Three new reviews. (Aug 5)

[Dinner]

The worst news in the review is that you can no longer rename cities. Did the Civ5 team never play civ? WTF? You could always rename cities and I almost always renamed my cities.

Eurogamer

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-08-05-sid-meiers-civilization-v-hands-on

Kotaku

http://kotaku.com/5602257/400-turns-of-civilization-v?skyline=true&s=i

Joystiq

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/08/05/preview-civilization-5-in-under-an-hour/

[DaShi]

Yup, it's CivRev for the PC.

[MikeH]

You can't rename cities?

I like a lot of what I've heard about CivV but that is a bizarre feature to take out. A great fun simple thing people love.

[MikeH]

From Eurogamer review

forever proud of building the Sistine Chapel, yet somehow blind to the starving millions.

What a great summary of almost all world leaders EVER.

[MikeH]

Generally I find Eurogamer reviews to be pretty accurate and reflective of what I think, and after reading that I am quite pleasantly excited again!

[gdijedi7]

hrmm...

How do you "accidentally" attack the Ottomans?

[Jaybe]

hrmm...

How do you "accidentally" attack the Ottomans?

You make a mis-click somewhere or you attack someone else who had an alliance with the Ottomans you were unaware of. We are now aware of secret alliances ...

(I haven't read the article yet)

[MxM]

The worst news in the review is that you can no longer rename cities. Did the Civ5 team never play civ? WTF? You could always rename cities and I almost always renamed my cities.

If this is THE WORST news, then it must be AMAZING game. I mean, I never EVER rename cities.

[Elok]

A great feature, or more likely bug, of Civ2 was the way you could use a diplomat to investigate an enemy city and then rename it. Sure, it was tactically useless and a waste of a diplomat to rename "Persepolis" to "Isuckballs," but it was fun. It was fun.

EDIT: I'm inclined to be very suspicious of any reviewer who thinks HP are "new to Civ."

[Tstorm]

If this is THE WORST news, then it must be AMAZING game. I mean, I never EVER rename cities.

On the other hand, I ALWAYS rename cities. I can't stand founding a city named 'Paris' or 'Moscow' or 'London'. Blegh. How boring. But hey, to each their own! My dad hardly ever renamed cities, either. (Until he started playing with me and saw my naming patterns.)

It's not the WORST news, but I can't judge that this is a good game by reading other peoples' reviews. I have to build my own judgment based on facts from the articles. I could care less if someone who's never played CIV thinks version 5 is a great game. They can shove it. I just had several hours of driving, which included some time to contemplate CIV5. I can't imagine WTF is going through the heads of the development team when they remove an expected feature like this. It adds to the replayability and customizability of the game for me (and I'm sure I'm not alone.) How hard can it be to do city names the CIV4 way? Is something broken in the gameplay by allowing players to name their own cities? I didn't realize this was a request of many civvers.

Firaxis marketing associate Pete Murray offered. "There's always something you can take to that fundamental formula and change it, and say, 'Okay, what can we do that's new and exciting with combat? What can we do that's new and exciting with culture? Diplomacy?'"

Oooh! Something new, I've got something new and exciting for gameplay! Let's remove a feature of CIV that people have counted on for years! That will help!

I'm definitely in the 'wait' column...the odds of me doing a pre-order, even for neat pewter collectibles, are slim at this point.

[Sabre2th]

As far as renaming cities...

I suspect it's not so much a matter of removing the feature as they forgot to put it in or haven't gotten around to it yet. It'll be a pretty simple thing to add. Won't surprise me at all if it gets added by launch or shortly after.

[Ananias]

EDIT: I'm inclined to be very suspicious of any reviewer who thinks HP are "new to Civ."

Yeah, that Kotaku review was horrible. I get the feeling the reviewer would have been rather playing something else, but knew this was popular so he figured he better pretend to like it.

[LDiCesare]

The worst news in the review is that you can no longer rename cities. Did the Civ5 team never play civ? WTF? You could always rename cities and I almost always renamed my cities.

Yes, not allowing that is really retarded.

[Hauldren Collider]

I love renaming cities

I was playing a game with a friend once and he named all his cities after silicon valley companies. I will never forget that time he had a "slave revolt at Google".