Utopia (Second Review)


Title		Utopia (Second Review)
Game Type	Management Sim
Players		1
Compatibility	Not AGA?
Submission	ghira@mistral.co.uk

Review
This review exists merely to annoy a true lover of this game enough
that they send a better review in to the AGDB.

I played this game many years ago, and gave it away. Also, I didn't
like it very much. Hence the vagueness of this review.

I don't know whether Utopia will work with modern processors /
kickstarts, since I haven't played it since my 1.3 / 2.05 days.

Utopia is similar to Dune 2 - it's a realtime "manage a city and
battle nasty neighbours" game. (NB Civilization wasn't real time, and
in Sim City you weren't at war with anyone).

It has pretty much everything you'd expect - you start with a small
colony and have to build it up, research new technology, keep your
citizens happy, etc. etc. Note that citizens in this game are unusually
stroppy - if they get really unhappy, they start blowing up your
buildings. This is much worse than their merely not doing anything.

Just like in Dune 2, you have a series of similar missions. In each
one, the basic idea is the same, but the enemy is fiercer. I believe
that in each mission the objective is to reach a citizen happiness
level of 80% rather than to wipe out the enemy - but clearly unless
your enemy is a pacifist, you're unlikely to be able to spend huge
amounts on parks and swimming pools. IIRC the enemy in mission 1 is
pretty much a pacifist.

The enemy city is off the edge of the map somewhere - enemy forces
just materialize on the outskirts of the map and attack your city. You
need to spend money on scouts/spies to work out where the enemy is. (I
can't remember what use spies are once you know this. I suppose they
must be useful for something - certainly I remember getting multiple
reports about life in enemy cities). You can send forces off to attack
the enemy city - they travel to the edge of the map and vanish. You
can ask for information about the current state of the fight at any
time.

The enemies in this game are positively unrelenting - they will batter
you almost constantly. You will have to get used to having buildings
annihilated, having to rebuild, etc. This is where I encountered a bug
- it seems that spaces where buildings used to be are regarded as
occupied, even if you clear the ruins away. Tanks will refuse to cross
such spaces. This becomes a real pain in a long game, as the later
missions are certain to be.



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