In a not too distant future, when creepy roots haven’t killed us all and aliens have shoved cameras up our asses, we apparently will be building rice farms on islands. Anno 2070 is a game that will probably more likely than not fall off most people’s radar this holiday season. I mean, why not? With every single damn triple A title and GOTY nominee popping up, it’s no wonder this game has been cast to the wayside. Also, it’s a city building simulation game, so that’s obviously a major turn off for the regular ‘blood and guts’ crowd. That’s seriously a shame. Because Anno 2070 is an addictively engaging game of trying to build an economy of algae, gold and cameras on an ever changing game background.

Quick note, I’ve never played an Anno game before this, so this review is me coming into a brand new experience of building weird shit on islands.

Now story isn’t a brand new coat of paint. It’s the same old rehashed storyline of industry vs. green. The Coal Train against Flower Power, big yawn. This time they added in a high tech faction who basically just sit around and stare at you play, kinda like a stalker but this stalker has an Ai leader called F.A.T.H.E.R., so double points to creepiness. You play through each factions storyline and make choices to save the world or harvest it and blah blah blah we learn to save the planet, woo hoo. Call in Al Gore and have him dance around in a garbage bag dress, it’ll probably have the same effect of WTF, we’ve seen this a billion times before. Each faction you work for gives you  experience points under them to unlock better buildings and new paint. No seriously, they give you paint for making them happy, followed by a harpsichord and a wanking monkey.

F.A.T.H.E.R. is always watching. Especially if you're gonna take your top off.

There is a continuous play mode, which lets you start in an area f the world map, complete with islands that each have their own fertility types. From there you just build your colonies and harvest stuff. The big three of Greenie, Meanie and Peepy (Green Tech, Industry, High Tech) won’t be joining in on the colonizing, they just have outpost where you can trade stuff and get missions, so I’m not sure honestly why they’re there. On land, you compete with some weird green lady who only builds tea leaf farms, so she’s probably smoking it. Underwater, you fight a Japanese(?) dude who hates everyone. Typical stereotype, check.

The cool thing is that you’re not playing an exclusive faction, you’re playing as an entity that has access to all 3 faction’s buildings and resources, meaning you can have an ecological weather station right next to a smelting plant, right behind a laboratory, down the road from the Mecha Titty Bar. As usual, balancing out your people’s needs is important, to access more of the faction’s tree tech, you need to advance your people by meeting their needs so that they’ll suddenly have bigger homes and new names.

 One of the many buildings you can build, this media center will tell your citizens to bend over and make more kids.

The base concern in the game will be balancing your eco levels & power and keeping your people happy. Higher eco means more fertility, but it’s expensive as hell. Power keeps everything running, and happy people means eventually higher level residents with more money, unhappy ones mean revolts and setting fire to above mentioned Mecha Titty Bar. You can also go underwater  with submarines and then build underwater facilities there that get you oil and jewels and algae, but you can’t fish. WHAT? You can build a 10 story jewel digger underwater, but not fish there.3 points to logic.

Here’s a big kicker, everyday there’s something that’ll change the game. There are missions that you can do for a certain faction to gain points for above mentioned paint and wanking monkey. There are also Global Senates where you can vote in one faction in order to gain temporary in game bonuses for that faction till they’re voted out. There are also World Events, which is like a storyline that you can play through. In order words, it’s a free DLC every week or so. MAJOR BONUS POINTS. You normally don’t see this kind of interaction between the players and the game world, so kudos to the team for doing so.

The monument of all things eco. Funny, it isn't a statue of a hemp.

In a short conclusion, I liked it. Maybe if you’re not a fan of building games or strategy games or any games that make you wait and be patient, then please go back to your regularly scheduled quick time events. As a lover of those megalomaniac building games, this will probably stay on my top list for a while. The three different types of faction buildings you could build at the same time won me over, along with the global effects that affect everyone. The story did wear on me in the end, along with the hammy voice acting, but just skip that pile o’ nonsense adjust go straight into the island colonizing game. I mean, who plays a building simulation for the storyline?

THE GOOD : An assortment of buildings, global events, balancing and missions
THE BAD: Storyline, hammy acting so bad it could be served for Thanksgiving
THE WTF: The creepy ass head of the High Tech faction who keeps stalking you

THE SCORE: 8.5/10 Tea Leaf Farms (Marijuana)

Thanks for reading! Leave any comments if you wanna and I’ll see y’all next time!

Philip Salesberry

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