Civilization Revolution

It's the middle of the week, I was bored, and decided to pick up a demo on Xbox live. I've decided since I don't have much content, I'm going to add a quickie. Civilization Revolution plays exactly like all of the previous ones I've played (Civ 2, Civ 2 Test of Time, and Civ 3), but it looks soo much prettier. The demo was rather small. it seemed that it was limited to about 20 or so turns (I didn't count). You can only choose from two races to start off with (The Romans or the Egyptians), and your tech tree is severly limited. It's a Demo, so I'm not going to be picky about all of that.

The game looked, and played great. I was a little iffy about playing with the controller after using a keyboard to play the game for so long, but it worked great. The interface wasn't what I was used to, but it felt right. The units were much larger on screen then they had been in previous versions, either that, or they just look bigger on a 37" TV rather than a 19" monitor. Either way, they were large and easy to distiguish what they were.

I didn't get to play it long enough to see if my gripes about Civ 3 were fixed. I'm a purist when it comes to Civilization. I reguard Civ 2 as the best one. I didn't like how they messed with the Wonders with 3. I'm not sure if they were changed for 4 or Civ Rev, but I imagine they hold the same powers as 3.

While that's more of an annoyance for me, others might see it as game balancing. I mean, building the Great Wall in Civ 2 meant that every city had a town wall, and no one could declare war on you. The United Nations did the same thing. Some may see that as over powered, since it was possible to build the United Nations before the Great Wall went out of effect (by anyone researching electricity), but I see it as historically correct. China built the Great Wall to keep Mongolia out. For the most part, it worked. Why shouldn't it work in 3? I remember other wonders losing some of their powers, but that was the one that annoyed me the most.

Even with that, I still highly recommend the game. It looks great, it plays great, and can keep you entertained for hours. And the best part of the game, it never plays the same way twice. If you're into turn based strategy that will keep you entertained for hours, play this game. I would get it, if I didn't already have a large backlog of games.