Who put that R in Evolution?
If you are a follower of the Civilization Series, which grew more complex with each iteration, you're first impression of this console-title probably is disappointment. But do not fret, the promissed Revolution may be postponed, but the evolution of this PC-Classis to a accessable Console-Version has succeeded!
Civ Rev fits you in the shoes of one of 16 historical leaders, to lead your country from a small tribe to a dominating nation. You start with a settler in 2000 BC and from there on your choices determine if you win by conquering all of your 4 opponents, build a space ship and land it on Alpha Centauri, create a marveling culture wich enthralls the United Nations, or build up a superior economy and amass 20.000 goldpieces... or if you fail at all.
The game offers 5 different difficulty settings, ranging from easy enough that even newcomers can easily bag a win, to disturbingly insane, with an AI that is cheating and bullying you from start to end. In the first 3 difficulties you can win by just focusing on one of the four paths to succeed, but in the later you will only stay alive long enought to fight for a win, if you can combine all aspects of the game.
If you compare Civ Rev with the versions known from PC, you will get the misleading impression, that it's been 'dumped down', but truly it just has been 'streamlined'. Not only to make it more accessable to new comers, or to better fit it to console-controlls, but primarily to make it faster and more enjoyable. You don't have to focus on a lot of micro-management, and especially the diplomacy offers way less opportunities, wich speeds up the gameplay a lot. An average game of Civ Rev may be over in 2, 3 hours.
Besides that, the game offers Mulitplay via Xbox live, the absence of a hotseat-mode feels like a wasted opportunity. Multiplay grants you, that you can finish any game, because if a human player drops out, the AI will take its seat. In reality you are going to play a lot of multiplay-games againt the AI - at least that is my impression after about 7 tries to play the game online. But with the ability to talk to your opponents online-play is much funnier then the offline-games.
Of course it's not perfect, and those that want a game as complex as known from PC will be disappointes. But if you're looking for some challenging roundbased-strategy on your 360 this is the game you need to buy.
