Reviews / previews
While many companies slap a bunch of new scenarios on a CD and call it a game extension, Alien Crossfire is something more. You won't find scenarios here, but numerous small changes to the original Alpha Centauri that make it a strategically more complex and exciting game.
New factions were a foregone conclusion, but the seven new factions dreamed up by the developers are ingenious both in the advantages and the handicaps they offer. For instance, two factions are alien races that can choose technologies to research even when the "Blind Research" option is set for all other factions. One possesses an attack bonus, the other a defensive bonus. On the downside, they detest one another, are both distrusted by all human factions, and have no vote in Planetary Council deliberations.
Another interesting new faction is the Data Angels, a community of freebooting hackers whose Probe units are cheap and insidious. (The Angels automatically learn any technology discovered by three factions they've infilitrated.) Or consider the Nautilus Pirates, who receive free naval yards and harvest bonus minerals from ocean shelf squares. In a world of small land mass they're particularly dangerous, and they proliferate like guppies.
Several new colony structures tweak the game toward greater balance. Three buildings increase the resource yield (food, energy, minerals) of sea colonies, which were extremely weak in Alpha Centauri. Another adds protection from incoming missiles (including Planet Busters). Alien Crossfire also includes a couple of new secret projects, special abilities, military units, and native lifeforms.
What impresses most about these changes is their complete integration into the strategic substrata of the game. Nothing is destabilizing, although some of the new elements in the mix (like the ability for probe teams to free leaders of eradicated factions from their captors' capitols) offer significant strategic game enhancements.
Alpha Centauri players won't want to miss Alien Crossfire.-- Barry Brenesal / GamePro
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