Civilization V

The box art for Civilization 5

Publisher: 2K Games, Aspyr

Creator: Firaxis Games

Console: PC
Release Date: September 21, 2010 (NA), September 24, 2010 (EU)

ESRB Rating: E 10+

In Civilization V, there is almost no story that comes with the game, as it is a completely random generated and played game. If there was a story, then it would be completely rebuked within the first half hour of gameplay. There actually is a very vague introduction narration describing how you got to where you are now. After that, it's all decided by the player.

You can play as any one of the civilization leaders, and each has their own country, special unit and/or building, ability, and personality (of AI players). An example of this is how Bismarck is the leader of The German nation in the game, has Landsknecht and Panzers for special units, can recruit barbarians (your earliest bane in the game). There is also many more leaders and civilizations to play as, such as Napoleon (France), George Washington (America), and Catherine the Great (Russia).

This game is turn based, so there is no definite game length, but unless you can expect to spend quite a while playing, as in over a month.

The game has several difficulty levels, ranging from incredibly easy, to phenomenally hard. The difficulty only affects: how long it takes to make things, strength and luck of enemies etc., but the actual gameplay stays the same.

This game has an infinite among of replay ability, as no two maps are the same (they are randomly generated each different game), different enemies, (who are always different. I.e. the never act the same), and there is many achievements and mods (as in in the hundreds) on steam. So there is many, many, many hours of gameplay available, and that's not counting the 3 expansion packs and many DLCs. 

There is little dialog; it would be expensive, seeing as how the developer could never see how the game will play out, and thus would need many more voice clips.

For music, there is an always a quiet ambiance (it can be turned off). It changes depending on which nation you are, and how advanced you are. 

The game is mostly 2D, but the models for the units are in 3D. The graphics are really good, but can be quite taxing on a computer. 

The controls are mostly point and click, while the arrow keys move the camera. Most of the menus in the game have a button on screen, but there are hot keys for almost everything, from making a city to automatically building a road (B, and CTRL+A respectively). The point and click method is easy and familiar, the trick is to remember what all the buttons do, and there is at least 100 different hot keys for different things. 

The game runs relatively smoothly, as long as you have a decent computer (it would be processing hundreds of different high quality entities). Everything is always in place, and is stitched together nicely. Something of note that I find when I first reload a game, most if the land assets are gray, and need to loaded. This is remedied by hovering over the area for a few seconds.

I haven't played much multiplayer on this game, but it seems easily found enough. All you need to do is ether create your own game, or join one that's already in progress. The multiplayer is no different than a regular PvE game, except that the AI's are replaced by human players, and you can interact with them via face cam. Split screen is accomplished by Hot Seat, where you can have multiple players, all on the same computer. You basically are taking turns controlling your chosen nation that you choose.

The only glitch that I come across, which I don't even know if it is a glitch, is when you have scroll over all your known area to load it manually. Glitches that are more commonplace in other games, such as clipping through walls, don't apply here, for obvious reasons.

There's a great variety of weapons in civilization five. They can range from wooden clubs to Spears to battleships to tanks to the giant death robot! You can't actually wield the weapons in the first person, but you but you control where they (the units) go. For combat, you're looking down, and there are three kinds of attacks. There is melee, where the units are whacking or shooting at each other, depending on where you are in the tech tree. There is ranged, where archers, ships, or artillery are firing down arrows or shells on enemies, there is also air combat where and have fighters and bombers can attack other fighters and bombers or bomb/strafe ground.

Civilization V is rated E 10+ for drug reference, mild language, and mild violence. The drug reference is understandable because many of the leaders of the leaders in this are shown smoking (e.g. Winston Churchill has a cigar, President Roosevelt has cigarettes etc.). There's some violence in this game, mostly from combat ( e.g. an arrow going to a guy’s chest, people falling from being hit by a rock from a catapult, etc.). There are explosions and nukes, but there's nothing really super-duper “Call of Duty” gory. For mild language, some leaders say some disturbing things when they greet you. For example, in the last game if you found the Aztec leader (can't pronounce or spell his name) he would say "Come! Let us slaughter a thousand slaves for our meeting!” Yikes! The game was released in 2010 by 2K Games and Firaxis Games. The creator of the game is Sid Miser. Civilization is available exclusively for the PC.

IMPORTANT: to play this game you need a Steam account (it's free) and an Internet connection for the first time. After the first login, you can just play in offline mode, which is where you can't play with people online. 

Overall, this is a great, glitch free game, one that I would recommend for friends. I would rate this game 9.5/10. I would rate it ten out of ten, but it's one of those games that's easy to learn, but hard to master. I have only gotten time victories, one of the easiest to get, but I almost got a conquest victory once.

-DTMWords

Final Rating: 9.5/10

Gameplay of Civilization V