Endless Space: It goes on forever!

Endless Space. No, it's not a hint to the hard-disk space required for installation, but to a surprisingly good 4X game that you'll never finish a game of. It takes influence from Master of Orion, and for those who aren't familiar with the genre, think of it as Sid Meiers Civilisation in space, but with fewer immortal Gandhi look-a-likes and more intergalactic space slugs.

The four 'X's are Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate. These are the aims of the game, and there're multiple win conditions for players to pursue. The idea is that the game pans out differently each time its played, with a different combination of military and peaceful solutions to opponents. In reality, this isn't the case. Everyone wants a piece of the ship-building, space battling invasion gameplay, which can make it somewhat difficult to play as the more peaceful races.

The combat is nothing like Master of Orion's turn based, isometric tactical screen, but is instead boiled down to what is essentially a rock, paper, scissors card game. Your fleet will fire rounds at the enemy automatically in the three phases of the battle. To compliment this, you play 'cards' which give certain bonuses for a single round of combat. Each card (except retreat) has a counter card, and if it is countered, the effect of your card is not only completely neutralised, but your opponent gains a specific bonus to his card as a result. It makes for some interesting mind-games; trying to guess what your opponent is going to pick, and out-picking him to the best of your ability. Other than these cards, its the ship-building that decides the fights.

(Bullets at long range. Like confetti, it's just annoying and doesn't really do much.)

The ship-building interface allows you to add modules to a class of hull of your choosing. It's heavily linked with the research you make. When new weapons come along, you'll be wanting to retrofit all of your old ships with new weapons, engines, and defensive modules. If everyone pursues a military research path, it quickly becomes an arms race and a retrofit-extravaganza. However, researching new weapons needs to be balanced with researching new hulls, which is in the expansion tree. Focussing too much on one research path is a bullet to the foot. Hybridising too much can leave you in the same situation. You're never really safe, no matter what you choose to tech into, which makes the games tense; forcing you to use your strategic mind.

(The standard defender. It usually becomes obsolete within 20 turns.)

I've played too many games of Endless Space to bother counting, and only two have gotten anywhere near completion. It's one of those games that you need to set aside a day to play with someone, like Settlers of Catan or other board games that take forever (and then some) to play. It's one of the few games that actually has endless hours of gameplay, and it goes to show that the turn-based format is far from dead, even with new technology.