Thanks to Sid Meier you can! I never had a PC that had quite the hardware specs to play one of Sid Meier's Civilization games, so I was happy to see a port of Civilization Revolution for the Playstation 3. Revolution is sort of a stripped down fast and dirty version of his previous much more detail oriented Civilization games. This is a god game, a resource management game and a strategy game. That is, you make all the decisions, where to build cities, what kind of troops to train, what sort of buildings to build, what kinds of technology to study and which of your neighbors to invade. Of course you have to manage resources and gold reserves to be sure you have enough money to carry out research or war. We all know what happens when too much money is spent on a war! Citizens at home get upset, and it is the same in Civilization Revolution. Now let's get into the game play itself!

Game Basics

You get to choose which great civilization to be! With some disregard for actual history and civilizations, every one of them are thrown in and you start from about 2000 B.C. Mongol hordes are led by Ghenghis Kahn (my favorite great leader!), The Egyptians are led by Cleopatra, the US is led by Abe Lincoln, Germany by Kaiser Wilhem (I am thinking Hitler would have been politically incorrect), Spain by Queen Isabella, England by Queen Elizabeth, Russia by Catherine the Great, The Zulus, the Ararbians, the Chinese and the Japanese. You start with one city and choose what to do. You might explore, train basic troops, or invade a nearby barbarian village.

The world map slowly (or quickly) unfolds from a fog as you explore further and further. As all cultures are thrown in together, the world map too is a random mix. Don't expect it to look like an actual world map, Paris, Rome, London etc. may show up in various spots on the map. In the basic scenario you will be in a world with 4 other civilizations. My first play through, I chose Ghengis Kahn. He quickly subdued nearby neighboring barbarian villages, and soon had a number of cities to harbor a lot of resources and gold. Each city could also build a variety of buildings like barracks. The more your civilization develops, the more buildings are available. Soon Ghengis had people studying bronze working, horseback riding, and irrigation for better crops. It is a turn based game, each turn you can move your troops so far, and new technologies take several turns to develop. Soon Ghengis was taking over neighbors cities and increasing his empire. By the 1600's or so, we had developed gunpower ahead of anyone else, and then tanks so by the time the year 3000 had rolled around and ended the game, Ghengis's armies of infantry backed up with tanks had pretty much decimated Queen Elizabeth and jolly old England. We also had sacked Paris, destroyed Tokyo and made some pretty serious inlays into the USA. I'll tell ya, there is nothing like the thrill of seeing your tanks rolling into Paris against a defending army of archers! Mwuaahahahhhahaha!

Game Play Advanced

It is not as simple as that though. You also can choose to initiate peace treaties or accept such. Will you trade the secrets of a democratic government for learning metallurgy? When you go to war, will your troops attack from the hills or the forests? Will your people defect from your city because of the cultural superiority of a neighbor? What technologies will you invest in? What form of government will you have, dictatorship, democracy, republic, monarchy?. How many cities will you start or just take over? Will your cities attract great people to them to help your civilization? How many troops will you train, what kinds of troops will they be? Will you defend your cities? How well? Will you attack all your neighbors or make peace with one, while you invade the other? All these questions and their answers will determine how your civilization unfolds.

Game Graphics

Did you ever see a tourist map? You know the ones, New York is depicted as having a huge Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building protruding at insane angles. San Fransisco has a giant Golden Gate Bridge, and Los Angeles has a big Hollywood sign. That is what the world looks like in Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution. Every city is an exaggerated view of what that culture would look like through the ages. Rome for example looks like a village to start but soon progresses to what looks like Caesar's Palace on the Vegas Strip. Russian cities all have rounded domes like those in St. Petersberg, Chinese cities all have buildings topped with pagodas etc. Your troops are similarly depicted. One man with a sword represents a platoon, and three represents a whole army. Again your troops are presented in an exaggerated view, like pieces in a game. From time to time your advisors on war, culture and ecomonics will pop in and give you advice. Leaders of other cultures will also pop in to offer peace treaties, trade negotations or declarations of war. My son and I both noticed Sid Meier's obsession with cleavage during game play. Katherine the Great, Cleopatra, Queen Isabella and Queen Elizabeth all have exaggerated bosums and seem to be quite a bit more attractive than they probably were in real life. My son laughed hysterically as a button press caused Cleopatra to arch her chest back and forth. Sigh. As the game progesses, you can see the cities get larger and more advanced, even to the point of developing tanks, figher planes, bombers and even nuclear missles. Roads go from dirt roads to super highways. In summary, both my son and I enjoyed the fun and detailed graphics of the game. PS3 looks great on the big screen!

Game Sounds

The characters all speak some form of Simlish. If you've ever played the Sims, you know how that sounds. What they have actually said is shown in text balloons. In fights, you can hear swords clash, arrows fly and eventually tanks roll. Sound effects are exaggerated much like the animation, but it is fun and enjoyable.

Game Controls

The controls are easy enough to master, you go through menus, and highlight what you want to make decisions on. Highlight a city, and you can decide what to build or what troops to train. Highlight a unit or a ship and you can decide where they should go. You can also study how much resources are needed and how many troops of what type are defending your cities. You can take as much time or as little time as you need on your turn, this game doesn't involve button mashing.

Game Length

This is a quick and dirty version of the game, it really only takes about 4-6 hours to play through and the game just ends a few years shy of 3000 AD whether or not you were done conquering your neighbors. You can win by economic, cultural, technological or military domination. My son and I usually picked military, simply because it is so much fun. We used technological advances to fuel our military war machines and invade the neighbors. Can you truly achieve a cultural victory if you don't defend your borders? Not in this game, all the art from the Louvre was hanging in Ghengis's palace when I played. (this is not actually depicted in the game, only in my imagination). Both my son and I would have liked to see game play end only when total military annihalation was achieved, but the game just ends once year 2996 is reached whatever you have achieved.

Game Replay Value

The beauty of the game is that despite it being short it has excellent replay value. It is fun to play and replay picking various civilizations or trying different routes to victory. Don't like war? Achieve a cultural victory or an economic victory. The map changes each time, and the other civilizations that you play against also change. You can also pick increasing degrees of difficulty as you master the game. Their are five levels of difficulty with the Artificial Intellegence and agressiveness of your enemies (err neighbors) increased with each. If that isn't enough for you, there are also a variety of scenario modes that drop you in the middle of a game with varoius parameters set. One gives everyone access to all technology, another makes everyone war like, to name just a couple. If all the included scenarios aren't enough, you can even download a few more from Playstation Online.

Online Play

Online play is very similar to the regular game play except for two things. One, you have a set amount of time to make all your turn decisions. Second and of more importance, you are playing against real other people and not the computer. What worked on your home game may get you powned when you try it out against a real rival sitting at their PS3.

Learning Value

One cool thing about the game is that through game play you have the opportunity to allow a great person to live in one of your cities. You can get up to 20 such great people throughout the game. The people are based on real great people, and they allow you to achieve results in the game, and they provide learning to those playing the game. A brief bio of each great person is included in the game.

Summary

Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution is easy to learn and difficult to master. It is also addictive. It's fun trying to rule the world, and this game lets you take your try. We gave the game four stars!

Recommended: Yes