Conquer the universe......in turns
Third edition of famous 4x ("explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate") series, Master of Orion 3 is probably one of the best in its genre (i'm still a big fan of Master of Orion 2, which brought me into the genre). Of course it has been surpassed by newer games such as Sins of the Solar empires and similar, but in its own rite, it is an awesome game. It has everything true RTS fan could wish for. Big play field (galaxy), lots of playable races, smart progress system and a truly huge arsenal of ships/weapons/stations to explore and deploy. Now, not everybody likes turn-based games, but if you are one of those people, then playing MOO3 will give you hours of satisfying gameplay, good graphics and great replay value. There are 16 different races to start with, and if you're in the mood you can make your own little green (or grey or red.....well you get the picture) people to conquer the galaxy. Story is simple and straight forward. Antarans have devised a new weapon of mass destruction called "Harvester Zeta", basically your Alien-like face munchers. Problem starts when they start to think for them self and of course, they begin to colonize. Naturally they munch away everything in their way. That is where you come in, as one of the races in the galaxy, battling your way through to the ultimate victory. You can probably guess where it goes from there. Gameplay, like in most 4x games can get a bit strenouus at times, but it is to be expected. After all, there are technology trees to be researched, milions of asteroids to be mined and so on. But, if you can get past the grinding part, you will experience truly magnificent gameplay, that will keep you at your PC for hours and hours. Sound and music are also nicely done, so long gameplay will not make your ears hurt like listening to two full albums of your teacher scraping the blackboard. A great game, that can still hold its own against modern rivals, but it's a little on the downside concerning graphics.
