E for All Preview: Civilization: Revolution
by Andrew Podolsky on October 23, 2007 at 8:50 pm
“Cleavage-Patra” – Scientists now know what the pyramids were modeled after…
Allow me to paint you a picture: First came the wheel, then the alphabet, followed soon after by television and the Internet. There were horses and camels and elephants, which were mostly used to raid barbarian villages and wage wars between nations. Precious gems were extracted, rice and wheat were traded, and Civilization was born.
Excuse me if I’m glossing over the details. Human history is a little too complicated to encapsulate in one limited experience, but the Civilization games have been doing just that since the series began in 1991. Formerly only found on PCs, Civilization begins anew on nearly all current consoles with Civilization: Revolution, featuring sixteen classical civilizations and a slew of gameplay changes.
If my rundown of human events over the last ten thousand years or so seemed overly simplified, you should probably expect that same level of reduction from the console version. To streamline the controls and gameplay, Civilization: Revolution will hasten the speed of mankind’s development to a furious pace. Blink, and you might just miss the Renaissance.
There are certain advantages to tinkering with Civilization’s grand scale, like enabling a three or four hour playthrough from chariot wheels to tank treads. Playing through human history on the couch could get tiring faster than playing from an office chair, so shorter games could be an advantage here.
Also, some of the more difficult to manage aspects of running a civilization, like corruption, pollution, and forced revolution have all been dropped. It’s funny that a game called Civilization: Revolution would drop the ability for your subjects to overthrow your imposed system of government, but apparently the scientists working at Take Two have discovered irony.
The cultural impact of your civilization has also been overhauled, as you can now gain a cultural victory by accumulating great people. When your high culture score causes an unhappy competing city to join your civilization, you’ll end up converting the unhappiest city regardless of their distance from your borders. These kinds of changes could disrupt the finely tuned balance of the series, but with Sid Meier on board as the lead designer, hopefully these changes won’t cause Civilization to crumble.
Civilization: Revolution looks like it holds a lot of promise for a streamlined console version, and the game should play the same across all systems regardless of graphical power or interface. Bonuses like a standardized Game of the Week for online competitions on the Xbox 360 and touch-screen control for the Nintendo DS seem like they might even make the game worth checking out on multiple platforms. We’ll have the complete story on this new era in gaming when Civilization: Revolution comes out next year.
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2 Comments » |
on August 9, 2008 11:55 pm
I think that the lead developer, or someone on the editing team had a lot of outside influences on their characters. Cleopatra of the Egyptians looks almost identical to Grace Jones. And the foreign adviser was mistaken for Condoleezza Rice three or four times when I was playing the game … and Catherine of the Russians seems to look a lot like Cameron Diaz. But the game turned out to be a lot better than I would expect. The demo caught my attention and I was hooked from the start. Thanks for the review !
on December 13, 2008 4:20 pm
Amoxicillin and saliva tests….
Expiration date for amoxicillin….