Overly Chatty Penguins

The Ready Room => Off Topic => Topic started by: scooter-blue on December 15, 2004, 10:11:59 PM

Title: Alpha Centauri
Post by: scooter-blue on December 15, 2004, 10:11:59 PM

I was going to add this as a reply to the warzone thread, but then decided that Alpha Centauri definitely deserves its own thread :D

Alpha Centauri is my second favorite game of all time, right after Starcraft.  God I love that game.  Nwabudike Morgan (or however you spell it) the laissez faire capitalist was my favorite character.  It was so great getting a maxed out economic rating and getting huge energy bonuses in all your cities.  I would actually outright purchase great projects using my huge energy banks.  Damn, I really need to look around and find those CDs for it.

Alien Crossfire the expansion pack was mediocre though.  It's definitely worth it if you can find it now, and I wouldn't complain except that I actually dropped $50 on it when it was new, and it required the original game.  The alien factions were very cool, because they were eternally at war and totally changed the gameplay by forcing everyone to pick a side.  But other than the aliens, the new characters were either too similar to existing ones or just generally lame.  The cyborg was really similar to Zakharov the academic, and the religion of Planet boy was similar to Lady Gaia.  The pirate and the hacker were just lame characters.  The aliens created interesting gameplay, but they were way too annoying to listen to.  I realize they all added variety and had their own gameplay niches, especially the pirate, who started off in the water, but there was so much strategy variety already with the different governments and budget management.  What was just as important if not more so to me is that the characters have a unique identity and seemed like real personalities with real motivations, which all the original characters did, but in the expansion pretty much just the religion of Planet boy did.  

The original characters were fleshed out extremely well, like how they gave quotes from essays they had written.  There were quotes from Morgan's The Ethics of Greed and Sister Miriam Goodwinson's But for the Grace of God, among others.  When I played I usually included either all seven of the original characters or give of them plus the two new alien factions.

I realize that the games are very long, which makes multiplayer games generally impractical, and to be honest I'm not even sure I would want to, but does anybody have any interest in possibly playing one?  My final exams are this coming week, and then I'm on Winter break.

Title: Alpha Centauri
Post by: CorvusX on December 15, 2004, 10:14:38 PM

If I should so find it for very cheap, I might be up for wasting my life away on hours of gaming.  Hell, I'd do it anyway.

You're just gonna have to go easy on me... or teach me how to play.  Meh :)

Title: Alpha Centauri
Post by: X-S-Z on December 15, 2004, 10:23:07 PM

I really should dig AC back up out of my closet. I loved playing as the spartan federation, but never really took the time to play other factions.  :(

Title: Alpha Centauri
Post by: SwiftSpear on December 16, 2004, 12:34:11 AM

ALPHA CENTAURI ROCKS!!!

Sorry, terrible inside joke

Honestly one of the best games I've played, even though I never bothered to get the expansion.

Still for classic turnbased multiplayer, nothing beats MAX.

[edit] I must ammend my post because it must be said.  TBS games were the best thing I have ever expericanced in my life.  Long long ago civilization stole my life and did not let go of its death grip for as long as I can remeber.  Then there was Heros of might and magic 2, a game so devilishly addictive you could quite concevably start playing it and never stop.  Soon after I discovered MAX, Master of Orian 2 and a long lost game by the name of Imperialism.  As things wound down I was breafly hooked hopelessly into Alpha Centauri and the later heroes of might of magic, not to mention the civilization sequals.  Looking at the market now there isn't a single TBS I am even remotely looking forward to.  Where has this wonderful genre gone??? [/edit]

Title: Alpha Centauri
Post by: SgtFury on December 16, 2004, 01:31:36 AM

True alpha centauri is teh best. My favorite used to be the green goddess, getting mind worms taken over rather than attacking you all the time then using them on your opponents was great! Either that or University and sell all my tech to everyone else except the weapons tech :) Sounds like my job now.  :blink:

Title: Alpha Centauri
Post by: Necrosis on December 16, 2004, 12:19:05 PM

No, I'm afraid Hive + Nerve Stapling > you.

Title: Alpha Centauri
Post by: DiscoZombie on December 16, 2004, 12:25:47 PM

anyone remember Master of Magic?  lesser-known civilization-like game, but it reigns as my favorite still... like civilization or alpha centauri, but fantasy-themed, with a hint of warcraft/RTS style economics... spells to research instead of techs... different cities had different races (humans, lizardmen, elves, etc) w/ different units and traits... and there were different schools of magic to specialize in (life, death, nature, chaos, etc)... heroes with special abilities, all units had experience levels... magic nodes to drain magic energy from (like resource nozzles) ;P a mirror world you can also colonize, with different races and stronger magics...

makes me all nostalgic :( but I think I tried getting it to run on my computer and it just ran way too fast, or didn't work at all... and I didn't have the patience to slow it down just right with a moslow type proggie...

my fave thing to do was master all the life spells... which have the most buffs to cast on your units, and also the ability to summon the best hero in the game... to whom I would apply all the best buffs, and send him rampaging, taking down entire armies solo =P

ah well.  hope SOMEONE remembers it... ;P

Title: Alpha Centauri
Post by: SwiftSpear on December 16, 2004, 08:11:42 PM

Quote

anyone remember Master of Magic?  lesser-known civilization-like game, but it reigns as my favorite still... like civilization or alpha centauri, but fantasy-themed, with a hint of warcraft/RTS style economics... spells to research instead of techs... different cities had different races (humans, lizardmen, elves, etc) w/ different units and traits... and there were different schools of magic to specialize in (life, death, nature, chaos, etc)... heroes with special abilities, all units had experience levels... magic nodes to drain magic energy from (like resource nozzles) ;P a mirror world you can also colonize, with different races and stronger magics...

makes me all nostalgic :( but I think I tried getting it to run on my computer and it just ran way too fast, or didn't work at all... and I didn't have the patience to slow it down just right with a moslow type proggie...

my fave thing to do was master all the life spells... which have the most buffs to cast on your units, and also the ability to summon the best hero in the game... to whom I would apply all the best buffs, and send him rampaging, taking down entire armies solo =P

ah well.  hope SOMEONE remembers it... ;P

[snapback]36355[/snapback]

Never played...  although I was going to say that you can get pretty much any old game to work through any one of the high feature dos emulators you can download for free online.  I was playing the original lode runner recently...  You just need to artificially simpulate low processor clockspeeds (since that's what they used to use for timing)

Title: Alpha Centauri
Post by: Zero7 on December 17, 2004, 05:42:03 AM

I remember Master of Magic. And now  I want to go out and play it again. Curse you *rummages through old game box* >_>