Anno 2070: An Ever Balancing Equation.

I’ve never been much of a fan of city building and strategy games. I mean sure I grew up playing games like Sim City and Age of Empires much like the rest of my generation and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy them, but as time as went on I found myself playing less and less of them, instead favouring other genres. I think this is due to the somewhat slower game play style, one that favours a decisive methodical approach that’s usually at odds with my “just entertain me” thought pattern. Still Anno 2070 managed to catch my eye with its curious blend of city building and real time strategy, something I hadn’t really come across before.

Anno 2070 puts you far into the future where the polar ice caps have melted, flooding the entire world. Because of this the world has united under one singular government with three distinct factions. The first is the Tycoons, a capitalistic consortium that look to rebuild the world as fast as possible regardless of the consequences. The second is the Ecos, an environmental movement who share the same goal as the Tycoons but favour sustainable approaches over expansion at any cost. Finally there’s the Techs, in essence a group of scientists who develop much of the technologies that power both the Tycoon’s and Eco’s economies. You are put in charge of an Ark, an advanced submersible craft that’s capable of restarting civilization on the uninhabited islands of the world. Anno 2070 follows your adventures as you rebuild civilization and do battle with the various problems that cross your path.

The graphics of Anno 2070 are visually pleasing to say the least, providing a level of eye candy that I haven’t seen in this genre before. Much of this owes to the soft glow that seems to surround everything, giving a soft blur that makes the graphics appear much better than they actually are. The camera work done for the cut scenes in Anno 2070 is also quite good with many scenes having a distinct movie feel to them. As an added bonus all this doesn’t seem to put too much strain on my gaming rig as even when I had hundreds of buildings on screen the game was still buttery smooth, something that the developers behind Anno 2070 get a lot of brownie points for.

However Anno 2070 falls into the lazy trap of nothing bothering to do any kind of lip syncing at all, not even for the voice acted parts. This really irks me as it’s not exactly a hard thing to do and Anno 2070 just doesn’t even bother, the characters just randomly flap their mouths while the sound bite plays. You may think this is being overly harsh but I watched my friends almost a decade ago accomplish near perfect lip syncing when they were doing a 3D animation course. When a game doesn’t bother to do this I can’t help but feel they had lazy animators, especially when there’s not that much more animation in the rest of the game. The voice acting, whilst passable, doesn’t really help matters here either.

As I alluded to earlier Anno 2070 is a curious blend of Sim City/Civilization city building style mechanics coupled with elements of real time strategy. The campaign missions serve as a good introduction to these mechanics, introducing each of them slowly so you can get a feel for them, and after the first couple missions I had a pretty good grasp on what I needed to do. The two different genres are heavily intertwined, as I’ll explain below.

The first part is the city building. You start off by dropping a warehouse on an island which gives you an area to construct non-residential buildings in. After that you can then drop a community centre which allows you to build homes for people to live in. These people have needs which take the form of food, drink, community and so on. Should you satisfy all their needs the buildings will then upgrade to the next level of citizen, one that has more nuanced needs but also generates more income for you. There are 4 distinct levels for each race and each level brings with it new buildings that are bigger and better than their previous ones.

However you’ll never be able to find everything you need to get to the highest levels by using just one island. All of the islands have natural resources on them that can be exploited but its guaranteed that one island won’t have everything you need. That’s when ships and trading routes come in, you can use them to ferry resources between islands. At the same time you’ll probably want to expand your population there, because otherwise you won’t be able to pay the upkeep on the ships. Of course those people have needs to, which the island probably doesn’t have, so you’ll have to use those same ships to start ferrying resources to them as well.

It’s really quite incredible how much effort you have to put in to make sure everything stays balanced so that you don’t run out of money or that you residents leave you. In the one multiplayer game I had with a mate of mine it was an intense 4 hour session of bouncing between islands ensuring that all the needs were met, ultimately unraveling before me as I underestimated just how costly satisfying the highest level resident’s desires would be. We didn’t even get to the other part of the game, the real time strategy component.

Whilst the main focus of Anno 2070 is the city building the RTS side of it is just as important if you’re looking to win. Whilst its not as complex or nuanced as say StarCraft II it can’t be ignored either as one combat ship can make you life rather painful if left unchecked. The final missions of the campaign focus heavily on this and whilst you won’t be spending all your time focusing on the combat it’s still enough to break up the monotony of constantly balancing the needs of your populace with the costs of doing so.

On top of all of this is the ancillary activities which can change the way you play your game. There’s regular votes for the world council with the outcome granting certain bonuses. A World Event is always happening that will reward players who complete it based on the number of people who participated in it and there are Current Events that can be completed for rewards from certain factions. For someone who’s a fan of the Anno series or just this instalment this kind of thing would be a veritable gold mine of additional content, further extending the replay value of Anno 2070.

Anno 2070 represents an interesting fusion of genres that you don’t usually see coming together and manages to pull it off surprisingly well. With the pleasing graphics, intricate game play and wealth of content Anno 2070 is definitely one of those games that won’t disappoint traditional PC gamers. The experience isn’t perfect however, what with the terrible lip syncing and ridiculously long play times for multiplayer games. Still for the price I paid I’d consider it a winner and I can see it being busted out at LANs for those looking for a Civ style fix without the minimum 8 hour time commitment.

Rating: 7.8/10

Anno 2070 is available right now on PC for $20.99 (or $90 on Steam). Game was played entirely on the PC with around 16 hours of single player and 4 hours of multiplayer.