Review written by Playstation4.net staff member John Millman
Sid Meir’s Civilization series declares war in Civ’s first appearance on PS3. For anyone unfamiliar with the concept of Civilization games, it basically involves leading your Civilization from the stone age to the space age, in a race to destroy or out wit all opposing Civilizations that stand in your way. The game plays like a giant interactive board game with players taking turns to move troops, plan attacks, build wonders such as the great wall of China in ancient times or a Nuclear bomb in the modern era and perhaps most importantly, manage workers to either produce, research or mine gold. Victory can be acheived in four different ways; Economic, Technology, Domination and Cultural. Each victory forces the player to adopt a different strategy in order to survive which makes the game feel fresh with each playing. In order to win the player must first choose a race. Each race has slight advantages unique to the character of the race, for example the Romans get half price roads, etc. To win the game by economic means the player must manage his workers to produce gold in a race to be the first Civ to build the world bank and own the world finances. A Technology victory requires that your Civ is the first to send a rocket to another planet, Domination involves crushing your enemies by use of force, combine units into groups of three and you have yourself an army. For each battle that is won the unit will gain in strengh and eventually be offered upgrades such as better city infiltration techniques. And finally in order to win by cultural you must make sure that your cities are generating enough culture to attract at least 20 great people to your city.
We all know that what makes a great game on the PC does not automatically translate into a great game on consoles. In Civ Rev the whole Keyboard and mouse issue is completly solved and simply mapped out onto the pad allowing for quick and easy control, navigation and management. The games are also much shorter in length, with each game taking between 3-5 hours, compared with 3-5 days per game on the PC, making for more intense battles especially when one civilization comes close to victory and the only sensible action is for all to declare war and put an end to an opponents victory attempt. Hardcore fans of the series may scratch their beards and grumble at the reduction of orders, options and map size on show here and argue that this ruins the game. But to do so they would be wrong. The reduction in options and menus works extremly well on the console and does not detract from the gameplay by any means. In fact one could argue that the new simplified controls, smaller maps and simple options add to the gameplay in terms of flow, intensity and closer battles. What PC gamers have to remember is that Civ Rev is designed from the ground up aimed specifically towards a market dominated by trigger happy adrenaline pumped console games. Civ Rev is by no means trigger happy despite the faster pace, a good strategy and knowledge of surroundings is still the key to suceess.
The difficulty is also extremly hard to master on the higher settings. On the lower difficulty settings the AI is not very good at all, you will soon find your modern tanks rampaging through an outdated AI line of medieval archers and AI that does not try very hard to disrupt your production when you come close to victory. However on the higher difficulty levels the AI is rather good and all hell breaks loose as soon as you come close to acheiving a victory (better get those defences ready). The diplomacy panel allows players to trade knowledge and information, declare war and peace, discuss world events and even bribe another civilization to attack another for a certain amount of turns. Or change governments for certain benefits and disadvantages. For example if going for a technology victory it makes sense to switch to a democracy due to increased science and gold production on the upside, but on the downside under a democracy it is impossible to declare war as those pesky citizens always VETO any attempt. But if you suddenly want to declare war simpy press R1, have a riot in the city, overthrow your current rulers, and rule with absolute power under despotism. Nice.
The modes of play included are Single player, scenario, game of the week (GOTW), and ranked/unranked matches online with full voicechat. Scenario mode involves finishing a game under certain conditions such as wiping the opponent completly off the map, be the first to an economic victory, etc. This can be a good mode to play in order to try out different tactics than one would normally employ by acheiving a different means of victory. GOTW is a static map that is updated on a weekly basis and open for everyone to play any number of times over the course of the week in order to acheive the highest score on the online leaderboards. Graphically the game is bright and colourful but do not exactly show off the full potential of the PS3. This game is all about the gameplay and does what it does very well.
Online is the place that this game really excels and brings a welcome restbite to the daily hussle and bussle of shooting, explosions and fast cars. Playing for 3 or 4 hours online, time seems to fly by and the feeling of building a nuke just before another civilization manages to complete a game winning wonder only to see their Civ turned from world leader to a pile of rubble in one turn is truly beautiful. However Civ Rev is not without its flaws, the game can occasionally suffer from the odd tear in online gameplay and seasoned Civ players may feel that the game is a little lightweight in comparison with it’s PC counterparts. All in all this is a great effort and Sid comes up trumps with what could have turned out to be a disaterous port. If you like your games with a bit of brains and more addictive than pringles then look no further the revolution is here! World domination is a step away. 8/10
John Millman
