Preview embargo on CivBE 250 turns demo lifted

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We know that Firaxicon is happening this weekend and the participants will be able to play there a 250 turns demo of Civ: Beyond Earth. Also there's a new wave of videos and articles about the game, so it seems like a preview embargo was lifted and everyone can talk now about the mid-game of CivBE.

IGN plays the villain in a 250 turns CivBE preview:

..Over here in Camp Supremacy, we've got your cyborgs, your Terminator-esque death robots, and your networked, brain-uploading, supercomputer hive mind. We also have by far the coolest space helmets.

As I gained more progress toward Supremacy's ultimate goal of sending a personalized Skynet army back to earth to “liberate” the unenlightened meatbags (the culmination of which was, sadly, outside the scope of this demo), it became more and more apparent that I was becoming something very different from my AI neighbors. Utilitarian habitations that looked like they came out of a NASA-themed LEGO set were bulldozed in favor of soaring, geometric towers sculpted from black titanium, radiating a wolf's eye yellow glow that evoked the trillions of interconnected processors within.

My scrappy space marines cast aside the more troublesome elements of their biology to become ominously-monikered Preservers and Overseers. Clad in dark armor with sterile, striking silhouettes, my growing cyborg legions massed on the borders of my increasingly nervous African Union neighbors. In time, they were joined by the wholly-mechanical CNDR walkers, and I took my hands off the keyboard to survey what was soon to be less of a battle and more of a slaughter. I could almost feel the sense of dread surrounding my foe's lower-tech, unevolved, human soldiers.

I had become the bad guy in a sci-fi movie. And it felt awesome...

..If Beyond Earth does one thing really well to distinguish itself as a unique game (as opposed to the greatest and most expensive Civilization V mod of all time) it's those moments of pure, iconic, sci-fi coolness. Aside from the non-linear tech web and the quest system, the underlying mechanics are close enough to Civ V that you could sanely accuse it of being a reskin. But the further down the rabbit hole of Affinity and ultra-tech you go, the less each turn feels like playing Civ V. From turn to turn and campaign to campaign, it can feel like Blade Runner, or Starship Troopers, or 2001, or The Matrix. A love of the source material that inspired Beyond Earth's interstellar universe crackles like electricity around the art, the flavor text, and the short- and long-term objectives.

The First 250 Turns of Civilization: Beyond Earth

Read more here: http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/26/becoming-the-villain-in-the-first-250-turns-of-civilization-beyond-earth

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PC Gamer gameplay video and hands-on impressions:

When Civilization: Beyond Earth was first announced, my biggest concern was that it would just be Civilization 5 re-skinned with a space theme. I got access to the first 250 turns of Beyond Earth, and after having spent a lot of time with it I can confidently say that, although it may feel familiar, this game takes a giant leap forward for the series. Watch the video for my full thoughts on the latest Civ installment.

Civilization: Beyond Earth gameplay — Hands-on with the first 250 turns

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rockpapershotgun.com: 200 Turns On The Final Frontier

However, I am pleased to report that sci-fi strategy game Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth is not simply Civ V with green face paint on. It has the same hexes and it does have much of the same infrastructure as its historical-themed predecessor, but its transformation into something alien goes far more than miasma-coated skindeep. The essential framework of Civ remains, but the final frontier – for the 200 turns with beta code I’ve spent there – requires a very different sort of thinking...

To come out of character – though I’m not entirely sure I was ever in it – this isn’t Alpha Centauri, but equally it’s not Civilization V. There might be many familiar streets here, but the layout is all out different. What I’ve played has lacked the relative immediacy and the early small triumphs of a traditional Civ game, and there were times (specifically where pushing past the early flocks of aliens seemed an endless and brutal task) when I worried it might not be for me, but those factors have been approached by a more palpable sense of struggle, giving me some measure of the pioneering spirit this game and its theme is all about.

All that said, I’m still not entirely sure what manner of creature this wants to be. Particularly, through all I’ve done there have also been some simmering sub-plots, about progenitor races and augmented humans. Told through sporadic pop-up text usually involving quick choice of response – each with a different resource bonus – they’ve yet to draw me much into the fiction, but I wonder if far greater consequences await me later.

All told, I’m keen to see what happens past turn 200, and what happens if and when I can be in ascendancy rather than simply scrabbling in the dirt.

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Giant Bomb:

Why waste your time researching how to send a poet when you can build sweet space guns?

Civilization: Beyond Earth: Giant Bomb Unfinished 09/25/2014

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Venture Beat: Civilization: Beyond Earth offers more than just hexes in space

I played through the first 250 turns of a traditional Civilization V: Brave New World game and then went through the first 250 of Beyond Earth, comparing the experience. Rest easy, Civ fans: CBE is the turn-based strategy game you remember from Civ V, both prettied and expanded. But it has a few changes that twist your gameplay...

In space, no one can hear you say that everything old is new again
Choosing building options will be familiar to anyone who’s navigated a Civ tech tree before, but there are so many more of them that it starts to feel like a playground.

And that’s the crux of CBE’s initial appeal: Everything’s here that you remember from Civ V. Gather resources, build your buildings, research your new tech, send out new settlers by land or sea to colonize new areas, and try to get along (or not) with the other humans.

But the things you remember appear offer deeper play in CBE, and the new elements, such as that hostile landscape and the ability to throw things into space, seem destined to change your tried-and-true strategies … at least a bit.