Civilization Revolution Preview

Firaxis has done a great job making the control scheme as intuitive as possible.

So, back to the match. We picked the all conquering Greeks, a decision partly inspired by super-cool action flick 300. We found most of our time during the early stages (4000BC and onwards) was spent toggling between units, moving them to reveal more of the map, and bringing up the city screen, where we could easily switch resource gathering from gold to science to culture to balanced depending on what we wanted to build. While a little fiddly at first we soon got a grip on the control scheme, quickly forgetting we were playing Civ on a console at all.

We were given some pointers to get us going early in the match. After we founded Athens (like in the Civ of old you need to make sure to found cities near a healthy dose of natural resources) we were advised to immediately build a unit, the Warrior, to provide defence from raiding barbarians. It wasn't long before the AI-controlled French, led by Napoleon, made contact and asked to make peace. This brought up a decision window giving the option to agree, reject or consult an advisor. For now, we went with peace. No sense getting killed before we've had the chance to found another city.

Soon, as we advanced through the tech tree, we opened up options to build new units, including the defensive unit the Hoplite and the coastal exploration unit the Trireme. We even built a new settler unit and founded Thermopylae. As we've mentioned, the game crawled along because of problems with the timer. So we only got the chance to progress a little further down the tech tree, establish relations with some other human players, build some roads between the two cities and mess about with the resource system.

We did however, sees loads of little touches which show how Civ has been tweaked to fit better on console. All the resources are placed and detectable at first but you may not be able to exploit them until you have progressed far enough in the tech tree. You can bring the tech tree up at any time and plot your path through the various scientific discoveries, government advancements and unit progression, making crucial decisions simple. Civilisation has always been steeped in history, but Civ Rev promises to take that further with the addition of famous historical figures, like Aristotle, who can turn up in your cities and provide scientific and cultural bonuses. Famous military generals will pop up from time to time too, granting an experience bonus to nearby units. Speaking of the units, they can be levelled up to Elite status and combined to form powerful armies. When a unit does level up you'll be able to tailor its skills. You might make it a medic unit, so it can heal when in enemy territory, or give it the March ability, so it can move further in one turn. The Spy, for example, can be used to infiltrate cities without having to declare war. And, get this, move a counter intelligence unit in to combat a spy and you'll trigger a James Bond style fight. Nice.

Expect the DS version to eat away at your commute.

You'll also be able to discover the mythical city of Atlantis. Defeat barbarians or impress independent villagers with your amazing technology and they might point you towards areas of great importance on the map so you don't waste time revealing areas of nothingness. There's a greater emphasis on combat and declaring war on unsuspecting allies. Everything suggests a quicker, easier to manage and slightly simpler Civ compared with the PC original. Of course we knew Firaxis would need to do this. But it's great to know that Firaxis looks like it's achieved this without dumbing down the Civ experience.

Achievements will be divided up into three categories, easy, medium and medal of honour. You'll get an easy achievement for your first contact with another civilisation, for example. You'll get a medium achievement for winning the game with only one city. And an example of a Medal of Honour achievement is playing a game of Civ Rev with Sid Meier, which instantly charts in our top 10 favourite achievements ever. While this sounds highly unlikely, it may actually happen, if you're good enough. Firaxis plans a weekly game of the week contest which will be played out on a Firaxis built map. Depending on how well you perform on that map, you'll get a ranking and an online world leaderboard place. Mr Meier will be watching.

After we put down the 360 pads we got our grubby mitts on the DS version of Civ Rev, which, we're happy to report, is also looking good. Here you use the stylus to move units and manage your civ. The graphics are more basic, as expected, and it's much quicker than the console version, indeed as the Japanese we managed to win an entire map via domination in about 15 minutes. But the prospect of playing four-player wireless Civ Rev multiplayer on DS this summer is one we're extremely excited about indeed.

So far so good then. Civ Rev on Xbox 360, PS3 and DS is shaping up to be a worthy addition to the Civilisation franchise, and, more importantly, a fun and addictive proposition in the ruthless world of online console gaming. It's not the same as it was on PC, but it's not massively different either. Sometimes change is good, and this may be one of those times.

Civ Rev is due out for Xbox 360, PS3 and Nintendo DS on June 6 2008.