Although there may be some good games on the way, I'll be surprised if any of them can unseat MOO's title as king of the universe. Master of Orion is still the definitive name in space opera games. After spending the last three weeks revisiting it, I've found this is a monolith that still stands tall. It is, instead, a towering monolith in the genre that has cast an eight-year-long shadow over everything that's followed. It's a good time to conquer galaxies.īut the real competition for these new titles isn't necessarily each other. And Crisium's upcoming Stars! Supernova Genesis looks like a dramatic leap from their last installment of the game they've been refining through successive releases since 1995.

Malfador Machinations' next installment in their Space Empires series is due out at the end of this month. SSG's remake of their 1983 classic, Reach for the Stars, was just released.

There's an embarrassment of riches coming up for us fans of sci-fi 4X games. Known affectionately as MOO, this is a fondly remembered '4X' game, the term for empire-building strategy games that play through the four 'ex-' phases: exploration, expansion, exploitation, and extermination. How long has it been since your ears stopped registering how silly it sounds to call a game 'MOO'? For instance, can you say 'MOO was a revolution in turn based strategy' and keep a straight face? Did it ever occur to you that the term '4X' might look like a label for ultra-hardcore porno beyond the mere XXX variety? When someone says the word 'SIGH-lon,' do you think of the shiny robot guys in Battlestar Galactica or the bulbous-headed super-intelligent aliens? These are the kinds of questions you must ask yourself to determine if you're a Master of Orion groupie like me.

Master of orion 2 races