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PREVIOUS ARTICLES

#201 THE SQUEAKY WHEEL GETS THE GREASE It's a matter of fiction... or is it? #200 CIVIII: ICS EMBRACED The origins and future of "Infinite City Sleaze" #199 WHAT CIV IS NOT There's whole incredible world beyond our computers #198 THE NATURE OF SEQUELS A really extensive review of some of the biggest games series #197 THE FIRST ONLINE RELEASE It's a new internet age and Civ3 is the first civ game of it, says Rasbelin #196 WHAT MAKES A GOOD CAR Not exactly a "if civ3 was a car" comparison COLUMN ARCHIVE

We knew where we stood with Civ 2, didn't we? It was a game about building a glorious civilisation, and it kept trying to pat you on the back whenever you achieved something lasting and noble. Slap a few million blocks of sandstone into something vaguely pyramid-shaped and you could almost hear the AI cooing "Good boy! Clever boy! Have a biscuit!" as it rewarded you with a tasteful little cut-scene and snippet of classical music. It left you feeling good about the fact that you'd been hoarding your shields like a miser, and turning the other cheek as those perfidious Babylonians sauntered across your turf and mooned at your city gates. Like the sucker I am, I fell for it hook, line and sinker. I loved those grainy little depictions of staggering achievement, and I always felt a surge of pride as the Hoover Dam rose before my eyes, or Magellan's galleon plunged through the swells.

That was years ago, and graphical technology has leaped on since then. In the run-up to the CivIII launch, the prospect of seeing what wonders could be worked on these micro-epics with fast processors and ninja 3D accelerators left me on the point of soiling my trousers with excitement. When my trembling hands finally slipped in that CD and I saw that it was bulging at the seams with 700 lovely megabytes, I actually started drooling. So I built my cities, sent my scouts out to make mildly obscene gestures at my neighbours and started building the Colossus. As those shields were amassed I started fantasizing about the imminent depiction of glory- the very pinnacle of heroic classical art bestriding the harbour with the setting sun glinting off the immaculate bronze muscles, all rendered in glorious "Buggermethat'sbloodyamazingovision".

What did I get? A picture of a big bronze foot.

It's like the most inept holiday photo of all time, isn't it? Viewing your shots and discovering you've inadvertently decapitated your wife in a few pictures is bad enough, but managing to miss out 95% of a bronze giant towering hundreds of feet into the air is downright surreal. It's like trying to take a photo of the Eiffel Tower yet accidentally snapping the "pissoir" across the road from it. I was fairly bemused at this point, but the fun was only just starting. Some wonders were just a bit prosaic, like the Great Wall depiction (A bit of a wall. Durrrr....), whereas others beggared belief. Take the Sistine Chapel, for example. Did it show the jaw-dropping magnificence of Michelangelo's and Raphael's art, which not only was the crowning moment in high Renaissance art but also a key influence on global perceptions of the Christian iconography? Nope. Instead I got an exterior shot of a small and rather brutal Gothic church which appeared to have been made of adobe.

By this point, I'd more or less concluded that the artists involved had severe and unresolved issues regarding their parents. Then it struck me that these depictions were nothing short of sinister. Before my very eyes I was witnessing the glories of artistic and scientific endeavour being systematically ridiculed. Take Adam Smith's Trading Institute as an example- this is a wonder intended to depict the birth of capitalism and development of the free market, which by anyone's standards is rather more significant than a poke in the eye with a clumsily-wielded chopstick. Yet it's depicted as a ramshackle shed looking eerily like the sort of beachside establishments you get in the seediest of Britain's coastal resorts, which specialize in beach towels sporting prints of women with breasts so large that for them to stand upright would be impossible without breaking several laws of physics. Do you spot a hidden agenda? You're not alone. The artists that made this "game" are clearly subversive nihilists, hell-bent on belittling every example of human glory. Their preferred course of action is the drip, drip, drip of near-subliminal images, and it's brutally effective. I can no longer muster any interest in the Golden Age of Exploration after seeing Magellan's ship portrayed as a child's toy discarded in a sandpit.

What's more, these evil acts are not confined to the Wonders. It provides a clear and shocking explanation as to why all the civilisation leaders cannot smile without appearing to be stoned out of their skulls. Can we ever aspire to the glory of Alexander the Great, when the last time we saw him he was minged out of his mong? I think not. In fact the only leader escaping this fate is Elizabeth I, but they more than made up for this omission by leaving her bearing a striking resemblance to Marilyn Manson.

It all starts here. Don't be surprised if future generations come to know 2001 as "Year Zero", because these people are powerful and devious. Sticking rampart subversion to a game as addictive as Civ is a move worthy of Machiavelli's Sneakiness Instructor. You have been warned.

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Bugs is now on a witness protection scheme.

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