Galactic Civilizations II: Game of the Year

Special edition covers the dread war between galaxies of this award winning strategy game series / ESRB Rating E10 Everyone 10+
Customer Review: Brilliant turn based game that brings back the good-old-days
I used to really enjoy playing an old (DOS Era) turn based space conquest game called Stellar Conquest III. The best thing about that game was the ability to modify ships to any configuration you liked. You could easily make any sort of ship from massively slow base defender loaded down with weapons, to a scout ship, to freighter, etc. Aside from Alpha Centauri, I'd never found another game that captured that same level of freedom and creativity in designing a fleet. Until Galactic Civilizations I came along, and now its sequel, Galactic Civilizations II, which has taken the design process to a whole new level. I'll admit I'm a micro manager in turn based strategy games. I like tweaking things. I like to make sure everything is optimal. But I know that many people don't like the tediousness of maintaining every little thing. That's where this game excels: you can either customize endlessly, or play using presets that enable you to get right into the game and commanding your empire. The game is versatile enough to please a micro manager or a big picture player. The graphics are adequate. They are not eye-candy, but they are pleasing enough, and like most turn based strategy games, I'm not playing GC II because the visuals knock my socks off. Gameplay is excellent. If you play any of the Civilizations games (the Sid Meirs games like CIV IV, CIV IV WARLORDS), you will feel right at home. Camera controls are intuitive and once learned become seamless. You'll forget what you're doing as you pan around and check out your empire. Overall this is a great game, one that I am enjoying, and one that happily does not include any malicious DRM schemes. It's well worth buying on its own merits, but even more so considering it's makers are not treating me and the rest of the gaming community like a pack of thieves. If you like turn based strategy in a space setting, this is a perfect choice. Highly recommended.
Customer Review: An excellent 4x Space Strategy game
Galactic Civilization 2 is a great example of a 4x ("eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate") space strategy game. Masters of Orion is an old series with a similar feel. If you have played Civilization, GalCiv2 plays very similarly with planets in space as the only buildable area for 'cities', then other anomalies allow for other environment upgrades. GalCiv2 is a very complex game, and does not have much of a tutorial to help new players. The basic concept can be hard to learn initially, but is well worth the investment. For anyone familiar with turn-based strategy, it is not too different from the previously mentioned games, and can be picked up pretty quickly. Internet guides and FAQs will also help teach advanced techniques. There is also extensive help available through their official forums. New content, in the form of two expansions, have greatly lengthened the life of an already excellent game. Stardock shows themselves to be a great company who really work for their customers. I recommend using their Impulse service in conjunction with this game. You should be able to enter the CDKey directly in and download it without needing to put the CD in the drive (I have done this for the Non-Game of the Year edition and the Ultimate Edition). I recommend the Ultimate Edition over the standard, since it includes the two Expansion Packs, but if the price difference is too great the standard version of Galactic Civilization 2 is well worth giving a try.

It was a few weeks ago when a lone nutcase bought a few guns and killed 32 people in one of the worst massacres in U.S. history at Virginia Tech. So far, there have only been a few mumblings here and there that the media is to blame in all of this, most predominately by Dr. Phil. He accuses the videogame industry of being somehow complicit in this one crazed gunman's actions, which is obviously unfounded and ridiculous. But there are always congressmen in office who are otherwise ineffectual in getting anything done to stop guns from getting in the hands of mental patients, who go on tirades against the entertainment community when something like this happens.

Thankfully, most people are waking up and seeing that mental psychosis is responsible for these crazy people's actions, not the latest Rob Zombie horrorfest. The movie studios for the most part capitulated to congress' need for a better system of screening out hard "R" rated movies that are unsuitable to kids under 18 years old. They now force i.d.'s to be shown at all ticket windows to allow teenagers to buy tickets to r-rated movies. Now that another massacre has occurred, they might be encouraged to force even stricter guidelines on r-rated movies.

The Federal Trade Commission regulates video game ratings, and is the watchdog for the movie industry, making sure that r-rated flix are not seen or bought on dvd by kids under 18 years old. The FTC chairman, Deborah Platt Majores states "The latest FTC report shows improvement, but also that the entertainment industry has more work to do." The FTC conducted a research group whereby they sent a variety of children into a retail store to buy r-rated dvds. Eighty-one percent of kids 16 and younger were able to buy R-rated movies in 2003, and that number dropped just 10 percentage points to 71 percent in 2006.

Based on these statistics, and in light of the shootings at Virginia Tech, there is reason to believe that retail video chains like Blockbuster will be in the headlights of watchdog groups like the FTC to make sure movies like "Hostel" and "The Devil's Rejects" do not get into the hands of 12-year-olds.

Hopefully, a massacre like Virginia Tech will never happen again, and R-rated movies should be given the freedom to grow as a genre so movies like "The 300" can be made for the vast movie-going audience's never ending appetite for extreme, well made action.

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