The world has seen the last of the polar ice caps, global warming has raised the sea-level by a few meters and the world map looks completely different. Huge corporations have taken over the world and everything has been reduced to a race for making the biggest buck. This is the world of Anno 2070, a look into our future.

Even though Anno 2070 is a real-time strategy game you should be warned that this isn’t your StarCraft 2 or Command and Conquer RTS with lots of units and lots of action. Yes, you have combat in Anno 2070, but this game is for the budding economist.

Going it alone

The singleplayer campaign does a great job of easing you into Anno 2070. Even though it can stand on its own two feet, its main purpose is to prepare you for the flesh and bones of the game: the multiplayer modes.

You are the captain of an ARK, a floating research station. The ARK allows you to colonise islands that previously used to be barren land. With the reduced usable surface of the world, these islands and their resources are now highly sought after. To assist you, you have an AI named Eve, whom you can trust implicitly.

You begin working for the Global Trust, the world’s foremost supplier of energy. They are all about industry and how to make money. Later on you will have the opportunity to work for the Eden Initiative, a green company with new technology to preserve the planet. If Greenpeace were to get into power, this is what they would turn into.

By settling on the islands you need to build housing for the people, as well as some light entertainment. Most importantly you will have to harvest the islands resources. Each resource requires various buildings in order to get the most out of them and these resources are then able to be traded with other islands and factions. And thus the economy is born.

Yarg!

Pirates and bandits will try to steal your resources by running blockades and getting up to no good. You will encounter many skirmishes, but warfare is not what the game is about though. Trading is.

As you make your choice between industry and ecology you’ll notice the change in the buildings these factions employ. The industrialists end up looking like something out of ‘Bladerunner’ with smog and dirty brown building colouring the landscape, while the ecologists have great shiny buildings, littered with trees and a general feeling of being healthy.

Anno 2070 doesn’t have a normal research tree. Rather than having scientists research new technologies, these are simply unlocked by the size of your populous. The more people you have, the more technology is unlocked. This puts your aim firmly to expand your colonies as fast and as wide as possible.

As islands are populated the game takes an unexpected turn and heads underwater. You get to build small settlements underwater that open up new resources and more opportunities to expand. These underwater settlements immediately reminded me of ‘Rapture’ from Bioshock, and I was a little disappointed not to see little Big Daddies walking around.

As mentioned the singleplayer campaign prepares you for the multiplayer. The multiplayer is set in an online world where you not only play single matches, but a greater community at large is involved in running the game’s economy. You will get to vote for council seats and other items on the agenda, and this will allow you to gain benefits if you are of the same faction. Some of these benefits are access to certain resources for cheap. It is up to you to influence what abilities are available in the game.

You don’t have to play alone either. You can create a persistent game that never ends and you simply need to maintain peace and grow your economy. You don’t have to go it alone either as you can invite a few friends to help you become master of the world.

Dude, that’s like… deep!

The intricacies of building and maintaining your island settlements get very complex and I often found myself almost panicking about what to do next. You want to expand and gather more resources but your people need more room to live. Buying them the room to live will unlock new technologies but means you won’t be able to mine the coal ore needed to trade with your neighbour, thereby preventing you from gaining those extra few coins to buy another factory.

The game itself is fantastically beautiful. Water sparkles in the sun and all craft create wavy ripples through the ocean. Trees sway in cool breezes and smoke billows from factory chimneys. Little birds flock around the harbours and people walk in the streets. It is not often that a strategy game pushes a PC to its limits but Anno 2070 certainly does, with good reason.

If you’re looking for a great strategy game that will eat away at your time then you need not look any further, you won’t be disappointed. This isn’t a dumb action game, but one for the thinking gamer - aspiring economists and world dictators can apply here, too. If you are an action strategy gamer, do yourself a favour and try Anno 2070. You’ll be surprised at how much is out there when you stop requiring big explosions.

The Good: beautiful; in depth; the thinking man’s RTS
The Bad: could alienate action players; might be a bit too slow for some
The Ugly: what? no Big Daddies?

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