Added: 09.06.2015 18:17 | 11 views | 0 comments


Master of Orion, the award-winning and critically acclaimed strategy game, has returned. The iconic 4X strategy gameplay of Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate that formed the blueprint for a whole generation has been resurrected and upgraded. Stunningly enhanced for a new line of players, Master of Orion inherits and redefines its core elements, providing a graphically beautiful and deeply rewarding experience. Master of Orion is the birth of a new era of strategy gameplay featuring the latest multi-platform technology and graphical systems. Within the depths of vast and volatile worlds, will you take up the challenge and “Conquer the Stars”? Lead one of 10 playable races in your bid for galactic domination, each with several unique advisors, racial advantages, technologies and specialized ship designs. Will you choose the fearsome Alkari warriors, savvy Gnolam traders, the sentient Meklon robots, or a race closer to home: humans? Colonize planets; grow your army; befriend nations or battle them. With Master of Orion’s massive galaxies ranging from 20 solar systems to over 100 with unique stars, new and untamed worlds are all waiting to be seized in your fight for supremacy. Will you crush worlds; manipulate leaders; horde resources; all of the above? With nearly 100 unique technologies and over two dozen types of structures to aid in your galactic conquests, the choice is yours.

Added: 06.06.2015 19:06 | 11 views | 0 comments


In Colonies Online players find themselves far away from home, inhabiting a cluster of alien planets where they must gather resources to build a colony and survive in this harsh environment. In a persistent online game world with no restrictions, players must work with or against other players to build anything from trade outposts to full-scale cities with the intuitive construction system. By crafting weapons and armor to aid in a quest of survival and domination, players battle aliens and other colonists with a non-target combat system. Colonists can also improve their character with new abilities and team up with other players to further enhance a colony.

Added: 31.05.2015 23:16 | 11 views | 0 comments


Freshman Senator Andrew Del Rio wastes no time turning Biko into an anti-Chief campaign, but news from the Outer Colonies tells a very different story. With the truth about the Spartan program hanging in the balance, how far will ONI go to bury it?.

Added: 21.05.2015 8:17 | 45 views | 0 comments


Sometimes, you go back to your backlog and think, "yea, I should really play this". And other times, you realize why you skipped it in the first place. Jason from PlayerEssence goes into his backlog, and regrets it! Enjoy!

Added: 18.05.2015 13:00 | 24 views | 0 comments

Video games have offered us some compelling visions of the future of human habitation. Some seem idyllic, like the glistening arcologies of . Where the cost of policies and the fact that only a few policy trees were mutually exclusive often discouraged switching them mid-game, traits are meant to be managed more actively. Like policies, they will come with unique perks and benefits for your civilization, but they will also fuel different kinds of diplomatic interactions. The development team wants to extend your diplomatic dealing beyond war, peace, and trade agreements, and having complementary traits will be a big factor in determining your options with a given leader. What these traits might be, how you manage them, what kind of benefits you'll see, and how they will interact with each other all remain to be seen.

The Rising Tide will also herald the arrival of four new factions; the only leader announced thus far is Arshia Kishk, head of the Al Falah (pictured at right). As Beyond Earth's story tells it, the Middle East was mostly depopulated after The Great Mistake. In the years that followed, a tenacious group of resilient survivors held on and refused to desert their homeland. When they finally managed to fund a spaceship send forth colonists, it wasn't the cryogenic variety that most other civilizations sent. It was a generation ship, meaning that those who boarded it knew they would never see their destination, and those who touch down at the end of the journey have never set foot on a planet before. The three other factions will apparently have similarly fraught origin stories, and each one of them will bring disruptive new strategies into play.

There are a few other changes that The Rising Tide is bringing to Beyond Earth, though details on them are fairly scant at this point. In order to further enrich and incentivize the exploration processes, you will now be able to find artifacts through resource pods, expeditions, and other means. Whether it's alien in origin or a relic from Old Earth, each artifact will have its own story and its own possibilities. You could keep it as is or combine it into a set, provided you find the others needed, and the rewards might include new perks or new buildings.

Along with the new units developed to accomodate aquatic and amphibious gameplay will be new hybrid units that require a blend of different affinity levels to unlock. Spreading your affinity points around may keep you from unlocking the highest level perks and units until very late in the game, but if these new hybrids are powerful in the mid-game, perhaps it'll be a more viable strategy to play the field. And finally, two new biomes are on their way, including the primordial world pictured above. With so much volcanic activity, I asked McDonough if the environment was going to pose a threat beyond that of native aliens and miasma clouds. He said only that they are "in the process of making each biome more unique, and will share more soon."

There are certainly more questions to be resolved, but even what's been shared so far seems to portend a serious shift in the Beyond Earth landscape. In a panel during the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco this year, McDonough and the other Co-Lead Designer, Will Miller, lamented that they hadn't been bolder in their divergence from the core Civilization formula. The oceanic gameplay of The Rising Tide holds the promise of radically changing the way Beyond Earth plays when it is released in fall of this year, and hopefully we'll get a clearer sense of how it all works in a few weeks at E3.