positive review score. ![]()
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