On Friday, 2K Games and Firaxis Games announced the launch of Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth for the PC, the latest installment in the Civilization series. The Mac and Linux version won't be made available until this holiday season, published by Aspyr Media.
So what kind of hardware will you need to run this game? The list of minimum specs shows that PC gamers will need an Intel Core 2 Duo clocked at 1.8 GHz or an AMD Athlon X2 64 clocked at 2.0 GHz. They'll also need an AMD Radeon HD 3650 or better, a Nvidia GeForce GT 8800 or better, or an Intel HD 3000 or better. PC gamers will also need 2 GB of RAM along with Windows Vista SP2 or Windows 7.
The recommended set of specifications includes a quad-core CPU clocked at 1.8 GHz (Intel or AMD) and 4 GB of RAM. On the GPU front, gamers will need an AMD Radeon HD 5000 or better. However, to take advantage of AMD's Mantle API, gamers will need an AMD Radeon R9 series GPU or better. Otherwise, Nvidia's GeForce GT 400 series or better will do, as will Intel "Ivy Bridge" integrated graphics or better.
Unlike previous Civilization games, this installment has players exploring and colonizing an alien planet. The game has plenty of side-quests to keep players hooked into the overall story while also allowing them to collect resources, upgrade units and more. Players will also face new technology, encounter dangerous terrain and hostile alien life, dig up ancient alien relics and so on. Players can even build satellites to deploy into a new orbital layer.
"Unlike its predecessors, players are no longer bound by historical context in Civilization: Beyond Earth," said Sid Meier, Director of Creative Development at Firaxis Games. "The game challenges players to make interesting and fun decisions bringing together future science, technologies and ideologies as you explore mankind's future on an alien planet."
So far Beyond Earth has earned a Metacritic score of 82 and a user score of 6.6. Early scores come from notable gaming sites including Game Informer (90), Polygon (90), Destructoid (90), PC Gamer (87), Eurogamer (80), Joystiq (80), IGN (79), GameSpot (70) and The Escapist (60). Click on the link to see the full list of 45 critics.
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