City builders and you: Anno 2070.

Ahh, the Anno XX70 series, a fine piece of german videogame engineering, made by the masters of the Settlers, Blue Byte, and published by the slightly deranged Ubisoft, a house build on the slow realization that always-on DRM probably isn’t the best idea, log on every time you want to play? Much better idea, put in a social interaction system into your own smaller version of Steam and Windows Live? Superior idea.

The basic gist of Anno 2070, and the whole series in general, is that you built a city on an island, you then supply said city with the crap its inhabitants demand. Food, entertainment, community and that kinda stuff.

In an new twist, Anno 2070 has three different kinds of citizens, the capitalist Tycoons, the hippie Ecos and the supplementary Techs.
The Tycoons, who demand stuff like spirits, casinos and hamburgers, can handle much more pollution than the other two, and have more efficient supply chains, their coal power plants produce a lot of power compared to, say, windmills.

The Ecos, who want tea, concerts and health food, can’t handle pollution at all, and have lots of cool ways to improve the environment, their windmills produces no pollution, and not a lot of power. Their entire supply infrastructure isn’t quite as efficient as the Tycoons, but do produce shiny cities.

The Tech’s, similar to the [Look up the Orientals from anno 1770], aren’t really supposed to be a standalone element, they are supplementary to either the tycoons or the ecos, providing crucial research, and an efficient offshore oil production. They demand simple algae based food, energy drinks and a lab nearby, to conduct dreadful experiments.

In the campaign, you end up playing with all three factions, starting with the Tycoons, then Ecos and finally getting the techs into the great bit blender. As you play through a fairly lackluster campaign of “AI goes rogue, save the world, pretend you are a hero”. It’s all good fun though, you even get to build warships and an small air force, and then go blow shit the hell up.

The game is wonderful fun, with plenty of contents to keep any decent fan busy for ages. 90/100, game of the age, all ages, all the time.