I just had my first few impressions of sins, and i have to say I'm pretty excited about it...

Finally a half decent 4x game that rivals homeworlds 'fun-factor' and doesn't come with HUGE turn-off's like say a turn based system that let's everyone 'wait' (forever) while the other player/AI makes a move (SEV anyone?), or just the anno 1995 (if lucky) dated gfx that make everything look like it was ported directly from an amiga console, and let's not even go into the various AI (artifcial idiots) that most of these games present as opponents, or the horrible attempts at implementing feasonable diplomacy options when said AI is on the decision making end of things.

Sins definitely has the fun and the eye appeal down to an art. The first time one of my larger fleets warped in to reinforce a losing battle I nearly creamed my pants! I actually played a huge scenario start to finish in one long, long, loooong setting, and never got bored... got plenty tired, but not bored. And the way the Sins engine performs is just nothing short of amazing.

HOWEVER... hehe..

There are a couple of things that I liked less... maybe nitpicking, maybe not...

First of all... the way the solar systems are mapped out.

It's kind of 'disturbing' to see a volcanic 'fire and brimstone' hellish type planet way on the outskirts of a solar system. Last i checked, things are pretty frozen out there. And what's up with the 20-30 planet systems? I mean ok, some of the 'planets' are actually just rocks and debris, but still, a quick inspection of the average Sins solar system looks like a cosmic accident waiting to happen. I was also a little disappointed to see that every celestial body is basically the same size in representation... a small rocky planet like a terran world for example is in effect the exact same size as a gas 'giant'... more over, the sun isn't very impressive in dimensions; looks more like a little burning asteroid really!

In Sins defence, I do have to say that it's nice to see a game that doesn't represents planets as 'pebbles'. You know as opposed to other games in the genre where the average capital size ship actually dwarfs your largest planets (wtf)... still I can't imagine it should be so difficult to 'vary' them up a bit.. make em scalable at least. Put in some barren worlds, some jungle worlds, some primordial soup worlds, rock worlds, ocean worlds, heck a planet made of cheese... variety is always good.

So far the visual aspect, I have more 'gripes' about celestial bodies...

More specifically on interaction. The level of interaction with celestial bodies in Sins is fairy 'skinny' as opposed to other games in the genre, imho. People can live on planets, you can build some guns around them, and if you're willing to research that far, you can actually put a shield around your planet... well ok, there's interaction, but it's pretty slim for a 4x game.

I would have liked to see for example... more complex planetary defences. Ground to space firing platforms for example.. you know, a couple big ass surface guns to put a few holes into the bad guys nuking the planet! Or how about a little more tech research into environment. Maybe something that benefits your cultures population ratio, or how resilient your population is to orbital bombardments of various types (dealing with fallout etc). The way a population goes from 0 to fully populated in a matter of minutes in Sins is a tad hmmm... strange to say the least. People also don't seem to mind flocking to planets that are being shot to hell, or even mind completely rehabilitating a planet that was just nuked to kingdom come (nobody likes a 6th toe do they?).

There's also something to be said about how much you can really 'do' with planets. Aside from put a bunch of prolific people on it and have them breed like rug-rats, there isn't really much else to do with a planet (aside from the planetary shield of course!).

I understand that from a point of view where planets are limited (although really, once you have 100 planets to mess with, how limited are they really?) you can't just go all out and go death star or supernova on the innocent inhabitants of various systems, but still... Would have been nice if there was environmental control over systems. Like maybe some terraforming on certain worlds... desert planets seem like a nice candidate, maybe the odd barren rock. Then again at this level of interaction terraforming doesn't really serve much purpose. Might have been nice if there were consequences to heavy bombardment of planets... you know like "ups, guess people wont be coming here for the next 300 years then!", or "yikes, looks like that was one bomb to many and now planet Gaia is really planet festering hellhole". Maybe an option to artificially create worlds, seems nice... Just MORE epic planet/celestial interaction stuff to really gear the game into the 'end game' spectrum. Right now end game is amassing enough planets to supply endless flows of cash to amass endless flows of capital ship fleets. which is cool also, just not very inspiring.

The tech-tree i also found a bit 'limited'... I guess in Sins we're not talking hundreds of years of development and technological advances, more like a couple years in the average huge scenario, but still, it's really nice to truly see your race and your culture advancing.

All in all, when i play Sins, i get a feeling like I'm playing in 'sandbox' mode. I guess i'm really a 'deep' 4x gamer that prefers the cultural develoment/exploration/diplomacy side to 4x rather than the extermination side. Don't get me wrong though, havoc, mayhem and settling old scores with intrest is definitely also a requirement for me! But yeah, all in all, I can really appreciate 'molding' a culture and having a dramatic impact on the game world in these type of games.

Regardless of all that, this game definitely wins 2008 in the genre, and probably every year from now on till 2018 considering the crap they usually pass for entertainment in this genre.