Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution (2008)
Developer: Firaxis Games
Platform: X-Box 360
Induction Date: 07/22/2008
The Barbarians are not very smart.
Civilization Revolution is a much simplified version of the Civilization games found on the Personal Computer. Its designer, Sid Meier, took a very smart though not necessarily effective approach in building this console version of his epic series. Instead of trying to recreate the demanding complexities of the game on the PC, Meier's focused on building a strategy game that is more casual and fast-paced. I won't necessary say that it's dumbed-down to accommodate the consoles' more varied demographics. Instead, it's like Disney's animated films compared to the classic fairy tales they tried to represent, which have their positives and negatives.
Liar.
The object of this game is to be the first civilization in the world to reach the apex of culture, domination, technology, or finance. After choosing from a wide variety of civilizations to play as - each with their own unique perks - the player starts off with a "settler" unit that is used to build the first city. From there, it is up to the player how he or she wants to build up the civilization. The game uses a turn-based structure and each action taken by the player, for example building another settler unit to gain another city or a military unit to protect the city, will cost several precious turns. The built cities must be managed to increase their effectiveness. The player also has to manage the technological focus of the growing empire that would lead to more build options for the cities as well as worry about the other civilizations on the map. The other civilizations are also progressing with the player throughout the game and using war or diplomacy options (or both), the player must keep them in check at all times to ensure victory. Be prepared to see the rather brutal A.I. feverishly switching back and forth between sending your civilization with words of love and then suddenly attacking your precious capital city. Each new map can last several hours of play and it's engrossing enough where I found myself playing each session non-stop. Those less committed can always use the game's save feature at any time.
I thought your favorite thing was magic Mr. Merlin.
Because the game moves so fast compared to its PC brethren, I found it to be rather repetitive. Sure there are different branches of technology to uncover during each session and sure there are subtle strategies to employ towards victories but the whole thing is just a bit shallow. There are really little to do in the city management screens and events - like the changes in era - happen too quickly that everything feels like a mad rush to the finish line. The speed of things fare a little better online, even though all the players are managing each turn together in real time. This is because during the online match, each turn is timed and can't be skipped quickly unless all the other players are skipping their current turns as well. The problem then becomes the length of the online gameplay. So far, almost every ranked match I participated in ended up with the other players actually leaving the game after about an hour in. This could have been easily remedied by granting rewards at the end of each game played. Remember how long battles can last in Culdcept Saga? In that game, people normally stayed on until the end of an online battle so that they could be rewarded with more cards in their collections.
It's always a good idea to leave army units in your cities.
This game is fun in small doses. Whenever I tried to play it more than one session a day, the flaws become a little more obvious. There is a weekly scenario available to be played on Live so I know that I would be coming back for more. I do like the flawlessly animated avatar presentations better on this version than those in Civilization IV. Everything found here is more colorful, more attractive, easier to swallow, and heavily injected with a non-healthy dose of steroids but also shallow, forced, and tiring at the same time. Civilization Revolution is good attempt to bring a classic strategy game to the consoles but since Sid Meier was directly involved with the project, the game deserves to be much better than it currently is.
RATING: 3 out of 5
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