In terms of personality alone, the additions of artifacts and Marvels are a big improvement to the core game. Again, it makes for a great change of pace for a game that had, up until now, grown quite stale.
#Sid meiers civilization beyond earth rising tide review full
Of course Firaxis saw the potential of full on ‘water world’ games where participating sponsors are forced to splash down into the ocean right from the first turn. There are enough advantages and drawbacks to make the play a tough one and that fact alone makes aquatic gameplay a pretty fresh new spin on what you’ll be used to in Beyond Earth. Settling your city on the ocean comes with a nice set of benefits, but it’s hardly a no-brainer decision. It’s not just sunshine and roses out there on the harsh seas though as water cities also come with their own specific drawbacks.Įssentially founded on top of giant inflatable air bags, you can expect aquatic cities to be quite a bit weaker than the usual land-based alternatives and you won’t be able to rely on nearby hills and canyons to shield you from encroaching invaders either.Īquatic cities have the unique ability to move about the water surface too something that’s extremely helpful as it allows you to secure new resources that might appear just out of reach of the usual city limits. Of course you can still perform the standard ranged attacks from water cities too, so if you fancy developing your own Orwellian floating fortress (complete with rocket battery and sonar net), you can certainly have at it!
A staple feature of the inspirational Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, colonies in Rising Tide now have the ability to settle on the surface of the ocean.Ī city founded on water will enjoy a few bonuses that fellow land-based cousins do not, including a significant bonus to naval unit production, culture output and a greater density of nearby improvable resources.
In terms of actual gameplay content, the Rising Tide expansion comes loaded with four major new features that dramatically change the way in which a typical session of Beyond Earth plays out.Īs you might be able to tell from the box art and title, the biggest new inclusion here is that of aquatic gameplay. The animation here is incredibly lifelike, the script is grandiose and overall it does a superb job of reinforcing the game’s science fiction elements and sense of story even if those features tend to be a bit abstracted whilst you’re actually playing. Likewise, the wonderful new soundtrack courtesy of composers Geoff Knorr, Griffin Cohen and Grant Kirkhope is both inspirational and quirky in equal measure and makes for a superbly immersive listening experience when playing the game.Īnd then you have the stunning new opening FMV movie, written by co-designer Will Miller and produced by the fittingly-named Waterproof studios. The once sterile presentation of the vanilla game has undergone a hostile makeover with everything from the UI, tech web, loading screens, and reward popups all receiving new artwork and a fresh lick of paint. Well if nothing else, Rising Tide certainly makes a fantastic first impression. Is it enough to breathe new life into the profoundly conservative affair that was the base game? It seemed that the designers couldn’t capitalize on their lofty vision and they even admitted as much in their GDC 2015 retrospective that was prefaced by the resonating soundbite: “we should have been more audacious.”įast forward a year though and they’re back and once again getting their feet wet with this new expansion for Beyond Earth subtitled: Rising Tide.
The core game itself may not have been a surefire hit like its developers hoped, but the potential for great things was there and it all culminated in what I fondly refer to as a “wonderful mess”.īut following several patches, which merely watered down the proceedings with ‘nerfs’ and botched attempts at improving both wonders and sponsors, a worrying precedent – that Firaxis Games didn’t know what was good for their own product – had begun to set in. Whilst relatively fresh and intriguing during its launch, the cracks in Civilization: Beyond Earth started to show quicker than I expected.
What a difference a hundred hours can make.
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