Anno 2070

[homerdog]

How did this come out so quietly?
http://anno-game.ubi.com/anno-2070/en-GB/home/

It is set in the year 2070. Global warming has melted the Arctic ice cap, which has raised the global sea level so high that what used to be mountains are all that remains of land.[5]
The game has two factions: The Eden Initiative (referred to as the 'Ecos') and The Global Trust (referred to as the 'Tycoons'). Ecos are environmental and build sustainable cities but are inefficient and slow to expand. Tycoons are industrious and expand quickly but have problems with pollution and dwindling resources.

Demo Link

I'm downloading the demo right now. Anno 1701 is one of my all time favorites. For whatever reason I never got around to 1404 and unfortunately between Skyrim and BF3 it will be quite a while before I have a chance to dive into 2070. Regardless, if you are a fan of the 4x or RTS genres, or if you love games with incredible graphics, this series is one of the all time greats.

After a couple of minutes with the demo I am at a loss for words. I'll get some screenshots up because it's hard to describe in words how good this game looks.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Ooooh, an Anno game set in the future. Love the previous 2 games, might have to pick this one up as well.

Regards,
SB

 

[tabs]

My partner and her brother play this cooperatively a couple of times a week. She says it gets better with every play, but the online social integration is pretty annoyingly laid out and hard to understand.

They just want to play together without being involved in the wider social aspects. Apparently one of the screens has a bunch of stuff you need for regular play, mixed in with a bunch of stuff to do with twitter or whatever, and the distinction is not clear.

Besides that, and the obvious learning curve with stuff set in the future (quite often more abstract meanings/concepts) she's having a good time with it. They didn't like the last one much, so played the previous up until this one came out. Apparently it's an improvement over the last, but the jury is out as to whether it's the best in the series.

Personally I can't get into these games. I thought that the last one (sorry I forget the names, they're all just a bunch of numbers to me) was very pretty indeed, especially in stereo, but Anno just doesn't hook me like Civilization can at times. Maybe it's the time investment up front in learning the buildings that I just can't be bothered to do.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Yeah, the Anno series isn't really for people that aren't into setting up their own interdependant economy and then seeing it all in action. It's kind of like the old old Settlers games (before they became more RTS and less simulation).

My favorite is still the original Settlers though. I loved how paths would naturally form the longer your settlers went to a location. And they'd eventually upgrade them to roads/etc. all on their own as long as you made sure they have a thriving economy.

Regards,
SB

 

[Mendel]

Hmm... Seems interesting though I never played any of the prequels. I guess the future is more appealing than historical scenarios to me. Downloading the demo right now, if I like it I´ll pick it up from bargain bin after the new year.

 

[homerdog]

I played 1701 more than I'd care to admit. It was a freaking blast!

Never got into 1404 but it was gorgeous. This new one doesn't look all that much better IMO but still it's the best looking RTS/4x game out there.

 

[DeF]

Ubisoft's new DRM sucks

http://guru3d.com/article/anno-2070-vga-graphics-performance-review/2.
I am really baffled that company could come up witch such restrictive DRM. I know that they think second hand gaming is at least as evil as 5 to 10 Hitlers but come on! And the sad thing is they will get away with it because users do not care until they get hit themselves.

 

[Goragoth]

Well I know I was tempted to buy this game but won't, at least not until a patch comes out that removes this nasty DRM. I would probably even be willing to look past the whole Internet connection required bit but only 3 activations, no way to revoke an activation, hardware changes require re-activation, and absolutely no way to get activations reset even if you call up? That's not even going a little to far, that's just batshit insane crazy.

One of the few new games that really had me excited lately, so I hope there's enough backlash that they patch it out soon.

 

[Mize]

Internet connection required?
Fail.
No value for that 14 hour transoceanic flight.

 

[Davros]

and only 3 activations. not 3 activations then call up and get another 3 activations. 3 in total

 

[Mize]

and only 3 activations. not 3 activations then call up and get another 3 activations. 3 in total

Guess I'd have to finish it inside of a year since my hardware changes that often.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Internet connection required?
Fail.
No value for that 14 hour transoceanic flight.

Internet connection isn't required. It's just that if you have no internet connection you can't use upgrades on your "base ship" (I forget what the real name is). You can still play and finish all the levels without those upgrades. They just make the missions and scenario's easier. You can still slot upgrades into your islands and ships which is sometimes essential to gameplay.

DRM like this would be just peachy if they allowed you to deactivate prior activations. Hell if they allowed you to do that limiting installations to 2 machines or even just 1 would be fine for me. So playing it on a plane is fine as far as I know.

I can live with 3 though. The previous Anno game allowed up to 5 activations. I've only used 2 of those. And when you ran out for that one you could contact Steam and/or UBIsoft (I don't remember which, it's been a while) to get your activations back. Assuming you didn't burn through all of them in a week or months period of time I didn't hear of anyone with significant issues getting more activations.

Don't have this one yet, but will be getting it when it goes on sale. Checked it out over at a friend's place and the single player campaign is far shorter than the previous Anno. So I'm not wanting to spend full price on it.

Regards,
SB

 

[Mize]

Well, I'd have used three activation in the last month if I had Anno 2070:
1. main game rig at home
2. bootcamp partition (XPP) on laptop
3. replaced HDD on laptop, put in SSD and created new w7p bootcamp

 

[Davros]

And when you ran out for that one you could contact Steam and/or UBIsoft (I don't remember which, it's been a while) to get your activations back.

You cant do that now. It's 3 and thats it....

Descent 2 has been on my pc's for 15 years do you think 3 activations is enough ?

 

[Lightman]

I dislike any DRM with hard limit on activations.
Few games have 3-5 activations but they are reset every 6-12 months which in my book is acceptable. Not great but I see from where they are coming from.
Hard limit to 3 activations is plain stupid. PC is not a console where hardware is locked and only times you change it is when you get RROD or similar failures. On top of that very large proportion of PC gamers are at the same time hardware enthusiasts which upgrade their PC at least once a year.
I personally have my main rig upgraded at least twice a year. So it gets new GPU in one half and new CPU/mobo in the other half of the year. Then occasionally you get new SDD, might have hardware fault and you're left in cold with similar DRM scheme.
Add to that I like to have access to all my Steam games on my Llano HTPC as well this means I can't play Anno on large TV occasionally because I've paid for it £3x.xx only to get 3 activations

At least their Settlers DRM isn't as restrictive, otherwise since I bought it in 2010 sale I've change too much hardware in my PC already.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I'm not positive about this, but I think that after a certain amount of time, they patch out the hard restriction on number of machines you can activate your game on.

But I agree, for a PC game a hard lock on number of activations with no ability to reset or remove past activations is stupid. It's not like the console world where there is a thriving used game market. And it's not like resetting activations would encourage piracy as you have to be online to have all features enabled which means only one copy of the game can be run at any given time with all features enabled. Even though the game is fully playable without all those features, I think most would rather play with them than without them when possible.

Regards,
SB

 

[Davros]

Out of interest, I used my google-fu to see if ubi screwing its customers can in anyway be justified by preventing piracy, and its no surprise that it hasnt.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Well, from what I've read, the pirated version suffers the same limitations as the unpirated version where not logging into UBIsoft with a valid account means that some content is disabled.

Enough to deter most pirates? No clue, but might have been enough to convince some to buy the game rather than pirate it.

That still has nothing to do with number of activations, detering piracy however.

Maybe activations is purely to discourage what a friend and I do for some games. We go half and half on a game in Steam (account that we share). And determine ahead of time who gets to play the game first. When that person is done then the other person plays it. So you don't get both of us trying to connect to Steam or the developer/publisher specific game account at the same time.

Regards,
SB

 

[Davros]

No I mean the activations cannot be justified by ubi saying the scheme has prevented piracy (because it hasnt)
I assume pirated version have no activation limit (would be funny if they did)

 

[pcchen]

These "activation" scheme always meant for reducing "sharing" of software, as Silent_Buddha said. Microsoft introduced activation for Windows XP solely for this: many people were buying a single copy of Windows and install it on multiple home computers. Microsoft wanted to reduce this (and it seems that they succeeded). Activation has very limited effect on piracy.