Black Box

The Low-End Mac Portable Gaming Page

CIVILIZATION II

If I would have to choose only ONE game to play for the rest of my life, it would be Civilization II. You begin in the year 4000 BC with a tiny settlement. A few millenia later you are a superpower and you can do anything you want, even blow out mountains that obstruct your communication. But only then real trouble begins: there are some other civilizations on this planet, and they can blow out anything that obstructs their progress - and that 'anything' might turn out to be you. The game comes in two flavors: 'classic' Civilization II and Civilization II Gold Multiplayer. The game is basically the same, with backward compatibility (Gold reads savegame files created by Classic). Gold runs significantly slower than Classic. It is noticeable even on my 1400/166. 5300 or 1400/117 users should definitely choose Classic. All you get with the Gold edition are new scenarios and multiplayer option - but the last one looks like a makeshift addendum to justify new release at new price. I must admit neverhteless that I had once a good time with my friend - we went to cinema and played Civ II multiplayer on my Black Box during the screening.

OVERALL RATING: The recommendest 'recommended' in the history of recommending.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: 040 or PowerPC (CivII classic), PowerPC only (CivII Gold), 10 megabytes of free RAM, system 7.5.3, color monitor.

CD-ROM: Not necessary.

SCREEN: Scalable to fit your desired resolution (great!).

SLEEP: Compatible.

KEYBOARD/TRACKPAD: Lack of numeric keypad causes a small trouble when moving units diagonally - you have to issue orders using mouse.

BUGS: The release (1.0) version of Gold Multiplayer is extremely buggy; download a patch to 1.1 from the developer website...

MORE INFO/PURCHASE OPTIONS: ...that is, from MacSoft.


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