Civilization is one of the most popular strategy games of all time, the series was created by legendary game designer Sid Meier who had already made a name for himself in the game industry before Civilization was released, one of his most popular games was a game called Pirates, I am planning to play through and review all six games (six games as of now) in the main series but with there being so many of them and not too many differences between each version we will be taking a look at three games per review.
Civilization (1991)
We begin our look into Civilization with the original game which is often referred too as classic Civ, the goal in Civilization is that you are a world leader who is essentially in complete control over a continent (you choose a race of people before starting the game) I chose to play as the Zulu’s meaning that I was playing as the world leader of Africa, the goal of the game is to try and build as many cities as you can while also being able to maintain the safety and happiness of your people.
You will often find that other world leaders may visit your cities offering to make trades of knowledge or money and far too often they will start a war if you refuse these offers, I had particular trouble with Frederick the world leader of Germany, he would often make a peace offering if I gave him knowledge, not much later he would offer to keep peace between our two continents, this kept happening multiple times before I had enough and took over the entirety of Germany so jokes on him.
The game is a lot more complex than it may seem, first of all its your responsibility to see that your continent and people are able to evolve over time as the game takes place over hundreds of thousands of years, you can actually play the game for such a long time that you end up in the space age which is very cool, during the course of the game you will need to send your wise men to research new topics which will allow you to build more useful items such as defenses which surround your cities, the ability to attack over seas and more powerful armies, the game will often give you historically accurate information making it a fairly useful learning tool.
The original Civilization is a great game and a classic that will always stand the test of time, a lot of DOS games were not capable of producing very good sound so the lack of music and audio is not something I feel is fair to complain about, graphically the game is fairly impressive for a DOS game but some parts of the game are much more visually appealing than others but again that could be DOS limitations but I suppose we will see if this improves in the sequel.
7/10
Civilization 2 (1996)
After enjoying the original Civilization I really wanted to enjoy the sequel just as much but to be honest I couldn’t get into it, I realize a lot of people really like this game but I just found it to be really boring and not very interesting at all, for some reason they removed a lot of the small animations the first game had and chose to stick with just text to commemorate you on your achievements, they did however add live action cut-scenes with dialogue if you chose to speak to the advisers or the high council, i couldn’t find any images of this but I will provide a youtube link below showing some of the cutscenes
Another thing that was a great addition was the much easier to use cheat mode, in the original game you could use small cheats to activate certain features including showing the entire world map, in this game you can access all cheats from a click of a mouse and as much as I dont condone to using cheats myself i am sure that some people would enjoy giving themselves a full treasury,unlocking all skills and other special unlockable features.
Graphically the second game is a massive step up compared to the original, with windows being able to produce more colours and detail the world map is more appealing and more details are shown when you upgrade your cities, I found it very difficult to move my troops around the map, it felt as if the keyboard was confused because every-time I tried to move a player they would usually head off in a different direction and this made it very difficult for me to try and plan my moves appropriately, the game includes the ability to use online multiplayer but I didnt test this as its a very old game which wont run on modern operating systems but hopefully a steam remake will get released at some point as I would like to give this game a second shot with multipayer included
Not a terrible game but its wacky controls and fairly boring design choices made it no where near as enjoyable as the original
4.3/10
Civilization 3 (2001)
After my disappointment with the last game thank god I enjoyed Civilization 3, first of all this installment brought back everything that I missed in the second game, it had great animations, a full cgi opening cutscene, lots of choice for land customization and you can finally play as either males or females for each race in the game, not only that but as well as the usual Civ game mechanics Civ 3 tops both previous installments by adding online multiplayer (that works) and challenge modes.
One thing I didn’t like about the gameplay in Civ 3 was the lack of player support on the lower difficulty settings, the other games both gave you advisors that would help guide the player step by step through the matches and I found that the support although complicating did help teach me the main mechanics of a Civ game, in Civ 3 this was still available but the player needed to seek out the advice by speaking to each advisor individually and it was very daunting
The graphics are outstanding, the game uses an art style that looks as if you are playing on a painted canvas, as per usual the game is shown from a birds eye view and the visuals really help it seem as if the player is looking at a physical world map, the animations from the NPC’s are smooth and simple which honestly is all you need in a game like this
the soundtrack is very good here, I complained that I was annoyed with the lack of ingame music in Civ 2 but in Civ 3 the music is relaxing to listen too and is not on a constant loop so you can enjoy a large variation of music tracks during your long Civ games.
Civilization 3 is the best Civ game out of the first three in the series and for what it provides it is worthy of its £2.99 steamprice, however this is not the best Civ game for new players, I give that title to the original for its simple design and much more useful advisors who advise the player without needing to be asked.
7.8/10
I had a blast playing these old Civ games, out of these three which is your favourite and do you agree with my opinion on the games so far? Hopefully it won’t be long until we are reviewing the next three games but until then.
Thanks for reading
you can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com
So I have always wanted to read a classic Christmas story around this time of year and since the many Oliver Twist films always air near the end of December the original novel seemed to be the perfect choice but honestly after reading it I don’t think this is a Christmas story at all or at least I don’t recall the book ever referring to Christmas so it makes we wonder why so many people associate it with the holiday but unfortunately I read the entire thing so……. Merry Christmas?
Oliver Twist was released in 1838 and it follows the adventures of a young Orphan called Oliver who is sent to a private juvenile home after his mother dies in child birth, any one who has seen one of the many films based on the novel knows that Oliver is met with a lot of bad luck throughout his adventure and a lot of this bad luck causes him to seem like a bad kid which results in him being sent to live with many different characters throughout the book since each one of his new masters eventually dumps him on someone else but none of these people are as manipulative and genuinely cruel as the homeless man Fagin who has taken on homeless children to steal goods for him to sell for profit, one of these children is none other than the Artful Dodger who is fan favorite character of the many renditions of the classic tale, the book does have some very graphic scenes, one scene where the character Sikes Murders his prostitute girlfriend Nancy is very grizzly and I have been told that it is one of the most terrifying scenes that Charles Dickens ever wrote.
It had been 11 years since a proper Rayman game had been released and for the longest time fans of the series accepted that Rayman was essentially dead and we just had to accept that those bloody Rabbids had taken over, but in November of 2011 we were all surprised and shocked when a new Rayman title hit retail store shelves.
I was very pleased when I found out that Rayman was going back to being a 2D platformer because we haven’t one of those on a home console since the original and that came out in 1995, however the gameplay does differ from the original game and in Rayman Origins case that is a good thing, first of all you do not need to collect all of the Electoons in the game to face the final boss however there is another collectible in the game called Ruby Teeth and if you manage to find all 10 you will gain access to the Land of the Livid Dead which contains a bunch of secret levels and a secret boss, the game has 10 main worlds and each contain a bunch of levels and half of the worlds contain a boss fight, the majority of the levels consist of fast paced platforming where your goal is get from point A to point B as fast as you can while hunting for Electoons along the way.
In order to collect those Ruby Teeth I mentioned earlier you will need to complete a treasure chase stage and I hope your good at platformers because these are really tough to beat, you will need to sprint,jump and swim your way through all of these levels, they are side-scrollers that scroll really fast and you will need really quick reactions in order to survive each one, they last around 2-3 minutes long and if you die you go back to the start of the level every time.
Rayman has had a re-design and I know a lot of people really like it but personally I do prefer how he looked in the first game however the world around him I really enjoyed looking at, the artistic detail is outstanding and the team behind the visuals need a reward for how fantastic this game looks, it honestly feels like you playing though a cartoon and with the games sense of humor and smooth gameplay it only goes to show how great a proper Rayman animated series could be, and yes I am aware that there was one in the past but like many people I don’t like to talk about it but maybe I will write a review of it at some point to show you just how insulting it actually was.
Out of every Disney movie that could possibly be remade Pete’s Dragon was one that I never expected Disney to touch again, the original movie was a 1977 musical about a young boy and his pet dragon who are on the run from his abusive adoptive family, the movie is a lot of fun and the songs will be stuck in your head for years after you see it, unfortunately the movie didn’t make a lot of money at the box office and Pete’s Dragon was eventually kicked under the rug by Disney and it was never mentioned again until this year when it got remade.
For the remake they didn’t take the musical route, they instead tried to make Pete’s Dragon into a Drama which is fine if its still entertaining but the problem is that it isn’t, the film is so boring that I honestly just wanted to walk out of the cinema, the CGI is amazing and Elliot the Dragon looks awesome but the tone of movie really makes the film too slow for you too really care that much about how good the CGI is, I believe that if the film wasn’t about a dragon then it would have been a half decent Drama about a family trying to adopt a little boy who they find in the woods but because its a Disney movie and it really tries to reach that younger audience it just ended up being a film that wanted to be taken seriously but ultimately ended up being trapped inside of a kids film.
The screen shot here confirms the use of cartridges over the more modern Blu-Ray Disks we use for most consoles today, for old school gamers like me who grew up playing cartridges this is very exciting news but for more modern gamer’s it may be a little bit too unusual but have no fear because not only can cartridges hold much more data than a Blu-Ray Disk but they are also incredibly cheap to make which may mean that Nintendo Switch games may be sold for a lot less than games were for the Wii U, however cartridges are no where near as fast to load up as a Blu-Ray Disk so speed may be an issue for the new system lets just hope that the Nintendo Switch has a good processor and a lot of Ram to make up for this, the use of cartridges does make it extremely unlikely for backwards compatibility with the Wii U but it is possible that maybe we will able to play our 3DS games on the Television
The first thing that stands out with this game is that it doesn’t have much in common with the movie at all, the first stage of the game actually takes place long after Peter is bitten by the spider as its his mission to track down Uncle Ben’s killer.
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