60 Minute Review of…
Master of Orion 3
Taking another cue from Civilization, the original Master of Orion
games relied on their tech trees to ramp you up a learning curve
and suck you in for the long haul. By researching new technologies,
the game mechanics evolved. You learned new ways to develop your
colonies and build your ships. Each new discovery was something
to look forward to. But in MOO3, you get a confusing "tech
matrix" with six areas of study, each with several levels of
advancement, each with several technologies. Many of these have
no clear indication of what they do in the context of the game or
why you'd ever want to research them. Not that you have much choice
in the matter, as they'll manage to work their way into your research
queue with no input from you. Your job is to set a series of slider
bars, which will then wiggle their way to different settings anyway.
As you play, a series of technologies parades through your turn
report, some being made visible, some being researched, and some
being made available. Each of these stages ensures that every tech
will get several chances to say 'hey, here I am!', which is kind
of embarrassing for them, considering how impossible it is to keep
track of who they all are. If you thought the techs in Alpha Centauri
were esoteric, wait till you meet these guys. You get standard sci-fi
techs like Space Ports and Fusion Drives, but a lot of the tech
matrix is crammed with an assortment of the arcane, the mundane,
and the utterly ludicrous. What's a Scanning Resonance Collector
supposed to be? What are Holistic Practices, Frame of Reference
Simulators, Cross Discipline Methodologies, and Societal Workplace
Modules? And who thought it would be exciting to discover Broader
Usage, Database Standardization, Lending Associations, and Adaptive
Administrative Techniques? At least Alpha Centauri's techs fit into
that game's powerful narrative framework. Here they're like guests
you've never even met who show up at your party.
The races in the original Master of Orion games gave them considerable
replay because they all felt different. But because MOO3 is choked
in a fog of its own inscrutable mechanics, there's very little sense
for how the races play differently. Sure, the silicoids eat minerals
instead of food, so that number in the upper left of the screen
that tells you how much food you're making each turn is going to
be smaller than when you were playing the humans. So what. It's
not like you're ever building farms or even paying much attention
to whether your planets, which are automatically colonized and developed,
have much arable land. Sure, the insects get some sort of collective
government model, but it's not like the governments have any noticeable
effect on how the game plays. Sure, the harvesters are supposed
to be evil, but it's not like you're in this for the backstory about
mysterious origins. Each race plays almost identically to any other
race, with the exception that the main splash screen shows a picture
of the last race you played. This is the extent of Master of Orion
3's personality.
Continued
February 21, 2003
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