This is a great month for video games:
1) Civilization: Beyond Earth: it's basically a revive of Alpha Centauri (one of the greatest strategy games ever) with the Civ 5 interface.
2) Median XL Ultimative version XV: I mentioned this earlier in the thread, it's an extensive mod to Diablo 2 and he's about to release a massive patch with like 25 new skills and tons of new quests and maps.
and random mention: I found this sick game created by a poker player called Aurora.
It's an unbelievably complex 4x game. You start off with with a civilization on earth that has just discovered trans-newtonian elements and the ability to travel FTL. It's like a turn-based space colonization game but much more complicated, as the turns can elapse a length of time anywhere from 5 seconds to 30 days. The solar system is modeled with extreme attention to detail, you can mine real asteroids or comets, you can terraform Mars or even Venus (which takes literally 100s or 1000s of years depending on your tech). You have to design every aspect of your ships from the engines to the turrets to the fucking missiles. How much fuel does the missile have, how powerful is its thruster, how fast of a ship can it hit, does it have a second stage (i.e. something that detaches from the missile during flight like electronic warfare or a dozen baby-missiles, etc)? Obviously you can leave the Sol system and find jump points to other systems to colonize, and there are AI civilizations as well as roaming hostile ships with no allegiance to anyone. The time system is so ridiculous as you can click the "advance 30 days" button and a an entire war can transpire between off-screen AI races that threatens to crash your computer.
This game is so ridiculous that I haven't even scratched the surface of it, and I'm not sure I have the time or intelligence to.
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