Critical Reception: Sid Meier's Civilization V

This week's edition of Critical Reception examines online reaction to 2K's anticipated strategy sequel Civilization V, which reviews describe as "the thinking man's paradise." The Firaxis-developed title currently earns a score of 92 out of 100 at Metacritic.com. Game Informer's Adam Biessener scores Civilization V at 9.75 out of 10. "Comparing Civilization V to contemporary strategy games is entirely pointless," he begins. "Civ V is a towering, AAA release with millions of dollars worth of polish in an era where questionably localized Russian titles are all that strategy gamers have to tide them over for months at a time. It's also a delightfully fresh take on a formula that has been slowly iterated on for more than two decades." "The heart of the Civilization fantasy is unchanged," Biessener assures. "You still manage cities, developing them from rude collections of mud huts into gleaming modern metropolises. Vast armies and armadas are again at your command, waging global war for conquest, defense, or resources with everything from spears to nukes." Biessener finds that the game effectively streamlines certain aspects of the franchise's core gameplay. "Civ V's genius lies in the way that Firaxis has aggressively chopped the number of decisions that a player has to make during the course of a game while taking away almost none of the meaningful ones," he explains. "As a hardcore Civ player, I appreciate some of these ancillary aspects of the design, but the removal of all the fat is unquestionably Civ V's greatest accomplishment." "A perfect example of this elegance of design is the new concept of 'embarking' units and removal of transport ships," Biessener notes. "In previous games, you'd build separate transport units, load your armies onto them, and send them across the ocean to land on foreign shores. As your military got larger, managing this became extremely cumbersome. The concept of land units being vulnerable and slow while embarked – the entire point of transport units – is perfectly replicated by Civ V's system of allowing armies to move across water on their own, albeit slowly and defenselessly." "I encourage everyone, from strategy newbs who spend most of their time in online FPS matches to grognards who could teach me a thing or two about the optimal distribution of forces in hex-based combat, to give Civilization V a shot," Biessener writes. "As a hardcore strategy gamer who is no stranger to planning out my empire's production dozens of turns in advance, I've already turned to Civ V for my world-conquering needs – but at the same time, if anything is going to rear a new generation of strategy gamers like the very first Civilization did for me, it's this." Anthony Gallegos at IGN.com rates Civilization V at 9 out of 10. "Civilization V can look seriously boring to the casual bystander," he admits, "but for the person at the helm of the game each turn can lead to a weighty decision, giving the player a certain feeling of power that few, if any, games match." "Like its predecessors, Civilization V is amazingly addictive, with games commonly drawing more than five or six hours out of me in a single sitting," Gallegos notes. "The reason? Because win or lose, Civilization V allows players to guide an entire society and craft their own story, taking them from the dawn of history and far into the future." However: "Civilization V is only 'good' -- and not 'great,' as I would have said about Civilization IV -- at crafting stories because I feel like the game's taken away some pretty important tools for customizing your society," Gallegos says. "In Civilization IV players could force things on their country and opposing nations in the form of religions and government. In Civilization V, though, players gather up 'culture' as a resource, spending it every so many turns on 'policies' that give their civilization bonuses." The result gives players less control over their scenarios. "I really appreciate the way the various policy trees give players a wide array of customization options for their nation," Gallegos writes, "but I miss the power and ridiculous glee I got out doing things like forcing Judaism down the throats of my enemies because my Jewish Japanese empire was out to win owning the hearts and minds of my neighbors." "Civilization V is one of the best turn-based strategy games I've ever had the pleasure of playing," Gallegos notes. "Whether teaming up with my friends for some multiplayer, or simply losing a whole night of sleep to the game's endlessly replayable single player, this is one game that any strategy enthusiast, or, hell anyone strat-curious should check out." Wired's John Mix Meyer rates Civilization V at 8 out of 10. "Civilization V is one of the few games to grab my attention in such a way that I am no longer aware of my surroundings," he warns. "Civilization fans will know what I'm talking about." Meyer continues: "The other night, I was so entranced in my session that if anyone were to walk by, they might assume I had turned into a mindless husk. In reality, my brain was firing on all cylinders, assessing the consequences of my every move. At the end of that night's session, I looked at the clock to see three hours had passed since I started playing. It felt like 10 minutes." "Civilization V is so addictive because it appeals to the nurturing side of human nature," Meyer explains. "Every move you make in the game bears its own positive or negative consequences. You must constantly evaluate what your civilization needs in order for it to improve." Meyer praises the sequel's friendliness to new players. "With so much complexity, it's good that Civilization V is more newbie-friendly than its predecessors," he notes. "The interface has been given a thorough overhaul, relegating some of the more extraneous information to sub-menus. The main screen does a good job of giving the essentials without being overwhelming and there are tooltips for just about every single button you can click." "Additionally," Meyer says, "some gameplay elements have been streamlined. For instance, you no longer need to build roads on resource tiles in order to actually get the resources. New players will also receive frequent pop-ups that give them recommendations on what to do next or simply instruct them about how a particular gameplay element works." "In a sea of shooters with pounding soundtracks and frenetic gameplay, Civilization V is one of the few games to challenge players' minds — to have them sit back and analyze situations methodically," Meyer concludes. "If Halo: Reach is heaven on earth for twitch-gamers everywhere, then Civilization V is the thinking man's paradise."