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First Impressions: Civilization IV
Sid Meier's Civlization IV was released last week, as was Call of Duty 2. I imagine that I'll be posting thoughts and impressions from both games up here, but I want to start with my first impressions of and comments on Civ IV.
Let me start by cutting right to the chase: Civilization IV is The Third Coming. Forget Civ III -- it never existed. Since essentially none of the new features that Civ III added worked well, they effectively don't count. Think of it as a somewhat failed prototype. Civ IV is the real deal. All the features and ideas that Civ III played around with (and a few new ones, like religion) are back, only this time they work. Oh, and they're fun, too.
I honestly believe that this is Civilization as Sid Meier originally envisioned it. This is it: the game of Civilization. Sure, there's still a lot of room for improvement, even in the places that have already improved greatly in this iteration. Sure, it's not all that it could be and some features are lacking in a certain elegance or spark that they could have had. Forget that; it doesn't matter: this game is fun, fun, fun.
First of all, menuing is kept to a minimum. Your advisers' windows are still their own entities, but that's good as they have a lot to visualize for you and you want to be able to explore them as you will. The city menu can be opened, but only if and when you want to analyze the city and make an interesting choice. Otherwise, you can easily direct it's military and production from outside of any menu.
Combat is another big change, and I couldn't be happier with it. It's way better than it used to be: a total success. Instead of confusing issues with a different attack and defense value for each unit, every unit now has only one power rating. What makes combat interesting is that every unit has different perks (such as: +25% power when defending a city) and you also choose new perks for them as they level up. And yes, the experience system is almost perfect in this game; it's fun and it doesn't bog the game down one bit. Oh, and battle is pretty fun to watch in all its 3D-rendered glory.
The usual level of customizability is present so that you can set up a small, icy world for a one-on-one battle to the death or a huge, sprawling archipelago world where sea battles wage constantly. Numerous difficultly levels are presented as usual, and it seems that they may be implemented even better than before. The game also has a lot of little things that make every game unique. For example, the terrain is much more interesting now as it has all kinds of resources scattered about, some of which simply boost food or production and some of which can even double the rate at which you build certain Wonders of the World.
But more than any set of features or specific improvements, I think the most important thing for me to say is that the game just feels right now. That's why I feel this is the Civ that Sid's always wanted. I can understand now why he seemed so genuinely excited about this iteration in his recent interviews. At his age and with his experience, I hardly expected to hear him talk about one of his longest-running game series as though it's really coming alive again for another round. But indeed it has.
Let me start by cutting right to the chase: Civilization IV is The Third Coming. Forget Civ III -- it never existed. Since essentially none of the new features that Civ III added worked well, they effectively don't count. Think of it as a somewhat failed prototype. Civ IV is the real deal. All the features and ideas that Civ III played around with (and a few new ones, like religion) are back, only this time they work. Oh, and they're fun, too.
I honestly believe that this is Civilization as Sid Meier originally envisioned it. This is it: the game of Civilization. Sure, there's still a lot of room for improvement, even in the places that have already improved greatly in this iteration. Sure, it's not all that it could be and some features are lacking in a certain elegance or spark that they could have had. Forget that; it doesn't matter: this game is fun, fun, fun.
First of all, menuing is kept to a minimum. Your advisers' windows are still their own entities, but that's good as they have a lot to visualize for you and you want to be able to explore them as you will. The city menu can be opened, but only if and when you want to analyze the city and make an interesting choice. Otherwise, you can easily direct it's military and production from outside of any menu.
Combat is another big change, and I couldn't be happier with it. It's way better than it used to be: a total success. Instead of confusing issues with a different attack and defense value for each unit, every unit now has only one power rating. What makes combat interesting is that every unit has different perks (such as: +25% power when defending a city) and you also choose new perks for them as they level up. And yes, the experience system is almost perfect in this game; it's fun and it doesn't bog the game down one bit. Oh, and battle is pretty fun to watch in all its 3D-rendered glory.
The usual level of customizability is present so that you can set up a small, icy world for a one-on-one battle to the death or a huge, sprawling archipelago world where sea battles wage constantly. Numerous difficultly levels are presented as usual, and it seems that they may be implemented even better than before. The game also has a lot of little things that make every game unique. For example, the terrain is much more interesting now as it has all kinds of resources scattered about, some of which simply boost food or production and some of which can even double the rate at which you build certain Wonders of the World.
But more than any set of features or specific improvements, I think the most important thing for me to say is that the game just feels right now. That's why I feel this is the Civ that Sid's always wanted. I can understand now why he seemed so genuinely excited about this iteration in his recent interviews. At his age and with his experience, I hardly expected to hear him talk about one of his longest-running game series as though it's really coming alive again for another round. But indeed it has.
