Admirably Activision added another victory condition this time out. Here you can build all the components to the Gaia Controller, which creates the same sort of tension that building the spacecraft did in Civ2.

Additionally you'll find a great deal of replay value here, but more could have been necessary. Multiplayer options include TCP/IP but fail to include PBEM, which feels like a more natural way to play a long term Civ-style game. A scenario editor is included, but only three scenarios have been provided. You can customize the map in a variety of ways but they still lack the more personally satisfying (to me anyway) World map. A wide variety of cultures can be portrayed, which is satisying, but it's still disturbing and comical to watch as your primarily desert based Polish Empire savagely rips into the tundra and ice-bound Cubans. Also, these cultures appear to lack the easily defined plusses and minuses Alpha Centauri and Civ2 delineated so clearly.

In the end Call to Power II is worlds better than Civilization: Call to Power but ultimately it still fails to completely entrance you and addict you the way the more elegant Meier/Reynolds designs do. It also fails to completely break free from the Civilization stamp, and in that way it has failed to truly strike out on it's own as a completely new game series. However, Civ3 is a long way off indeed and, as president Clinton said recently when referring to Al Gore: "He's the next best thing." Call to Power II is indeed the next best thing, and may help you bide your time while waiting for the real deal.

Andrew Bub
Contributing Editor & Beatdown Scribe