NEWSPAPER GIVES GLOWING REVIEW
(19 August 2008, 18:28 | CivRev | 52 comments) A glowing review of Civilization: Revolution has been published by The New York Times. Writes Seth Schiesel for the newspaper:

Melding formidable intellectual depth with an unintimidating, relatively easy-to-grasp graphical presentation, the new Civilization is by far the best strategy game to grace a living room console. This is a console game that history and social studies teachers should encourage their students to enjoy. This is a game that parents should want to play with their children. And this is a game that will then incite some parents to send their kids to bed so the old folks don’t have to share.

Thanks to Mike "tylertoo" Dunn for the news tip. - DanQ

A `STRATEGY GAME OF THE YEAR` ALREADY
(13 August 2008, 09:06 | CivRev | 1 comments) A week into the eighth month of the 2008 calendar year and Civilization: Revolution already had a "Strategy Game of the Year" nod to it. G4`s X-Play has published the results of its six annual "G-Phoria", a video game awards show voted on by visitors to the parent`s website. CivRev took 37% of the vote in the "Strategy" category beating out Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, Jeanne d`Arc, Sins of a Solar Empire and World in Conflict.

"Game of the Year" went to Halo 3. - DanQ

POLYCAST SPECIAL WITH JASON `JASON2K` BERGMAN
(30 July 2008, 18:16 | CivRev | 6 comments) Earlier this month, Apolyton Civilization Site (ACS) Chief/Owner Administrator and PolyCast (PC) regular co-host Daniel "DanQ" Quick alongside fellow staff member and long-term PC fill-in Annalee "Cartimandua" Barney spoke with 2K Games Producer Jason "Jason2K" Bergman about Civilization: Revolution now available worldwide on the Xbox360, PlayStation 3 and DS console platforms. Questions by Quick and from several forum users on-site and elsewhere are asked to learn about the game`s development, post-release plans and Bergman himself.

The second "Focus: Civilization: Revolution", it is now netcasting as a PC special. Total runtime is 50m09s. PC along with its sibling show ModCast fall under the collective banner of PolyCast as the official podcasts of ACS. The first in-depth look at CivRev in this manner on the show was released earlier this year prior to the game`s completion.

To date, ACS is the only known community on the Web to produce its own Civ podcasts. - DanQ

1UP YOURS: FUTURE OF THE FRANCHISE
(27 July 2008, 02:36 | CivRev | 5 comments) In this week`s episode of 1UP`s flagship podcast 1UP Yours as part of their "Whatchya Been Playing?" segment the show`s hosts spent some time talking about their experiences with Civilization: Revolution. Host Garnett Lee played the XBox 360 version and liked how pace of the game allows him to finish a full game in only a few brief sittings. He also compliments the controls, and the hosts discuss the aggressiveness of the AI and the small maps and how these affect gameplay.

John Davison played the Nintendo DS version of the game and is impressed by the fact that it`s the full game from the consoles only with 2D graphics, and also likes the DS`s controls that allow you play either entirely with or entirely without the touch screen if you want, as well as the intuitive interface:

Everything is always mapped left and right, so it`s like actions are on the left and then more resourcy things are on the right, and it works that way for whatever you`re doing whether you`re managing a city or you`re managing anything else in the game, you always know where the type of activity is managed.

The hosts` main criticisms are that the conquest path is really only one viable way to play the game, the other victory types aren`t nearly as compelling, and that the finer aspects of control are lacking, e.g. you can`t change governments whenever you want, only when the game presents you with the possibility.

Garnett Lee comments that once you`ve played CivRev, you probably don`t want to go back to the PC version of Civ because the faster gameplay makes it far superior. The hosts even wonder if the series will ever return to the PC now, they consider CivRev to be the future of the franchise -- although they do recognise there`s still a large audience for the PC version and Firaxis could still continue cater to that as well if they want.

You can download 1UP Yours from 1UP or search for it on iTunes. The CivRev discussion starts 27:55m into the two-and-a-half-hour show and lasts about 15 minutes. - Locutus

NYPOST: EASILY A B+/A-
(27 July 2008, 02:34 | CivRev | 52 comments) On the New York Post`s gaming blog Post Game Report journalist William Vitka posted a brief review of Civilization: Revolution:

This is an excellent, stream-lined strategy game for the Xbox 360 that Sid Meier himself programmed the core of. It doesn`t get much better than that. It`s just a superb console addition to the world famous pantheon of Civilization games. And it`s certainly leaps and bounds beyond the nearly-tragic PC port of Supreme Commander (which...yeah...sad).

The reviewer rates the game [e]asily a B+/A-. Read the full (brief) review on the newspaper`s gaming blog. - Locutus

AP: FINE INTRODUCTION FOR CONSOLES
(27 July 2008, 02:33 | CivRev | 52 comments) Lou Kesten of the Associated Press wrote a brief review of Civilization: Revolution that was published in a number of North American newspapers including the Baltimore Sun:

Meier`s Firaxis studio has done an excellent job translating complicated keyboard commands to a console controller. And the graphics are stunning, with stirring battle sequences and witty animations of your advisers and enemies. There are a variety of ways to win -- you can pound your opponents into submission, for example, or focus on building cultural "wonders" for your own citizens -- so no two games are the same. "Civilization Revolution" is a fine introduction to the strategy genre for console players. Three-and-a-half stars out of four.

You can read the full review (among other places) on the website of the Baltimore Sun. - Locutus

-- Civilization: Revolution News Archive