The Save Spot

One more for the backlist

 

 

 

The RPG, a favorite gaming genre, is stacking up recently as the bane of this busy gamer.  I haven’t had time to play through Oblivion, GTA IV, or Final Fantasy XII but I can’t stop myself from picking up each latest and greatest offering to the role playing gods.  These great games sit on my shelf and mock me with their dozens of hours of gameplay, sidequests, unlockable characters and gaming escape. 

The most recent game to insult me so is Final Fantasy IV DS, the latest in a long series of remakes of the game first released in the US as Final Fantasy II for the SNES.  I spent some time with the game yesterday, to get a feel for the remake and torture myself with guilt and frustration that I won’t be able to give this little gem the hours it deserves.  Here are some initial observations:

1)  The opening cinematics are excellent and well-matched with the Uematsu soundtrack.  Characters retain the look of the cinematics in the Playstation releases, and Cecil and Kain both look imposing in their armor.

2)  There are in-game cutscenes which do a nicer job of presenting the story than just dialog boxes did.  I really like an early scene where Cecil in a contemplative mood is shown with the moon framed through his tower window. 

3)  The 3D models look pretty good, almost PS1 quality, but obviously don’t compare favorably to non-portable final fantasy titles released in the last five years.  The effort at the armor for Cecil and Kain ends up looking cartoon-y, in contrast to the cutscenes where it looks intimidating.  Still, the game pulls a lot of horsepower out of the DS and it’s fun to see familiar sprite-based locations, characters, and enemies get the 3D treatment.

4)   It would be nice if battles moved more quickly.  You’ll want to go into the menus and turn up the battle speed dial as far as it will go.  They should have made it go to 11. 

I haven’t played far enough to get a feel for the difficulty or the amount of grinding that will be necessary to experience this re-telling of a great story.   I’d give even odds that I never will (or at least will have to push off the time when I can get to it until something like “retirement”) but if you’re a lucky gamer with more time than I, I’d certainly recommend giving this game a try.

 

 

 

 

 

Civilized differences

 

 

 

Over the weekend I spent a few hours with a good friend and a fresh copy of Civilization Revolution for the Xbox 360 - an activity I can strongly recommend.  Last night, my copy of Civ Rev for the DS arrived, and I stayed up late enough to be both victorious and quite tired this morning.  Alas, sometimes sleep must be sacrificed at the altar of the busy gamer! 

As a long-time fan of the series, I have fond memories of hours spent in front of my IBM 286 PC, running a copy of Civilization (the first one, before there were numbers!) off of a 1.4 MB floppy disk.   The game was so much fun, much of which shared with aformentioned friend, that as late as 1998 I still had an old 16MhZ 286 PC and a copy of Civ to play in my dorm room at college.  Just writing about it makes me want to go dig up a copy and find a way to play it on an XP or Vista machine.  Of course, since then there have been several successful sequels and I’ve also spent quite a bit of time with those.

 

 

So it’s with this background that I picked up a controller over the weekend, and my DS last night, to experience the latest iteration of Civilization.  Overall, the game on the console and handheld are remarkably similar (graphics not included, but then graphics isn’t really what Civ is all about) and also quite fun.  There are some key differences in gameplay, however, that make Civ Rev different from it’s PC predecessors, including:

1)  You no longer direct the engineering of land and resources directly with settlers or workers.   Roads are built instantly with cash, and land improvements are now made possible by certain city buildings or technologies.

2)  Military units and city buildings no longer have a financial or resource support cost.  Once you spend the resources to build them, there are no ongoing costs.

3)  Many of the techs, city buildings, and wonders have different effects than in the PC series - if you’re a Civ veteran, pay close attention to these as you’re making your choices.

4)  You don’t have tax / science / luxury rates to control in the same way.  Each city can be set to specialize in producing food, gold, science, production, or a balance of each.  But you can’t micromanage here and choose exactly which resource tiles are used by each city.

5)  In my two games on Warlord, there were no unhappy citizens.  Instead of keeping citizens happy, temples and other related city improvements add to your “culture”.

6)  Maps are smaller, overall, and games move quicker. 

There are other changes, as well, of course - many of which are noteworthy, but I won’t cover them all here.  Because of these changes, I’d say that the game is more tilted towards military conflict.  The fact that military units don’t have an ongoing support cost makes it much easier to build up an army and support a war effort.  You can certainly still work towards a technology, cultural, or economic victory though.  My first victory was economic, so I’ll be looking for a more satisfying military victory soon!

While I don’t see Civilization Revolution as Civ 5, it’s certainly been a fun game to enjoy so far - and I’m already strategizing about my next game.  If you’re looking to scratch that ‘just one more turn’ itch, it’s definitely worth a purchase.