Reviewed: August 11, 2008
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
2K Games

Developer
Firaxis

Released: July 8, 2008
Genre: Strategy
Players: 1

9
9
8
10
9.1

Supported Features:

I’d like to say that was my excuse for having never played a Civilization game before, but honestly, I’ve just never been even remotely interested in Sid Meier’s political world building simulation, and now that I am almost entirely weaned from PC gaming, chances are I would never have played a Civilization game if it weren’t for Civilization Revolution, now available on the Xbox 360. I’m not sure what compelled me to even attempt this review. With no prior background in the franchise and plenty of Civilization fans on staff ready to dive into this project, I almost felt guilty when I loaded this game up…almost.

Civilization, as a franchise, has always been centered on building a massive world power from the smallest of start-up cultures. The game is turn-based, allowing you time to plot, scheme, and strategize, using military might and diplomatic savvy along with an every growing tech tree of knowledge in your race for supremacy. Civilization Revolution not only captures all of the flavor of the previous titles, it manages to reinvent the gameplay, making it far more accessible to newcomers as well as strategically pleasing to veterans of the series.

Civilization Revolution is so easy to play and so accessible it was a joy to learn and a fascinating experience that actually teaches you some core concepts in social studies and political science. You being by choosing from 16 possible civilizations, each represented by a famous political or cultural icon. Naturally, I chose America lead by honest Abe Lincoln. My tiny culture was placed on a tiny land mass and I was left to build an empire.

Thankfully, you have all sorts of in-game help in the form of political, military, scientific, and diplomatic advisors. These colorful animated characters pop in from the sides of the screen, often shoving each other out of the way to promote their own agenda. Listen closely to their advice and you will quickly learn how everything in this game impacts something else. To build an empire you need a growing population, a rich cultures, and resources to expand. You’ll also need a strong military to protect yourself, because yours is not the only civilization growing on this hunk of a planet.

The one thing I learned quickly it that this game is an arms race and those with the most toys wins the game. To that end I tipped my scales in favor of scientific research, which netted me scientific breakthroughs. My culture was the first with an alphabet, written language and printing press. I also founded the Internet (take that Al Gore) and the atomic bomb. Discovering these items first gives your society certain advantages over the other developing nations, especially in multiplayer games.

But much like a game of Monopoly, things can become skewed quickly and often the game tips in favor of one country making it hard to balance any sort of conflict. In my first game my civilization grew rapidly and Russia was the only other society that could even pose a possible threat – mostly because we were on adjoining land masses and their expansion was only a few square from my borders.

For whatever reason, Catherine (of Russia) was content to leave me alone for several thousand years but those pesky Germans and their quest for world domination thought it was a good idea to make some threats. Their leader demanded I give them some of my advanced tech and in exchange they would leave me alone for 4 turns. I wasn’t about to give them the military tech they demanded, so instead, I made the generous offer of giving them the alphabet. War was declared shortly thereafter.

Now up until this time I hadn’t even been watching the German civilization which consisted of Berlin and a few surrounding cities. The cool thing with this game is that whatever civilization you play as, you get a library of names of famous cities, landmarks, and even cultural icons, who will play a part in your developing society. My first city was Washington followed by New York, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Boston. Keep in mind that landmasses look nothing like our globe and my Boston and San Francisco shared a tiny island. But back to Germany…

With war declared I was free to openly attack their cities. Operating as a democracy I am not allowed to start a war unless provoked. If you plan on winning the game by conquering all the other civilization you’ll need to be running a style of government where the people have no say in your actions. By now my technology level was decades beyond Germany or any other civilization for that matter. I was discovering everything and sharing nothing. So when a Viking-style rowboat sails up to my Navy battleship and opens fire it was almost as funny (and lopsided) as when my B52 bombers were circling Berlin and their Samurai archers were shooting arrows at my planes.

As your civilization grows you will attract legendary characters of history, but they don’t always appear in sync with what you may have learned in school. In my game, Alexander Graham Bell founded the Manhattan Project and got me my first nuclear missile silo in Chicago. The Wright Brothers appeared in my civilization around 1975 and built my NASA space program in a conquered Spanish city just north of Atlanta.

There are four ways to win the game and as I quickly learned, none of the four are all that dissimilar. In fact, with a well-placed save game you can win in all four ways with a single civilization without much replay. Domination requires you to conquer five other civilizations. Technology requires you to start a space program, build a space station, turn it into an ark, and then launch a settler mission to Alpha Centauri. Economic requires you to amass a certain level of wealth and then build the World Bank. And Cultural requires you to attract a certain amount of historical and cultural icons (Great People) to your cities then build the United Nations. It’s quite easy to get to a junction point where all four of these outcomes can take place within 40-50 turns.

Normally, I would expect a game with this much scope to collapse under its own control scheme but Civilization Revolution has one of the slickest and most intuitive interfaces of any strategy-sim I’ve ever played. And if you never bother to turn your advisor off you’ll constantly be reminded of important objectives and things to do or at least try. With taps of the RB and LB buttons you can cycle through your cities and order them to build units, buildings, or cultural wonders. You can also tip the scales of productivity to shorten construction time or focus your efforts on scientific endeavors. You’ll need to build an infrastructure at a city level as well as interconnect your cities with roads and caravan trade routes.

As much fun as Civilization Revolution is playing against the computer, things get really fun when you head online to mix it up with three other egomaniacs bent on world domination. You’ll find the human competition is far more devious than the computer AI, even on the harder skill settings. There is also full support for voice chat so you can taunt your enemies or talk peace in a private diplomacy chat room.

In addition to the main game and playing online you also have a nifty Scenario mode that mixes up the rules and victory conditions. More scenarios are promised via downloadable content and for those on Xbox Live you can always check out the Game of the Week option. All of the modes are incredibly fun and the entire game is accessible to gamers of all skill levels. I was particularly fond of the “save anywhere” option that allows for fun experimentation. China was getting a bit rude so I decided to drop a nuke in their capital city. Sadly, my democracy wouldn’t allow for that so I switched to Despotism. After taking my one penalty turn of anarchy for switching governments I was able to turn the Chinese Palace into a mushroom cloud. And thanks to my ability to save my game before I did all that, I could return to my previous democracy simply by reloading my game.

The game is heavily driven by icons. You’ll have some soldiers, and you can combine three of those into an army then you can put that army on a boat and sail them to another country. As you move, combine, and travel, these units are represented by specific and easily identifiable icons. It gets even cooler when things get animated and your ship go into battle or your fighter planes start to dogfight or your bombers level a city.

When the game starts you have your own little corner of the globe shrouded in the fog of discover. As you move around the land or sail across the ocean more water and landmasses are revealed. You can settle these lands to expand your civilization, secure more resources, or perhaps trade with the indigenous people, assuming they are friendly. Even early on in the game you’ll get headhunters and barbarians wanting to mix things up.

Probably the single most captivating element of the game, at least for me, was the large iconic figures that appear on screen. These can either be your trusted advisors or other world leaders offering to trade with you, present you with gifts, or even threaten you or declare war. Most of these characters, at least the ones based on real people, are highly artistic representations of the real person. And they all have humorous animations. I love Catherine’s dismissive wave of her hand each time she exits the screen.

Sound effects are fun and even humorous. Every unit has a unique sound effect attached to it. I loved to hear the arrows bouncing off the hull of my B52 bomber or my battleship firing on a Viking boat splintering it in half. There are all sorts of musical cues, theme songs for the various cultures, celebration music when your city is honoring their leader, and even a fun venue for watching jugglers, dancing bears, exotic belly dancers, and harmonizing singers perform.

There are a ton of awards to unlock, portraits, statues, and models of the various wonders you can build in the game. I’ve only unlocked a small fraction of these awards, but I’ve also only played as one civilization. The Achievement points are clever and somewhat challenging to acquire. I was able to get 18 of them in my first seven hours but you are also challenged to win as each and every civilization at least once and also to win on the King and Deity skill levels.

There are also tactical challenges like winning with only a single city and winning without ever changing government types. Not that you need a reason to play this game for months to come, but now you have several.

And even though I still have no desire to play Civilization on the PC, Civilization Revolution has become one of my favorite 360 games of the year. If you’re not sure then give this title a rental. It shouldn’t take long before you are hopelessly addicted as well, and rightly so. This is the fantastic console port of a complex PC game, tailor made for the type of gamer who enjoys the perfect blend of action, strategy, and simulation. I highly recommend it.