Tom's Hardware | Tom's Guide | Tom's Games  

• PC
• PS2
• PS3
• PSP
• Xbox
• X360
• GC
• WII
• DS

• Reviews

Sid Meier s Alpha Centauri (SMAC) is 4X turn-based strategicstrategic computer game developed by Firaxis Games and released first in 1999 for Windows, then in 2000 for Mac in 2001 for Linux. It is a single-player game as well as a multiplayer game.

SMAC was created by Brian Reynolds and Sid Meier who developed the very famous series game Civilization, and actually SMAC is the continuing story of Civilization. The storyline of SMAC is also largely based on the novel of Franck Herbert The Jesus Incident.

But even if SMAC was a successful game and had a large community of fans it did not reach the height of success of the Civilization series. Nevertheless it was also praised by critics for the quality of its storyline and of its graphics (for its time), and was awarded several times as well.

SMAC is the story of an attempt by humans to colonize a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system as the Earth is destroying itself through war, famine and poverty.

The starship Unity is sent to the planet Chiron, which is very similar to Earth, to colonize it.

But the journey to reach the planet is extremely long (about forty years), and the vessel needs to be repaired so a part of the crew is awakened to proceed to fix the malfunction.

However the captain of Unity is killed by an unknown murderer before the end of the repair. The crew panics quickly and those who were still sleeping are awakened.

The captain s assassination provokes fears and suspicion among the crew. That is why seven leaders take up the challenge of leading a faction onto Chiron by using one of the seven colony pods.

The starship crashes on the planet and the supplies spread everywhere. This is the beginning of the game and now your mission is to take control of one of the colony pod and help it to be victorious over the other colonies.

You will have to choose among the seven factions the one you want to play with. There are the Spartan Federation (militaristic), Gaia s stepdaughters (ecological harmony), University of Planet (technocratic fond of knowledge and sciences), Peacekeeping forces (diplomacy and peace), Human Hive (collectivist principles), Lord s believers (fundamentalist), Morgan industries (capitalistic).

You will have to attempt to expand your colony and achieve victory; you can adopt strategies or developed tactics to reach your goals.

For example the scientific discoveries within the game will determine what technologies are available to particular factions which in turn determine what facilities and units you can build at their colony bases.

But you are not necessarily obliged to attack another colony to expand yours. Some parameters for victory are customizable and you can choose a victory based on diplomacy, economic or transcendence.

In addition to the tensions between the human groups on Chiron, your cities could be attacked b the native life of the planet, a kind of semi-sentient fungus that spans the planet.

If you are polluting to much (industries) your installations and cities could be destroyed by this plant, as it reacts as the immune system of Chiron, protecting it from being damaged by humans.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri reviews