Blog Shop Reviews

Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution
From 2K Games
Price: $59.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com

24 new or used available from $47.00

Average customer review:

Customer Reviews

Great game for all ages
Like many of the reviewers, I too have played Civ games for a long time. I am not disappointed though. To me, it seems that the endless amounts of staring at the computer screen while my units move or take several turns to do what I’ve told them to do is now finally gone. This new era of “simplified” Civ actually means a cleaner visual with nice vignettes, decisions that are more instinctual, plenty of teachable moments with my children about how civilizations are born and ruled, and the best part about it is that I don’t have to spend 6 months to conquer the world. I could do it in one day. The sheer volume of hours that I’ve spent in past Civ games watching units and workers just move around the screen could all have been used for some greater good if I’d had access to this newer, faster version. Thanks Sid!

Fun, but not as deep as other Civ games
I think of this game as “Civ Light”. It lacks much of the depth of other Civ games, and seems designed to be easier and faster to play. Some examples: the map is very small, and you have no control over the map size or type. You no longer build roads square by square, but instead create them instantly (for large amounts of money) and only between cities. There are no railroads (roads now act much like railroads).

In terms of gameplay, because the map is so small, it tends to feel very crowded — you’ll run into multiple civilizations early on, not too far from where your own settlers begin. Often the whole map will have only one major continent. As a result, it’s pretty much a scramble to grab as much of this meager territory as you can early in the game. Then, once you develop a single tank army (by building and combining three tanks), you can pretty much take any city with it, and just walk around the map mopping up. So there is definitely a difficult mid-game phase where you risk losing cities to attacks or culture, but after that there’s a pretty long clean-up phase where your win is inevitable.

It’s still fun, but as a more shallow game, the fun is likely to wear off a lot sooner than it would with the older, deeper versions of Civ. Still, even a shallow Civ is better than no Civ, so I’m happy to see that it’s come to new game systems.

Flawed but still engrossing
There is no getting away from the fact this version of Civilization is dumbed down compared with the great games from its heritage. It also has plenty of flaws including its control system, overall depth and graphical performance (jerkiness and slow scrolling speeds). Having said that, I’m totally hooked. Strategy games are my favorite genre and in the absence of any decent strategy games so far for the PS3, this is a breath of fresh air from all the racing games and first-person shooters that otherwise dominate on the platform. For anyone looking for something different on the PS3 and can accept the games minor annoyances, take a look. If you are a die-hard civilization fan then you might find this a little difficult to swallow – maybe stick to the PC versions.