Civilization 5 - Review

I am actually pretty surprised that this particular strategy game even caught my eye at all if i am honest. You see i often tend to avoid strategy games as i find that eventually they either become to easy or too hard, or if you are in it for the long hall, cluttered. Its very ease to devise a gameplay formula and get it wrong in certain areas but for a strategy game it is basically unavoidable, through all of the numerous strategy titles i have played they all seem to suffer from some kind of monumental deal breaking problem that fractures the gameplay.
However, despite my better judgement i actually gave this game a chance as it seemed like something that i should at least try and do once in my reviews.

This game goes into its gameplay with the same basic architecture as every other turn based strategy game i have ever played and does this without any form of self awareness to its own simplicity. But perhaps this is good? Though turn based games do tend to break the immersion of the game itself while sending the gameplay into a calculated rut of uninformed decisions, we all know what happened to Tom Clancy's End War when they tried to take out the turn base system. The fact of the matter is that though this game operates from a dated structure, it does everything it can to encourage the player to make the best use of its assets. A player cant actually press the button to end the turn until all units belonging to the player on the map have either been issued a command or specially told to do nothing. This is something that no other strategy game, that i have played, has ever done before. It actually ensures that the player uses the turn well and cuts out the risk of blind spots. Not to say that this isn't annoying however. Though its a useful mechanic it quickly becomes tedious when a player owns large amounts of units and is forced to tend to them all, even the ones who aren't particularly useful at that given time. I find that the unique design of this games turn based system cant seem to commit to a good deed without committing a sin at the same time, so it gains the not so impressive rating of average.

The gameplay does however offer a great deal of challenge and variety in enemies. The game allows you to face off against other empires as they progress just as you do but through different or similar areas, combine this with city states to ally with or fight against the result is a tone of playability.
This brings me on to the games presentation, does the art style fully complement the game itself? No!
 The game goes for a sort of cartoon design choice with itself, which isn't a bad thing in its entirety, but in some ways it can drag the game down. Part of this style includes the size of units, when comparing a unit of soldiers to a city, it feels like you are commanding giants. It has that melodramatic feel to it that breaks my immersion, the feel of being a commander of an army or the ruler of a nation is broken when you notice that the units aren't designed to be taken seriously. Some could argue that this is simply a visual representation to make the unit visible to the player, but i wage a counter argument that size is equal to amount with a game like this. The more accurately sized soldiers there are, the more visible they become. But this is at best nit picking on my part and i chose to discard this complaint simply due to the fact that any game should be free to take whatever artistic and design based direction they want.
Though the design style was not exactly tailor made for the pursuit of realism or impressing me, it goes excellently with the games story direction. Well in actual fact i wouldn't call it a story direction, though the game can provide a 'scenarios' game type, the core formula is to simply follow the progression of human history from start to finish with various empires. Now this is where the game really gets playful.

As the game allows you to chose certain empires you as the player can select one that peeks your historical interest the most. However alongside this the game gives a progression system, through fields of research that grant new abilities for an empire and  certain smaller factors like science points, an empire is able to progress through various historic eras. This is the most displacing part of the game if you aren't open minded, as you can for example see the Greek empire ruled by Alexander the Great progress to the renascence era. I imagine that the fact that the game is riddled with historical inaccuracies would really frustrate a history buff. But if you are able to keep a more open mind and remember that gaming isn't always designed to be serious, you can actually enjoy it. Its cool to see more early age empires progress to the modern eras and its also addictive to get enthralled in the progression system.

I will say that this is a good game but i found it most enjoyable for the simple fact that it isn't all based on war. With this game the success or failure of any empire is based upon the policies the player may chose to undertake as a leader and the level of effort the player puts into cities. It becomes less about fighting and more about deciding what you want your empire to be, a hub of social culture, a thriving centre of scientific pursuit or a more militaristic state. It goes far to let the players make what they want which is especially cool in the multiplayer. Because of this i feel that it does in some way go further than most strategy games to differ from the standard formula, but as per always...MORE IS NEEDED FOR IT! This game suffers its largest draw back from the fact that even MORE emphasis needs to be put onto the building of an empire and less on the wars. In conclusion, this game certainly is worth the money and it is very easy to run on a middle market PC so its good in my books!

Steam - Good or Bad?

Okay so in celebration of free time away from education i decided to not only re download Steam for my fairly UN-impressive PC but also actually spend money on it. This is kinda a big deal as i have often wanted to call myself a 'Steam User' so that the more aggressive hardcore gamers would stop with the angry phone calls but the truth is that i didn't feel like it was worth spending money of games that my PC wouldn't be able to run.

Luckily i hit a revelation from my newly liberated moment of madness when i realized that Steam actually has far more to offer than just the typical mainstream AAA titles. Looking back i don't really know how i didn't see that coming because Steam is for PC and the PC is the central hub platform for all creative digital media, so of course there will be more choice of retro to classic games. It holds entire libraries of not only old to new games but also games made my independent developers, to mods and DLC as well as games adapted for the PC platform or modern operating systems. They key fact is that when stripped down; a digital distribution system is nothing without the content that it is selling and Steam's best quality is not only that they sell shit tones, but that they sell shit tones with a great deal of diversity that are always consistently fresh paced.My point being that i can go from playing Counter Strike which is by nature a budget title with dated graphics to Bioshock Infinite, a newer and more mainstream game, in no time at all.

However, aside from the strength of content Steam is more successful than any other major system of its species because of two things. The first is the prices, Steam is able to sell most of its games for dirt cheap and the rest for a very least a reasonable amount. During the highly frequent Steam sales a user can see price reductions of up to 80% with a game of any type or age. I personally found this out through the recent Summer sale. The great part about digital distribution is that it completely

eliminates manufacturing and shipping costs for retailers, leaving only royalties left to stand between a retailer and the profit margin. Valve seem to realize this and as a result sell their games for as cheap as they can possibly go, resulting in smaller profit margins but increased unit sales. I wish that other systems like PSN or Xbox Live would wake up and realize that the key to success in digital distribution is penetration pricing and that they can afford to get away with that technique of market share expansion as a result of their unique market. Of course this does require an understanding of the business world so it comes as no surprise that neither Sony or Microsoft could figure this out.

The second is its ability to completely change how a user looks at PC gaming to make it feel like a more slick and professional experience. If you are a console gamer coming over to PC you will notice that a personal computer focuses on application software, not just games, so if you are a hardcore gamer its hard to separate the gamer from the every day PC user. However once a user gets Steam he/she will find as i did that it creates a library of games and software for you, and allows for categories to segregate the content. It feels not only more worthwhile but just nicer to access your games from the Steam library rather than manually through your desktop or start menu. As well as
this Steam allows a user to create a profile and share content, news and online play between other users in the same way that PSN or Xbox Live does. Any game downloaded from Steam will use it as a multiplayer client and will also allow access to the achievement systems. I particularly enjoy the achievements as i found them to be the best quality of a console, to see them on PC games not only helps to show the user how Steam is just as good, but it also extends the playability of any game. All of the above counts towards the second key strength simply because it offers all of the great ideas from a console only with a great deal more freedom both in and out of the software itself and does so without being essential to bog standard gaming.

Its kinda hard to notice any flaws in the design when this system just works so well and so seamlessly with PC gaming. There are off course some ideas that could be pretty cool to see that aren't currently there, one of my own being Valve creating its own Emulator and attaching it to the Steam system so that retro gamers can enjoy older titles for older platforms. Now i know it isn't a valid criticism to highlight, that it doesn't have something that i thought of myself, but i mention it just because if anyone can actually do something as outlandish as that, its Valve. Part of the fun of a console experience on a PC is the vast amounts of freedom that the platform can offer.
The only real world complaint that i have is that Steam is still mostly something made for AAA gaming, so most users will need a high end PC in order to get the full experience out of Steam as a gaming client. As Steam basically gets involved without a great deal of things on your computer, i would have hoped that it could advise you on whether or not you could run a game you wish to buy, before buying it. This seems like the kind of feature that a gaming client for PC would need to save its less educated users from disappointment after final purchase. But in the end it comes down to the user taking responsibility for his or her own machine and knowing what it is capable off, so its kind of a good thing that you can retain some independence.

In all honestly i don't really feel that there are a great amount of deal breaking problems with Steam, and if i can say this, sat here typing away on my crappy computer; literally anyone can regardless of preference. All in all i am extremely impressed with what i found and i can proudly say that i credit Steam not only as a gaming client, but as a more impressive client than any that exists on a current or future generation console.