We Need a Sequel

We live in the age of sequels. The E3 press conferences for Microsoft and Nintendo this year were particularly full of sequels to darn near every decent game released on either platform. Some sequels are good, some sequels are bad, and there are some sequels that I would love to get my hands on that just haven't been made yet.

One that I have been eagerly awaiting for a decade is Alpha Centauri. Sid Meier and the amazing crew at Firaxis have put together a steady string of truly great games over the years. The Civilization series is the standard by which turn based strategy games are judged, and rightfully so. But in my mind, Alpha Centauri tops them all.

I have no idea what made this game so addictive. It was basically Civilization 2 with some tweaks, and Civ 2 never hooked me like Alpha Centauri did. Maybe it was the political model, or the vehicle customization, or well-reasoned but really-cool tech. Maybe it was environment. Honestly, I have no idea. And I'm ok with that.

Just so long Firaxis can recapture that magic in a sequel, that is. Alpha Cenauri, as much as any other game I've played, deserves to be brought back to life. A re-release via Steam or GoG would be a nice consolation prize, but I have my hopes pinned on a complete remake, Pirates style.

Robot Renaissance

Continuing the recent trend of selling old but good games for very low prices, the announcement was made late yesterday that MechWarrior 4 will be released for free. Playing one of the greatest robot war-machine games ever might be the perfect way to purge the bad taste of Transformers 2 out of your mouth. And it is hard to argue with free.

Granted, this amounts to little more than a publicity stunt to drum up press for the recently announced brand new MechWarrior title. And, hey look, it worked! Regardless, it is always a good thing for the great games of yesteryear to be made available for free or on the cheap. These games are not any less fun for being old. MechWarrior 4 still has a lot of play left in it.

There are still some answers to be given on this release. While I assume the free version will be tweaked to make sure it plays well with Vista, I cannot confirm that yet. Even if the free version is just chucked online as is, though, I do not imagine it will be long before the community hacks any Vista bugs out of it.

No firm word on release date, but it is said to be soon. In the meantime, let's hope this trend continues. There are a lot more great old games out there that could use a new and cheap release.