I'd like to show you a little bit of Civilization: Revolution.
I am sitting at a table in a conference room on the first floor of
Firaxis Games' office in Hunt Valley, Maryland. It's November 7th, 2007 at about 1PM local time. These words have just been uttered by the company's Director of Creative Development,
Sid Meier, who is sitting across from Executive Producer
Barry Caudill. Sitting across from me is the company's Director of Marketing,
Kelley Gilmore, and beside me "Web Monkey"
Dennis Shirk. I am one of two individuals from the
Civ fansite community who were invited to not only see but also
play CivRev -- the first outside of the company to do so. My colleague is
Civilization Fanatics Center's '
Padma'.
Though I have been playing computer games for more than 20 years, and assorted
Civ titles for almost 15, I can count on two hands the number of hours I've played on a console... and most of those were
on the Super Nintendo in the early 1990's. I am coming then to
CivRev as a long-time computer gamer and
Civ player but novice console user.
CivRev will be available on several of the popular so-called
seventh generation console platforms:
PlayStation 3,
Xbox360, and
Nintendo DS next spring and the
Wii next fall. Padma and I were shown and played (separately)
CivRev on an
Xbox360, but afterwards were given a little additional time to try out its
DS counterpart.
Digital camcorder in hand, I shot extensive footage of and on
CivRev during this visit. From these videos I will first be writing from and then posting edited versions for you to see and hear for yourself in an going feature entitled "
Rev It Up". First, an account of a presentation of the game led by Sid and Barry -- with questions from Kelley, Dennis and primarily myself -- followed by my personal playing experience.
The revolution awaits.
