Anno 2070 Review
By
Kevin VanOrd, Senior Editor
The sci-fi city building of Anno 2070 is a fresh take on a familiar genre. Expect to get hooked, and stay hooked.
The Good
- Involving mix of city building, resource management, and mission completion
- Metagame adds persistence in clever ways
- Great visuals and soundtrack give the game a cool sci-fi style
- Pollution control and underwater islands invigorate the formula.
The Bad
- Online copy protection makes for occasional technical trouble
- Some interface quirks and other foibles can lead to confusion for beginners.
With Anno 2070, a well-regarded series of strategic city builders goes rushing headlong into the future. No longer do you produce spices and dates, or ivory and jade. Such notions seem almost quaint in Anno 2070, where fancy health drinks and microchips are in high demand, and submarines scan for anomalies near underwater islands. The game's appealing futuristic vibe is apparent from the main menu screen, where you view the rotating Earth as if through a satellite feed, scan lines and static occasionally disrupting your view. But the joy goes far beyond the superficial. Anno 2070 is a detailed and daunting game that lures you in with its attractive trappings, and then hooks you with its interwoven social and economic structures. Sandbox urban planning and structured missions are combined effortlessly. It's a one-two punch of game addictiveness: "Slowly expand and improve my growing civilization" and "I'll do just one more quest before I turn in."
That addictiveness is further heightened by Anno 2070's persistent nature, in which a metagame of sorts keeps the rewards coming the more you play. Your main structure is the ark--a floating base from which your helpful AI companion intones advice and updates. You can upgrade the ark with various modules you earn, research, and purchase over time. Modules have a variety of effects: increase transport ships' cargo space, enable offshore windmills, and so forth, and once you find them, you get to keep them. Another metagame feature: when you log in to the game, you and other players might get an opportunity to vote for the faction leader of your choice, in an effort to reap the potential rewards he or she might offer. Note the "log in" part, however. To begin playing--and obviously, to participate in online features like voting--you must be connected to the Internet. You can continue playing a single-player game should you lose your connection, though that could cause you to lose your persistent ark upgrades.
The need to be online to start playing isn't ideal on those uncommon but annoying occasions when Ubisoft's servers shut you out. Whether or not you see the online persistence as a clever "gamification" of the Anno series or a veiled method of justifying stringent digital rights management, however, there's no denying that the city builder underneath is fun and rewarding even without all the metagame embellishments. You begin with your ark, a modest cargo ship, some currency, and the basic necessities for founding your first city. From your little harbor grows a metropolis, new buildings becoming available to you as you meet your population's evolving needs. They might want only fish and tea at first, but give them time, and they'll be whining for communication centers and fancy pasta dishes. And delivering the goods means exploiting the map, setting up trade routes, and sometimes even fending off the rivals who stand in your way.
It seems simple at first: place structures to get a supply of basic building materials flowing into your warehouses, keep everything connected with roads, and so forth. But before long, your list of considerations grows, and you must make crucial decisions on how to expand, what to purchase, and how to transfer the flow of goods. In Anno 2070, you don't need to manually set up transport routes between warehouses; once a resource makes its way into a warehouse, it's available in every warehouse on that island. Don't take that to mean this game feels dumbed down as a result. Once you expand to multiple islands, or even encounter other arks--whether they are controlled by the AI or by other players in online games--you can and should set up automated trade routes using any available vessels. If you're producing a superfluous amount of fish but constantly running low on tea, trading with others or redistributing these items across multiple islands can keep your income flowing.
Speaking of tea, your citizens drink a lot of it, though eventually, their tastes become more refined. But watch out: they might demand health food, which means you must grow both rice and vegetables. And thus you might have a problem on your hands, since the soil may not support those veggies. Or coffee. Or another supply you need. Solving such problems gets your creative juices flowing, for without that health food, you can't attract the next level of citizen. And without those citizens, you aren't getting cooler structures to play with, and your little empire grinds to a premature halt.
Not that everyone likes health food, though the game's Eco faction sure wolfs it down. The Tycoons, other playable faction, aren't so environmentally conscious, preferring champagne to biodrinks. There's an interesting dynamic here representing a very modern conflict: environmentalism versus industry. Depending on your own views, you might see the Ecos as green warriors or voodoo climatologists, but either way, Anno 2070 embraces the relationship between population, food supply, and pollution. The Tycoons aren't as concerned with protecting the ecology as are the Ecos, but both factions must monitor rising levels of environmental contamination, and each possesses a structure to purify the air. But these structures--like those that produce power--must be spaced out properly to maximize their effectiveness.
By
Kevin VanOrd, Senior Editor
Kevin VanOrd is a lifelong RPG lover and violin player. When he isn't busy building PCs and composing symphonies, he watches American Dad reruns with his fat cat, Ollie.
@wavelenth121 I find it hilarious you find my opinion on the game as trolling. I don't find it offensive, I'm a fan of the Anno series but this is blatant political biased. And trust me its not the case as people tend to make it a one sided argument when in reality 30,000 scientists a majority of them climatologist have refuted the evidence of man made climate change. And if that were the case theirs almost zero evidence it would be catastrophic. Now I'm no way telling them how or what to make just stating my opinion. Have a nice day.
made_u_look wavelenth121 Actually, a quick google search results in several graphs and data showing a decline in the suns activity since about 1980, while global temperatures continue to rise rapidly. It is common to find cherry picked data from certain sites, but if you follow their citations you get to what they are not telling you. The scientists who actually post findings in peer reviewed journals which are accepted by the scientific community agree that climate change is and has already been occurring.
Either way, it is cheaper to buy, run and maintain efficient cars, where is the harm? Money is the cause of this, think of the vast profits made from the inefficiency that we are convinced to love by the power of advertising.
@made_u_look No, it's a hypothetical science fiction scenario for a videogame and if you find that offensive or "brainwashing" then it's your own fault for being mentally incompetent, interesting that you feel so secure in your belief that humans aren't causing climate change that you saw fit to troll about it on a gaming site. Right, "no one ever takes into account the sun", trust me I'm sure that's the first thing scientists take into account when calculating humanity's devastating effect on the biosphere.
This sounds like a city building game to rival SimCity 4 and cities XL 2012.
Looks like a good game but the DRM is too much for me.
This is just brainwashing kids into think manufacturing's bad. No one ever takes into account of the Sun, for extreme heat changes. Cause you know it only heats our solar system. We've been having the highest solar activity recorded in the past 10 years.
good tactical game. I like the mission in the game
@Kastigador You only owe it to yourself to remove ads from what you are seeing on your browser. You should know that you can block ads from being loaded into your browser in the first place.
@Yams1980 How does it affect the review? It doesn't, it's just an extra revenue stream for gamespot. Quit complaining
I would love to play this game... if not for the fact that I'm broke and I'm pretty sure my old piece-of-crap comp would explode if I tried to play it. My (get-it-at-some-point) amazon wishlist it is!
Global Warming, DRM... the game is brilliant people and the fact that you are surfing GameSpot makes it hard to believe that you don't have constant internet at your disposal. I'm glad to see Anno in the top 10 list of popular games. Well done Related Designs, you deserve it
@Yams1980 Agree. I think that ad should be removed for paying subscribers like every other ad. It's minor, but that's what I paid for. I don't think they're selling out the integrity of the review by having it there, but subscribers pay for no Ads and that's definitely an Advertisement. If I see any more of this, I'll be cancelling.
"PC games are reviewed using AMD Technology". I think they use this to get free $$ and free hardware for doing reviews. I guess if Nvidia and Intel gave them free stuff they would give them advertising space too. Pretty much I have no respect for ad spammed reviews. How can you trust anyone that puts that sellout quote before a review.
Great review, I hope to get it if it goes on sale. Also, guys, stop arguing politics and global policy in the comments of a game review. It has nothing to do with this game and doesn't help any potential buyer in the least. Take it to the forums or email each other. Be respectful for goodness' sake.
"PC games are reviewed using AMD Technology". I didnt notice this before until now. They probably felt the need though after what happened with RAGE
I kind of liked Anno1701 and 1404, but for me at any rate they started being tiresome far sooner than other city builders. I'll try this maybe next year, but for city building, I think I'll stay with Settlers. ... As for the Environment, well, just google Arctic ice sheets, aw hell, just google Antarctic ice sheets while you're at it too. We ain't helping matters that's for sure.
If you were actually an "expert" on any of this Yasso, you would't jump from the concept of influence, to quantum physics, to the butterfly effect, to propaganda because it just seems like you are throwing big words to throw out big words, which really doesn't do anything for you since all of your information is wrong or invalid. However If it is the propaganda and censorship of American's that you want to talk about - well that is happening all the time, but with global climate change? Not so much. Stop googling hoaxes.
@ Yasso: Stop trying to be the psychological/sociological prodigy on the Gamestop boards because you're not. The very fact that you said that climate change isn't real, not only eliminates any sense of credibility that you maybe thought you had before but it makes your argument even more faulty. I'm sure when you googled the term "global warming hoax", you started to feel all high-and-mighty because you actually "researched" something in your life, but the truth is until you take college-level courses on psychology, sociology, and environmental studies, you really can't say anything on the matter of "global warming". Also get with the times - the concept of "global warming" is dated and we now know that the entire climate is changing (not just heating up), and while some of it is natural, humans are speeding up the process drastically. How many of these natural disasters do we need destroying other countries infrastructures and creating more environmental refugees before for you realize that it is more than just a "hoax" Entire island nations are becoming swallowed by rising ocean levels like the Maldives while the giant Asian Brown Cloud is suffocating the air around South Asia and India, killing millions each year.
i don´t like anno´s interface in any of their games... Also, i would to have more detailed information about economics, like "per minute" supply information, smth like Rise of Nations
I would love to buy this game... but I do not buy games with machine activation DRM at all. In fact, I haven't bought a Ubisoft game in quite a while because of their DRM schemes...
mrwar I totally agree, the last game I bought was the Settlers 7, after a week of downloading something like 6 gigs of updates before I could even get it to load up the menu screen, then I had to stuff around for another couple of hours with there pathetic DRM, I ended up playing 30 minutes of game, and never played it again because it was no fun, it was just time spent trying to prove it was not a Pirate copy, so from that time I said Ubisoft are Pathetic and I will never buy one of there games again, and now after buying Diablo 3, and keep getting disconnected from my single player game because of DRM, Blizzard now have joined my Banned list of game companies that I will not purchase from.
It is one the best recent strategy games ... a must have.
@mafiul -- We don't control what shows up on the top games on the front page, nor does any company. It is our readers. The most popular is based on traffic, and traffic alone. If lots of people go to read a review, preview, or news article for a game, it then shows up as one of the most popular games on the site because lots of people are reading about it. It's not some conspiracy, dude.
@cephas90 And I agree with you on that "influence" will have degrees; after all, there are influential figures or personalities, and there are simple people who change very little in their surroundings. However, with our knowledge today as a race, we really know too little to be able to quantify influence properly, and looks deceive often as you probably know. A simple, poor person may look insignificant, but you never know, their influence in an important mass event might've been awe-inspiring. The same thing can apply to this simple game; it could influence just ONE gamer, who grows up to be someone, and they carry a certain message to influence much more in the world. That's the thing about the mysteries of how the universe work, which quantum physicists try to decipher nowadays, we do not have the technology or knowledge to truly understand the "chain reactions" or "butterfly effects" that occur in our world every second. In one word, we should never underestimate the effect of a misleading message; if something is wrong, then we should declare it openly as wrong, just as I did, and even if 8 out of 10 people are going to troll me while calling me the troll, it doesn't matter; one should still do the right thing and call things as they are. Maybe one sane person will listen.
@Huggy_Monster Claiming that the main idea or main theme of the game's story has absolutely no relevance to the game is like claiming that love has absolutely no relevance to a romantic song. You claim "It's just a game", and they can claim, "It's just a song". @cephas90 I'm continuing this from my comments above, as this whole comment is relevant to your and Huggy's replies: The reality is that it's never "just a game", or just a song, or just a movie...all those are pretty much supplements or replacements for books in the minds of billions of people across the world who barely--if ever--read something useful, and they just absorb what they have in their minds via movies, games, and songs, no more. In fact, that's exactly why media professional and propagandists are able to influence whole generations and populations...by convincing them that "it's just a...game/movie/song". But it really is much more than that; at the very least, it's a message.
@yasso no one believes global warming, and I doubt a low key game like this is even influential enough to do what you're talking about.
Want to bye it
This Game was not in top least when it was released, but after a month now it's 1st in Top least just after GameSpot reviewed it. So who if controlling gamers interest and sells? A true Quality Game or a Game Review Website?
People remember this is still a game, i don't think global warming is real its BS but i still will play this game
@yasso Another lunatic that babbles BS online about good ol' "corporations/governent/secret societies" eternal conspiracies that's "brainwashing the masses" through movies, books, documentaries and now video games. Now that he's finally realised he "was leaving a lie and was manipulated all of his miserable life", he is desperate to make the masses see the reality through his eyes. Thank you for enligthening us "all knowing one", now I can finally see the "truth".
@Yasso I let you pick the odd one out: Global Warning, Evolution or Paris Hilton.. 3..2..1.. GO!
@ yasso U mad bro?
@Yasso sorry you feel that way Yasso, but non the less it has absolutely no relevance to the game or its quality, the environment aspect of this game has nothing to do with politics or scandal, its a just a game element that's 'different' to other game, and should be praised for being little more creative.
@yasso Shutup troll.
Whether they realize it or not, the folks at Related Designs have just further glamorized a hoax, global warming, to support corrupt / corporate (they're the same today more or less) governments' agenda to tax us more than they already are (so-called carbon emission taxes or simply carbon taxes). Even in movies, like Happy Feet 2, which is viewed by children, they had scenes specifically dedicated to propaganda of global warming and evolution. Educate yourself before giving thumbs up and down; do your own homework. Good keywords to start with include "global warming skeptic" or hoax. Even check the records of winter (AND summer) temperatures in the last few years; the "spikes" were caused by El Nino, and without them, the world is freaking cooling down, literally. We're in a strange world of brainwashing and brainwashed fanatics, and it has nothing to do with religion.
Also, as far as ubisoft technical support goes, it makes fixing the rare occurrences of bugs that do exist, impractical and time consuming.
Solid game with a uniquely executed concept. Could have been market much better, as I didn't hear about it until it was already out. Some of the bugs especially with the online interface made getting the game started a pain. The online functionality is pretty cool, and the way they keep statistics of the incidences of things in the global play is interesting to see. As a whole I would call the game a 7.5 but because it possesses so many unique features it will seem like an 8.5 until you really invest a lot of time into it, at which point it either becomes overly tedious, or just boring. Worth play in any case, a sold choice for a good 12 hours of play more if you are really into city micromanagement.
Ubisoft has learned that it can't shackle an entire game to a persistent online connection DRM - but now it shackles metagame mechanics to it instead, so that the DRM appears "value-added". Having done this with Heroes VI (namely its Dynasty mechanic), it does this with the latest Anno too. :? Well, it won't work against piracy as long as all the code for the metagame mechanic is located on local storage. As for me, I am only getting this game when it's dirt-cheap, like I tend to do with games that have ingrained DRM.
Havent played but if you're worried about DRM , do a little researching..you'll find plenty of ways around it!
Great game, unfortunate DRM. On a side note, listen to gfperez's advice and watch those vids if you're new to the series. The SP campaign does not teach many of the finer, and some basic, aspects of the game. Side note 2: activate that right-click menu!
After Silent Hunter 5 I wouldn't dare buy another Ubisoft game although I've come close after playing the demo..
This is a great game and far deserves the rating but the DRM is a bit of a turn off but still its very enjoyable.
The Steam version of the game hasn't the draconian Ubi DRM, but it features Tagès Solidshield DRM with 3 activations, which is almost as bad. Also, the game has already been cracked, so all this crap is actually going to be a trouble just for loyal customers, while pirates can enjoy the game without a single issue and for free. Well done Ubi.
The copy protections on PC games these days are way too extreme and keeping people from buying really good games. It's sad and ridiculous.
Looks like a great game...it looks refreshing and different!
Game looks absolutely stunning but that DRM thing is a turn off.
horrible drm is going to kill the sales on the first few months
game's probably good, but with that DRM I'll never buy it. Get it Ubisoft?
I haven't played a city builder in a long time and after reading this review I really want to get back into those games
If you are new to the series, I recommend watching this three videos - they're one hour long each, but explain the mechanics and what you have to do pretty well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYFLhADYd3k&hd=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Peawl0l856s&hd=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTFFV0gCzLA&hd=1
Game Emblems
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User Reviews
Anno 2070
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- Publisher(s): Ubisoft
- Developer(s): Related Designs
- Genre: Strategy
- Release: Nov 17, 2011 (US) »
- ESRB: T
