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Excellent transition

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 22 / 24
Date: July 10, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The good:
- One of the most addicting games of all times makes its way to Xbox and the transition is very smooth. While this version has been re-written specially for consoles, it does keep most of the original gameplay. If you haven't done this already, download the demo and see for yourselves what this is all about.
- The game has 5 difficulty settings. For those of you that had trouble beating the demo - worry not. The easiest setting is extremely easy - unlike it was in the demo.
- All 16 civilizations are available right from the start. You can select any of them and play through skirmish missions, Game of the Week or a set of modified skirmishes. This last one has around 10-15 'missions' where the Skirmish rules have been changed. For example - on one map there are more and tougher barbarians, on other there is no diplomacy, etc. Game of the Week is being updated every Sunday and will allow you to play against the AI, in same exact conditions as all other XBox Live players. Then - you will be able to see your rank versus other players in the world.
- The version of the game that I bought includes a free 'wonders' code, to be used for downloading extra wonders. Did not try it yet, so do not know yet what is included.
- Graphics are excellent - a bit cartoonish, but perfect for the gameplay. There doesn't seem to be any noticeable improvement over the graphics from the demo, so what you see in the demo is what you will get.
- The Manual is excellent. Gives a lot of detail and covers all the info you need. If you play on Easiest setting, the game will also act like a Tutorial, which is helpful, if you have never played this before.

The bad:
- You have no control over skirmishes. Basically, all maps are randomly generated - which is great, because you never get to play the same map. However - if you want to select map size, number of players, individual difficulty for AI players - this is not possible.
- I was hoping the game will have a Campaign, that you can play with your favorite Civilization. There is none. This being the case - not sure how long will it take for the fun to wear out.
- There is a lot of slowdown when the camera has to pan on longer distances. Not sure why - the Xbox 360 demo did not have these issues. It's not unplayable, but it gets annoying after a while.
- There isn't enough diversity between the civilizations. Each civilization has some special units, but there isn't enough of them. Most of the time, you will play with same units.

Overall: if you are new to this or unsure - try the demo. Otherwise - give this game a try. Despite some minor annoyances, it's definitely worth it!

Civilization now more civilized

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 21
Date: July 11, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is the Civilization I have been waiting for! I have played through a full campaign and I have to say I love it. I love not having to build every road and micromanaging every square. They left all the good parts in but removed the tasks that became mundane towards the end of the other Civ titles.

It has the same technology trees as the other civ games so if you are familiar with them you will catch on quickly.

Multiplayer games now finish in 2-4 hours instead of 12 hours like the previous iterations of this franchise.

If you enjoyed Civ but were longing for faster game play this is the game for you.

This is what every turned based strategy war game should strive for.

the only problem I had with the game was the advisor and enemy animations were annoying to me at first but after the tutorial guy went away the other advisors kind of grew on me.

If world domination is a goal of yours and you don't think your current career track is going to get you there I highly recommend this game as the next closest thing.

It Was Fun For a Few Hours

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: July 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I'll admit from the start that I'm more a fan of real-time strategy games. But since RTS games on consoles still haven't measured up to PC performance, I decided to give this game a rent. I'm glad I only spent $8 instead of $60!

It's a GOOD game - I had fun playing it... ...the first few times. After that it became very repetitive and I felt it growing old very quickly. In just one week of renting the game, I beat a game with every civilization (there are 16 if I recall) and won a game via every available method - Conquest, Technological, Financial, and Cultural. I finally reverted to the "lightning round" scenario games which only lasted about 15 minutes each.

I found that the maps - essentially a globe - were often very tight spaces and made expansion difficult to control. It was often challenging enough to find ROOM to place a city, nevermind finding good placement for producing various resources. This wasn't always an issue, but seemed to be the case more often than not.

The gibberish from the "assistants" quickly became annoying. I don't understand how, with gaming as advanced as it is today, characters can't TALK to us. My car talks to me, for crying out loud.

The end of each game is where things became the most frustrating. Often times I would simply be riding from turn to turn, trying to let every possible "great person" appear before time ran out. I would have 10-15 cities, each with every possible building upgrade. Yet every turn, I would be asked "What do you want to build in [city name.]" I didn't want to build anything! And to make matters worse, if you would start building a unit, there was no way to end production of that unit. The only option was to build a wonder, which would then complete the game. Furthermore, if the city builds a building and then you give it no additional item to build, it will store your production credits. Later, when you decide you want ONE military unit, it'll use all of it's stored production credits and build as many units as those credits will allow. One time, I tried to build ONE spy in a city that had been dormant for many turns - it built 57 of them!! This forced me to sit for a few minutes selling 56 of them back for gold credits.

The biggest downfall to Civ-Rev is a limited range of reuse. Yes there are 4 methods to victory and 16 different civilizations. There are also different scenarious that may place bigger emphasis on fighting Barbarians, or using naval strategy - even one that places you on a different planet and replaces Barbarians with Aliens. These give you a different look to things, but the game still plays the same. The only challenges left at that point are earning Xbox achievements, and some of them - such as winning each victory type in Deity difficulty (the hardest of 5 difficulties) can be downright impossible to some.

Some other quick notes - you can scroll quicker using the right stick - select a unit, right-stick scroll to where you want it to move, then just use the left stick to select the specific "tile" you want it to travel to. The lack of a better zoom in OR out was annoying. Yes you can zoom out, but not by much, and it is tediously slow. The ability to rush construction of units or buildings was helpful, as was the ability to cease production of a building and convert those credits to a unit. That came in especially helpful when an army would show up at my door and I had no defending units.

Give it a rent and have fun with it. But only those desperate to conquer the world with a console controller in their hands should consider this a needed purchase.

Old School Civ Just Like You Remember

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: July 14, 2008
Author: Amazon User

If you remember being in your dorm room for 24 hours straight saying "just one more turn", this game is going to hurt your social life, family life, romantic life, and probably your health from lack of sleep and food. If you've been following the Civ series as it's gotten ever more complex graphically and play-wise, then you may want to skip this (unless you think the multiplayer options will appeal to you).

This game does have poor graphics and simplified play, but it completely takes me back to the 90s with addicting gameplay. The advisors are annoying, etc. etc. All the critiques are basically spot-on. For me though, never having a PC that could run a modern Civ game appropriately, this game is flat-out fantastic. It's (relatively) fast-paced and features workable multiplayer, along with "games of the week" that allow you to play the same map as others and gauge your abilities. But most of all, it's just really fun. The lower levels are obviously too easy, but the higher levels provide a decent challenge.

Not for everyone due to the shortcomings, but overall an awesome experience for non-PC Civ players. If you love the XBox Live game Settlers of Catan, you're going to eat this up.

360 version is fun but not worth the full price

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 17
Date: July 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

They did a really fine job paring the interface of the PC version to a 360'a console screen and a console controller. Very few complaints there. And I wasnt surprised that some gameplay elements are completely removed or very simplified (like the tech tree). That's all fine because the core gameplay is fun.

But I get the impression this could have easily been a "Live Arcade" download if it werent for all of the "advisor's" animations taking up disk space. I just dont think this should be a full price game. Even a bit of a rip off really. 30 bucks max.

Why?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 45
Date: July 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Why did they make this game?

Instead of being something new and invigorating, it was old and busted.

Yes, the step away from some of the mundane tasks in the civ series are great. But...

1) Horrible, horrible graphics
2) Slow movement and panning
3) Time line is mega fast, no way to slow up
4) As in #3, no options, at all, for players to change the games
5) No way to turn off production in a city
6) The diplomacy AI is absolutely terrible, the worst I have ever seen in a CIV game. The other leaders always make demands and then go to war with you, even when you have a Panzer tank army 2 squares from the capital and they are defending with a single archer... Stupid, stupid, stupid.
7) Advisors are annoying and no option to shut them off.
8) Very little complexity or depth. Build and move, build and move. No long term planning needed... Oh did I mention it will be 1985 in about 30 minutes of gameplay? At higher levels, you can run around with only archers in 1900.

Horrible piece of work that gives the CIV series a bad name.

Excellent transition to console

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 19
Date: July 18, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I'm a long time Civver, so I've played Civ on the PC for quite a few years. I knew that the game would have to be streamlined when I heard that it was coming to the console, and I was curious, and perhaps concerned as to how that would affect the game overall. I needn't have worried. The move to a version of Civ for consoles is worthwhile, and will no doubt bring a lot of new Civvers into the fold. From what I've heard the initial run of CivRev has sold out, so what does that tell you?

Anyways, from a long time Civ player and new console player, I can say that CivRev is an awesome game, and very fun to play, even for my kids who, before now, would never touch a game like this. For that reason alone the game is worthwhile.

I would even venture to say that after playing CivRev, that certain aspects of Civ4/BTS make more sense. That's how good they present game concepts to the player.

The debate still rages among hardcore Civvers as to the merits of CivRev, but I think anyone who enjoys a good game will really have fun with this one. 5 stars.

A console version... not a NEW civ game... I LOVED IT!!!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: July 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Apparently some of these reviewers thought this was gonna be some new and improved or completely original take on Sid Meier's civ games. No. This is a console version of a great PC game. As such one has to expect some differences. That doesn't mean, however, that this game doesn't include all the aspects that make up a CIV game. But I would say, if you like the computer version stick to that, if you're looking for something a little different, read on.

To answer another reviewers question, "Why was this game made?"

As someone who always found Civilization games extremely massive, confusing, time-consuming, difficult to navigate, and impossible to grasp completely - THIS IS OUR SALVATION!!!! All the fun of the Civilization franchise in a simple, intuitive, easy to learn, addictive, and yet still complex console game. The graphics are beautiful (in the civilization's own cartoony way), the game has tons of replay-ability, and the setup/interface is so well designed that I actually quickly learned about elements of the game that I never even realized were a part of the old pc versions.

In my opinion... it's the way the Civilization games should have been designed since the very beginning.

*Just make sure to go into the options menu and mute the voices of your advisors and world leaders who talk in nothing but gibberish or you'll soon find yourself yelling profanities at your television set* =)

Good Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: July 14, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Sid himself said, "This is the game I always wanted to make". It might not be as long as the originals, but thats what makes it interesting. The skills levels are easier, so after training and I would skip Warlord.

They designed the game so you can play it in ONE SIT DOWN. Which is perfect if you want to battle a friend online or you actually have a life.

Not The CIV You Expect

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 17 / 46
Date: July 11, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Well, it is hard not to compare this with the much loved computer based versions. Yes, they have in the description that this console version was written from the ground up, so that does provide an excuse. So to be fair, all I will say is that this version is nothing like the computer version. It has very few similarities at best and the game play is very different. They obviously made this for the casual gamer. Serious gamers will think this version is a joke.

To call this a next generation game would be an insult. The graphics are sub-par at best and is really nothing better than you might see on the Wii console. I am not knocking the Wii, I am just providing a comparison. This console version also lacks the many wonderful musical scores from the PC version.

They have animated characters guiding your way through the game. They all speak in gibberish that gets very annoying the longer you play. Again, the graphics for these characters are bad for a next gen console.

The victory options are non-existent. In fact, there are hardly any game options.

I don't know. When comparing to the PC version, I could beat this version up all day and write a novel. This is going to be good for the CIV novice that has never played the PC version or maybe thought the PC version was too hard to play. However, they at least could have done much better on the graphics and sound if the $60 price tag is to be justified. This costs more than the PC version and you get so much less.

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