Frostpunk 2 (PC, £37.99)
Verdict: Bolder and colder
People talk about making bigger, better sequels. Frostpunk 2, the successor to the 2018 original, certainly is bigger.
Where the first game was about managing a few hundred people through a couple of months of a new Ice Age, this one is about keeping thousands of people going for years and years.
Where the first mostly took place in one location, the grim Arctic city of New London, this one enables you, the world’s most harrowed city planner, to spread out into numerous settlements.
There are also more resource types. More factional infighting. More choices.. More, more, more.
But is Frostpunk 2 better than its brilliant predecessor? Hm. That’s hard to say.
Frostpunk 2 is a city-building survival video game developed and published by 11 Bit Studios
People talk about making bigger, better sequels. Frostpunk 2, the successor to the 2018 original, certainly is bigger.
Where the first game was about managing a few hundred people through a couple of months of a new Ice Age, this one is about keeping thousands of people going for years and years
At times, I missed some of the older Frostpunk’s dark personal touches
Thanks mostly to its greater size, this sequel is a different cup of frozen chai altogether.
Sure, you’re still asked to make brutal decisions in the name of human survival — like whether to withhold winter fuel payments from your population. But those decisions now play out on a more macro than micro scale. It’s about governments and economies and ideologies, rather than individuals.
This meant that, at times, I missed some of the older Frostpunk’s dark personal touches — like the fact that you could check in on each citizen as they battled with some horrible illness.
But I also found myself revelling in this new game’s ambitious, impressively realised systems. Playing different political movements off against each other, for instance, is a tremendously satisfying lark.
Not that there’s really anything fun about this terrible Ice Age. Bigger? Yes. Better? Perhaps. But Frostpunk 2’s choices are still as chilly and excruciating as the weather. Brrrr.
I found myself revelling in this new game’s ambitious, impressively realised systems
Frostpunk 2’s choices are still as chilly and excruciating as the weather. Brrrr
Ara: History Untold (PC, £49.99)
Verdict: A new civilisation
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. You are the famous leader — an Alexander the Great or Elizabeth I, say — of a nascent civilisation. It’s down to you to defy the aging process and somehow lead that civilisation across millennia of history, from the spears and baskets of the ancient era to the computerised warfare of the future.
Will you beat your rivals militarily, economically, spiritually?
OK, I will stop there — because you’ve certainly heard that one before. It’s a description of the longstanding Civilization series and also of other Civ-like games, such as Humankind and Old World.
And now it’s also a description of Ara: History Untold. This is Microsoft’s attempt to muscle in on the 4X genre (so called for its four defining goals: explore, expand, exploit and exterminate) and it’s… quite like everyone else’s attempts. Here is another game that, if you squint, may just as well be another Civ release.
Except, it’s not totally the same. Ara does enough within its generic constraints to be at least worth trying — and perhaps even supporting as it expands in the years ahead.
A look at the in-game play of Ara: History Untold
his is Microsoft’s attempt to muscle in on the 4X genre (so called for its four defining goals: explore, expand, exploit and exterminate)
Ara does enough within its generic constraints to be at least worth trying
Its first standout feature is how it looks. This is a beautiful game that’s a world apart from the boardgame-style plainness of some of its competitors. Here, you can swoop from a continental vista to closeups of your settlements, full of little people and animals, in a breathtaking instant. Wow!
The next feature is its simplicity. Ara really understands what’s important in these games and, for the most part, strips things back to that. I’m particularly taken with, for example, its ‘Prestige’ system, by which you can rack up points in any area you like — from Culture to Industry — and then have them count towards your final victory. Which is to say, you can win in your own way. It’s wonderfully freeing.
Of course, it could be the case that — as tends to happen with these games — Ara will lose some of its simplicity as it grows in future. Let’s see. In the meantime, it’s not nearly as good as Civ, but it might be a better entry point for people wanting to try out this taxing genre. All must have civilisations.
