Superdonkey's Game of the Week: Civilization 5

     Well first and foremost i'm not exactly a big fan of the Civ. series. the only other one i've played is Civilization 2 and it was just downright confusing to me, so i barely touched it after that. Steam somehow managed to lure me in though, so I decided, "Eh, what the hell?" and picked it up. I've got to say that all the confusing amounts of data, and extremely complex gameplay have been dumbed down more or less. You no longer need to be an RTS genius to play the series and to me that's a good thing. All of the hardcore Civ. players say it has been casualized but i would say it has been more streamlined than anything. The game comes with great tutorials too, to teach beginners, such as myself, all the basics of gameplay.

Your looking at the most badass leader in the game right here.

     Gameplay in this game is very wide and varied. You really have thousands of different options to choose how you want your civilization to be. You could be a military superpower, a peace-loving diplomat, or even the most technologically advanced empire in the world. You really can play the game anyway you want to and have it still be fun. In my first playthrough, i decided to make my people evil scientific genius-overlords. By the time the rest of the world was just discovering gunpowder, i had already sent rockets into space and was on the way to developing nuclear weapons. Needless to say, other nations saw me as a threat. So there i was just tending to my science on day when about three armies of the surrounding nations starts attacking one of my city-states with their primitive muskets and knights. So i send in some modern day infantry and completely destroy their armies with about two units. I haven't finished this playthrough yet, but i'm pretty sure that i'm going to dominate the world.

   

I wish i could choose GLaDOS as my leader.

     As you can see above the graphics aren't really anything special, but this isn't some guns blazing hyper realistic FPS either so you can't expect too much. The sound is pretty much in the same ballpark. Nothing really strikes me as outstanding, and i'm sure most of the sounds are recycled from the old Civ. games. Be that as it may, you dont play this game for quality sound and graphics you play it for the creative aspect of it, so i'll let it slide a bit in my rating.

LAKE WAR!

     Only a few things bugged me about the game, but some if it could just be my noobness. For one, no matter how hard i tried, i could never seem to make good relations with the other countries. Maybe it's just me but everytime i would try to strike a deal with them they would insult me, and tell me no. So i just killed them instead. Secondly, sometimes when i would choose to attack an enemy the soldiers would just stand there and stare at them, even though they were within attack range, and i hadn't even moved them yet during that turn. Again, it may just be me, but this only happened a few times so i'm just writing it off as a glitch though. With all that being said it is still one hell of a game and i would highly suggest picking it up if you have the cash.

Gameplay : 9.5

Graphics : 6

Sound : 5

Value : 8.5