Gamespot's Single-Player Strategy Game of the Year: Civ3

[yin26]

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/feature...001/p3_22.html

[yin26]

Listen, it's obvious these guys played Civ3 the same way they play their shooters: Quickly and once until the end. Sure, if you play Civ3 that way, you might be impressed. Heck, I was. But Civ3 sucks from about your 4th game on.

Here's just their first sentence:

Civilization III brings great turn-based strategy gaming back to life with its solid design, sleek interface, sharp artwork, unlimited replayability, open architecture, and epic storytelling

WTF?!

[HalfLotus]

Lots of people have played lots and lots of civ3 and love it. Just can't stand to have someone disagree with you can you Yin?

You do realize that your sig says you're an ******* 90% of the time, dont you?

[yin26]

Here's proof they simply have NO IDEA what they are talking about with Civ3:

In addition to the game's inherent replayability, Civilization III includes a complete editor for players to create their own mods and scenarios for virtually endless variety.

LOL! PATHETIC!

[Imran Siddiqui]

I have always respected Gamespot (and because of their RPG game of the year award, I'll be looking to get Wizardry 8), and I agree with their choice 100%.

[Adam Wallock]

I too tend to agree with Gamespot's reviews. I have made many purchases based on their ratings and not been disappointed.

Wizardry 8 is a must own for any RPG fan. Great Game.

[Capt Dizle]

I am wordless. I haven't bought many games this year so maybe Civ 3 is the best of a sorry lot.

Seriously, who the heck designed this game. Sid could hardly have looked at it.

[yin26]

Well, the Wiz8 seems to be a solid recommendation, and I plan to play it when I finish a few other games first. But this Civ3 thing is laughable.

[Alex]

Hmm... I really think they have not played the game that much. But I tend to agree with their review. I think that Civ3 manages to revitalize the series. Maybe it is not THE game we were hoping for, but it is hardly a disappointment to me.

But I have to agree with Yin on one thing: that "complete editor" nonsense. They launched the editor once, and thought: "Cool! We can change the rules... Ok, next game?".

[Terser]

CivIII is alright in my book. Just alright, mind you.

The reason Gamespot gave it this accolade--and in fact the reason why players and reviewers pay it such respect--is because of the complete and utter lack of great competition. Look at the nominees for Gamespot's single player strat game of the year: "Kohan," "Commandos II," "Tropico," and EUII. Now, I've got nothing but love for those games, having played (and to a certain extent enjoyed) all but one of them (Commandos II). But let's be honest: none of them are particularly innovative or earth-shatterlingly immersive. In any other year Tropico and Kohan probably wouldn't have made the list, and from what I've seen and read calling "Commandos II" strategy seems kind of a stretch. Thus we are left with a winner by default *Drumroll* Civilization III!

The one eyed man is king in the kingdom of the blind...

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by yin26
... But Civ3 sucks from about your 4th game on.
...

Oh, NOoo! I'm still playing my THIRD game!!

Gotta love the different ways people play!
Some for the quick win, some to immerse themselves into it; some with a half-full glass, some with a half-empty glass.

----
Terser,
I LOVE your signature!!

[Libertarian]

If nothing else, thinking people are learning how worthless reviews can be. Declaring an unfinished, untested game to be the Game of the Year merits nothing but ridicule.

It is to laugh. Ha!

[GodSpawn]

Yin, just as a matter of interest, what would you have chosen as strategy game of the year? (This isn't a loaded question, BTW!)

[yin26]

Hmmm, thanks for the unloaded question. I hope you give your pick, too.

On the Gamespot list (I'll just keep with their list) are:

1) Civ3
2) Commandos2
3) Europa Universalis2
4) Kohan
5) Tropico

I played Commandos2 and found it *very* polished and interesting for the first few missions. While the polish stayed, the interesting faded for me. At a certain point, it simply became rather easy to go in with a few good tricks and clean things up. So, a bit light on the strategy part once you got good at it.

I played Tropico and also found that to be a bit tedious after a time. Quite fun, though. Once you learn some good buidling orders, however, the strategy part begins to become weak, and you find yourself playing a sort of Sim City with guts ... but not much more.

Never played Kohan.

Played Europa Universalis *1*: Am I allowed to comment on 2? From all I have read of 2 (which I plan to buy soon), it's just 1 with some added complexity. So if it's O.K. to vote for a game I haven't played, I'd *still* put Europa Universalis ahead of Civ3. Why?

Well, its decidedly NOT for the 'grab you at first turn' effect, that's for sure. Heck I packed EU up after about 7 hours of trying hard to like the game. Gave up on it. Moved on. Then some people whose opinions I value convinced me to give it another run. Glad I did.

In short, Civ3 grabs you then spits in your face after a few games. EU spits in your face (as if to say: Sissy! If you can't handle it, piss off!) then grabs you for many longs months. So I can understand why pressure cooker Gamespot guys wouldn't get deep enough into EU to figure it out ... keep in mind these are the same guys who think Civ3 has a complete editor, o.k.? .... but:

Europa Universalis is by far the best (especially historical) strategy game to come out in a long, long time. It has my vote for strategy game of the year, bar none!

[Badtz Maru]

Kohan is a VERY innovative game for it's genre. It may not look like much, but there is a lot of depth in the gameplay. It's resource management system is unlike any other RTS, the unit construction system is unlike anything I've seen in an RTS, and it models a lot of things that are ignored in most RTS games, like morale and supply range.

[GodSpawn]

Hmm, I haven't tried EU because from what I read, it didn't seem quite the game for me. Perhaps I should try it.

I quite liked Empire Earth, Tropico and Startopia, but to be perfectly honest I like Civ3 best out of all the strat games I've played this year.

But this year's strat games just aren't that good - compared to my favorite games of the year (Diablo II expansion and Baldur's Gate)

[Trifna]

Civ III is the game with the more POTENTIAL to be a good strategy game. It is theorically (its core) extraordinary. But some things makes that it has some problems (which doesn't make it awful to everyone...). And for Gamespot, well it seems they didn't made a profound research on their subject before writing, which makes that they didn't saw some things. A little reading on Apolyton forums would have show them some problems easily (because that, as a good fan community, we stress-tested the game on every aspect). But I don't expect them to read forums with every game they review...

[Desert Dog]

Hey lighten up on him because he is right about civ 3. The front end and middle game is fairly decent if you don't install the patch and use say Korn's Blitz mod. If you install the patch you will most likely have crash occur around industrial or modern age right at picking your tech.
How many of you people that think civ 3 is great using the patch have made it into modern times? How many of you have launched to Alpha Centauri? Are there any of you out there that like to build up a hugh peaceful empire without any crashes? How many have played on a 230x230 map with 8 civs without a crash?
I would be interested in hearing some honest replies. Just curious if anyone has actually saw the entire game from beginning to end with the patch installed? I have tried 3 games w/patch all of them crashed at industrial or modern times.
It even seems evident that the game will NEVER be fixed to function correctly. Firaxis is not the same since all of its top programmers left.

Desert Dog

[Libertarian]

Trifna,

I just wanted to say how much I enjoy your posts. They are always insightful, always thoughtfully measured, and always are testimony to the goodness of the person behind them.

Thanks for being here.

[Moraelin]

Well, in all fairness, while Civ 3 IS a step back from SMAC, it's not bad at all if you compare it to other strategy stuff from this year. Basically everything else is straight C&C clones, and more straight C&C clones. You've played one, you've played them all. There's THAT little innovation in that genre.

I've been playing Empire Earth these days, and while it DOES have some GREAT ideas that I would have loved to have in a proper empire-building game, it really is Age of Empires 3. They did some amazing things with those epochs, scenarios and campaigns (if you ignore that some of that stuff is far more historically inaccurate than Civ 3, and combat is even worse modelled.) No doubt. If your dream was to play one more RTS, there's none finest than EE. But it's Yet Another RTS (TM) nevertheless. A proper empire building game it is not. Sorry, nothing composed of disparate pre-made scenarios counts as actually seeing your empire through human history. You'll still have the exact same scenarios, no matter what choices you make. There is no diplomacy at all, for example, so there's no way in heck to avoid having to fight a mis-represented Sparta if you play the Greek campaign.

(But again, it had some great ideas. If someone wanted to take some ideas from EE and put them into Civ 3, I'd be one happy camper.)

Tropico was a GREAT game, but I guess it wasn't for everyone. I LOVED it, and played it for hundreds of hours. But I can understand that if someone really wanted a _war_ strategy, it's definitely not going to be their cup of tea. Tropico is an economic sim. (Same as, say, Capitalism or Railroad Tycoon.) Not a military strategy. It also was many months ago, so most people forgot about it by now.

So what I'm trying to say is: maybe Civ 3, for all its flaws and mediocre design, does deserve being strategy game of the year after all. I still wouldn't have given it the insanely high scores that some of those sites gave it, but then the other "strategy" games from this years would have got a lot lower scores from me, too.

[Libertarian]

I guess it's sort of like Ordinary People winning Best Picture in 1980 over Coal Miner's Daughter, The Elephant Man, Raging Bull, and Tess.

[player1]

Yes, CIV3 had lot of potential to better than now.

But still, IT IS BEST STRAT. GAME of THIS year.

My score: 8.8/10 (with patch)


Played many games this year, and still think that Civ3 is best one.

If some game is best of the year it doesn't mean that it is excellent & revolutional.

[Moraelin]

Yep. While 2001 has been a great year for some genres, it's been a totally crap year for strategy. Frankly, there are two games on that list (Tropico and Commandos 2) which don't even belong there. You know it's a bad year when you have to fill the top list from other genres. Tropico was an _incredibly_ innovative game, if you've played any city building games before. I could fill a page with stuff it did in a new and better way, just off the top of my head. But it was actually an economic sim. And Commandos 2 was more of a puzzle game with a war theme, than anything else.

I've read an editorial on Firing Squad this year. Not as much an editorial, as one of their reviewers' plea to give turn-based games another chance. I could almost feel that guy's pain. I mean, I had to play like two RTS games in the whole year, and got fed up with them. That guy likely was sent every single major RTS for review. He's likely had to put up with yet another C&C clone with just changed graphics every month, if not more often. (And he does try to hint at the lack of inovation, only in a somewhat diplomatic way.)

So try to see Civ 3 from one of those guys' perspective. You're drowning and you get a breath of air. It's not even fresh air. It's stale, it's damp and it smells of rotting algae. If you were on land, you'd hold your breath. But it's AIR. It's your ONLY choice.

Or to put it less dramatically, it may not be perfect, it may be a step back from some past games, it may not really be too inovative if you compare it to SMAC instead of Civ 2... but it's still better than the other "strategy" games that reviewer has reviewed this year. And he already gave those RTS games scores around 90%, only because of lack of competition at the time. Since he can't go back and say "oops, actually I've changed my mind, those games only deserve 50%, so I can give Civ 3 a 60%", all that remains to somewhat keep the proportions is to give Civ 3 a 95% and name it game of the year.

[Libertarian]

The most balanced review I've read so far:

It's stale. It's damp. It smells like rotting algae. But best of all, it's your only choice!

[yin26]

Well, I think you make a good point. I would go a bit further and add that precisely because they are used to the twitch and flex kind of games (as you say, they must play tons of them), they have lost ... or maybe never really had ... the ability to evaluate a TBS strategy game very carefully. There are simply too many signs that they played the game MAYBE once. You just can't do that with a strategy game and even hope to come close to understanding its merits and faults. It seems clear to all of us here, even the staunch supporters of CIv3, that the late game is awfully weak, suggesting that Firaxis had little time left to really make the game fun from start to finish. Sure, that can be patched, but patches are like promises that 'the check is in the mail.'

As for why EU didn't win, I think the same dynamic is in play: EU is an awfully hard game to get used to. My guess is these same guys who played two hours of Civ3 and gave it a 90+ score (noting the 'complete editor') also played two hours of EU and figured it wasn't worth continuing.

My only complaint here is: If you dare pretend to know enough about strategy games to name one Game of the Year, at least have reviewers dedicated enough to know what they are talking about ... not FPS hacks who managed to load up 1/2 a game during lunch.

[Moraelin]

Well, in all fairness... I wouldn't have nominated EU as game of the year, either. Precisely on account of that learning curve. You can't really blame a reviewer if he doesn't recommend a game based on "you'll have to spend a week trying to even understand what's happening there, and likely wishing either you or it were never born, but trust me, after that chances are you'll like it." For all its other faults, Civ 3 does kind of look more intuitive from the first time.

However, in defense of reviewers (or at least SOME reviewers), the Firing Squad did give EU not only a great score, but made an editorial to praise it and almost literally say that it's the only real-time strategy worth being called strategy at all. If it weren't for their "EU rules" sort of offensive, I probably wouldn't have bought EU at all. Kind of surprising for a site whose main qualification seems to be FPS games.

It's also worth noting that unlike the others, the Firing Squad review DOES mention that Civ 3 has almost no innovation. In fact, they say it on two different pages in a single review. Admittedly, they try to downplay that in a rather weird way, and it doesn't prevent them from giving it a 96% score either. (Guess noone's perfect after all.)