That bad, uh?

[Sal]

I think it is great fun. It does need a bit of tweeking but I also think that not everything people say is unbalanced really is. Let's face it, the game has been out a week so it is possible people are still getting to understand it. That being said, I have no doubt it will be changed with patches so if you want to play a finished product then wait.

I reckon if you are a fan of the civ games in general it would be hard not to enjoy.

 

[Ojaiike]

I have been loving to just fool around with floating warmachine and xenotitans. It is obviously worse BNW and has balancing and dimplo issues but i think it is just as good as civ 5 and as good as G&K if it where balanced and got some bug fixes.

 

[Jimbo30]

It is great fun, and oddly compelling considering that it's just really a buggy, imbalanced Civ 5. If you play sub-optimally and take time to do stupid stuff you can have an enjoyable time with it. 33 hrs in a week for me says so, at least.

 

[Breezin]

What I like to do - for all games - is go to Metacritic and read a couple of the lowest-scoring reviews. I'm paying attention to things they disliked, and judging whether I think those would be an issue for me or not. Then read one high review to understand where the fun is, and draw your own conclusions.

That's exactly what I do! The low reviews are very important even if they're an outlier.

Tom Chick's review although negatively biased (he's hated Civ V) had a lot of valid points. I'd say I got more from that review than the high reviews as often they are too glowing and fail to point out the flaws - they have to justify the high score right?

I usually look at the median review - Gamespot in BE's case - for a good indicator of how the game will be. I think the 7/10 given by Gamespot was completely on the nose. This was surprising given that Gamespot in the past has been a fanboy of all AAA titles.

Despite the less than raving reviews, BE has a lot of promise. I think Firaxis could pull it off and turn this into a 9/10 game.

 

[Thander]

Reviewers tend to weight the "freshness" of a game pretty high. Civ BE is probably 70% the same rules as Civ V, so the reviews automatically lose 1 to 2 points (9 goes down to 8 or 7). If you liked Civ V vanilla when it first came out, you will definitely like Civ BE. If you grew bored of Civ V vanilla quickly, you will probably grow bored of Civ BE quickly.

I am waiting this time myself, but that doesn't mean the game is bad. I have had a lot of fun playing games before they are polished. It can be fun to learn one way of playing and then a patch changes all that. I get my fun in games from learning. Each time a major patch comes out, I can throw out everything I learned and start again. Then again, I also like beta testing. I sometimes spend more time reading patch notes than actually playing a game.

I usually look at the median review - Gamespot in BE's case - for a good indicator of how the game will be. I think the 7/10 given by Gamespot was completely on the nose. This was surprising given that Gamespot in the past has been a fanboy of all AAA titles.

That's probably because they hired a freelance reviewer for this review. GameSpot is heavily console-focused these days like most of the big game journalism outfits. Probably the only inhouse PC game reviewer is Kevin VanOrd, but he still spends more time reviewing console games than PC games.

 

[Paszczak]

Hi!

I was really excited by BE and I would have bought it at launch if my PC hadn't been at the store for a hardware update.
I am reading a lot of negative impressions and I was taken back by gamespot's low score (7/10).
Should I sit this one out until it is fixed (by dlc, I suppose) or are the bad reactions a bit exagerated?

Yes, sit out and wait until it's fixed.

Modern video games follow the same cycle: rushed beta version is sold for $50-$60, DLC is sold, some band-aid fixes are thrown in between while the company is working on their next game.

You'll be much better off if you wait a year or two and buy Beyond Earth Gold Edition or whatever it's called, that includes all the DLC, patches, expansions and what not.

I skipped Civ 5 for that particular reason. Got the whole pack when G&K was released and it was awesome. Saved me 18 months of headaches that people who bought Civ 5 v1.0 were apparently getting .

 

[AriochIV]

If you liked Civ V and you like science fiction, I think you'll like Beyond Earth. It has problems that need to be fixed for it to have any longevity, but it's a lot of fun for at least half a dozen playthroughs.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I skipped Civ 5 for that particular reason. Got the whole pack when G&K was released and it was awesome. Saved me 18 months of headaches that people who bought Civ 5 v1.0 were apparently getting .

Just to point something out: in addition, calling DLC "fixes" is a bit unfair. Firaxis has been very good with putting out regular balance patches in addition to technical fixes.

Vanilla Civ5 suffered from some design decisions underlying it and a lack of subsystems to make it interesting, that's why G+K had such an impact - it needed more "moving parts", i.e. balance patches alone couldn't "fix" it entirely. Civ:BE has a much more solid basic gameplay, but it's more that the numbers are off than that there's not enough "meat" so to speak, so I'd reckon a big patch or two in, it'll be a very enjoyable experience already (I already like it, but realise the issues it has). In any case, it does cause you to go "one... more... turn!", so there's that.

My recommendation: try the demo. And if you're not strapped for cash, it'll be a fun enough, enough to get 20-30 hours out of it, just not sure about the usual 100s of hours Civ tends to eat up - unless they patch it.

 

[Joch]

Hi!

I was really excited by BE and I would have bought it at launch if my PC hadn't been at the store for a hardware update.
I am reading a lot of negative impressions and I was taken back by gamespot's low score (7/10).
Should I sit this one out until it is fixed (by dlc, I suppose) or are the bad reactions a bit exagerated?

there is a demo, try it and decide.