Napalm Riot

The Civilization series hardly needs any introduction in the world of gaming - it has been a cornerstone of turn-based strategy gaming for over seventeen years. The control of humanity has always been popular, and this is evidenced by the series selling over eight million copies since 1991. However, ever since the original the basic premise hasn't changed, with the alterations taking place in the graphics and tweaking the mechanics. Although it could be said "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" there's been a long time with little innovation.

Civilization Revolution, as the title suggests,attempts to change all this. Revolution is the first time the series has ventured into console land without being a direct port of the PC titles. As such, it's a massive vehicle of change for Civilization - it's still recognisably a Civilization title, but only just. The turns are still there, and so are cities, units and the tech tree - but gone are the week-long marathon games against twelve opponents. Gone is the micro-management of cities, and the never-ending fight against maintenance costs. Revolution is a game of speed and simplicity - pretty much what a console game should be. After all, you don't want to sit on the sofa for a week...do you?

A typical Revolution game will last around an hour, and take you right up into the modern era (although it's quite possible to win well before this occurs). The technology tree has been cut down to a handful of key techs, each offering significant advantage over your foes...if you get to it first. Likewise, the unit types have been massively scaled back - in the Ancient era for example, the Warrior, Archer, Horseman and Legion are the only ones available. Unique units for civilizations still exist, and if used effectively can have a dramatic impact on the battlefield.

Each civilzation also has unique characteristics that take effect in each era, ranging from gold interest at the end of turn, cheaper buildings to combat bonuses. These can impact your play style quite heavily - although you'll have to accept an almost constant state of war with your neighbours. Peace in Revolutions is simply a breathing space to recruit some new units for the next round of battles, as your rivals will be quickly demanding technology or gold from you or else...

It's this constant fighting that gives Revolution the faster pace over the older titles, and it's also why this game does feel really different. Revolution is like finding an old friend after a decade, and realising they've become a vegetarian hippy who lives in a tree. There's still the recognisable elements there, but it's a new and different animal to behold.

As with most recent titles, there's a single player and multiplayer aspect to Revolution. The single player has a bunch of scenarios and random maps upon which to test yourself, and also the new "Game of the Week" feature. This involves a new map from Firaxis every week, in which you compete to set the highest score against every other player in identical conditions. The winner gets an award for being the best player in the world, for that week. Multiplayer is where Revolution gets interesting, as human players are simply far more random than the AI - and as you'd expect, games can last much longer. Online play supports audio and visual chat, along with ranked games and private servers.

Of course, not every game is perfect (despite what IGN wants you to think). Revolution's major let down is the controls, which is to be expected. Despite being designed for console play from the start, the dual analogue sticks are still not as accurate as a mouse pointer and can feel clumsy at times. The interface is well designed, and the simplification of the game really does help the controls, but moving units still feels a little like a chore at times. That said, it's far far better than the previous ports, so I guess Firaxis have done some good.

Graphically, Revolution displays in native 720p and 1080p, and looks very good. Regular players will note a more cartoon style to everything, rather than the realism that began to emerge in Civilization IV, but this helps to make things more recognisable and less busy on screen - after all, you're not sitting right next to the screen this time round. The only criticism of the graphics is more one of performance - there's a noticeable lag at the end of turns when the PlayStation 3 does the number crunching, which is represented on screen by pauses and some juddering. However, the rest of the game is flawless, and for a turn based game to look this good is a rare thing indeed.

So what is Revolution? Is it the next in the series, or spin-off? I'd have to come down on the side of it being a side-project, rather than the successor to Civilization IV. There's too many changes, and it's just too damn fast to be the direct relation of the global conquest series we love. However, it's fun and engaging - great for when you need a Civ fix, but don't have a few days to fulfill it. Meanwhile, I hope they're working on V.



Demo available from the PSN (North America store only at time of writing), and Xbox Live.