Here we go!

As of now my agenda for games is ridiculous. Fable 2 and Far Cry 2 are both coming out tomorrow; I want to give both games equal playtime before i review them so those may take a while. Fallout 3 is coming out on the 28th which will most likely require even more time than the previous two. Finally there is Battle Fantasia from Gamefly. It was made by the guys who made Guilty Gear so I'm excited about that enormously. Hopefully I'll be able have reviews up for all four of these games by the end of November. Wish me luck!

Sonic Boom!

http://www.giantbomb.com/street-fighter-4-tgs-08-trailer/17-75/

Epic

October = OMGSOMANYGAMES!

Ok so October is looking huge. Dead Space, Fable 2, Fallout 3, Legendary, Mushroom Men, Far Cry 2, Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 are all headed our way this month. It is an amazing amount of potentially great games to be released in less than 30 days. Most of those games are being released between October 16th and October 28th. To be honest I doubt I will be able to review at least half of these games. I think that by the time I play all of these games November will be upon me and then it's a whole new splurge of games.

As of now I'm playing Ninja Gaiden 2 and enjoying it a lot, not sure if I'll have enough time to review it. Hopefully I'll be able to get Dead Space from Gamefly on time so I can review it in a timely manner.

This year looks like it is going to be amazing for any gamer. With so many choices out there gamers will either be made extremely happy or driven mad. Hopefully a little bit of both.

Oh, the Tokyo Game Show is going on this week and as of now the only announcements thus far are from Microsoft. The New Xbox Experience is going to go live on November 19th and Tekken 6 is coming out for the Xbox 360 (yet another hit to Sony's exclusives.)
Suda 51 also announced a sequel to my personal Wii favorite No More Heroes (woot)

Review: Civilization Revolution for the Xbox 360

As I booted up Civilization Revolution for the first time, I realized something about myself; before that point in time I had never played a Civilization game. Sid Meier's Civilization series has been around for quite some time. This game is the first in the long line of Civilization games to be streamlined for the console players. Due to this approach Revolution becomes a more charming and whimsical experience than its predecessors.

I do believe that people who are diehard fans of the original Civilization games may be put off by the style of Revolution. That being said, anyone who wants that strategic game-play element that only Sid Meier games can pack should check this one out. For a console strategy game Revolution has surprising depth; it manages to dig itself into you and force you to continue playing, even though you can save and stop at anytime.

The art style was the first thing that struck me when I began playing my first skirmish. I noticed that all 16 historical leaders in the game looked like cartoon renditions of themselves. The game made leaders like Lincoln, Gandhi, and even Ghengis Khan seem adorable. If you know anything about these leaders, you know that they did not live during the same time periods. All 16 leaders are from completely different periods in history; each had his or her dominant civilization during their respective era. If the fact that this game can make Julius Caesar square off against Queen Elizabeth makes you cringe, then I suggest you stop reading now because it only gets worse. True historical reenactment is not what this game is about at all, and that adds to what makes this game so fun.
After selecting one of the 16 caricatures, you behold the beginning of your civilization. Whether you pick Alexander the Great or Abraham Lincoln you start the game with a small town and one unit of sword-wielding warriors. The object of the game is to build up your civilization and turn it into a powerhouse in one of four sections; technology, economy, culture, and domination. Even if you plan to concentrate on economics you will still be putting time into the other section; without at least paying attention to all four sections equally your civilization will not be able to keep up with the enemies’. To win a game of Civilization you must; capture all enemy cities, send a populated space craft to a new planet, extrapolate your culture so you can build the United Nations or horde all of your gold and create the World Bank.

The system used in Civ Rev (as it shall now be called) seams unbelievably simple for a game that is all about scale and strategy. During your turn you are the only player allowed to move his or her forces around the world. By simply selecting one of your units, you can then move them to any point on the world, as long as they have the permitted amount of moves they will move to the designated spot. When your turn arrives you move your armies around with ease, choose new technologies to be researched to enhance your civilization, build up your army, or create structures that will amplify your culture and production.

The graphics are beautiful and the character models are functional, if a bit simplistic. You won’t be seeing tons of details in your cities but they serve their purpose as beacons of your culture. As time progresses in the game, from BC to the futuristic AD, your city will become a sprawling metropolis filled with factories and busy citizens. As time goes on in Civ Rev the battles between civilizations become strange. During the first 20 turns or so battles consist of medieval type warriors, archers, and horseman facing off against. Once you begin researching technology that allows you to create riflemen and modern infantry the battles make you cock your head a bit. Modern infantry soldiers are meant to be defensive units, so why can they not best an army of archers or pike wielders? Well I guess in a game where Caesar can fight against Montezuma anything is possible.
The battle system in Civ Rev is just the rest of the game, streamlined. Every unit has an attack number and a defensive number. While this may seem straightforward, some upset victories do occur. Battles occur when a player moves his or her units over those of an opposing civilization – as long as there is no truce between the cultures the armies will duke it out.

This overly simplistic gameplay is what makes the game so appealing. Every turn grants the player a sense of accomplishment, whether the player is commanding an army to capture Berlin or sending scouts to find a lost castle, a resounding sense of greatness is always resonating from the game. Every turn that passes by leads into something new and exciting that makes the game harder and harder to put down and that sense of flow is what makes a game great.

Besides skirmishes there is also a delightful multiplayer and enticing scenarios. In the five multiplayer games I played there was no lag and I felt as though I was making and breaking friends along the way. In the time it took to play one game (two hours) I made truces with people that I quickly decide to turn on and crush; truly an experience only available in select games. The scenarios on the other hand are great ways break away from the usual build up and knock down attitude of skirmishes. Scenarios grant the player, and his or her enemies, immediate access to technology. In one scenario everyone had immense armies and so did the roaming barbarians of the world. It quickly became a bloodthirsty fight for survival.

Audio is definitely an aspect of Civ Rev that I may have overlooked the first time around. When you really listen to the music and sound effects you are treated to an epic sense of scale. The music picks up when battles take place and each unit is granted his or her own music when they move around the world. Battle cries can be heard from dying soldiers, as well as cheers from victorious armies.

Throughout my extensive time with this heavily addictive game, I found few flaws. From time to time the graphics begin to chug a bit. Also, when the action becomes frequent the simplistic system seems to be incapable of handing certain tasks, but luckily this game is not played in real time.
With such epic events taking place so often, you feel a sense of pride for your civilization. You truly feel as though you have led your people as they build a space ship that is capable of reaching new uninhabited worlds. Failure is also taken as a true pain because you become so close to your people. It’s the feeling of accomplishment and purpose (coupled by the fantastic graphics and great sound design) that kept me coming back to Civ Rev over and over again. Just when you feel as though you have exhausted all of the possibilities in the game you realize that there is something you haven’t done, and you immediately wish to accomplish it. Many games have attempted to make the player feel like a god, but only few succeed at accomplishing such a daunting task. Civilization Revolution is definitely one of those select few. If you’re looking for a game that can bring the feeling of a massive strategy game to a console then Civ Rev is your best bet. Few games on the Xbox 360 or PS3 can match its sense of scale and simplistic interface; Civilization Revolution is truly a game that deserves its place amongst the collection of any console strategist.

Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution gets a grizzly 5 out of 5 beards.

All images credited to Giantbomb.com