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Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution (PS3/XBOX 360) By: Adam Waddilove The Civilization series finally hits the next-gen consoles, but does it make the right moves to be a hit? Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution is the latest offering in the legendary award winning Sid Meier’s Civilization series of strategy games, featuring the famous “just one more turn” addictive gameplay that has made this one of the greatest game series of all time. Civilization Revolution has been designed and built (by the legendary Sid Meier and his team at Firaxis) from the ground up for consoles, delivering graphics, gameplay and controls that take full advantage of the unique features of the Xbox 360 and PS3. Console versions of strategy games have usually been a hit and miss affair. Civilization Revolution enters the arena, but is it truly a Revolution or more of an Evolution? Well, I found the PC games good fun but I enjoyed the console versions much more. It’s more accessible, which can only be a good thing for the franchise. Essentially you’ll choose to play as certain civilizations, be it the Romans, Germans, Spanish and so on. There are a ton of civilizations to choose from and each one has their own quirk, for example one might have an advantage in a certain aspect like military, which helps when trying to go for a domination victory. What’s great about Civ Rev is that it allows you to play it in 4 different ways. You can go all out and try and take over all the other cities, you can get richer than everyone else, you can try and develop technology and launch a space colony or you can develop culture in the cities and attract great people like Shakespeare and Einstein, once you get 20 people you can build the United Nations and win a cultural victory. Of course, the other civilizations will be problematic to your cause. Some will declare war on you for no reason while others will demand something for a number of turns of peace. The closer you are to victory, the closer you are to everyone declaring war on you. No matter what civilization you choose, you’ll only start with one city and be surrounded by fog that vanishes when a unit walks through it. So you won’t know the layout of each time you play, it seems to be a random layout which keeps things fresh.    As time progresses, new eras of time will unlock. You can go from creating an army of soldiers with swords to making an army of tanks and planes. You can even create nukes to drop on opposing cities, providing you have the right type of government selected, some will oppose war altogether but will give you bonuses to science and production. There is just such a good mixture of things to do in Civ Rev, so much so that I can’t imagine people getting bored quickly, but then again you really need to be a fan of strategy games to appreciate it. That’s probably the main complaint of the game; it does enough to please fans of the genre but not enough to entice new ones to enter the fold. Also the visual style that the team decided to go with might be off-putting, it seems a bit cartoony overall but the presentation is stellar nonetheless. The overall design of each map is great, although you might wish that certain parts were more detailed. There is no real graphical difference between the PS3 and 360 versions, but the 360 has more lifespan as a result of its achievements. Some easy ones are winning with each civilization and trying to win each type of victory. Tougher ones require you to win under other circumstances, like before a certain time with a higher difficulty, believe me they are not easy in any regard. The audio is pretty minimal, it does its job but it’s not outstanding. Voice-acting is non-existent apart from a few grunts and so on. The Verdict Civilization Revolution does plenty to give fans what they want, but it does little to impress non-fans of the strategy genre. It provides a lot of content and ways to claim victory and is charming with its graphic style, that won’t be to everyone’s tastes but if you can look past that then you’ll find an engaging and compelling strategy game that you will enjoy time and time again. 
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