Good games to buy?

[Bootsiuv]

@Zeneticus

I've found GalCiv2 to be unstable at best....It always crashes....I have XP SP2 with a VisionTek Radeon 1550x (256 MB), and 768 MB of Ram.

That should be more than enough to play the game, as, like you said, it's pretty low on the requirements. I've checked the site for any solutions, and have found that I should update my drivers. I have done so, and it still crashes after 30-50 turns.

I suppose I'll have to wait for Sins of a Solar Empire before I have an enjoyable spacefaring experience.

A few things about GalCiv2 irked me, anyways. The fact that the planets don't orbit the stars realistically takes away much from the immersion IMO. The colony build screen is also a little ridiculous....those are some MASSIVE structures you must be building, if you can only fit one in a few hundred thousand square kilometers.

I was very fond of Imperium Galactica II, but it suffered from some of the same issues.

I'm still waiting for a space Civ game that looks somewhat realistic. Give me vast distances when I zoom in close....I want to feel like I'm playing over light-years of space. Even the gigantic galaxies in GalCiv2 are far too close together, and bear little resemblance to reality. The same red and blue dust clouds in the background every game is also disappointing....they could have changed it up, and added more of the beautiful objects that we see in space. The entire game, while fun, is too abstract for my tastes.

I'm hoping Sins of a Solar Empire will address some of these realism issues.

On one last note, Freelancer was a very fun game. Probably the best space game I've ever played, with the most unique and entertaining locations.