Game: Civilization IV is Out!
There have been many new reviews coming out very recently. To start it off, GameSpot just recently reviewed Civilization IV. The game earned a 9.4 out of 10, superb by GameSpot's rating system. GameSpot gave the game a perfect 10 in game-play, an 8 in Graphics, an 8 in Sound, a 9 in Value and a Tilt of 10.
Here is an excerpt from the 3-page review:
Even single-player and multiplayer options have been improved in Civ IV. The single-player game offers much-improved artificial intelligence that seems to cheat much less than in previous games, or not at all. In the single-player game, rival nations won't mysteriously explore the entire world in two turns, nor will they use those two turns to magically build a network of five cities where there were none before. Computer-controlled nations will also make much more reasonable bids at the table, but they can't be easily bribed with small handfuls of cash, either. The single-player difficulty seems to scale extremely well by offering a very gentle introduction for beginners at the lowest levels and a suitably tough challenge for experts at the highest levels.
Reviews also come from 1Up, Yahoo! Games, and Eurogamer. They have all given Civ4 high marks at 9.0/10.
Yahoo! Games' Mike Smith mentions this about the interface:
The interface is much more of a consideration, and barring one or two fairly minor issues, Civ 4 gets it right. Even though it feels like almost all the game's frontend is given to a picture of the game board, there's a surprising amount of information crowbarred into the surrounding windows and buttons. Liberal amounts of help and reference material are provided in-game, and getting detailed information on anything is just a matter of letting your mouse float over it.
There is also a Multiplayer review up at Apolyton written by Jesse Fletcher (others may recognize him as Friedrich Psitalon, I simply know him as the best Civ4 MP player I've played against ). Jesse, also the co-authur of the Official Civ4 Strategy Guide talks about what the major differences in Civ4's multiplayer are compared to previous versions of Civ.
Here is a quote from his MP Review:
The Final Tally
Soren Johnson put it best: "CIV - sometimes it's better to be good, than lucky." I've said it before and I'll say it again many times - CIV's biggest difference over C3C is that canned, often-repeated-and-mimicked strategies just won't work anymore. There are so many approaches and styles, so many available responses, and so many minor factors to balance between health, happiness, commerce, military, this-tech-or-that-one... "build this and then do that" is simply not relevant anymore.
>> GameSpot Review 9.4/10
>> 1Up Review 9/10
>> Yahoo! Games Review 4.5/5
>> Eurogamer Review 9/10
>> Apolyton MP Review by Friedrich Psitalon
