Why is Civ 3 Getting Such Good Reviews?

[Daveraver]

I mean, I think the concensus around here is that the game is mediocre at best, even when counting in the insipid patch...

I mean on average, even with the people that love this game... I think we'd all end up giving it a big fat 7/10 at the most....

Why then, do we keep on seeing 9's and 9.5's and the ilk? huh?

Anyone?

[Spiffor]

Some possible reasons :

1) Infogrames paid the reviewers and their publishers to have good reviews. Well, these people have to make a living... When we tell you corruption is high ! (note to Infograme, which is eager to sue : it is only an assumption, I do not affirm that you are corrupting reviewers... But I heard many things about videogames press)

2) The reviewers are blinded by their previous Civ experiences and remember the good old days playing civ1. They can't imagine a game from the Civ-series to be mediocre or bad.

3) The most important reason I think : the reviewers are not hardcore gamers, they probably never belonged to the civ fan community, and therefore attach little importance to the lack of MP and the lack of scenarios. They probably didn't ever try the editor !
The reviews test a single-player empire-building game. And if you pass the details (useless privateers), Civ3 is a really good experience in empire building, with an interesting concept of trade, a complete diplomacy, and an incredible addictiveness -at least for those who are not used to play civ permanently since 10 years, all of these qualities are accessible to the newbies, and don't need days to be learned. That's why Civ3 had much more success to the reviewers than Imperialism had : complete and complex, but simple to handle.

[Sabre2th]

I, too, am wondering why it keeps getting 9s and 9.5s. I gave it a 9.8.

[HalfLotus]

I would give the game a 9. Probly 9.5 after patching.
I haven't played any other games since I got civ3.

A better question would be: Why do people get freaked out when someone else likes the game alot? Some people on these boards **** their pants when someone disagrees with them.

[sachmo71]

Probably because the reviewers can forgive the game because it doesn't have an editor or multiplayer. While some of the people here are ready to take a torch to Firaxis/Infograms because of this, real people realize that it isn't a reason not to enjoy the game.
Also, I don't think the reviewers would scrap the game because airplanes cannot destroy ships. Nor if the Americans are present in the game but the Spanish aren't. They also won't stop playing the game because you can't resist harvesting forests or trading with the AI and having them give you 1 million gold per turn. So, this shows how stupid and irrelevant they are. If they could just see how important these things are to the game, they would slash the ratings of this game to nothing. If they don't think that IFE is a horrible enough bug to scrap the game, well **** them.


(The above sarcasm was intended to amuse. If you take offense...**** you, crybaby)

[Libertarian]

I think Firaxis and Infogrames built Civ3 the in true Civ player tradition — they examined their resources, assessed the playing field, made a building plan, and executed the best way they could within the constraints and context they had.

I'm not sure what is meant by "hardcore gamer", a very subjective term. But there actually are lots of platforms that you can use to customize to your heart's content. I recommend the one published by Microsoft: Visual C++.

Interesting irony: Borland used to have a better C++, but they targeted "hardcore programmers" and lost the whole market.

[Akka]

People tend to react excessively without thinking twice or really considering what they are saying. When they like something, they praise it skyrocketting, when they don't like, they put it beneath the floor.
A very good game like Civ3, while having very noticeable flaws and being a step back in many things from Civ 2 and AC, can jump to the moon in the critics, just because they are enthusiastics.

Moreover, few testers actually have the time to play all the games intensively to find the hard-to-see flaws or see if the game takes time to be appreciated. It's often the first few impressions that are graded.

There is also the childish fascination for excess in any senses, like when modders make a 50/50 unit, or when they put a 10000 in ressources appearance. Just look at BGH maps in SC and how ridiculous they are. It leads to streaks of '9,5 stars out of 10' for good games, and '1 star out of 10' for bad ones.

This lead to the problem of being able to grade a product that is even better than the previous 9,8/10 game you just tested two months before
Just wonder what grade Sabre2th and HalfLotus would give to a game better than Civ3

And lastly, there is some games that are just liked by reviewers, while not being so great. Look at Epic, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, all good games but not transcendant that were graded like the 8th wonder of the world. Often, a stunning first impression or an impressing name/good idea shake the tester enough to overpraise the game.


Plenty of reasons to have too high grades when it comes to video games

[MarkG]

Re: Why is Civ 3 Getting Such Good Reviews?

Originally posted by Daveraver
I mean, I think the concensus around here is that the game is mediocre at best, even when counting in the insipid patch...

I mean on average, even with the people that love this game... I think we'd all end up giving it a big fat 7/10 at the most....

mediocre is not a 7...

check the various polls people have made here over the last month...

[Dravin]

Well that's a simple question if I ever heard one. Maybe it's getting good reveiws because the reveiwers like the game?

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Dravin
Well that's a simple question if I ever heard one. Maybe it's getting good reveiws because the reveiwers like the game?

it's a conspiracy, i tell you!!

[GodSpawn]

I wonder if the consensus among folks who have time to post is representative of reality... I have hardly any time to post at the moment because, you've guessed it, I'm too busy playing Civ.

It's always this way on the forums, whatever the game. You get an unrepresentative view of reality, because upset people complain much louder than contented people (who are probably too busy playing whatever game to talk about it).

IMHO, of course.

[Dravin]

No, you are on to something. It's amazing how a community almost always tries to pass its self off as representative of everyone who bought the game. Because unless registered users is around the total number of units sold such isn't the case.

It’s a subconscious thing, all you see is the people in the forum and you come to feel that they are it.

[yin26]

It's all about expectations: If you expected Civ3 to be Civ2+, then you are a happy camper. If you expected Civ3 to really rework a good number of basic Civ elements, then you are horribly disappointed.

Now, the Civ2+ had the more reasonable expectations, of course. This just goes to show that if you aim low enough, you are never disappointed in life.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by yin26
It's all about expectations: If you expected Civ3 to be Civ2+, then you are a happy camper.

you're just saying that to promote your "civ3 expectations survey"(tm)

[yin26]

True! ...but I didn't include the link, so I still have some integrity intact (very little, admittedly).