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Fun while it lasts

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: November 09, 2001
Author: Amazon User

When Startopia first arrived at my house, I eagerly tore open the box and installed the game at once. I had played the demo already and was very impressed, and I was extremely anxious to get my hands dirty with the full version. Everything--the graphics, the gameplay, the theme--impressed me from the get go. Before the day was over, I was hooked.

Basically, Startopia is a city-building simulation, except that instead of a city, you're building a space station. There are three decks for you to dedicate your attention to; the first is like your main level, where aliens can board your station and where the most basic facilities are; the second is the "pleasure deck" where aliens can spend their leisure time. The third is basically a biodome, where you can grow crops and where aliens can get a breath of "fresh" air.

As I already said, the gameplay of Startopia is excellent. The three decks, along with the trading and combat systems, provide for a relaxing and enjoyable gaming experience. The problem with the game is that it simply doesn't have lasting power. After completing the ten single player missions and playing one or two "sandbox" games, where you get to do pretty much whatever you want, the game just isn't that fun anymore. I'm sorry to say this, because there's really nothing wrong with the game; it's very good, but, alas, it's not destined to be a classic.

I still recommend at least trying the demo for this game. It should keep most people occupied for several days and perhaps even weeks (the game, not the demo). After that, it will most likely collect dust for a few years. Then maybe you'll play it again once or twice and finally put it down for good.

Basically, what it comes down to is this: are you willing to buy this game just to be entertained for a week or two? It may be worth the money, it may not. That's for you to decide.

If you're just looking for an ephemeral way to kill time and have fun, Startopia may very well be a smart purchase.

A good game, but this early version is buggy.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: August 07, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game has a lot of potential. It's a relatively original sim with a hint of real time strategy thrown in the mix. The general idea is that there are nine different races that you hire to work in the various facilities you build on your space station. There are three types of facilities you can build, maintenance, entertainment, and spiritual facilities, each of which is built on a particular deck. By balancing the needs of your residents and visitors, you can build up your section of the space station to its full glory and destroy your opponents.

Sounds good, so why do I think this game is only three stars? When playing it, I really got the feeling that this game was a wine released well before it's time. This if for a number of reasons. First, there is very little documentation. In fact, there is absolutely no manual of any form. No in game help and no hard copy booklet. The F1 key will provide a very minimal bit of context sensitive help, and there is a brief tutorial at the beginning, which is helpful for game basics. Otherwise, plan on discovering the remaining features of this game by trial and error. Second, the game only ships with 10 levels, which shouldn't take anyone too long to conquer. There is a sandbox mode, in which you can toggle various settings and play against computer opponents, but this gets repitious quickly. The third and final reason I think this game deserves only three stars is that it is very buggy. On my system, 1.3GHz Intel P4 running Windows ME, the game crashed out to the OS about once an hour. Thankfully there is an autosave feature that backed up most my game play. Interestingly, the tutorial starts with a warning about how "fragile" it is. The unfortunate thing is, the rest of the game is just as fragile.

My final recommendation is, unless you have absolutely nothing better to do with your money, wait until the expansion package comes out.

Dungeon Master in Orbit

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: October 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

When I was buying this game, I kept on thinking of how my copy of the Sims was gathering dust on my shelf. I'd played the demo of Startopia and thought that it was a very humerous, immersive experience. Although there's a heck of a lot going on during gameplay, I get the overall feeling of not really being involved in the whole party. Sure, all the structures and decor has been provided by me, but terrorists plant bombs, electrical blackouts occur and aliens die randomly regardless of how much security, energy or medical resources I buy. Even though you can 'possess' aliens a la Dungeon Master (although it's called shoulder cam), you can't then take control of him and go where you want. Instead, you just get to walk around in circles.
Anyway, a great looking game, albeit a bit buggy, but when the push comes to the shove, I'd imagine that it has a fortnight's appeal (I bought it yesterday after two days worth of demo playing, and I was getting tired of it after a few hours.)

Imbalanced, Monotonous

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 9
Date: December 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The key element to have a successful real-time strategy game is to keep the player busy. In StarCraft and Command & Conquer, players constantly have to scurry across the map in order to maintain their units and building properly. Startopia instead keeps the player waiting, bored, instead of rushing, hoping for a break.

Startopia is a brilliant idea. Ever I thought it was a wonderful idea to make a spaceship simulator somewhat similar to SimCity with a bit of StarCraft combat elements mixed. Yet, whe I first played Startopia I was playing exactly what I had hoped. The graphics were brilliant, and viewing the spaceship very cloesly was a great benefit. The gameplay itself had many different dimensions, including combat, trade, hiring, and create tree unique decks to satisfy the population. Game missions were a pleasure to play, yet not too difficult to handle. Music and sound were a work of art, even the opening cinematic set a humorous tone to the game.

Yet Startopia's entertainment value dwindles as players march into the game further. This is mainly because the game is imbalanced. Players can't make enough money to stay above the artificial intelligence's competition. Instead, after spending my entire treasury, I was forced to wait until a trade ship entered my space port, or my entertainment facilities made a large profit. Thus, Startopia is a great game to play and scratch its surface, but to become deeply involved in it is an exasperating experience.

I would recommend games like Civilization 3 and Empire Earth to those who wish to have an entertaining experience with a game similar to Startopia's gameplay.

A Great Beginning

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is easy to like. The slick graphics and interactive feel make it modern and appealing. The quirky techno soundtrack helps too. The only complaint I can levy is that it's easy to finish all the "training" levels, and go straight to the open ended "sandbox" mode. After you control the entire station, there's nothing else to shoot for!
I bought this game pre-9/11, and I think something must've happened to stopo production on a sequal, or an improved newer version....I mean come on....Sim City got a second, third and fourth chance, and spun-off countless times....why not Startopia?

Fun at first but wears off fast

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 7
Date: October 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'm sorry to say that I got pretty board of this game pretty fast. It was worth about 10 hours of "fun" play time for me, but from then on out it was just too repetitive, and confining. The animations are great, but the gameplay itself was lacking for me, and the storyline was really dumb in my opinion.

SimCity, But Much Better

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: July 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The game is the same as SimCity, but there's no annoying and costly monthly fee!

The network gaming feature doesn't work well, and it uses gamespy, but playing over a LAN works great.

Compared to the graphics of current games, Startopia is only average, but the fun factor is high, making it a joy to play.

Battles between other players is an option, but the game mainly focuses on city expansion.

The BioDeck level proves to be a special challenge presented to players as a terraforming minigame, from a moonscape to a wooded forest with animals. Of course, the terraforming experience takes time to evolve from nothing into something.

Depending on your choices, terraforming can produce special resources that you would normally have to buy or create.

Events, such as solar flares, can add unexpected challenges to the game. Such settings can be toggled, and the frequency of their occurrence can be set.

There is a handful of different aliens in the game, and each specializes in a different job. Their roles range from Security to Medical Sickbay Personnel, Researchers, and Monks. (The Monks can produce over 5000 credits, used for tasks such as powering the station or buying resources and buildings.)

The fun factor is well worth the price!

Fun Time Waster

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is fairly easy to pick up. You can hop on it when u have a few minutes to waste and hop right off. It's very... amusing. It's not very deep, but that is 1/2 the charm. Relaxing way to waste some time. It does take a long time to load.

Fun Strategy Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: May 11, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I remember getting this game when it first came out and playing it for hours on end. I replayed it in just the last couple weeks, and I remembered how much fun it was and so completely addictive it is!

I do, however, want to mention that this CD is for 95B/98/ME. I have it running on Windows XP, but after a certain point the computer locks up and I can't get past it. I will restart the game and once it gets to the same spot again it locks up again.

I know that MuckyFoot is no more, so there won't be any 'official' updates, but if there was ever a game to be re-released for current software and hardware, this would be the one.

Good at first but starts to lack...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 14 / 15
Date: July 30, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I have to start out by saying I loved Startoipa, I was excited to play it the first time and was stuned by its visual appeal... And I remained that way for about two weeks of excessive play. However after the first effects wore off, I was left feeling that the game lacked somethings that I'd like to share why I felt that way with you.

Each alien race has a specific job on the station, they each work in one or two rooms that you build. Some rooms don't require workers, (even tho you'd think they would), so right off the bat you can see there are some limitations, perhaps they should have had aliens that excel at certain tasks but can be used as general workers.

I was left feeling that the tutorials were inadiquite for my tastes, I'm a veteran video gamer and have played many games from many different generes so it shouldn't have been so hard for me to pick up the consepts. I also feel that the first 5 or 6 missions are basically tutorials. Each mission focuses on a specific room or race that the game wants you to build/learn about up until the 7th or 8th mission. (as a side note this agme only has 10 missions)

After playing a few "sandbox" missions i was left feeling like I had little control over the station I was trying to run. There are very few options you can set on each room/building and virutally no way to track things like cost/income ratios etc. Although these things may not interest you at first. Once you've been able to setup a successfull Starbase, you are left wanting. These tweaks could have made the game last longer, for those that wanted that kind of control.

Here's a quick list of other control issues that should have been addressed:
- there are "security bots" that patrol your station looking for bad guys, but you can't set patrol routes
- You only have to pay your workers when you hire them, and when you promote them, with no real reoccuring costs there's no real need to limit your hiring.
- Each alien has a few different ratings on how well they do their job etc, however these ratings seems to have very little impact on the actual gameplay.
- Aliens will sometimes quit and leave the station but there is no way to tell why (so how do you fix something if you can't tell what's wrong?).

Now don't get me wrong, a basic level this game is great fun, and looks great. The gameplay is good, well balanced, and there are VERY few technical flaws which is great in a game this complex.

However, I would say average life span of actual use for players would be 2-4 weeks depending on how much you play and how much control you want. If this is enough for you to get your money's worth I would suggest you buy it.

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