demoplay: Anno 2070 /PC

In a few days arrives the latest edition of the Anno series, Anno 2070. Usually Anno takes place in a medieval setting and the gameplay is about to build up your own settlement and assure economic success with trade, production and extension. But this one for the first time of the series takes place in the near future, as the name suggests, Anno 2070. The demo offers you the first two campaign missions, including the first game-mechanics introductions a.k.a. the tutorial. The mission content was nice, nothing very special or exciting, for me was and is Anno a "sandbox" game and i was never interested in the campaign.

At first glance (in particulat the main-menu) feels very strange, everyone who knows the series will have the impression of a completely different game - it's irritating. The mission-descriptions mediate this strange feeling in the same way, it's about some "two-year plan", "company's board" and "produce-volume" etc, you're not familiar with this kind of speech in the Anno series. Even the first few minutes of gameplay seem to be "overspaced", it's the new menu-look/order and icons with which you first must become familiar before you realize that the good old gameplay-mechanics of Anno still are the same and you beginn to feel comfortable with the gameplay.

The atmosphere and the general appearance is notably handsome, simple beautiful - the movement, all the details, observe your residents, listen their feedback, see your settlement growing - you could keep watching all this and forget about the gameplay, and maybe even the time. Conveniently there is a "postcard-mode" - a perfect camera- and lenses- setting for superb screenshots. . Music and sound are also of good quality, definitely a different direction than usual.