Token Female Gamer

Originally I thought that this review would just cover the expansion, but it turned out that I couldn’t remember how to play Civ 4. Either I had absolutely forgotten how to play or I had never played it at all.
This completely took me by surprise since the original box had been opened. Maybe I opened it up, way back in 2005 when it came out, just to look at it and revel in its shiny newness, then placed it at the back of my closet and promptly forgot.
Ah well. At least I had the chance to revisit it.
Enjoy!
tfg

My Impressions

Starting out with the expansion really felt like one of those nightmares where you show up to school and find out you have a final test for a class you never knew you were supposed to be taking. I really thought I had played Civilization 4 already. The box was opened and looked like it had been used, that must have been me right? /sigh

With two sparkling new icons on my desktop, one for the original Civ 4 and one for the Beyond the Sword Expansion, I immediately dove for the expansion. Side note: I already owned Civ 4, but since I just got a new computer I didn’t have it installed.

I was greeted by a seizure inducing 2K logo followed by some skimpy cinematic and the main menu. At that point my enthusiasm had already been dampened quite a bit. Traversing the menu turned out to be even more painful. Where was my story arc, my introduction to the game? All I found was a series of new standalone Mods and Scenarios.

But I was determined to finally reach some sort of game play. Confused about what I was supposed to be playing at all, I chose the very first mod that was available in the list. It turned out to be a small group combat mission. This was not what I had been expecting. I mean Civilization is about building civilizations, hence the name. I was so disoriented at this point that trying to finish this strange scenario seemed like a good idea.

I had no clue what I was doing. The game screen didn’t look familiar, the menu had confused me, the combat mission alienated me, no wonder I failed the mission. At that point I had to remove myself from the computer. I walked away and went to breath in a paper bag for a bit.

Determined to master this game, I returned to my computer. What was wrong with me? Why hadn’t any of it made sense, why hadn’t I recognized anything? Clearly I was going to have to start all over, from the beginning.

Returning to the original Civilization 4, I stared at that menu. Still no story arc and no real introduction to the game. Finally, between multiplayer and options I spied my salvation: the tutorial.

The first thing I was greeted with in the tutorial was a fake Sid Meyers. Through the entire tutorial there he was. Every now and then he would wave, sort of like Obi Wan’s “These droids are not the droids you are looking for”, only Sid’s was more of a creepy “you will learn to play this game”. It was rather disconcerting and I tried very hard to ignore him and focus on the game.

Note to Sid: Please Sid avoid the urge to put yourself into the game next time. It’s not appealing; it’s actually pretty creepy. Your name is already on the box, isn’t that enough?Tutorial over, confidence restored, I returned to the expansion and played my way through quite a few games.

Review

Civilization 4
Release date: Oct 25 2005
Website: http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/home.htm

Civilization 4: Beyond the sword
Release date: July 23 2007
Website: http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/beyondthesword/

Developer: Firaxis Games
Platform I played on: PC

Game Summary

Create the world; rule the world, whether by peaceful means or military might.

Game play

This is a standard Turn based Strategy Game, set in our present history. Game play seems to be focused less on resource management and more on Civilization expansion and development.

For those that like war there is a strong military aspect to the game. It turns out that I am terrible at being a military commander. After having achieved the space race victory in one game, I decided to keep playing. A not so friendly neighbor declared war on me. It must have been thanks to all those spies I sent over there to sabotage his cities.

Usually I try my hardest to avoid battle, but this time I was so far ahead and I had already won that I wanted to give it a shot. Turns out I am very bad at war. There seems to be a little more for thought and goal oriented unit management needed then I am willing to strive for.

The military system seems to use the rock-paper-scissors model. So if its military might you seek, be sure to research your units well. Because of the fact that the game is turn based each unit faces it’s opponent in a one on one battle. The best way to defeat your opponent is to fight with units that take advantage of your opponent’s unit’s weakness, hence the need for planning your battles accordingly.

World and Story

Well there doesn’t seem to be an overall story for the game. The original game includes scenarios that reflect different periods in our history that you can reply, or try to improve upon. It seems like this is more of a ‘what if’ game. What could the Romans accomplish if they had had the chance. There is a large selection of old Civilizations to chose from for the ‘what if’ play.

The new expansion scenarios and mods do contain some story. They also challenge the game play options in different ways, with hero units and extended research trees, alien units and combat missions. And how could it be a real expansion without a few new ancient civilizations added into the mix. My favorite turned out to be the Celts. They were the only civilization with a cute female portrait. =)

Graphics

The map is 3D, but really functions as a 2D map. The 3D-ness isn’t much more then eye candy, although there are some nifty inclusions that it does afford.

When you scroll in closer on the cities you get a birds eye view of your bustling metropolis. The sound also changes depending on what stage of development your city is in. When scrolling all the way out you get a nice global view of the world.

The graphic improvements over the previous games are bonuses, but the developers were smart enough to not have the graphics enhanced to such an extent that it eclipsed or inhibited the game play.The expansion doesn’t seem to enhance any graphics features, except that it adds more available units and new tile sets.

Replay-ability

Well there are really lots of options here. There are a bunch of different scenarios to play in the original game. On top of the pre-made scenarios are there are randomly generated maps.

Although the maps do vary, the game progression doesn’t change much.The expansion does include a whole new array of mods, scenarios and randomly generated maps, which really extends the amount of play.

Multiplayer

There is multiplayer. I haven’t been interested in trying it. Turn based games tend to be tedious in multiplayer.

But I thought I should give it a whirl just for reviews sake. The online game I tried to join required me to have a game spy account, which I don’t have and didn’t want to sign up for. I guess Firaxis didn’t want to host their own servers, and who can blame them, it’s a lot of extra overhead.

So I will just leave it at, yes there is multiplayer available, play it at your own risk. =)

Game finished

I’m not sure if you can ever actually finish this game. There is no real overall goal. I have played a few scenarios to completion and played some randomly generated maps to their victory point and beyond, but the game itself doesn’t really have a finish.

It seems that the end of the game comes when the player no longer wants to play.I find myself at this point now. The game no longer provides enough variety within my game play. There are only so many space races I am willing to commit too.

It actually took me a while before I realized that I was bored. I went back to take some screen shots and found myself rather reticent. All urges I had to play had been wiped clean by boredom. Before coming to this realization I had to complete all of my games. Clearly my deep ingrained need to play just one more round overrode any sense of boredom, almost like I felt an obligation to the little people in my fictitious world.

Things that bothered me

-It’s strange that the game installed a different icon for the expansion verses the original game. Everything is available in the expansion that was available in the original game, except for the tutorial. I personally would have preferred for them to keep everything together.

-The main menu is so terribly difficult to navigate. Maybe this stemmed from the fact that I had the game at its highest resolution. The ‘next’ and ‘cancel’ buttons are found not on the main menu but on the bottom of the screen in each corner. They were completely lost in the vastness of my screen.

-There was so little help inside the actual game it was rather frustrating. Thankfully the computer suggested logical next steps for me to take. This still didn’t help me understand what this choice accomplished or what the long-term effects would be. It would have been nice to get a better idea of where choices would take me.
Then again I am not sure it made much difference what I chose, no gain seemed to prohibit any other gain.

-I found it very difficult to toggle through all of my units, especially when I had them set to automate or sleep.

-The game is based on our current world model. This meant that most of the units in the game were easily recognizable, but it also left me frustrated at points because I was constrained by the world we live in. There was no way for me to create a safer or cleaner world, I had to redo all the mistakes of our past to get to the present. There was no ‘living in harmony with nature’ option; there was no ‘pave the entire world’ option.It’s a straight line from cave men to space travel that doesn’t allow for any deviation regardless of which civilization you start out with.

-This steeped in our current world history part also made the game feel more like simulation then a real game. This led me to ponder what the difference between a game and simulation really was. There are a bunch of games out now that basically simulate real life. Civilization does it on a much broader scale, which for me lessens the creepy factor.The expansion also brings in more imaginative and expansive sets in their mods and scenarios. This helps break up the monotony of seeing real life reflected back at me in my game.

Time played

About 18 hours total

Rating

If you do not currently own the game and wish to try it, I recommend that you get the Gold edition of the game. It’s the original game with the two expansions bundled together. Oh and start with the tutorial. =)
Website: http://www.2kgames.com/civilization/goldedition/

Mood progression

Images

Tags: pc, strategy, turn-based, vitual-life

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Computer Games, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.