There are some things PCs can do that console
games shouldn't.
Call it division of labor, argue over superiority,
I don't care.
And sure, while there's been some cross-contamination
that worked well - Goldeneye wresting dominance
in the FPS sector, or the Super Nintendo version
of SimCity which was pretty decent, or even
the controller-optimized PS3 and PS4 renditions
of Final Fantasy XIV - more often than not,
you're left with a stripped-down interpretation
that feels like an affront to all you hold
dear.
Civilization Revolution is a stripped-down
interpretation, surely... but I don't know
if it's that much of an "affront."
Maybe an "aside" or an "aback," but this PS3
version of the famously obscenely huge 4X
staple holds its own and can serve as a nice
primer, an introduction into one of the most
intense of gaming genres.
I'd lay some plot on you, but really, you
craft the plot as you go, along the basic
lines of "Your civilization, led by (INSERT
GREAT LEADER HERE), builds from sticks and
stones to world domination."
Just like its big brothers, that domination
can take a number of forms, from absolute
military victory to cultural ubiquity to being
the first people to reach Alpha Centauri.
From that basic starting point, you have the
freedom to do those four Xs mentioned earlier:
Explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate,
at whatever pace you wish.
That said, you'll also have competitors, other
great leaders displaced from their own geographic
bounds, trying to expand their grasp of this
hunk of randomly-generated landmass.
It's the standard Civilization bit, really,
just... kinda altered for the console masses.
You can't have super-precise mouse and keyboard
controls in this case, so you've gotta adapt
for the relatively clunky controller... and
that's where Civ Rev stumbles.
You've got a thumbstick that moves your focus...
sometimes... and directional buttons that
cycle through units in a given region or move
to the next region, where "next" is a constantly
ambiguous term.
It might be in a different conflict entirely,
just aligned so closely to your vertical axis
that suddenly BAM.
You're in Barcelona, instead of moving to
the next battalion of units stationed outside
Minsk.
Fortunately, while the controls are a bit
grindy, the graphics are by-and-large capable
of holding things together... in the main
game, at least.
Other functions such as the Civilopedia, while
a useful resource for the history and edutainment
aspects of the game, sometimes have egregious
graphical mishaps, and this is actual footage
of how choppy things get when you finally
beat the game.
Yeah.
Civ makes this PS3 grind like hell... but
you won't really notice it in the moment,
because you'll be too intensely focused on
discovering the next best technology.
The audio presentation isn't bad, and the
background music... well, you're going to
forget all about it because you'll either
A) be too deep in diplomacy to hear anything
or B) have shut off the audio long ago because
the garbled vaguely-ethnically-flavored speech
of your quote unquote "trusted advisors" made
you want to rip out your hair.
There's a number of things that make this
Revolution kinda weak as a Civilization title,
but regardless, it IS Civilization, and you're
probably not going to wrest yourself from
it until you've taken over the world.
Just one more turn, man.
Just one more turn... oh, and you've gotta
choose your next science to pursue, which
means you should reassign some workers in
Moscow for better efficiency, and...
