In the past, I never would have picked up an RPG (Role Playing Game for those not in the know, and if so, why are you reading this?).  The mere mention of them gave me impressions of turn based action sequences, painful management of inventory, and killing spiders for 20 hours to level up.  Recently, publishers and game designers have switched it up a bit, making RPGs less of a painful grind and bringing back the fun.  Mass Effect was the game that got me interested in RPGs again.  The inventory management was pretty easy, the action felt more like a shooter with squad based strategy elements, and the storyline kept you captivated.  From there I went a little more hardcore, and blew untold hours on crafting a paradise in the wasteland of Fallout 3.  Then, from out of nowhere came a game I had heard about in passing several times but never gave it any thought.  A new IP called Borderlands.  Suddenly, days after it came out I was working out a plan to acquire it.

Borderlands for me had all the elements I was looking for in an RPG.  The art direction was cell shaded, which I enjoyed in Crackdown and Robotech Battlecry.  This artistic style gave it a unique look that was easily recognizable whenever you saw a screen shot up.  Battles were action based and didn’t require a lot of setup beforehand.  Inventory management was fairly minimal.  All of these elements were only made better for me given the fact that online co-op was also available, though limited to a 4 player raid.  More on all of these points below.

The premise of the game is that you have landed on the world of Pandora, to search for alien treasures hidden somewhere on the planet’s surface (no, this isn’t Avatar).  The planet itself looks like you’ve landed somewhere in New Mexico, with nothing but scrub and junkyard towns scattered about the dusty plains.  The junkyard towns are usually where you get your quests and have the supply depots in them, where sharky businessmen make their living off the fortune seeking quest followers.  Cell shading lends to thicker outlines around objects, while textures insides of the cells are still reasonable.  If you have played Crackdown you are familiar with the style.  At first it feels almost cartoony, however once the action starts you will feel it is anything but.  Textures themselves are of a industry standard detail, nothing over the top.  Occasionally when you warp into a new part of the world, the textures can take a while to pop in, though it isn’t usually that distracting as you are already rushing to replenish your stores at the closest vending machine.

Action in Borderlands is often intense and keeps your interest.  The intensity increases when you co-op up to three other friends, as both the levels and the quantities of the enemies you are fighting explode to manic proportions.  Even exploring the world and grinding I still found exciting enough to keep playing it on and on.  As you progress through the game, the enemies level up with you.  Each enemy you destroy will give you experience points, that ultimately help you become more powerful.  They also often drop items, such as ammo, weapons, health vials, etc.  Lot more on weapons later.  The interesting item in regards to the level of enemies is when you go back to an earlier area you can literally mow everyone down with little resistance.  The caveat of going back to lower levels, though it does make you feel god-like, is you get almost no experience for anything you take down.

When leveling up, you find yourself with access to new skills and abilities.  There are 4 classes you can play as:  tank, sniper, soldier and assassin.  Each one has it’s own set of three major branches of a skill tree that unlock unique abilities for that class.  As you gain levels, you are given points to deposit into skills in the tree, leaving your character customization options fairly open.  I chose to take the assassin route, and by the end of the main quest line had quite a stealthy bad-ass whom could take on her fair share of enemy raiders.

Which brings us to weapons.  Some have described Borderlands as a gun nut’s orgy.  There are an almost unlimited amount of gun combination available in the game.  You have your basic classes such as SMG, machine gun, sniper, rocket, etc.  However, for each one of those classes you have level of weapon and a series of modifiers available for each one.  These modifiers can be something simple like a 2x reload rate, or more extreme like 4x fire damage for a certain amount of seconds after the target is hit.  Though inventory management isn’t that difficult in this game, you can spend a bit of time after a battle looting what the dead left behind, always searching for the perfect gun.  Ammo slots can be upgraded as well, and once you are half way though the quest line running out of ammo really wasn’t a big deal.  A nice feature is you can collect everything off the battlefield, then take it into a local town or vending machine and cash it all out.

The quests given to you in towns and people you meet out in the wasteland are varied.  It can be something simple like collecting and item and bringing it back, or the more extreme of finding pieces of an ancient artifact to help the storyline along.  All quests can be done solo or with your friends.  Once completed, everyone in the party gets the experience from the quest.  Vehicles are available within the first hour of the game, which further facilitates exploring and movement on the very large map.  Their armaments and speed mix it up a bit in what would be a boring quest or a lot of walking.

Borderlands shines the most when played co-op.  Gearbox did include 2 player split screen, though it is hard to see the menus in each half of the screen when you are trying to do inventory management and the like.  The ultimate best way to play this game is online with three other people.  Nothing beats the experience of trying to flank a horde of baddies with your party, communicating to each other over voice chat, and completing a quest together.  For best results, everyone in the party should try and be a different class, but even when there are duplicates the game gracefully takes it in stride and sends just the right amount of challenge your way.

The developers at Gearbox really knew how to breathe extended life into this game.  Not only can you do a second playthrough with your same character, but the amount of DLC they have release has been substantial.  They have released several major DLC packs for Borderlands to date, and they are still planning more.  The latest iteration, General Knox, adds a whole new realm to the universe, with fresh weapons, vehicles and enemies.  The last game in the recent past I have seen that provided such a steady flow of DLC for a game has been Burnout Paradise.  It is great to see that some developers are finally extending a game with added content, verses just popping out another sequel once a year (I’m looking at YOU EA).

Overall this game has been a great experience.  It took about 30-35 hours for me to do the first play through.  I still have plans to play it a lot more as soon as I can finally make it through Mass Effect 2.  The constant approachability of Borderlands and the amazing fun of playing it online has been keeping it off my Goozex queue, even though I have already finished it once.   I’ll see you in the Borderlands.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

It’s a given.  I love driving games.  Most games involving a car and/or motorcycle I’ve at least booted up once or tried the demo of.  They don’t have to be bad or good, but I usually have to try them.

A little while ago, two separate companies released Baja off-road rally type games around the same time.  These were Baja: Edge of Control by THQ, and SCORE International Baja 1000 by Activision.  On the surface, they appear to be almost identical, but on a deeper dive, THQ’s shone more brightly.  After appreciating the amazing work that was put into DiRT by Codemasters, I thought I would give Baja: Edge of Control (B:EoC) a shot and traded for it on Goozex.

The game starts you off in Baja California, with one class open, the VW Baja Bug.  While this isn’t a bad vehicle overall, at this bottom level in the game it is torturous.  Even after upgrading everything on the Bug, you are unlikely to completely win many events at this lowest class.  Also, the learning curve is rather steep.  Right off the bat, you are being bounced all around on very uneven terrain, having to pick up the controls that were not very well explained in the manual or in-game help.  The gist of taking most hard corners is to e-brake slide into the turn, then pop your clutch on the way out.  Once you have this down and get up into the higher levels, it becomes quite easy to keep ahead of the pack.

After you make it beyond the grind of the lowest VW Bug level, other classes open up and you can buy vehicles to race in these classes as well.  I found that if you re-ran several events in the lower classes, you could completely avoid whole classes and just buy the truck or what have you in two levels up and skip over something not as exciting, say “open wheel”.  Furthermore, when you bank up a whole bunch of money in the game, and buy a new 4 wheel dream of choice, you often will have enough to max out all the upgrades at this level.  If this is done, and with proper e-brake/clutch technique, you should be able to clean up almost all events first time through, making the learning/difficulty curve rather skewed: amazingly hard at the start, a challenging but attainable win after the first two classes.  Classes are unlocked with XP earned in racing, and easily unlocked classes ahead of me as I progressed.  Money can be earned by wining races and splattering sponsorships on your rally vehicle.  Sponsors will pay based on how many body panels you still have left at the end of the race, which for me was usually about half.

Events and tracks are varied enough to keep things interesting.  About half way though you will know a large quantity of them quite well, as many repeat with subtle changes.  Tumbleweeds and small rodents or bunnies (can’t figure out which) do sometimes cross the road in front of you.  Scenery of course looks a bit like a desert, no big surprise there, but it certainly doesn’t have the spice and thrill you’d hope for after hours of driving.  It feels accurate, and we’ll leave it at that.  You can fall off cliffs and run into trees, and occasionally roll.

Damage is modeled well when you run into trees or other cars.  In fact, it is modeled so well that they have damage gauges for many parts on your vehicle: tires, oil pressure, temp, suspension, etc.  As you tool through a race, these indicators will decrease.  When they do, the overall performance of your desert rat will decrease as well.  There is the option to pull off the road into a hot pit stop or helicopter to get repaired, but I usually found that even with a blown tire and steaming radiator I had enough of it together to make it the 3-4 laps on a standard rally without repairing.

Which brings us to race types in the game.  Included for your racing pleasure you can do: hill climb, circuit, point to point rally, open world non-race touring, and more that I’m likely forgetting.   There are also major rally modes for the Baja 250, 500, 1000′s.  These can take hours to complete (4 hours on the 1000 I think?) so I didn’t bother trying them out.  In these long modes you would certainly have to make use of the repair facilities, if not for your truck, then for your thumbs by the end.

Overall I was very happy with playing through it, though I didn’t have the passion about the game to finish every nook and cranny in it as I did with DiRT.  The driving certainly keeps you on your toes at all times, regardless of how much you upgrade your vehicle.  It is a good rental, though hopefully you would have it on long term rental, as the game would only get enjoyable for you after you get past the first class or two.  I personally got it off Goozex and will be putting it back up there soon.  I’m sure it is cheap enough to buy now as well, given that it has been out for a while.  Graphics are decent, gameplay is solid once you figure out what the controls all do.  It makes for a nice aside to play when you want something a little more casual but spirited than another game you might be playing at the time (*cough* Fallout 3 *cough*).  Recommend for those of you who want to feel like you know how to race in the dirty dirty.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

There have been a lot of Star Wars games.  A LOT.  In my experience, only a few have made the cut at all in terms of quality.  I think the last good one I played was X-wing vs. Tie Fighter.  Maybe Jedi Knight.  Rogue Squadron?  Please.  So along comes a game where you get to fully explore the dark side of the force.  I was intrigued.  Never before had we been given an opportunity to slay down anything in our path, with no regard for who it was that you were mowing down.  After a few looks at screenshots and descriptions, I ordered Star Wars: The Force Unleashed off of the Best Buy site on basically a half price deal they were doing the day after Christmas here.  After a very painful process to actually get the game in my house from Best Buy (took over a month and somehow I ended up with two copies of the game) I was able to sink my teeth into the game.

This game fills in some new back story with Vader.  It occurs after the events of the 3rd movie (Episode III), after Vader has been created.  Vader has taken on a new apprentice, behind the Emperor’s back, in hopes to overthrow the Emperor behind the scenes.  The game leads you through a storyline as his apprentice, with the time line coming rather close to the 4th movie (Episode IV), as there is a Death Star already being built and functional.

First impressions were good.  You start the opening level as Darth Vader so you have no issues slaying all the Wookies in front of you, though I did feel a little bad about it at first.  Once that level is down however, you are left to fend for yourself as Vader’s apprentice.   The first HALF of the game was truly painful as this character.  You rarely had enough power or experience to really do the damage you needed to.  Boss battles were often very hard.  Given this, you end up spending half the game attacking and hiding and dodging to keep alive until you level up enough.  Whenever you level you are given points that allow you to add to stats or abilities, similar to a mini-RPG.  The decisions are not very difficult.  More force power that recharges faster?  Yes please.

Once the second half of the game kicks in, you are in the swing of things.  Powers are readily available and you can easily meet the objectives of each level without a redo.  There is certainly joy in wreaking complete havoc on your environment.  Force push here, lightning there, jump in here and sith slay with your saber.  Rinse and repeat.  Most large enemies are easily taken down with running in circles and force lightning them.  Kind of a cheat, but it also feels great to be your own personal electric chair.

When you tire of hacking through levels (as this game really is just a hack and slash), there is a sum of training and challenges you can do.  I wouldn’t expect them to take more than an hour all told, and are usually best done after you are fully leveled up near the end of the game.  For the most part they aren’t very difficult, as long as you engage the most troublesome enemies in the room first, then deal with the rest afterward.

Overall the game is very satisfying.  Once you get a fair amount of powers under your belt, the game is enjoyable, though before that it can feel like a grind.  Like most Star Wars games from Lucasarts, it feels like they put a lot of thought into it, but didn’t take the time at the end to put in the extra polish a truly excellent game usually has.  I experienced many glitches, where I’d fall halfway into the floor, the enemy I was fighting would disappear, and once the save game even became corrupt, causing the game not to boot anymore and moving it off from the hard drive to a memory card made it suddenly work again.  Amazingly, these still didn’t take enough away from the experience to make it miserable.  I liked the game, and had a great time with it.  However once you are done, there isn’t much replay value, and off to Goozex it goes with my two copies.  I’d recommend picking this up if you enjoy the Star Wars universe.  If you are looking for a basic shooter or hack and slash game, your money might be well spent somewhere else.  A solid rental for sure, buy if you are a fan.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

Another game based off a movie, yeah great.  When are those ever any good?  You’d be hard pressed to find one.  But this is different.  It’s an old movie, a classic movie.  this can’t just be a shameless plug for the latest blockbuster.  Sure, you CAN go buy the movie at your local retailer… but this is far from the typical movie game made to be a piece in the media blitz puzzle.  Though the game obviously has roots in the movie, it doesn’t try to integrate itself to it.  Instead it creates it’s own universe.  The the cool part is, then it tosses you the keys and says “Go ahead, have some fun… be home before dawn”.

When one looks up this game on the EA site they see it classified under the “Action/Adventure” genre.  Ok, there’s action in it, and I would say there’s a bit of adventure… though i don’t see a fedora or a bull whip anywhere.  But if you stop and think about it, doesn’t EVERY game qualify as such?  I mean really, what else is there?  The Boredom/Monotonous genre went out of vogue in the late 90′s.  So, in the quest to better describe this game i hereby offer a new genre.  Hence forth, this type of game shall be referred to as a Sandbox game.  A sandbox game is one where a world is given to you with several vague objectives and you can do whatever the heck you want.  If you want to follow the objective, more power to ya.  If you want to drive around as fast as you can running over as many people as you can… go for it.  Examples of this sort of game are game such as Crackdown,  Grand Theft Auto, and yes… The Godfather 2.

So now that we have that ironed out, what about the game?  You start out in Cuba, the day that Castro takes power.  When the dust settles from the revolution the family is forced to change their plans… which is where you come in.  The whole point of the game is to take over rival family’s business, then take out the rival family completely.  The game provides some guidance along the way, but how you do it is decided entirely by you.  You can bomb business, perform hostile take overs, or just go rob banks all day.  Whatever floats your boat.

You also get some partners in crime.  That’s right, you get your own family.  How that works with the movie logic?  Haven’t figured that out yet.  You’re a Corleone, he’s a Corleone, wouldn’t you like to be a Corleone too?  Regardless, you’ll get to recruit and promote 7 “made men” that you will then use to attack and defend territories in 3 different cities.  These men will have varying skills.  There are safecrackers, engineers, medics, demolitionist, arsonsists, and bruisers.  You’ll need to make sure you have the right men for the right job.  You can also upgrade your character as well as your family members… increasing accuracy, amount of health, and so on.  These men will prove vital in helping you secure every possible business and defending again rival families that are coming after you.  Treat them well.

I found my 10 or 13 hours of game play to be interesting and slightly addictive.  I found the need to completely stomp out all competition to be strangely compelling, which disturbs me a little.  The combat was fairly smooth, if not a touch on the arcade side.  Driving physics were HORRIBLE, but most sandbox games suffer the same affliction.  Graphics were quite good making for some inspiring fire balls, and surprisingly realistic animation.  Be VERY aware, this game is rated M for a reason.  There is nothing pleasant about shooting your way in to a rival family’s strip club, beating the owner in to submission, and then accidentally shoving your shotgun in his mouth and making a mess on the wall behind him.   If you’re sitting in your dorm room causing mayhem, that’s one thing.  Don’t buy this game for your kids, play it around  kids, or discuss it with kids.  Unless, of course, you want them to grow up to be a Don.

- David Hayes

Well, Hollywood strikes again.  Every time anyone has a good idea Hollywood scoops it up, ruins it, squeezes every penny it can from it, makes us choke on it, then cuts it’s losses and runs away with a devilish little giggle.  That’s exactly what they’ve done again with WANTED.  For those of you not paying close attention, Hollywood has already moved past the A List comic books (Superman, Batman, Spiderman), burned through the B List (Hulk, X-Men, Fantastic 4), and made us suffer through the lower echelons of the comic book world (DareDevil, Electra, Iron Man).  But now, they’ve gone from mainstream to some of the less known, but highly respected comic books such as Spawn, Watchmen, and WANTED.  First came the movie starring the always lovely Angelina Jolie… and some other guy.  Now comes the video game.

WANTED: Weapons of Fate is another foray in to the world of a “Fraternity of Assassins”.  Can you imagine their pledge week?  Anyway, the back story on all of that is made fairly clear in the movie, so i won’t rehash it.  The game picks up 5 hours after the end of the movie.  The main protagonist, Wesley, has his home intruded upon by members of the French Fraternity and thus starts both an evolution of his skills as well as a journey of discovery in to who or what he is.    Along the line comes several upgrades to your abilities and weaponry that really make for the most interesting part of the game.  There are plenty of predictable plot twists and turns that delve deeper in to his past before ending with ever present boss fight.

Before you ask… yes, you get to bend bullets and slow time and all those fun ideas.  It’s not very smooth or quick… but it’s doable and becomes almost your primary tactic as the game progresses.  The practice of doing so takes more work than you might imagine.  For instance, yes you can bend bullets… but before you can do so you must stand up out of your cover spot while being shot at, then tell the game you want to bend a bullet by finding your target then pressing the special button, THEN you have to find the correct trajectory for the bullet.  WHY?!?!  You’re a super assassin that can bend bullets, but you can’t have the instincts to know the best trajectory?

The other major tactical factor in the game is your use of cover.  It’s rare that you find a shooter where staying under cover is so important.  The cover system was good, though not perfect.  It did a better job then most, particularly when moving between cover, but every so often the game did something less than logical that would cost you your life.  Very frustrating.

Level design was adequate, if not repetitive.  Lots of cover spots, lots of bad guys.  Not bad at all.  Most of the game is spent in either Chicago or Paris, so there’s a little diversity there.  One thing that should be noted is that i finished the game, at the hardest difficulty level, in 4 hours and change.  It’s NOT a long game.

Overall this game is a quick fun jaunt through the world of WANTED.  I liked it enough to play it through twice in 2 days.  The graphics aren’t great during cut scenes, but game play is acceptable.  Game play moves quickly, though it  too can get a bit repetitive if you don’t get creative.  And for all you Xbox360 Gamerpoint addicts, if you play on the hardest difficulty you’ll get 3 achievements for 80 gamerpoints per completed level.  All told, not bad for a weekends’ worth of escapism, but definitely not on anyone’s “must have” list.

This may just be a good rental for you, or perhaps trade for it and throw it back into the pile.

- David Hayes

Heart thumping, getting so close to the end of the race, if only you could get those three black cars off your tail that keep smashing you into the wall, then you can make it safe to the finish, unscathed. However it is unlikely that this environment will be forgiving enough for you to make it to the finish. This is Burnout Paradise, the fifth in a series of explosive racing games that pushes your reaction times to the limits but rewards you with spectacular crashes when you fail to make the grade.

Criterion Games gave the Burnout series a fresh new feel this time around. With an almost menu-less system for starting races and taking on challenges, the new open world dynamic brings a lot of new concepts and features to a series that is certainly middle aged. Previous iterations of the Burnout series were deep in menus to get into the action. With Burnout Revenge even having multiple levels of maps and menus to get through just to start a race off. No more! Burnout Paradise (aka BOP) takes a hint from the Midnight Club and Grand Theft Auto series and gets rid of the menus. All you are left with is a large island to explore. You are left to your own, with a basic car. It is up to you to actually find all the races on the map, which there is indeed an achievement for.  Roll up on a race, hit both gas and brake, and you are good to go, the race starts, and you are off.

The world is instantly interesting.  First off you have to repair your car, and then it’s off to exploring.  I easily spent hours getting the lay of the land, trying out a few races, and finding those elusive gate smashes that are scattered throughout the city.  Even when exploring, you can set top road rule times on all the roads, to the envy of your online friends (who can see them when they are crusing around).  After you win a few races, you have the chance to take out special cars that add them to your collection.  Tons of fun.  The race types vary; from straight out end point races, to being the marked man, my favorite road rage, and so on.

Not only can you play these all offline, but with a quick flip of the D-pad pop-up menu, you can join an online party with other fellow racers.  The online options include both racing in a couple different varieties, as well as a large handful of group challenges.  These give the game extra breadth and depth after the single player game becomes too familiar.

Graphically and auditorially the game is amazing.  True to form for a Burnout game, crashing looks awesome, with shards of your vehicle spinning off in all directions.  Sounds boom and roar, with the life of the city all around.  It is usually fairly easy to hear when a car is coming up behind you in surround.  Ambient sounds also make you feel like you are in a city full of activity.

The game as it stood out of the box on release was impressive on its own.  I personally put over 50 hours into the base game, with more than half of that online in Freeburns and Races.  However over the course of the next year and a half, Criterion has gone to great lengths to contually add to this game.  Iniitally, these updates were free.  This first set of updates added in new online race types, and even a whole motorcycle subset of the game, which is a first for the Burnout series.    Then later they added the option to buy exotic new cars, an offline pass-the-controller-party mode, and even a whole new section of map in the form of another island.  Criterion has not only made this an excellent game, but also a platform.  Using downloadable content packs and micro-transactions, they have extended the life of a game that likely would have lost interest after 6-8 months.  However more than a year later, it goes on strong.  I hope in the future, game developers and publishers take the hint from this success.  Forget putting out another iteration of the same game every year, but how about adding the same functionality into the existing game as DLC?  Here’s hoping for the future.

Come join the party online with your own copy!  Alternately you can trade for it or rent it, but I’d recommend keeping it for the long haul.

- Ben Mazhary-Clark

He’s baaaack.  That’s right, that brash little brain sucking alien from the planet Furon has made his return.  Crypto’s his name and stealing DNA is his game.  The fun part comes from how he does it.

SO, back story.  Way back in the day when every xbox was black and the hard drive was internal there was this funny little game that got released.  Destroy All Humans was the title, and the cover art looked like something out of a 50′s era B movie.  I picked it up on a lark and POOF, i was introduced to the amazing world of sandbox games.  A big map with LOTS of things to see and nothing but loose ideas of objectives that will help you move along and have some fun.  Talk about an eye opener.  Played enough of that game to sufficiently piss my wife off.  Fast forward 5 years and now we have the latest installment of the series on the 360 (i believe there was another title released solely to PlayStation… but who cares?).

I know what you’re thinking.  Who’s Crypto and why do i care?  Crypto is a 3 foot alien sent from the Furon empire to collect human DNA by extracting their brain stems.  No, i’m not kidding.  But wait, it gets better.  Crypto also happens to be a smart ass, cynical bastard that is voiced by a fairly good Jack Nicholson imitator.  He says some flat out funny stuff fairly regularly.  And as if that wasn’t enough, then there’s the weapons.  The Black Hole gun, the Venus Human Trap gun, and last but far from least… the anal probe gun.  You heard me right.  This bad boy fires self guided… let’s call them missiles… that hone in on the rectum of it’s victim.  The victim then runs around spewing… uuuuhhh “stuff”… from their butts.  Shoot them enough and they die.  Seriously people, i can’t make this stuff up.

Once a person dies their brains pop out the top of their heads and are magically drawn to Crypto.  You collect the samples and you’re on your way.  Of course, three foot tall aliens probing people to death is BOUND to garner some attention.  Kill enough people the police show up.  Offer a little resistance and S.W.AT. joins the party.  You make them work too hard  then soldiers and tanks show up.  What now?  You’ve got the full force of the Army bearing down upon you.  Luckily Crypto can do more than just shoot a gun.  He’s got some psychic abilities.  Psychokinesis is one of the more useful abilities.  Picking up cars with your MIND… yeah that’s just fun.  Then there’s cortex scan, basically you can read minds.  Not much use in a fight, but useful for gathering information and the occasional laugh.  Then there’s my favorite, the body snatch.  Run up to someone, hit the right button and suddenly you’re a leggy blonde or a hot red-head on skates (oh, or a tubby balding guy but i get to be that EVERY day… yay).  Perfect for hiding from the fuzz.  Heck, you can even hide AS the fuzz.  But beware, the game is smart.  If you snatch a body in front of the police they are smart enough to know it’s still you.  In fact, snatch a body anywhere and all the people around you will freak out just a little.  Apparently a little green guy with a gun isn’t very scary, but if he absorbs someone else’s body that’s an issue.  Boundaries people!!

All right, so what’s the point of the game.  Here in lies the true beauty of the game.  I’m not sure there is one.  There are no political undertones, no subtle comments about the state of society.  Just a racaus romp through various interesting locales causing mayhem and destruction whenever possible.  Throw in some hysterical dialogue and a story line you can follow and you’ve got a great play through of a fun game.  Is this game going to revolutionize a genre?  No.  Is it going to entertain you for 12 or so hours?  Only if you have a sense of humor and know what you’re getting in to.

Want to suck brains for a living?  Buy this bad boy, or trade for it on Goozex!

- David Hayes

Have you ever really wanted to conquer the world, but just didn’t have the time?  Well now there’s an answer.  Civilization: Revolution (Civ Rev) from the mind of Sid Meier has everything you need to dominate the world all wrapped up in a tidy little box.  You’ll use everything from irrigation to Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (also known as nukes) to build one little city in to an empire.

Civ Rev is Sid Meier’s first foray in to the console market.  He’s been putting out Real Time Strategy (RTS) or turn based strategy games for your PC since 1991, but now with the help of 2K Games he’s made the leap to an XBox360, PS3, or Nintendo DS near you.  There are now 4 different Civilizations games and the idea behind all of them is to become the ruler of the world.  In Civ Rev you can do that in one of four ways.  You can dominate the world militarily, become the envy of the world by advancing in culture, bankrupt the world by becoming so wealthy you can do as you wish, or use technology to advance your empire beyond earthly limits.

To begin every round you must select your leader.  You have many leaders to choose ranging from Gandhi to Caesar, Napoleon to Abraham Lincoln.  Every leader has it’s strength and weaknesses, so it helps to know what kind of victory you’re looking to accomplish before you start.  One important note here, any given round can last many hours.  You’ll start at the stone age and depending on how good you are (or aren’t) you could finish in the Space Age.  I’ve seen this last four hours routinely.  There are ways to shorten that, there’s even a lightning round setting, but don’t go in to this game thinking your round will go quickly.  More than likely it won’t.  The good news it that the game let’s you save at almost any time and it gives you 10 saves to use so you can go back and forth at will.

So you’ve chosen a game type and a leader, now you’re ready to start the game.  The world opens up, and there in front of you is the entirety of your empire.  Five or six people scurrying around looking for a good place to settle down and call home.  This is a VERY important decision in the life of your civilization.  You want to look for plenty of food, plenty of resources, and a defend-able position… just to name a few factors.  Often the game puts you in a good starting square, but it’s worth looking around to see your options.  Don’t look for too long though, there are four competing civilizations that will be growing with every turn regardless of whether yours is or not.   Find your spot, settle in and get to work.

Pretty quickly after creating your settlement you’ll get your first set of warriors.  Shortly there after you’ll start researching technologies.  Eventually you can create armies, build structures, and in a short time create a sprawling city filled with activity.  Branch out and send settlers to other areas of the map.  Eventually the other civilizations will start encroaching on your space, or you on theirs.  Battles will be fought, like it or not.  Cities will flourish or fall.  You will leave an indelible mark on this virtual world, or you will fall to the wayside and fail.  It’s all in your hands.

One of the other nice things about this title is that no matter what, the game doesn’t take itself too seriously.  Sure, the rise and fall of an entire civilization is totally up to you, but that doesn’t mean it has to be dramatic.  The game is presented with a sense of humor.  Even when you’re being threatened by hostile enemies, the language is such that you can just chuckle it off.  A lot of other RTS games present your challenges with a sort of dire, do or die, mentality.  Civ Rev on the other hand just puts the information out there in a semi-comical, even cartoony manner for you to digest and respond to.

Multiplayer leaves a bit to be desired in Civ Rev.  Playing head to head can be fun and challenging.  But add a third party and things get awkward fast.  Particularly if you have a group of two or three buddies you wanna spend a few hours playing with.  The three of you will start a round, but the first person to loose is just out of luck.  They have to sit and wait, potentially HOURS, while the other two finish the fight.  I’m sure there is a time and place for that kind of gaming, but in my world it’s fairly rare.

So who should invest in this game and why?  People like me, that’s who.  Someone who is new to the RTS world and wants a full experience without the melodrama that can accompany taking over the world.  It’s a great gateway game to a whole new type of game that a lot of console gamers have yet to try.  2k Games has already released several downloadable content packs at the time of this publishing and is doing a good job of keeping the game relevant.  If you’re looking for something new and different that still offers a challenge then this game is definitely worth a look-see.  And for those on the fence, XBoxLive offers a demo version free for download on the marketplace.  Try before you buy.

Buy it now or Trade for it on Goozex

- David Hayes