Grandpa Troll's Blue Collar Review 2-22-2009

[Grandpa Troll]

The reason i am doing this review of this game at this juncture in time, is my preperation for an upcoming REVCAST.

Due to ongoing medical recoveries from an unfortunate accident three years ago, has left me somewhat handicapped, loss of much of the use of my left hand due to total wrist fusion.

Ok, so am now getting used to life on a very restricted ability, but do have the iniative to adapt and overcome, so here i am, plugging my CIV REV on 360 in, having a go!

I do enjoy the eye candy approach, very similiar to that of the CIV IV graphics.

This to me is a plus as oppposed to taking away.

I also enjoy the almost immediate interaction with your neighbors.

Science moves along very quickly and the ability to interact immerses you vey quickly.

I have learned through a few stompings, the value of having multiple armies of archers early in your cities.

I was amazed how quickly in this game as opposed to other's from Sid Meier. the brink of war is BAM! right in your face!

I thought at first I was doing someting to offend the computer, than I realized, no sitting back here, you are engaged whether you like it or not!

Ok, jumping around, lets look at the various Civ's. me I like the Mongolians, those barbarian villages joining your civilizatio is much to be grateful for. The Keshik is right on ttime for my style!

[Grandpa Troll]

Continuing on, and do not mean to make this sound negative (my sweetheart says when I preface my remarks with that statement, means I am fixing to rip something a new butt!)..although this is not the case here!

Ok, My biggest gripe is broken down as follows:

FIRST I love the many paths for Vicory, but wish we could say choose one or all or choices in between for Victory!

SECOND I do wish we could have just a small map customability, be it in the form such as Call To Power offers, any of the other Civ games offer, or even we had some sort of hosted map maker where we could send to our XBOX account.

This would really enhance this game so much more, just these few suggestions!

I understand this game was set up for the platform, but that doesnt mean people playing this wouldnt enjoy a long game such as many who are from the PC Side.

I want to put a plug in for a sometimes controversial but never the less brilliant poster here at Apolyton, and that is the Brilliant Canadian ASHER. I enjoy his posts, between his sometimes tyrannical outburts at people who are not on his sheet of music, that help break down PC gaming versus Platform gaming, I find this game here, for me, brought me back to the first Civilization experience I ever had, an 18 hour game, first ever, on a 60" TV bgscreen,when my son was playing on a Playstation, CIV II!

I fell in love and then bought my first PC game, Call To Power which, in spite of many negatvies, is still my favorites game in the Civilization series!

ASHER convinced this grateful Grandpa Troll how gaming is really doing well on platforms versus PC. Forgive me, if my acknowledging ASHER and his reasoning I miss the correct terminology. by platforms, I mean NON PC games, be in XBOX 360 or PS2,PS3 or what have you!

Now, the thing I see is CIVREV is missing the mark by simply addressing those two items I have outlined.

Ok, this is my points of contention and just a small critique!

Grandpa Troll

[dojoboy]

I can't really argue against your points, nor do I want to.

Is this your first experience with CivRev? On the 360?

I've just finished my first CivRev game (last week's GotW) in over a couple months, and I immediately fell for the streamlined game again. I play the DS version, where the similarities to Civ2 are really strong. I, for one, would enjoy more diplomatic options, but the current design works.

[Grandpa Troll]

I have now completed two games and won both by Domination!

First was a Warlord Victory using the Romans.

I like how relentless the attacks come and you have to stay on top of production in order to thwart all attakers efforts.

I adopted a policy of allowing tech extortion, unless I was headed for a wonder and needed it before they could get it.

i have yet to give up a famous person nor have i emptied my coffers!

One other things I noted that is amazing, i have literally thrown dozens of Tank armies at a city and the bigger cities seem very equal to the task of defending!

I believe I need to get on up the tech side of say artillery to assist in capturing cities!

[Grandpa Troll]

My second Victory came also by Domination, this time on King Level and by the Russians.

I ended up taking several English Cities along the way, early on I did a lot of expansion into Englands territory and used 2 cities to do nothing but ship defenders, mostly archers while growing culturally first than militarily so as to hold these cities against the homeland and natural advantage they would have with short order replenishment of troops!

Very fun and each night I find myself going at it, so far the game usually take about roughly 3-4 hours, actually its a guess but really do enjoy this game.

Again, it would be nice if we could tweak a small amount in settings, maybe one day............

I could see myself playing a very long extensive domination game here and having a blast!


Gramps

[UnOrthOdOx]

Continuing on, and do not mean to make this sound negative (my sweetheart says when I preface my remarks with that statement, means I am fixing to rip something a new butt!)..although this is not the case here!

Ok, My biggest gripe is broken down as follows:

FIRST I love the many paths for Vicory, but wish we could say choose one or all or choices in between for Victory!

SECOND I do wish we could have just a small map customability, be it in the form such as Call To Power offers, any of the other Civ games offer, or even we had some sort of hosted map maker where we could send to our XBOX account.

This would really enhance this game so much more, just these few suggestions!

I understand this game was set up for the platform, but that doesnt mean people playing this wouldnt enjoy a long game such as many who are from the PC Side.

I want to put a plug in for a sometimes controversial but never the less brilliant poster here at Apolyton, and that is the Brilliant Canadian ASHER. I enjoy his posts, between his sometimes tyrannical outburts at people who are not on his sheet of music, that help break down PC gaming versus Platform gaming, I find this game here, for me, brought me back to the first Civilization experience I ever had, an 18 hour game, first ever, on a 60" TV bgscreen,when my son was playing on a Playstation, CIV II!

I fell in love and then bought my first PC game, Call To Power which, in spite of many negatvies, is still my favorites game in the Civilization series!

ASHER convinced this grateful Grandpa Troll how gaming is really doing well on platforms versus PC. Forgive me, if my acknowledging ASHER and his reasoning I miss the correct terminology. by platforms, I mean NON PC games, be in XBOX 360 or PS2,PS3 or what have you!

Now, the thing I see is CIVREV is missing the mark by simply addressing those two items I have outlined.

Ok, this is my points of contention and just a small critique!

Grandpa Troll

To your points, from reading the descriptions, I believe that some of the SCENARIOS do have victories turned off, and others tweak maps settings and very little else changed. I found them not "scenarios" like we've come to think of them in Civ, so much as a wee bit of customization.

My experience with one that was supposed to be a ice age map was less than exuberant at it's effectiveness at giving what a similar setting in CIV would give, but perhaps that was just one isolated incident.

Maybe explore around there. It's not perfect. Heck, it's not even close, but it IS there in some degree.

[PLATO]

Great reviews Gramps. I just wish I could find some time for getting into CivRev.

Love your new sig too!