PS3 Fanboy hands-on: Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution
Also at New York Comic Con this weekend, we headed over to 2K Games booth and tested out Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution. We went straight ahead into a single player game. Out of the 16 civilizations in the game, two were playable on the demo: Romans and Egyptians. We decided to take on the role of the powerful Roman Empire.
When we first kicked things off we noticed right away that the streamlined interface was an intuitive system; we easily shot straight into the natural flow of the game. Things go much faster in Civilization Revolution as compared to the traditional PC games as a lot of commands have been simplified. For example, workers are not controlled individually and automatically carry out preset commands. This is good as it cuts out tedious and repetitious actions within turns and lets you focus more on moving military units and defending your empire.
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In most games, the select button is usually ignored, but in Civilization Revolution it is very important. The select button toggles a command window where you can execute most of the familiar features from previous Civilization games. It's here where you can view city reports, micromanage your city works, take a look at the encyclopedia, seek audience with your advisors, look at graphs and statistics, and also set the command for your workers. As mentioned earlier, workers will work automatically to preset commands. You can choose what they will focus on gathering; you can set a specific product to focus solely on, or you can set workers to collect all products evenly.
All in all, the PS3 version played very well. PC gamers who love the Civilization series will definitely want to give this console iteration a try. It is quite a different game in a traditional sense, but that just points out the series is growing, and the game is a new and innovative experience. Also, we've been told that a demo for the PSN should hit before the game's release, so there's no reason not to give it a go.
Stay tuned. We'll have a brand new interview with Civilization series creator, Sid Meier, for you later this week.
