Sid Meier's Starships Review - Touch the Sky
- Thread starter Encaen
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I was really disappointed with starships, a collection of boring missions and boring combat, with everything else being mediocre at best. It is maybe good enough for an mobile game , but even then you can find better and more compeling games there. Deffinetly one of the wors games released under the name of Sid Meier that i played.
Have to say I've had a lot of fun with Starships. It's not Civ but then I really don't think it's trying to be. Ace Patrol with spaceships. Dual Command is a totally broken Wonder though as once you have it any fight becomes a complete cakewalk no matter the difficulty level, particularly if paired with Hyperlaunch
I was really disappointed with Beyond Earth, so I can't see myself getting Starships. Seems like if they had paid attention to just minor touches in Civ:BE, like:
1. actually using the faction leaders' voice actors to read their tech quotes rather than the god-awful narrator they went with,
2. giving the leaders distinct personalities in dialogue and quotes,
3. having different victories and affinities actually tell a different story throughout the whole game,
4. Not making all the terrain in a single map the same color,
then Starships might have worth considering. Instead, it's like, "Hey, do you own a tablet? No? Well, too bad! Here's a mini-game set in the same boring, lifeless universe as the Civ game you just bought, which only made you want to reinstall Alpha Centauri!" So no thanks. It also leaves a bad taste in my mouth that Civ:BE is so barebones while this thing got developed simultaneously. What if they'd spent those man-hours and money on polishing up BE?
1. actually using the faction leaders' voice actors to read their tech quotes rather than the god-awful narrator they went with,
2. giving the leaders distinct personalities in dialogue and quotes,
3. having different victories and affinities actually tell a different story throughout the whole game,
4. Not making all the terrain in a single map the same color,
then Starships might have worth considering. Instead, it's like, "Hey, do you own a tablet? No? Well, too bad! Here's a mini-game set in the same boring, lifeless universe as the Civ game you just bought, which only made you want to reinstall Alpha Centauri!" So no thanks. It also leaves a bad taste in my mouth that Civ:BE is so barebones while this thing got developed simultaneously. What if they'd spent those man-hours and money on polishing up BE?
Well, this disagrees with every other review I've seen, which universally say that it offers far less depth than you might expect. It sounds like an OK tablet game, but utter shit on a PC - very lightweight with no strategic or tactical depth, but fun enough for quick games when you're not in a position to sit down at a PC and play a full game of Civ.Encaen said:
I also really don't understand the whole "set in the Beyond Earth universe" thing. There isn't a Beyond Earth universe. That game was set on a single planet; not only is there no space travel, but there no are technologies or events that even start to address space travel in any way. And Beyond Earth didn't really have a story at all, other than "you're on a new planet, try not to die", so it's not like this game can be a logical continuation of the same story or themes. There is simply no connection between the two games and it really makes no sense to pretend there is, especially since Beyond Earth wasn't exactly well received in the first place (I actually quite like it, it's a perfectly competent Civ game at a decent price for a standalone expansion, most of the complaints come down to it not being the second coming rather than there actually being anything particularly wrong with it). Hell, just see Adept Meechanicus above - not interested in Starships specifically because he didn't like an entirely unrelated game, solely because they've pretended it actually is related somehow. That's the exact opposite of how marketing is supposed to work - you try to associate your product with something people liked, not something they couldn't give a shit about.
Every other review says it offers far less depth than you might expect for a full Sid Meier's game.Kahani said:
However, for a tablet game, and a "lite" PC game (price is 1/4 of a full retail new release), it's not bad for a quick pick up and play. I probably wouldn't have given it 4/5, but 3/5 would be reasonable. It's "ok".