Space Colony
by Jack of All Games
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List Price: Category: Video Games See more product details |
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Video Game Reviews of Space Colony
Customer Review: Space Colony
Summary: 5 Stars
This game is great. I only have the demo but I plan to go buy it in just a few minutes.Customer Review: Would give it 0 if I could
Summary: 1 Stars
I purchased this game new 3 weeks ago (not from Amazon)and still haven't been able to play it because it's stuck on "create a user". I have been back and forth w/ tech support, tried all their suggestions and have gotten nowhere. I suggested they refund my money, but they haven't acknowledged that.Customer Review: A nice addition to the sim genre
Summary: 4 Stars
If you're a fan of "god games," Space Colony is a must-have. It's a great combination of building, resource management, defense, and, well, for lack of a better word, let's call it HR. People management. Social experimentation. You'll find other games that are more sophisticated in one of those areas (like The Sims, for the latter category), but overall Space Colony has a great mix. The building options are varied, though some more options for bio-dome decor would be nice and I'd really like to be able to rotate items. Resources include both raw materials and industrial products that have to be created by trained colonists. Threats to the colony's health come in various forms, large and small. Some are easily overcome (such as illness). Others, like the protoraptors, can be more difficult to defeat. Space Colony probably won't appeal to gamers looking for a really challenging military sim, but for my taste there's just enough to worry about in the defense sphere to add interest to the game.The characters are one of the best parts of the game. There are twenty characters to get to know -- most important, the protagonist Venus Jones, who's probably the only truly sane character in the colony. Each character has a unique set of skills and liabilities. Tami, for example, is a social pariah and a drinker, but she can sweep floors like nobody's business. Vasilios has either brain damage or a deep-seated psychological problem that gives him a sort of catatonic, shell-shocked quality, but this character will work like a machine at whatever task you set him to. There's a lot to balance in the social management department, especially when you consider that, as in The Sims, relationships can degenerate over time. In other words, your colonists will fight. They'll shove each other, trash talk, and generally give you a real good reason to send them to the counseling robot for some stress management. Overall, the most wonderful part of the social side of this game is how varied the "talk" is. The colonists speak in English, not gibberish. You can overhear their comments on the decor (add some plants and you'll never hear the end of it), their small talk with each other, and even some longer dialogues during their "time outs" to resolve arguments. A lot of the comments are just plain funny, which really ads to the personality of the characters and the game as a whole.
Space Colony compares very favorably with other sim games I've played. I'd put it up there with Tropico 1 & 2 (also a Gathering title), Pharoah/Cleopatra, Civ III, with elements of The Sims thrown in. Actually, the game it's probably most like is the excruciatingly buggy StarTopia, only with more individuality and more social interaction. And many fewer bugs. In fact, I've been pleasantly surprised by how seemingly bug-free the game is so far, especially since I actually installed it on a machine that's slightly less than the recommended system requirements (P3 450 instead of P3 800).
Overall, this is a great addition to the sim genre, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys sim games.
Customer Review: Wow!
Summary: 5 Stars
What a great, entertaining game. If you like The Sims and you like strategy games, you'll like Space Colony. The voice acting is really good, and the characters are funny even after hours of play. Even the manual is funny (read the character profiles, and the corporation mottos at the top of each section, such as "Blackwater Industries. Principles waste money.") The game is challenging without being overly difficult. And I have only encountered one minor bug (a character disappeared after I clicked on a building she couldn't enter), which was easy to deal with (I restarted that level).One note, it's got some bad language and so I wouldn't give it to young kids. The Teen rating is there for a reason. But if you're a teen or adult, you won't find it offensive. It's a very good game.
Customer Review: One Major Problem
Summary: 4 Stars
Space Colony is a fun, highly addictive combination of resource management and people sim but there is one major problem. Although the manual is well-written and contains a lot of useful information, if you enjoy "roll your own" campaigns you will find yourself pretty much on your own. The manual contains basic information on how to link two maps to form a campaign, but there is no information on how to use the menus in the campaign creation area. This can lead to a fairly high level of frustration.