Gamespot needs to check their tone, put their inside voice on, before i send their butt outside
But here it is from my current point of view,
the game is so nice i bought it twice, seriously, i bought it once many years ago in box for about $12 i think, sold it back to the store after about 6 months of playing basically 12 hours a day. Fast forward to my college years, i bought the game on ebay again for 99 cents and it has not left my CD drive since.
the gameplay is extremely immersing and requires you to think the entire time about what to do next and, like all other civilization games, requires you to stay on your toes. Considering it is very very easy to blink and realize you have been playing the game for 6 hours or more in one sitting gives the game a great overall value considering that if you go looking, the most your probably going to pay for this is most likely $5.
and as for my sound score, the reason it even gets a 1 is b/c it won't let me give it a zero, but on second thought it deserves the 1 simply because the game has sound, considering how long you end up playing it, the games 13 tracks that get recycled that last about 3mins each, along with the cheap sound effects, get old REALLY fast.
the only redeeming value to the soundtrack is that its kind of funny that if you turn on iTunes while its in the tray, the program reads the game as "George Strait: 50 Number Ones"