As the commander of either the terraforming Eden colony or the nature-harmonious Plymouth colony, you must keep your colony alive on the hostile planet of New Terra. New Terra's
malevolent nature will get in your way however it can, but Eden scientists have introduced the larger problem: the "Blight". Now both colonies are in peril. The malignant microorganism the Blight is attacking anything it can and is also causing tectonic instabilities inside New Terra. You must evacuate your colony, establish new colonies, mine and refine
ores, research new technologies, and finally figure out some way to get off New Terra. On top of this, you must maintain morale, train scientists and workers, compensate for power and labor shortages, and keep your population intact. Sound impossible? Try the hard difficulty level!

Outpost 2 shifts the gameplay emphasis, which is warfare in many real-time  strategy games, from war to survival. It isn't boring, either. Outpost 2 is very challenging and once you evacuate your first colony at medium difficulty, you feel very accomplished. You cannot even build armed structures or units until the fourth
mission, and then you really don't need them.The last few missions are pure combat, however, but if you can get there, you deserve a little mass destruction. There are three difficulty
levels that should be called easy, hard, and insane, but there are very helpful tutorials that lessen the learning curve. The graphics are very nice, highly detailed, well animated, and can also be zoomed. The soundtrack is original and
pretty good, too. To make it complete, Outpost 2 has multiplayer capabilities that bring the challenge to two or more survivalists, and the point-and-click interface will be very familiar to anyone who has played Command & Conquer,
Total Annihilation, or Warcraft II.

So, if you're looking for a change of pace and a tremendous challenge in the  a real-time strategy gaming field, take a look at Outpost 2: Divided Destiny. You won't be disappointed.

By Geoffrey Baxter