Reviewed on 360, DS. Also on PS3 Developed by Firaxis. Published by 2k Games.
I’m not going to waste your time by talking about the history of the Civilization franchise or the in-depth workings of how turn based gaming works for everyone out there who thinks ’strategy’ is deciding between the chain gun or the chain saw in Gears. Short version: Sid Meier’s Civilization is the biggest video game ever made. You start at the dawn of human civlization with a motley tribe and work your way up to the modern day, all the while trying to take over the world. It’s incredibly detailed and incredibly awesome.
It’s also slower than Keyser Soze taking a jog and more detailed than a relief map of Michael Jackson’s face.
So, we now have Civilization Revolution. The big difference, despite it being on consoles, is the speed. A regular game of Civilization IV (the latest iteration of the PC game) takes about 30 hours from start to finish and if you really want you could push it to at least 80. I haven’t played a game of Revolution that’s taken longer than 4 hours and believe me I was trying to stretch it out as long as possible because it’s BRILLIANT.
I love Civ. I mean, really, really dangerously bordering on looking at it through its bedroom window at night kind of love. When Revolution was first announced everyone thought it was going to just dumb the game down but it’s not like that at all – it’s the same game at heart but now built for speed. Think of it like the difference between reading the original text of Romeo and Juliet and watching the movie version. Purists can scoff at the movie all they want but it’s got Claire Danes in it so purists can go jump for all I care.
For example in Revolution you start with a heap of base technologies that in the PC game you had to spend your first half an hour researching. This means you can get to the interesting techs a lot quicker and start to build your empire your own way in the first few turns. Researching also takes less time and it’s a lot clearer what each thing you can research ‘does’.
Oh speaking of building things your own way another cool feature of Revolution is that there are now four clearly defined win conditions you can aim for on each difficulty setting. I prefer the Financial win condition since I’m not a warmonger and it’s great that the game gives you the scope for that – the PC game always felt too dead set on war breaking out for me.
This game was released on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and DS. The 360 and PS3 versions (as far as I can make out) are identical and amazingly the DS version is near as damnit identical to the console versions. This easily makes the DS game one of the best DS games ever made. There were a couple of UI problems I had with the DS game that made me make some ill informed decisions (you can’t tell how many units you have in a city easily unless you activate them and them refortify them, aaaagh) but overall this is the console game in its entirety. It even has the downloadable weekly challenge packs! An incredible achievement.
Ultimately Revolution and regular Civilization are different enough that die hard fans like me should really get both versions. X-Wing and Star Wars Arcade are vastly different games but if you’re a Star Wars fan you’d want both, right? Right. An easily awarded 3, regardless if you’re a fan of the franchise or not.
PS: GO TO HELL GANDHI STOP TRYING TO NUKE ME YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!
Controller1.com rating 3/3
I’ve been away for a few days hence the pre-recorded podcasts and tiny updates from my iPhone. Now that I’m back home, there’s more game time. This morning I decided to give Left 4 Dead (PC) another go. I’m just bumming through single player at this stage since my early attempts to play online failed to elicit much fun. I surprised myself by playing through several levels in one sitting, so I think I’ve probably committed myself to playing for a little longer at least. When I go back to work I’ll try playing with real people again but single player will do for now.
Since finally being able to sample World at War online on PC, I’ve decided that although its fun, I’ll probably stick to 360 for multiplayer. There are just no servers running Team Deathmatch for this game unless you want Friendly Fire and Hardcore rules- which I don’t. I never get why PC gamers hate fun so much. It’s like “Hey let me buy you a ticket to Disneyland,” and they’re all “Only if we go when its really busy and really hot and make sure we go on only the rides with the longest queues.”
Fallout 3 has been started. Yes I envisage myself getting about 25% of the way through this game before I give up but since this game is so huge, I don’t think that will be a huge problem. It’s already more fun than Oblivion but that’s possibly down to the more SF backdrop. Cyrodil was a nice place to visit but I woouldn’t want to live there. Washington DC doesn’t look that much better but at least there’s no ‘Wayne’s World’ style zoom-ins everytime I talk to an NPC.
Games on the current playlist:
Multiplayer: Call of Duty WaW (PC and 360)
Singleplayer: Left 4 Dead (PC), Mirror’s Edge (PS3), Fallout 3 (360)
Still to play: Boom Blox (Wii), Prince of Persia (360), Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts (360)
Recently finished (or finished with): Little Big Planet (PS3), CoD WaW Single Player (PC)
No, we’re not drunk. We just make as much sense as two drunks talking about video games. Join Cam and George on a journey through the year that was.
What the hell is Dead Spacebeef you may be asking? Its a horizontally scrolling shooter for the iPhone and iPod Touch and its free.
You basically touch the screen above or below your ship to control vertical movement and run your finger over the waves of enemy ships that swirl around you Galaga style. If you run your finger over the enemy fighters, your missiles lock on and fire once you let go of the screen. You can fire off a power up charge by holding your finger on your ship and letting go. That’s about it.
It looks rather spiffing and since its free and every man and his dog has an iPhone (or more likely, his wife), there’s no reason not to check this out.
So someone bought my parents wii-fucking-fit. Truth be told, they kinda need it. But I don’t need to be tech support.
Like thousands of older folk on Christmas, they turned to their tech-savvy kids to set up their new Wii and show them how to use their balance boards. It is of course a fun distraction for actual gamers- for a short time- and far more fun than assembling a barbecue or a lamp. But it’s a lot of money for something I know will be set aside very shortly. My parents aren’t particularly interested in technology so their interest in Wiifit is more down the fact is an excercise gadget.
I found the balance board games to be the most fun, heading a football whilst avoiding shoes and panda heads. Running with a wiimote is pretty cool but overall this isn’t going to make you go down a shirt size. It will if you keep up with it, the same way WoW will make you fat as you head towards 80. For the oldies who do keep up their Wiifit regimen, it will suck them in just as much as a MMORPG will to a Korean student.
By this stage you’re so sick of Holidays that you want things to return to normal. In that vein, we present Clint’s counter to Cameron’s love of Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat versus DC Universe.
Depending on where you are, its Christmas over the new few days. If not that, then your celebrating something so have a good time and play some games with your family. They may have just gotten a band new Wii and will expect to play Wii Sport with you. You might as well do this as it is fun and if you have more than basic gaming skills, you will pwn granny. “You’re going down, bitch!”
So after they’ve played Wii sport and you hook up the Wii Fit for the one and only time your mother will ever use it, here are some things to consider:
1. Don’t hook it up to the wifi. Everytime Nintendo feels like it, it will send a message to your Wii and the disc tray will glow blue. This will freak the fuck out of your grandfather who will proceed to call in a priest and have your Wii exorcised.
2. There are mountains of Wii games available for insane prices in bargain bins world wide. There’s a reason they are so cheap. They are either shithouse, crappy or Boom Blox.
3. Wii Fit is not a substitute for a proper exercise regime.
4. Carnival Games is not a substitute for a proper game
5. Wii Music is a toy. The only tunes you can successfully recreate in Wii music are those from Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music album.
6. The best games on Wii are Zelda Twilight Princess, Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid: Corruption
7. The worst games have outsold the best games. Games such as Wii Play and Mario and Sonic at the Olympics are the big sellers on the system
8. Ubisoft is combining some franchises into mega-selling blockbusters such as Imagine: Tom Clanciez, Shaun White Recon Boarding Babiez and Prince of Fashion Designerz.
9. Gamecube Pikmin is being ported to the Wii. Not a new version, just a port of the GC version they runs on a Wii disc, even though you can just load the GC version you can get quite cheaply pre-owned or used or, as is more likely to be the case, sitting unplayed in your own collection.
10. Now that Mario Kart, Super Mario Galazy, Zelda, Metroid and Wario have games on the system, the 3 year long wait until the next Nintendo machine with new iterations of those games begins. In the meantime Nintendo will offer us Wii Macrame, Wii Masturbate (a surprising hit amongst core gamers), Wii Beat a Dead Horse, Wii Scraping the Bottom of the Barrell and Wii Out of Ideas.
I’ve been having a day at home convalescing with my PS3 getting a bit of a workout. I popped in Mirror’s Edge and having been playing through it for a few hours. It’s probably been the most interesting EA game I’ve played in a while (Hey, Battlefield BC and Burnout were great but they were sequels rather than something new).
Clint waxed lyrical over this game in the Focus Test a few weeks back (get it here) when we played the 360 version but I thought” hey there’s PS3 only DLC which i will never buy down the track so that’s what I picked up. It runs very smoothly after an incredibly short install (less than a minute) and although its definitely a trial and error game, its definitely trying to go where no nerd has gone before (ie in the body of a fit Asian girl).
Singstar ABBA on PS3 has been sitting around since our Focus Test and I popped it in to have a go at home. There’s something to be said as ABBA is really the perfect group to have a Karaoke game based around it songs. I mean Queen would have made a natural choice for Rock Band or GHWT rather than Singstar, but how much of the target Rock Band demographic want to rock out to Fernando?
I wrote recently about how frustrating the latter levels of LBP were and how I was going to give up on it. Well, today I did try one more time and gave up. It’s too frustrating. I decided I would have a look at some of the community made levels. First up was a Star Wars based level which managed to go from Blockade Runner to Tatooine to Hoth to Endor all in one level. A staggering about of detail had been put into this level, even if it wasn’t all that involving to play. Then came the truly awesome 300 level. This one actually played quite decently but like most of the user-made levels, it was subject to quirks that would have been found by a rookie QA guy on his first day. My attempt at playing a Metal Gear 3-inspired level ended when the character I was mean to be dragging to safety got squished by an elevator and there was no respawning of that character. A very tricky level set in a disco provided some head scratchers when it wasn’t providing some class A frustrations and a really cool Indiana Jones level (probably the best to play) recreated most of the prologue from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
But the most interesting level was AC/DC Back in Black. Basically you operate a bike that’s toeing “Headbanger Dude” from left to right, do nothing but watch as he bops along to a MIDI version of Back In Black. Some very creative stuff
This week Clint is dragged kickdrumming and screaming into the studio to ROCK OUT! Cam is torturing is with pseudo 90’s nonsense and George is trying to talk and play lead at the same time! Its madness. Its awkward. And its ready for download directly into your brain.
controller1.com FT GHWT:
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Well, I done gone and broke my toe. The toe’s fine and will heal slowly but there’s a whole gamut of videogames whereby having a fully functional left foot foot would be an asset. Sure the left foot is the tard pack of the foot world but its nice to have the option. Will I ever play DDR again? Will I ever want to?
I figure myself a fairly sedentary person, which is why its so ironic breaking my toe during a work out. I’ve been examining how this will affect my gaming since it basically affects anything more energetic. So here’s the list of affected games:
1. Balance Board games. This means Wiifit and Shaun White’s snowboarding. I don’t own a Balance board or either of those two titles and nore do I have plans to acquire either in the near future. So no great loss here.
2. Dance Mat games: Again, I don’t play these games either. Yes they’re great for the people who like them, but there’s something about playing them that irks me. Yes, my toe is already broken so can I at least keep my dignity intact?
3. Driving games utilising steering Wheel and Pedals. Well, once more the curse of shooters means I don’t playing driving games often, and never with a steering wheel and pedal.
If I wanted to drive a car, I get in my car and drive that. Which I can’t do right now since pressing the clutch would be painful.
4. Drumming in Rock Band/ Guitar Hero World Tour. I am right footed when I use the kick so it’s not entirely out of the question. Its just a question of hiring a Rock Band roadie in order to lug it around.
5. Anything on the Xbox 1. Mine’s in a cupboard and I’d have to lug it over to a TV. I’m already weary of dropping heavy objects onto my other foot. Ho ho ho, I just invented time travel and went back to the year 2001.
So it seems my diet of shooters and platformers is safe for a bit. I can’t see Fallout 3 being affected in any meaningful way. I don’t want your pity, you can reserve that for EA.
