Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22811 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Loki Entertainment Software
• Model: 112222
• Released on: 2000-07-30
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platform: Linux
• Number of items: 1

Manufacturer's Description
Throughout the ages of humanity, the urge to explore new horizons has called upon our deepest instincts. Yet Earth now lies open, its every corner inhabited, every depth known like the lines of your hand. But time and technology have given you the chance the reach out for new, completely unexplored, uninhabited worlds to conquer, far from the bosom of old Mother Earth. It is time for humanity to leave its cradle...

Customer Reviews

As good as star wars or star trek anyday
Alpha centurai is set around 40 years after the regreatable but unpreventable destruction of the planet earth at the end of civilization II when the planets nations joined together to go forth and find another suitable home for the human race somewhere in the centuria planetary system where im guessing they believe is a suitable planet! At the beginning of the game the colonists warey of the 40 year long journy mutinies and the colonists slip up into fractions, ( THIS IS WHERE U COME IN! thats right u the power hungry mogalomaniac gamer! ) much like the origanal civilization game u are the leader of a tribe or fraction of ur choose ( each fraction as its own advantages and dis-advantages ) after ur fraction crash lands ur first city is astablished, the game has alot of the features as the origanal, diplomacy, tactics, weapons of mass destruction that sort of thing, only better this time u have the chance to use research to create ur own war, diplomatic, colonial and special tactics units and to deploy them to ur advantage. Given that the planet u have landed on is alian an pretty desilite u can use terraforming units and tools to change the planet into a lush green new eden. The risk of barbarian attacks is not gone native and aggressive life forms can attack at any time. The games graphics are very impressive compared to it predacesor with realistic terrianial modeling,( real hill and bumps! ) however the planet at the start of the game is quite bland and depressing in colour " but all the more reason to terraform! " The game it self can become quite addictive and u can end up not sleeping intil 5 am believe me ive done it, but the games play does become routen and boring once uve explored it fully so u do tend to forget about it for a while then get an sudden urge to play it again. all in all a great game although it does become a little boring after quite a while!

The only game you will ever need!
"Alpha Centauri" (AC) is simply explained as the sequel to "Civilization". The game who let you lead a small tribe building their first city, to grow into an empire and finally lets you win by sending some thousand settlers into space for colonizing another planet. There is here AC takes beginns. The settlers are divided into 7 groups during the landing where your mission are to lead one of them into reaching some of there goals, surviving one among them...

Install: When I bought this game, it was my first "real" game for the linux platform. I was a bit skeptical since I'm a beginner at linux and don't feel specially comfortable configuring everything, but this was not any problem at all. The Loki installer and update-tool had the game installed, upgraded, and up and running in notime :-)

Audio/video and game control: The planet surface is what you usually see on your screen. It is presented in a "iso-metric" view, where the graphic is, maybe not state-of-the-art, but will do the job. Actually neither the graphic nor the sound are specially good, but for you who have played "Civilization", that is not important for this game. The units and cities are spread across the screen and all is very easy to control with the mouse, or combined with hot-keys which lets you move the units and through the menus more effective.

Gameplay: My God.. This is where these kind of games does it at best. I have not been sitting up all night since the days I played "Civilization". The plot is well though through, and you are soon living inside the game and don't realize it's four o'clock in the morning. Since the development of new technology lets you see new parts of the game, and you lead you troops into battle while you are trying to join forces with other players to reach your goals at a diplomatic level. These goals can only be reach by also building up your industrial back-bone while keeping an eye on your neighbors and your pollution, so the planets mysterious beings not start kicking back at you.

Compared to "Civilization II" the diplomatic part were you talk to the other opponents are working out much better, and also the research part is more realistic since you are not aware of what is coming out of it all the time. It it also more interesting since there is more ways to win the game and to be able to design you own units after your requirements is also a nice touch. The multiplayer-games are an interesting part bonus even though I have not tested it yet. Some will miss the "wonders of the world" and not find the "secret project" you can build interesting enough, but I don't think so.

The bonus-pack "Alien Crossfire" is also a nice thing which is will let me keep on playing this game for years. The game is simply addictive, and Loki have been doing a grate job bringing this game to linux.

On my machine, a PIII-450 128mb ram and 16 mb graphic-card it behaved more than well. And as I told you before there was no problem installing and running it under Red Hat 7.2 and KDE2