CivRev Impressions

Holy crap is this game awesome.  I downloaded the demo a couple of weeks ago and played it 20-30 times, but it got more and more frustrating when the pre-set ending date of 1250AD would hit, especially as I was one move away from storming a capital city of a rival civ.  Well, with the release of the retail game, that issue is resolved.  However, ironically, I still feel the same, though less intense, feeling upon ending a game.  I played through a game on King difficulty and won a cultural victory, but I kind of hated to win as soon as I did.  I was in the process of crushing a Spanish city with my wing of Bombers and I was just a smidge away from obtaining the next economic milestone.  To me, it is a really good indication of how much I enjoy this game that, after completing a 3 and a half hour game (this isn't a typical game length, but I took my time and did some civlopedia research along the way) that I won, I didn't want it to end.  Today is going to be a really long day at work because I am dying to get home and start up another campaign.

If you haven't tried the demo and you own a 360 or PS3, you owe it to yourself to download it and give it a try.  I had played Civ IV on the PC and didn't like it because it was too much micromanaging.  CivRev scales back the micromanagement significantly.  It hits the sweet spot for me because it stripped some of the more tedious aspects of the game (managing each individual worker and having to have the right types of production for certain projects), but still leaves you feeling like you are in total control of your civ.  If you have a God complex, it is a dream game.    I almost didn't download the demo based on my preconceived notions of the Civ series, but Bevo convinced me that I needed to give it a try.  I am glad he did (even though he still likes a terrible college football team).  If you are a newb to the Civ series, you need to play on the Chieftan (lowest) difficulty, as that difficulty has an adviser pop up frequently to help explain the basics of the game.  Actually, even if you are a Civ vet, it is probably easier to play through a bit of a game on this setting to get a grasp on the basics of the controls with a controller.  The game is very well adapted to a controller, but I prefer having a nice on-screen avatar walk me through it rather than having to read about the controls in the manual (and, of course, the demo has no manual to read).

There is still so much that I haven't tried in the game (MP, scenarios, game of the week) that this isn't a review of the game, but I can already tell that this is my favorite game since Gears and it is a very nice change of pace from CoD4.