Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution Review
The basic premise of Civilization Revolution, much like its predecessors, is to pick one of sixteen great civilizations of history and lead them, starting from humble beginnings in the year 4000 BC. After that point, everything else is up to you. The game is played much like a board game, moving units across a randomly generated world turn by turn, with unexplored lands covered in a fog. Eventually you try to achieve one of four victories. The first is that rather straightforward Domination victory, where you must conquer all of the capital cities in the game using military might. The second is an Economic victory, where you must accumulate a reserve of 20,000 gold. The third is a Cultural victory, where you must achieve 20 cultural advancements like having famous people of history join your civilization or building great monuments. The last is a Technological victory where you must develop enough technological advancements to travel to and settle on Alpha Centauri. Along the way to victory (or defeat, if you do not play well) you will get help from advisers and make deals with the leaders of the other civilizations that are in a particular game. There are also several difficulties, ranging from overly simple at the bottom to nearly impossible at the top. I recommend a medium level difficulty to start.
In general the gameplay is similar to previous Civ games, which means it’s awesome to those of you unfamiliar with the series. However, it has been simplified and streamlined to work on a console. Some examples of this include much smaller game worlds than in PC iterations, slightly less micro-managing (it still exists though, don’t worry), and the removal of the complex menus of the PC versions for a much smoother interface. Overall, the gameplay is very rewarding and gives you as much of a challenge as you want, depending on the difficulty you choose.
As you might guess from the description above, there really isn’t a story set for you in this game. The player has to make up a story for their civilization as they play. That doesn’t mean that there is a lack of great “plot points” in any given round. Most arise because of simple fact that this game combines real people and monuments from history with a world totally controlled by a player and their opponents. A particularly humorous example of this came when I was playing a game as the Roman civilization. As I was nearing modern times I was confronted by Gandhi of India. No surprise there, we had traded technology earlier, but he wasn’t here for trade. He was here for war. I literally had to stop the game because I was laughing so much. My real point of all of this is that if you want a full story you’ll have to look else where, but if you can have a little imagination about it then this is full of potential stories.
Going along with the historical theme of this game, the audio can be described as being “the best of times and the worst of times”(Ok, that was actually a literature reference, but it’s very close). The music is enjoyable and always changes to fit what is happening at the time. About to invade another civilization? Cue the omninous music. Or maybe you just built the Eiffel Tower. Cue some peaceful music. Or perhaps you are looking into the fog of unknown territory. The music stops entirely for an empty, lonely sound. All of thise fades together nicely and the music stays nice and subtle throughout the game. The little sounds that your units make as they move around and after they have won a battle are nice too. However, the advisers are what keep me from enjoying this game’s audio. They are just annoying. They speak total gibberish and it seems like each adviser and world leader has three sound clips. Fortunately you can turn this off separately from everything else in the sound options, but that doesn’t change the fact that they will annoy you out of your skull. My last complaint about the audio is that it take very little advantage of surround sound, except for the empty sound of looking into unknown lands.
The graphics in this game are a personal favorite of mine. The Civ games have always had a fairly distinct style about them, and that style continues wonderfully on consoles. There may not be the most polygons you have ever seen on a screen, but what is there truly pops. As you can see from the screens posted in this review the colors in this game are really bright, something sorely lacking in today’s world of gray on brown shooters. Also, the bright colors and fairly high contrast serves a vital purpose for this game on consoles. It allows you to very easily see what is happening since a console typically doesn’t produce the same resolution a PC does. The animation work is very nice too, and it’s shown off to full degree when the camera zooms in for a battle. There is also a very satisfying effect that comes up when you land a nuke on a city. Finally, this game runs perfectly smoothly most of the time. The only times I have run into any slow down is when I had about 15 tank armies attacking China and when I had 7 very developed cities on screen together. Slow down doesn’t really affect a game of this type though it never requires the fast reflexes and framerates of a shooter or racer.
The multiplayer in this game is mediocre at best, but that is only for the time being. It’s really a more a product of the kind of players on consoles versus the typical PC crowd than any real problems with the game itself. Instead of being willing to sit down for a few hours to play a very strategic game, console gamers want fast action which ends up with some less than satisfying multiplayer games. Typically you end up with people that don’t know what they are doing so they either take very long to take their turn(but not too long, thanks to an in-game timer) or quitting. I expect that over time this problem will deal with itself as only the experienced Civ players will remain, but for now the multiplayer is not too much fun compared to the single player.
Overall, Civilization Revolution is one of the strongest strategy games to hit consoles. It doesn’t quite compare to it’s big brother on PC, Civilization 4, but as a console strategy game it is great. It’s a fun game that will provide tons of replayability while also giving imaginary world leaders enough to work with while not overwhelming new players. I strongly recommend this to anyone that is a fan of the Civilization series or to anyone that wants a good strategy game for their console. If you can’t stand the thought of a game that doesn’t involve headshots of touchdowns you may want to try the demo first, but keep an open mind.
Story - There is no story constructed for you, but what you can imagine from the events that happen is always sure to entertain. - 8.5/10
Gameplay - Sure, it’s not your typical fast moving console game, but that’s alright. This is the best console strategy game out there yet and you will enjoy it for a long time to come. - 9.5/10
Audio - Good music and sound effects, but the annoying adviser/leader voices ruin that. Fortunately they can be turned off independently of anything else. Do that first and you will have a much better time. - 8/10
Graphics - The typical Civ style is all here and it’s nice and colorful like it should be, even though it isn’t quite the beauty games like Call of Duty 4 are. - 8.5/10
Multiplayer - While it’s not very fun right now due to player inexperience, the multiplayer is perfectly wonderful since it is the same as single player, but online. Just wait for more experienced players to start playing, hope for a good match, or play against friends. - 7.5/10
Overall - This game brings the Civ gameplay to consoles in its own way and it works wonderfully. This game is fun and the fact that every game is entirely different makes for huge replayability. If you are up for some strategy thinking, buy this game and you will not be disappointed. Yes, I am very happy to say that this is a definite buy and receives a strong. - 9/10.
