Cubed:
It should have been a slam-dunk - something too easy to do to possibly fail at - yet against all odds, Sid Meier's Starships has managed to botch up a great idea with a series of seriously inept design choices that left the game of questionable value at best. It's not that there is, somehow, no potential here, as there is plenty of potential! It just gets ruined by a desire to appeal to lazy design and comes across as very disappointing.
GT:
We've honored many winners, but before we wrap up, we take a moment to recognize this year's casualties as well.
EB: 2K has announced the arrival of the 2K Editors’ Choice Strategy Bundle on the iOS App Store, which will contain the iOS versions of Civilization Revolution 2, XCOM: Enemy Within, and Sid Meirer’s Starships. The bundle will cost $19.99, which is a 60% saving over buying the games individually. This will be a limited time offer, so act now or be left out in the 2K Non-Strategy-Having cold!
GG:
The name of Sid Meier has attained a godlike status amongst strategy gamers and, it could be argued, for very good reason. Known as a developer who plays his games over and over until he deems them fun enough to launch, many of his myriad of releases are instant classics. None more so than his magnum opus franchise, Civilization. That series was followed by sci-fi spinoff Beyond Earth last year which, while certainly having many of same mechanics, fell short of its predecessor’s glory and of matching Meier’s much-loved Alpha Centauri.