I'm not saying this is a bad game in any way, shape or form, I found it just average and for it to be boring overall.
Game play:
The way Civ Rev works is that there are essentially 2 phases, city management and troop allocation. City management is where the player decides what building or unit is to allocate their production resources towards and also whether the city will generate Gold (to use for rushing out units or buildings) or Science (used to develop technology to receive bonuses and to be able to build new buildings and/or units.) While this does represent an accurate portrayal of what a leader would decide what needs to be developed during a time of expansion, it would have been preferred to be less boring. What I mean by that is in the beginning, players will painstakingly look through every available building just to see what it does to help their civilization, then when they memorize what the buildings allow players to produce, they will develop the same game pattern (or build order, for you Starcraft fans out there) and alter it at the end for whichever type of victory they are going for which leads to the game play becoming stagnant. Then there's the troop allocation phase when players arrange their troops to either defend an area or attack another player's civilization. Unfortunately players can't arrange for all their tanks to move to the same spot at the same time, they actually have to select them one by one and move them, which can take quite a bit of time, most notably in the late game when a player has 17 armies of tanks and are turning an enemy civilization's cities into pancakes.
Now I mentioned "type of victory" a while ago, there's actually four different ways a player can win the game, by Domination, Economically, Technologically and Culturally. A Domination victory can occur one of two ways, by wiping out all four of the opponents or by lasting until 2100 AD (it might be 2200 AD, can't remember at the moment) and having the best army. Obviously this method can either be the most entertaining or the most boring depending on if the player's army can defeat other armies. An economic victory occurs when a player has, at one point in the game, 20,000 gold which then allows the player to build the World Bank (for 500 resources,) unfortunately the game doesn't force the player to keep all 20,000 in their account so a popular tactic is rush to 20k, then rush out factories, iron mines and workshops and switch to the Communism government and BAM, World Bank done in 3 turns. A cultural victory occurs when a player manages to get a cultural counter of 20, ways to add to this are by attracting/kidnapping great people or by building wonders, with the cheapest costing 50 (Stonehenge) and then requiring the player to build the United Nations (which also costs 500 production) to complete the victory. This and the economical victories are two of the most "dry" methods to win as they are quite time consuming, and the final method, technology, also takes a while but involves building parts for a rocket ship and colonizing another planet. While these victory conditions seem varied, as I mentioned earlier, they can all be achieved with the same game plan which can make the game seem bland and boring.
There's also different versions of government that provide different bonuses, but unfortunately they will also play into the player's "build order" so while there is some variety as to what government to choose, most players will stick with one or two and never deviate, which again adds to the stagnation of this game. Then there is also the Civilopedia (I may have spelled that wrong) where they explain all the great people and wonders found in the game. If players liked the encyclopedia section in the Dynasty Warriors games (like I do), they may like this but most players will avoid this like most gamers in the early 90's avoided the Atari Jaguar. I would mention the DLC at this moment, but it honestly doesn't make much of a difference to game play, the only positive thing about them is that half of it is free and the rest is about $3 per file which does seem like a rip-off in hindsight.
Graphics:
Unfortunately, the graphics aren't that great. When compared to Warcraft 3 (which was released 6 years earlier) Warcraft 3's unit design and battleground is much easier on the eyes. That's not to say that the graphics are terrible, they are adequate and each unit type looks different from a similar unit (for example, Knights are more armored than Horsemen and it shows,) but when compared to Warcraft 3, unfortunately I would choose Warcraft 3 every time. Also, there is some slowdown in some cases where there is a large amount of units on the battlefield, which is understandable because it's similar to Dynasty Warriors series' slowdown when there's 75+ units on the screen all vying for attention, but when the game gets to about 2000+ AD, players will see slowdown almost every turn which can really make the game drag on and completing the match feel like a chore than a pleasure.
Sound:
Despite Civ Rev's graphical shortcomings, the sound is actually pretty good. Units moving and attacking each other sound like players would expect them to, sounds of ships moving across the water is superb and nuclear weapons obliterating a town just sound devastating. Unfortunately there is little in-game music except for the main menu screen so the game can sound a bit boring in that aspect, but the battle music does sound intense like the battle being viewed has some significance to it. However, it would have been nice if Firaxis put some voice acting in here as that would make the player feel like they really did have advisors, instead, the player's advisors speak complete gibberish which can get very annoying when three of them want to talk to the player consecutively. I can understand why Firaxis wouldn't put voice overs in (see my predicted reason below) but still, they would have made the game so much better with them included.
Story:
With most games similar to this, such as Warcraft, Starcraft and Command and Conquer, there is a campaign mode which introduces the player to the controls of the game, as well as provides the main story of the game. Unfortunately Civ Rev has a tutorial of what the game mechanics are, but they're only available at the easiest difficulty setting and there is no story/campaign mode in sight. Now I understand that the civilizations are from different areas of the world and from different times and that most likely Firaxis didn't want to demonize any nation/leader in particular, but without a campaign, it really hinders on the game as the player doesn't understand why their chosen civilization was placed here surrounded by the French and the Americans, players are just supposed to accept it and fight for control of the world, which is also an unanswered question as to why. This also hurts the replay ability as there practically isn't a purpose to play it other than as a time waster, which when considering its price point, isn't a good thing.
Longevity:
Unfortunately there's not much longevity/replay ability available here, there's no campaign mode for the diehard story players and there isn't any trophies for the trophy obsessed. All this being said, there really isn't much that will keep the player coming back to play this game, as they will likely play this for a couple of days, and then it will collect dust in the player's cabinet. Granted that some of the free DLC does alter game play by giving new maps and wonders to discover, but unfortunately they just don't add enough depth to save this snooze fest from fading into total obscurity. Of course, all this goes flying out the window if the player is a diehard fan of the Civilization series, in that case, they'll buy this no matter what I type.
Overall, this game is a rental. There really isn't much replay ability in this game to warrant a purchase unless you can get this game quite cheaply and there are other games that do a much better job immersing the player in the environment. Now it is possible that this game is better on PC, but I don't own the PC version, I own the PS3 version so I guess I'm stuck there. Now I'm not saying this is a bad game in any way, shape or form, it's just average and I found it to be boring, and when looking back on it, there just isn't enough to justify a purchase of $50 CDN for this. But hey, maybe I'm wrong and you really like these types of games and you want to buy it. In that case, buy it and you'll have loads of fun with this, but if you put it down within a month, don't say I didn't try to warn you about that.
Quick Review:
Pros:
- 16 Civilizations to choose from with their own unique strengths
- Several different strategies assure games are varied
- Some DLC is free
Cons:
- Some freezing when nuke is launched
- No story/campaign mode
- Noticeable slow down throughout, but more frequent in late game