Sid Meier's Civilization V Review

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(More customer reviews)The working relationship between a game designer and his publisher is never a simple one. So I would not know where exactly to place the blame, Sid Meyer or 2K GAMES. But in the end, it does not matter. Because it is simply sad to see a great gaming franchise came to this.
THIS IS NOT A CIVILIZATION GAME
A great number of major features of this beloved series have been simply removed. A fellow gamer called this "Civilization For Dummies" and he is absolutely right.
There is no trading maps or technologies. There is no claiming resources outside your borders by building a colony. There is no need for transport ships as units apparently are now all..amphibious (and they need 15-20 turns to cross an ocean!). There are no city-growth milestone requirements (granary, aqueduct, refrigeration). There is no culturally conquering an enemy city (detonating a "culture bomb" by consuming a Great Artist will only get you extra territory tiles but no cities). There are no spies nor health/pollution balance. And there are no armies (please read on).
ARMY CASTRATION
Someone please tell me what was so wrong with armies that had to be yanked out? Napoleon almost conquered Europe with one army. Germany almost conquered the eastern hemisphere with three and the US still holds a two-and-a-half armies doctrine. How can a turn-based game be called Civilization unless one can emulate, well, a real civilization? Building an army, seasoning it on minor conflicts and then going for the enemy's capital was one of the most fun parts of any Civilization game. Why Sid, why?
YOU MAY BE ABLE TO LAUNCH INTO SPACE YET CANNOT CLIMB MOUNTAINS?!
Movement should be hindered by rough terrain. Units that have 3 or 4 moves on the plains should not be expected to do more than 1 or 2 on a mountain, right? Well, no. Mountains seem to be those magical places no unit can climb or pass through (not even ...helicopters of jet fighters!). And I cannot see how this makes for more complicated strategic decisions than timing your movements, claiming the high ground and having a bonus for elevated artillery?
UNIT STAMPEDE
A major issue for me, this was what really ruined the game. For some unfathomable reason units cannot be stacked. A worker can coexist with a military unit but that's it. Artillery and shock-cavalry are very vulnerable to attacks and (with the new hexagon layout) one would need ...six defensive units to protect a single artillery battery.
As a result, units keep getting on each other's way (especially when ordered to move for distances that require more than a turn), they refuse to even pass through friendly units (!) and the "tactical" considerations that result from this are trivial. And whenever besieging an enemy city, one has to endlessly maneuver his units around it (while exposed to its bombardment) whereas wounded units are never easy to withdraw.
You cannot even garrison more than a single unit within a city. Not that it would make a difference, since the garrisoned unit is not automatically awaken to fight back when the city is under attack(!), the city is left to defend itself.
CAN YOU REALLY COMMAND WITHOUT A...CENTRAL COMMAND?
The economy is nose-diving into the red and you want to reduce the percentage going into research for a while to avoid having units of yours deleted one by one? The fickle people of your civilization are unhappy and you want to placate them by increasing their entertainment allocation? You have discovered conscription and you want to upgrade all your musketeers into recruits? Well, TOUGH LUCK! There is not central command screen to do so. Only advisers that you have to thank for annoying you.
You have zero control of both your cities resource distribution and your national economy. And units have to be hunted down and upgraded one by one.
Speaking of the economy, when are going to see a Civilization game where one can run and manage a national debt?
NO FREE EYE-CANDY IN THIS UNIVERSE. NOT EVEN A STALE ONE.
The game does look new and polished and the units are well designed but not cutting edge and not without a steep hardware price. If you expect anything comparable to STARCRAFT II crispiness you will be disappointed - at my 1280x1024 resolution it is not easy to discern roads from railroads.
The system I am running my copy was top of the line about a year ago and still I had to tweak the video settings with a mix of high and medium to get it running. Even then, whenever I scroll to a different location of the map, I can see the image fleshing out, just like zooming in a Google-Earth map.
So one can only wonder: why should one need a...Cray to run a Civilization game at full?
STEAM OF WAR
The game requires OnLine Activation (and rumored perpetual reactivation every few days) and has to be tied to a STEAM account. Effectively this means that the game is a piece of rentware the buyer never really owns and yet it is sold at full price. I realize that to some people this may not be a serious issue so, in case you are wondering, I deducted a single star from my overall rating of the game because of its DRM scheme. To every other gamer however, you can now make an informed decision.This was a major disappointment. I never though I'd say this but I while playing the latest Civilization game I caught myself wondering if they would ever make...CALL TO POWER III.
New gamers, steer clear of this mess, this is NOT what a Civilization game plays like.
Seasoned gamers, we know better than to call this a Civilization game.
Sorry Sid, EPIC FAIL.

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Sid Meier's Civilization V is the fifth offering in the multi-award winning Civilization turn-based PC strategy game series. As with earlier installments in the series, Civilization V features the famous "just one more turn" addictive gameplay that has made it one of the greatest game series of all time. In addition to this it also features improved diplomacy, unprecedented modding tools and functionality, new ranged combat over a hex oriented board rather than squares, an in-game community hub facilitating improved online play and more. This collectable Special Edition also contains exclusive content and items. See the complete contents list below.

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Medieval II Total War Review

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(More customer reviews)I picked up Medieval II Total War / Total War Kingdoms Gold Pack for $30 and I have to say, for that price it's a great deal. There are months of gameplay packed into this game. I was up until 4am, 4 nights in a row!
Concept: 9/10
In Medieval 2GP, you play as 1 of 17 different Factions / Nations in an attempt to use diplomacy, treachery, and military might to take over the world. The game features a Battle Mode where you can fight a Battle against AI, a Short Campaign where you must wipe out 1 or 2 rival nations and occupy a good portion of the world map, or a Grand Campaign, where you must occupy Jerusalem and a very large portion of the world. The "Short" Campaign could take you anywhere from 8 - 40 hours to finish. With the expansions, there are more maps, 13 more Factions, and 110 more military units... There is also a dedicated Modding community that has further enhanced the game.
Graphics: 8/10
The graphics are impressive on the high settings and it's pretty incredible to watch 4000 soldiers clash on the battlefield with arrows raining from the sky and catapults destroying fully destructible cities.
NOTE: I had an awful time getting my NVidia 7900GT to work with this game, but I finally found the solution on a forum. Creative Assembly's and SEGA's websites were less helpful than a Magic 8 Ball. I'll post the solution in the Comments Section below.
Gameplay: 7/10
There are three types of gameplay in the game. There is a World Map where you can move armies and units across a battlefield and into enemy territories. You strategically use diplomats, merchants, religious figures, spies, assassins, princesses, and armies to thwart your opposing nations. This plays out like old school RISK.
There is faction management, where you govern your cities, raise or lower taxes, build structures that provide troops and upgrades for your army, balance your budget, put your leaders in the most optimal places, and assemble your armies. Your Heirs, Commanders, and Governors have stats... some make great generals, some make great governors. It's up to you to put them in the right places. If you have a brother in-law who is a weak commander and not very loyal, you can send him off to fight the Mongols Far Far away from your homeland. Think of it as chlorine in your family gene pool. You don't want his offspring inheriting your kingdom.
There are the battles. The battles are fought between units in an RTS, rock, paper, scissors, type of battle. Archers are great at long range, Horsemen can run over the archers, spearmen can set themselves in a defensive formation and impale a cavalry charge. There are also infantry (swordsmen) who fare well against the spearmen. There are literally hundreds of different types of units. There are open field battles in different types of environments, mountains, snow, forests...
There are castle sieges where you must use catapults, rams, ladders, siege towers, to take over a walled city. And there are castle sieges where you must defend your city from invaders. During a battle, you can also pause the action and issue commands, or speed it up 2x - 6x so you don't have to wait for the troops to get into position.
If you want to play the game RISK style, you can have the AI simulate the battles and get a results screen that says something like: Victory, you lost 200 men, the enemy lost 650 men.
If you want to play the game like an RTS, you can have the AI govern your cities, while you fight the battles. It was a great idea to cater the game to both styles of play.
Strategies: 8/10
The AI is pretty simple in the game, and once you figure out how to play, you will rarely lose a battle. You can use units and the terrain to your advantage. Unlike Starcraft, you don't have to kill every enemy on the battlefield. You can break their morale and get them to run away. If you see a bunch of enemy swordsmen, you can pepper them with arrows and kill half of them as they are charging, then run them down (literally) with heavy calvary. The game displays their morale and you can see when they are about to break. When they flee, you can let them retreat, or run them down to finish them off.
On the World Map, you can hide your armies in the woods to ambush enemies, or position them in choke points to halt enemy advances. If you are at war with another Christian Faction, the Pope may order you to cease fire for a few turns, which usually allows the enemy to regroup and counterattack. But you can actually destroy an enemy city without attacking it. Send spies, and assassins to take out the governor, kill the militia, and the citizens could riot and rebel against their king. If you have a charming princess, you can marry an enemy general into your family, stealing their army... or you can send diplomats to negotiate with your enemy and harm their economy. There are many ways to topple an enemy town. You can even form an alliance with another nation, and use spies and assassins on them if you don't get caught. If they declare war on you, the Pope may excommunicate them for violating the alliance, or even launch a Holy Crusade against them! How you conquer your enemies is completely up to you.
Interface Screens: 5/10
Switching screens to manage your cities is pretty clunky and it seems that you have to click to 3 different screens to gather information before you make a decision. This gets a little irritating after a while because it feels like everything is 3 clicks away, when it should be 1 click. For example, after a battle, if you decide to execute your Prisoners of war, a box appears on the far left of the screen. Left Click on the Box and it says, "Your Commander has +1 Dread" - right click to close the box. Now find your commander on the battle map, left click on him, then double right click to bring up his stats to see how much Dread he actually has and what it means. It would have been great if that first window showed my all of my commander's stats and his location.
Issues: Diplomacy. Diplomatic Negotiations are pretty broken in the game. It feels like a die roll, instead of strategy. You may ask another nation for Map Information and offer 200 gold. They may refuse and GIVE YOU 1000 GOLD. The game would have been much better if the Map Information cost X, and you had to negotiate to get X down.
Overall: 8/10
Learning the World Map and Battle Strategies is great fun and feels rewarding, but the limited AI and clunky interface keep the game from being GREAT!
The game is rated T for Alcohol References, Blood, Mild Language, a bit of innuendo, and Violence in the form of large scale battles.
Buy it cheap if you want months of light strategy and epic battles.
If you're looking for a Starcraft Killer, you should probably keep looking.

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The Witcher - Enhanced Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)*UPDATED*
Don't listen to Kenny. The download window has a handy link to your games page, where you'll find the CD key ONCE THE GAME IS DOWNLOADED. Because it's on-line, it's even easier: You can paste the parts of the key to the key-entry screen!
This is v. 1.5, and I'm running on Windows 7 64, and the only problems I had were during the opening splash screens: for some reason, ctrl-alt-del-ing made the splash screens run (they would be super-slow, otherwise... like a frame every 3 seconds). The opening intro vid played for me, though, and I was able to access the main menu screen, change the resolution, and start playing the game. The vid problem might have something to do with the fact that I only have onboard graphics...
Speaking of onboard graphics: I need to get a discrete card, and soon (I just built this machine). I can tell that this game would look a lot better once I get a GPU with some muscle. I'm running it at "low", 1280x720, and it shows.
I've seen comments in forums that some users had sound issues, but I've had no problems.
I've played for an hour, so far, and this is quite a different game, for me; I've played RPGs for years, and this just "feels" different. I'll need to get used to the controls, primarily, but the active combat system is something new, too. In all honesty, I jumped right in without reading the manual, so that might have something to do with my experience.
Though I've given this game 5 stars to counter Kenny's blunder, I do have to admit that I would normally give it 4 stars because I didn't just "get" the controls in a few minutes; I like game controls that seem to just become second-nature after a very short while, and The Witcher doesn't have that. The controls are responsive and smooth, but I can tell that I will have to learn them, not just translate old habits to a newer game. (I know this is being picky, but I want to be honest.)
So far, it's enjoyable, and I can tell that there will be a lot of depth to this game. I can already see that I'll need to play it, again, but make different choices.
I've barely begun the game and don't even have a proper gaming system, but I wanted everyone else to know that it downloads and installs just fine to Win 7 64.
As of 11-20-10, it's silly to NOT buy this game for $6...

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