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Expansion is a rip off;

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: March 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The game is fun to play and the graphic change is tremendous improvement over the original Alpha Centauri;

However the time it took to change a few graphics and one or two game points is so little; I was hardly worth buying originally; this is why so few people bought it and why its value is higher;

I like the improvements to the interface and story line the alien crossfire yields; but it is weak as far as an improvement; however I'll probably keep my copy.

The two alien race factions Manifold Caretakers and the Manifold Usurpers and the terraforming icons for these factions is pure genius and artistically great; my favorite faction is the Nautalis Pirates;

And the fungal tower is a refreshing improvement to the creatures of Alpha Centauri;

Awesome

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 9
Date: October 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Not for the beer drinking crowd.. but an awesome game.

Great!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: May 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

If you manage to get your hands on a copy of this, hold onto it as strong as you can! It was discontinued maybe five years back, but it still holds strong with nowadays games. Alien Crossfire gives you a larger diversity in factions, along with the ability to make your own. The only downside is it sells for $$ or more. The new units and technologies, not to mention factions, are great!

A good choice.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: December 22, 1999
Author: Amazon User

My buddy got me hooked on this game. Naturally the original and not the Expansion. But I like the expansion. I like the fact that you can randomize the races. The aliens lifeforms have a little more spunk to them, such as a ranged attack. The basic game is there, with a little more bonus. The original characters intermix with the new characters. It's all that and a bag of chips.

Even with it's flaws it's a great expansion!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: July 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Alpha Centauri is such an absorbing game that completely outpaces anything similar that has come out over the last 12 years. The Alien Crossfire expansion adds enough to the game that it surely is worth owning and using. Be sure to get the patch though as the game has a lot of bugs!

The new human factions (Pirates, Drones, Consciousness, Planet Cult, and Datatechs) are fantastic fun! The alien factions are overpowered, irritating, and suck the life out of the game in my opinion. Fortunately you can play without them. Too bad you can only have seven factions max in a game as playing with the 12 human factions would be incredible fun!

The new planetary features are worth having for sure. The Manifold Nexus is mysterious and worth fighting over. The crash site of the Unity spaceship has lots of goodies to dig up, and the borehole fields are nice to build near.

The new technologies add a lot of excitement to the game along with new base installations like the Aquafarm which gives you more food from kelp farms or the Flechette missile defense which gives you better defense from missile attacks. Brood pits make even bigger and more dangerous mind worms, spore launchers, sealurks, and isles of the deep. New Technologies like marine detatchments can be added to ships so you can board and capture enemy ships! Four new secret projects are also made available: Planetary Energy Grid (energy bank in every base - nice!), Cloudbase Academy (air complex in every base - definitely the most valuable secret project!), the Nethack Terminus (probe team bonus - yawn!), and the Manifold Harmonics (nice for extra food and energy but the game is almost over!).

Once you play with the new factions and buildings, it's doubtful you'd go back to playing just the original as much if at all.

Excellent Expansion

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: January 13, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Alien Crossfire is not a sequel but a refinement of the original game which, by the way, can still be played after the expansion is installed. Gameplay is unchanged but the new techs and units add balance and even more subtlety to the game. I find the seven new factions to be slightly more powerful than the seven original but it's fun to mix and match. The two alien factions have an advantage at the beginning of the game but are left out of the world council, which can be a big disadvantage later on. There are some minor bugs so be sure to get the patch.

It took me forever to find this

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 12 / 15
Date: February 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is one of those, 'don't ask us about' it addons. Seems the owner and a head developer when seperate ways. If you really only want to play the game and are not stuck on collecting it, or the box artwork, do a search for 'The Laptop Collection', and just buy the thing for 19.99 along with Alpha Centauri and like 2 other games. If you need to show the box to your friends, or want to resell it on e-bay, you'd better buy it used for like $75 to $125 here. Whatever you need. Cool game. Next time I won't wait so long to get what I wanted. Collectors glut just about ruined getting a hold of this one. Barely made it. Notice, I don't need the pretty box. :)

Still fun after all these years!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: November 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I was one of the beta testers on SMAC and SMACX and sank far more hours into it than I'd ever want to admit to. Burned out, immediately after the retail release I set it aside for a couple months but came back to it and never left. I've probably spent more time with SMAC/SMACX than any other game and I'm still playing. Why? Because it's truly a classic piece of work--a story within a game and a game within a story. I know of no other game in the genre that is quite like it. And guessing at the amount time, effort and money that went it making SMAC, I don't expect to see another one like it either. If you're a fan of the TBS genre, then for that reason alone you should have a copy of this--its a reminder of just what can be done by a talented, dedicated crew of artists working in pixels and code.

If you've not experiened this game, then there is really only one question you need to answer to know if you should get it: do you like turn-based strategy games? If so, then you need to try this one. A few people are put off by the Science Fiction setting but unless that's a fatal flaw for you then find a copy of this and enjoy. Some things you need to know:

* This game isn't new so don't expect state-of-the art graphics and eye-candy. However, the graphics hold up pretty well tho' and they serve the purpose extremely well.

* Yes, it will play on the latest machines running WinXP. At least it does on machines I've tried running P4 processors and Win2000, WinXp Home and WinXP Pro. There are a couple of tweaks you may or may not need available to make it fully compatible and with a P4 processor the game will warn you that 'your CPU isn't supported' but it plays just fine.

* Don't rush through this one. Play the game like you're reading a really good novel--read everything, look at stuff, watch the cut scene videos, etc. There's an incredible amount of 'back story' for the game and its easy to miss just how rich it is.

There aren't many things, much less games, that can be called unique but I think SMAC/SMACX is one of them.

It is what it is.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: July 07, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is an expansion module for Alpha Centauri. If you like Alpha Centauri this is a very good upgrade. If you don't like Alpha Centauri this won't change your opinion. I happen to love Alpha Centauri and bought the expansion pack as soon as it came out. While it is not perfect, it does what it does very well (introduces new player races in the game and different game options). I am very happy with this product.

An excellent expansion with a few flaws

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: February 15, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I loved Civ II and I lovedAlpha Centauri, and in fact I loved all of Sid Meiers products. Which is why I wasn't suprised by the excellence of the expansion pack. I loved how unique the factions were, which led to a diffrent style of game than Alpha Centauri...which was played like Civ II, i.e. 7 similar factions which give a subtlty to the game play...where as in Alien Cross fire, each faction is radically diffrent...not even including the massive difference between Human and Alien factions...One human faction can maintain an complety water civilization, and another can completey criple anoter faction with just probe teams. I also really liked being able to comit atrocities without sanctions.

I had a few objections...namely, The council doesn't seem to work to well with only 5 governments, and they're weren't really enough new techs, wonders, weapons,graphic changes and new ways to beat the game for my taste. My only other objections are that the Aliens seem a little to powerful, especially at the beginning, and and I thought it would have been cool to coexist with them, instead of wiping them out.

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