Civ? Me and Civ? Yeah, we go a long way back. I still recall the day, just prior to my career in gaming actually, when I stood in the store torn. Should I buy Quake? Or Sid Meier’s Civilization II. The one with the monsters and visceral thrills? Or the one with the pedigree, the elephant on the cover, and the one that looked fiercely, defiantly, and wonderfully beautiful and complex. I came home with both, I’m proud to say.

Civilization, the series, are the most ambitious playable games ever made. Each is a work of art in its own way (Civilization III was a stumble), and each can be played with a mix of wonder and bewilderment by casuals and newbies, or pored over and savored by studious types fascinated by all the choices and all their impacts. The game is surprisingly simple, but filled with wonderful technologies, moments, and personality. In the best of them the AI seems alive at times, and even in the worst, there’s always a reason to stay awake for a few more hours – just to see what happens. In an interview Sid Meier once told me: “I think a great game is just a series of meaningful choices, over and over again” and the result of that simple recipe is a powerful and contemplative gaming experience. One I recommend to intelligent moms, dads, and teens everywhere.

But who has time for all that?

And what about the people who are fascinated with history and the concept, but aren’t interested in a poster sized tech tree and countless unit, food, production, cash, science and birth rate, etc., simulation? Can Civ be boiled down to TV and even pocket sized?

The answer, in both cases, is yes . . . but I spent most of my time with the Xbox 360 version.

The game continues IV’s descent into cartoonishness with intrusive advisors and world leaders constantly appearing and speaking in that annoying Sim-English thing Sid and co. developed for Sid Meier’s Pirates (parents, buy that game). They can be silenced, but not removed entirely. They are welcoming and my kids think they’re awesome – actually, you know what they are really? They’re that MS Word paperclip in costume and acting all crazy.

The graphics are lush, colorful and soothing and the music is so true to the series, you’ll hear most of those tunes here. The game still revolves around production, trade, and food but these are mostly on automatic. You can place workers, but you don’t do much by hand. This leaves you time to develop your army because, like Civ4, you’ll need it here.

Have you ever been waging a long war and wished you could just get your units quicker? Everything happens faster in this game, but never too fast. There’s less going on, it’s all very manageable, but the hours still fly by. It’s not perfect, there are some real AI problems and there are plenty of presentation bugs that need squashing…

Oh and to anyone still annoyed that the early 90s Civ would allow a Phalanx to beat up a Tank on occasion? Well, with the experience point system they use here, you’ll see that sort of thing happen a lot.

If the complexity of modern Civ is what excites you, go ahead and skip this game. But for those who realize/remember that Civ is at its heart of hearts a boardgame, you’ll quickly see that these ommissions, these compromises, still equal riveting gameplay – especially in multiplayer (and yes, the DS version is a fair facsimile).

Kid Factor: It’s rated E-10 but aside from the scantily clad Cleopatra and the Cameron Diaz-esque Catharine of Russia (all the ladies in fact) and the semi-violence of the very cartoonish combat, there’s nothing here meriting 10 but the difficulty. It’s Civ-streamlined, but still not simplistic.

Bottom Line:

Civilization on a console? It works for me, ignore the middling grades. If this finds its audience, it’ll change strategy gaming on television forever and teach all those console twitchers a thing or two about just …. one… more…. turn……

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