There’s not as much space for a dedicated gaming device out there as there used to be, and both Nintendo and Sony know it. Want to watch a movie? Bring up Netflix on any device in the house save your kitchen blender. Want to play something bigger and bolder? Pull out a tablet and rock a few hours of Civilization Revolution or Need For Speed. Stuck in a long line? Whip out the iPhone, RAZR, or Blackberry. Graphics are better, gameplay is or can be more immersive, and in the battle for RPG dominance the PS3’s library is peerless.īut now Sony is fighting against lots of great ways to waste your time. The Playstation has long been the gold standard in console gaming, despite the Xbox’s recent challenges to the throne. Like a line of hard-marching Lemmings (or a swarm of Patapons), Sony’s countless, niggling enemies would like nothing better than to distract and steal the company’s hard-won fan base.
#Civilization revolution 2 vita review series#
It’s okay, but not in the same league as the games that made this series famous. But with some annoying busywork and annoying AI, it lacks the depth and interesting challenges that give its big siblings their staying power. That doesn’t make it a bad game – it offers good controls and variety in leaders, maps, and scenarios, and can easily keep the momentum going for several hours of grand strategy.
ProsĪs a Civilization fan with thousands of hours played in the series, it’s difficult for me to get into the simplified design of Civilization Revolution 2. When I started running away with a game and getting near victory, I kept getting declarations of war from civilizations without really knowing where they are relative to me and if I should care. Civ Rev 2 doesn’t give you a way to view the entire planet, either with a small map or by zooming out far enough to get a perspective on things, so it’s hard to be aware of the global situation. Considering there’s no multiplayer in Civ Rev 2, that’s a bummer. Especially when separated by any water at all, they mostly left my expansion unchecked and allowed me to pour all my resources into science and culture for easy wins. On every difficulty level except for the ridiculously unfair Deity level, other countries were mostly passive. It probably doesn’t help the late-game framerate chugging, either (which, to be fair, affects every Civ game). That forces you to constantly build entirely new units to sit on top of the existing defenders in every city, which creates more hassle when it comes to finding the unit you want. So if you’ve got a lone warrior, you can’t build two more warriors to make an army, and you can’t disband the existing warrior for gold, either.
#Civilization revolution 2 vita review upgrade#
So what’s the point?Įven more annoying: you can’t pay gold to upgrade outdated units, like when warriors are replaced in the build menu by legions.
There isn’t even the possibility of mixing and matching different unit types into a squad to complement each other’s weaknesses. That’s fine, but after the first few battles I started to wonder why these completely ineffective single units exist at all if they don’t stand a chance against anything but an enemy settler. That's as much of the world as you can see at one time.įor example: In order to be effective in combat, you have to combine three identical units, such as three warriors, into one super army unit that combines their attack and defense stats.
That simplification works pretty well, but some of the other steps taken to minimize micromanagement end up creating some pretty dull busywork. You don’t have to worry about things like improving terrain, because most of the improvements to your cities’ resources come from automatic upgrades to technology instead of managing workers. Once you’ve got the hang of things, it does become pretty easy to control an expanding army and empire of cities. At least the several different victory conditions, like going for culture instead of conquest or trying to build a spaceship to colonize other worlds, made starting again worthwhile. I actually ended up winning my first couple of three to four-hour games on King and Emperor difficulty without fully understanding how that happened. What’s weird is, outside of the combat, that lack of information doesn’t matter very much.