Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Broken"

I had long been hoping for an updated version of Colonization that provided national borders, better graphics, and streamlining of trade.

This is not that game.

We now have cultural influence, but it ruins the game.

I am an accomplished Civilization IV and Colonization player, but the mechanics in Civilization IV: Colonization seem to work differently.

For instance, I founded a colony, then some turns later the French founded a colony near mine.

I experienced moderate growth in mine, while they experienced unrealistically rapid growth in theirs.

This lead to my colony's resources being slowly but surely taken over to the point my colony was worthless.

Presumably I need to play it much longer to learn the exact rules for culture, but after all the other problems I couldn't be bothered.

Most annoying are the graphics. Everything is brown. So brown you can't tell what's what. Worst are the resource graphics, which are just a dark brown charcoal smudgy outline on a lighter brown paper. Some of the pictures bear no resemblance to the item they're supposed to portray. It takes me out of the zone when I have to stare and squint just to see what I'm looking at. Very stupid.

The soundtrack was one of the best aspects of the original. Not so in this one. Very muted and lacking in character. I miss all the old fiddle ditties and American colonial songs.

Lots of little things are now done in the Civilization way, and this detracts from the experience. Presumably the people writing this version didn't have time to get it right and just took some shortcuts.

And to top it all off, it uses SecuROM copy protection, which is known to be invasive and cause problems on some computers.

I ended up wishing I'd never installed the game, and would advise you not to either.

Don't bother.