Sid Meiers Civilization: Beyond Earth

It may change in time, as did Civilization V, but the promise of a better future doesn't change the fact that right now, discovering new worlds is a pleasantly tactical, if all too easy...

Alien life-forms: Humans aren't the only species inhabiting far-off planets in Beyond Earth .As such, this is a difficult game to review. It skates a line between remaining true to its roots and injecting interesting new mechanics into the mix, but no...

The initial premise for Beyond Earth is simple albeit serious. Humanity has screwed itself. There's very little explanation but I imagine we all nuked each other or melted the ice caps or something. If my previous Civ games are anything to go by Giant...

Pop culture's obsession with apocalyptic scenarios would have you believe that we take a pretty dim view of Earth's future prospects. It's on TV, it's at the movies, it's in our video games. All of these fictions seem to circle around the same, unspoken...

Beyond Earth is nowhere near the strongest game in the more than 20-year-old Civilization series, but this big collection of interesting experimental ideas definitely still kept me playing long after I should've gone to bed. The Affinities and...

Civilization has always had something to say about this stuff (and civilisation has always had something to say about this stuff) but Beyond Earth goes further than ever, suggesting that even if we do eventually live on Pluto, the distractions will have joined us there, and will probably have multiplied.

It must be an interesting challenge for developers of a series so focused on history to tackle questions of humanity’s future. Obviously both subjects tap into many of the same sources, but where most Civilization games explore who we are, Beyond Earth systemizes who we could be.

Although its foundation in Civ 5 makes it familiar, Beyond Earth is full of interesting surprises that are pleasantly difficult to master.