Sid Meiers Civilization Revolution

Review from Samo - Tuesday, 05 August 2008 @ 3:29pm

Depending on who you believe, gamers came from humans and humans came from monkeys. Not in a weird sort of sick inbreeding way, but over millions of years as set out by the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin. Most of you intelligent gaming types are probably already better versed in the whole caper than I am so I won’t bother going into the details, which I’d probably get wrong anyway. Even though it is technically only a theory and is probably wrong in the first place. This is awesome when you consider the bloke had a city named after him. How can Darwin write a theory and be only ‘potentially right’ when I write heaps of theories on games which are gospel truth yet he’s the one who gets a city!? This has led to a sudden realisation that I’m being short changed and I should have a city named after me. I’m not asking for anything big like Melbourne, maybe somewhere smaller and more insignificant like Brisbane should be renamed to Samcity.

Sid Meier’s Civilisation series has been running since the beginning of time. It’s incredible to sit back and think of just how long the series has managed to remain relevant for. The original debuted on MS-DOS back in 1991! It’s a great feeling because it’s not often that I get to sit here sipping my scotch while being all nostalgic but then, to be really honest I can’t. My first Civ experience was years, years and years later with the release of Civilisation IV, on Windows XP of all things! However, Civ IV wowed me with the depth of thought, progression and the sheer scale of the strategy. It was an incredible game in every way and for someone who was becoming frustrated and bored with the ‘move fast or die’ nature of RTS, a pleasant, measured, epic turn based strategy game was just what I needed.

Things don't seem to have progressed much in the near future

Fast forward a few years and despite what Microsoft’s Games for Windows department will tell you, Steve Jobs’ prediction is coming true many years too late and the mass PC gaming market is slowly dying a long and undignified death in favour of the lounge room console. Legendary game make Sid Meier and the good people at Take2 recognised this trend and as a result we are left with Civilisation Revolution, the game that has been comfortably nestled in the drive of my xbox 360 in my lounge room for the past couple of weeks.

10 minutes of play was all it took for me to realise that this new, improved, faster Civ is much less radical that its name may suggest and is more of an evolution to suit the changing trends in the gaming marketplace. It plays and feels like the Civs of olde, yet with more balance. There is much less reward based on nationality of the player. The length of the game is shortened too, gone are the epic 3,4,5 hour grudge matches, replaced with lightning 2 hour maximum games. This is Civ for the short attention span of the console generation.

The result of all this balancing and shortening is an extremely level playing field. Massive emphasis is placed on progression and the balanced player is the one who loses. Civ has long rewarded even, balanced strategy but the short play time of Revolution massively rewards the more daring strategies that shoot for a particular type of victory, yet they’re much more risky if they’re upset in any way. It feels like it’s been specifically tailored to the xbox live community and in many ways, it was.

The online multiplayer is where the game truly shines, real human players are always more interesting to play against than the AI, yet in Rev, the AI is a pretty damn good challenge in anything above the basic difficulty level. Looks like I might need to spend a few more weeks sharpening up my approach but of course that isn’t going to happen because the downside of being a reviewer means I need to move right on to Race Driver Grid and I won’t get to stuff around with Civ for a few more weeks. This is a shame because as a game to spend time with, it’s one of the best. The gameplay isn’t stupidly fast like a real time game, you have time to sit back and think about your next move and take a sip of that beer or scotch that’s accompanying the playing session without getting paranoid about your opposition player getting away.

"You're presence offends me!" New anti pickup line of the week.

The overall presentation takes a little while to get used to. Civ Rev’s world is an overtly cartoony place very reminiscent of The Sims, as is the way your advisors and adversaries are portrayed. It can grate, especially the way they talk gibberish at you when you’re working on making a serious move for the good of your empire.

The biggest downside of Civ Rev is the balancing. All of the races, units and technology tree just seem way too even. There’s very little pay off for making certain decisions and as a result the Civ formula feels a bit blander than before. Maybe this is a trade off for the short play time, but if you’re looking for the richest turn based strategy experience, I’d still recommend Civ IV first. However, Revolution is a game that understands its target market very well indeed. This isn’t a game that gets bogged down in the detail and over micro-management and focuses on the bigger picture. As a result of this thinking, it’s a wham-bam-thank-you-mam experience that the console crowd (i.e me) will love.

Pros

Civilisation unplugged, a fantastic thinking man’s strategy game perfectly built for the console xbox live type audience. Cartoony presentation is fantastically whimsical and light hearted.

Cons

It’s not traditional 5 hour plus civ and there’s no option to extend game time. ‘The Sims’ style elements of the cartoony presentation can grate a lot. Over balancing of races, units and tech tree makes the game a tad bland. Silly Americans who spell Civilisation with a 'z'.