Thursday, October 28, 2010

Kirby's Epic Yarn


Kirby’s Epic Yarn is the game I want to throw back at the guys that used to make fun of my Nintendo 64 back in school. The big, machismo-fueled tough guys (that were guidoing it up well before Jersey Shore was a thing) that dismissed the Banjo Kazooies and Donkey Kong 64s of the world as too childish for people with a double-digit age. The people that would rather be playing the M-rated games the ESRB deemed them 7 years too young to play. Whose kids have gone on to become Halo’s underage, racist online pests. I say that because this particular Kirby game works so well because it’s so damn kiddie and childish. The playful, charming tone and sense of childlike discovery that is encased in this game is enough to warm even the coldest of hearts. If a male is enraged at the thought of playing Kirby’s Epic Yarn, it’s because they’re either in denial of their sexuality or insecure about the size of their less-than-epic member.

The entirety of this game takes place in some kind of elaborate arts and crafts project conducted by every kindergarten class in Japan. Kirby engages in an epic confrontation with an evil sorcerer (which is to say that he eats the sorcerer’s tomato and is then pulled inside his mystic gym sock…uh huh) and is trapped in a land of cloths and buttons. Being the bastion of joy and good will that he is, Kirby agrees to help Prince Fluff restore his arty land and smile a whole lot along the way.

From there, your heart will grow 3 sizes larger for every level you play until your arteries collapse. Levels are comprised of strings, cloths, cottons, denims and other things your high school girlfriend made a Scrapbook of Memories about. Kirby him/her/itself is made of fibers, and thus loses his ability to inhale and retain oxygen or enemies inside his pink form. Rather, he can readily transform his stringy body to what suits his needs. Become a smiling car to run faster, a smiling parachute to slow his descent, a smiling submarine when he’s underwater, and, given the chance, he would probably remain smiling if he was a car in the motorcade during the Kennedy assassination.

Kirby’s main tool is a whip that he can use for assorted means. He can either untangle(!!) enemies or roll them up in into a ball for projectile purposes. Or he can pull taps or unzip zippers to make alterations to the environment. Or swing off stray buttons while still smiling(!!) Epic Yarn taps into that primal urge we all have to pluck at loose strings and dangling zippers, only the game provides results more pleasant than a chastising from your mother. Environments may unravel, revealing hidden shiny beads to collect or pathways or generally do something to make you coo in delight. Collect enough beans and the shop keeper’s face will appear on the screen, within a gold star, smiling, while Kirby lets out a cry of bliss. Playing this game would make Mel Gibson a nicer man.

And part of the fun of Kirby’s Epic Yarn is that the game is always finding something new and adorable to throw in your direction. Maybe it’s discovering what the cloth-rendition of snow or water looks like. Or discovering a new piece of furniture for which to decorate your apartment with. (Of course Kirby has a bachelor apartment, the swinging single he is.) Or there’s a new vehicle mini-game. The game is constantly introducing new vehicle-based mini-sequences to keep things fresh and interesting. One minute you’re a smiling jeep, the next, a smiling tank of nuclear yarn destruction. The one constant being the smile.

And it helps that the game is readily playable with a second person, assuming the role of the well-browed Prince Fluff. I haven’t truly tested this theory myself, but I think this game will get you laid. I posted about this game on Facebook and got a smattering of swoons from women. Remember, guys, there are benefits to putting away that Modern Warfare disc and showing your sensitive side.

In case the abundance of the colour pink hasn’t made it clear yet, this is not necessarily a game for people that crave horrific bloodbaths or even a challenge. I never really found myself frustrated or bored at any particular point. Rather, the game adopts the Lego Star Wars system of “no, you can’t die, no matter how hard you try, you are bound to your immortal coil.” Instead of death, doing something bad will result in Kirby dropping a TON of those beads that you have been fetching. This, in the midst my state of euphoria that stems from playing the rest of the game, results in many moments of me yelling OHNOOHNOOHNOOHNOOHNOOHNO in saddened panic. You see, I was sad because I made Kirby sad. And that is a much worse fate than death.

Throw in some really blissful music and you have a game that borders on therapeutic. No, really. There is something about this game, whether it’s the deliberate pacing or the “hey, everything’s alright!” mood or the sheer abundance of gems to collect that just give this game a totally uplifting vibe that will remove all of your worries of the day. With so many video games built around spinebreaking difficulty or immersing you in some kind of hellish warzone that real soldiers never want to revisit again, there is something special about a game that actually tries to evoke happiness.

While the game doesn’t have any outstanding flaws, there are a few things that I could have done without. The game’s final stages, while not a chore to play, feel like the least memorable segment of the otherwise heartwarming experience. There’s a side-quest where decorating apartments unlocks new tenants that want to play mini-games with you. Except, well, I didn’t want them to have the satisfaction of playtime with me. And while not a flaw with this game, but trying to intersperse Kirby’s Epic Yarn with sessions of Super Meat Boy is a terrible idea. After playing through the latter for several hours, I found myself a tad flustered at how Kirby was not running at 2000 km/h and bouncing off blood-splattered walls for about half an hour.

I managed to wring about 7-8 hours of absolute bliss out of this very, very special title. And I’ve got full intentions of returning and completing my Ikea Fantasy catalogue of cheery furniture items. So my end summation is that you should probably buy this game. Even if you are the kind of person that demands their gaming experience be marked with a trail of headshots, you may find something that warms the bottom of your heart. This is a very different kind of game, one that doesn’t look to challenge or shock you, but pump your body with endorphins and make you feel good about the universe.

4 ½ stars

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Costume Quest


As I was doling out candy to the assorted door-to-door treasure hunters last Halloween, I began to wonder about today’s generation of costumed kids. Do they go through the same dilemmas we did? Do they argue amongst themselves on whether or not to “do both sides of the street”? Or get upset when they draw the courage to visit the really creepy looking house (with gravestones, scary music and a guy in the toy casket surprising visitors) only to get lollipops in return? Do classmates laugh at the guy who got the cheap-looking Ninja Turtles outfit?

Costume Quest purports to answer these questions and more, in a manner most colourful. This is a semi-RPG that plays with the child’s spirit and imagination on October 31st, with almost a Jerry Seinfeld-like attitude. Because really, what is the deal with adults that give out raisins?

You play as either a brother or sister, who’s trick-or-treating plans go awry when your brother or sister are kidnapped by goblins. The goblins’ evil plans involve taking as much candy as physically possible, and your brother or sister had the horrible misfortune of wearing a candy-corn outfit. Thus, you will have to band together with other costume-clad warrior kids from the neighborhood to stop these goblins from being general jerks.

So you’ll have to suit up and do battle in your paper and tin can costumes. When you run into said goblin, your party transforms into whatever they imagine their costumed personas to be. A cardboard box robot becomes a fully-armed Gundam robot, a generic knight becomes a Paladin warrior, a white unicorn becomes a rainbow-powered majestic steed, and so forth. Part of the fun of this game is how it takes the perspective of the kids’ imaginations. The robot will assume all kinds of overdramatic poses. The Statue of Liberty’s healing attack involves red and blue stripes, along with the pictures of a bald eagle and Abe Lincoln’s face. The smartest decision in Costume Quest is that it never discloses whether this entire elaborate adventure is the real deal or just the children playing make-believe. One adult briefly alludes to the goblins as “teenagers”, as who else would be terrorizing the streets at night? But otherwise, they could be real goblins, or the kids could have invented the whole shebang in their heads. Having that semblance of doubt feels all the more curious.

Otherwise, this is a decidedly rudimentary RPG. Your combat options are restricted to a basic attack, a special attack that loads up after two basic attacks, and a possible third, equipped ability. The different costumes merely dictate what your special attack is. You can use hard-earned candy to purchase and equip badges that offer assorted stat changes. That is about the extent of the game’s complexity. That the game’s level cap is TEN should tell you that Costume Quest is suitable for a younger audience. Anyone expecting Junctions or Gambits or any kind of crazy customization system that makes no logical sense should stick to the dozens of other RPGs that I can never figure it out.

My one qualm with a game that aims to keep it simple stupid is that it probably shouldn’t be using phrases like “splash damage” or “DOT”. Lest we see Costume Quest raise a fine generation of Warcraft addicts.

Everything about the gameplay is kept equally as simple as the combat. Your various side-quests include playing hide and seek and a bobbing-for-apples mini game. Trick-or-Treating involves knocking on a door and getting either a tacky adult who gives candy or a goblin that makes you fight for your sugary prize. There aren’t any particular brain-bending puzzles, and only the final boss will test your RPGing merits. Despite the seemingly simple and redundant nature of the game, I never quite found myself bored at any point. You consistently find new costumes to ogle over, new areas to visit, and no shortage of cute dialogue. While the game doesn’t have much in the way of “rolling on the floor laughing my ass off” moments, there are plenty of good chuckles and smirks to be had at the assorted bits of dialogue. And you’ll get to wax nostalgic at your memories, like laughing at the kid with the generic ghost-sheet outfit.

It took me about 5-6 hours to finish Costume Quest and nab all of the achievement; a reasonable length for a downloadable title, to be sure. Odd as it sounds, this is not a game to be playing for any kind of complex, difficult test of wit. But rather, it’s more of a leisurely ride through memory lane and a chance to laugh at the awkward thrill of the candy hunt. I would consider it worth playing, and perhaps worth making an annual Halloween tradition.

4 stars

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1


As the 26th Sonic game released, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 aims to numerically confuse the world. It also aims to address just about any and every complaint levied at the series since the existence of polygons. There is no beastiality love story. There is no ridonkulous plot. Sonic doesn’t transform into a wolf form and have crappy combat sequences. (Though I’ll confess to being weirdly curious about Sonic Unleashed at the moment. Maybe for the wrong reasons.) There is not an ounce of dialogue. There are no alternative characters with annoying voices. There is no mock-punk soundtrack. In fact the only characters present in the game are Sonic and Dr Robo…Eggman.

This is very much the pure nostalgic throwback that we all thought we wanted. Like a true 16-bit game, the story is pieced together from what visual aspects we can pick up. We can *assume* that Dr Eggman is capturing woodland creatures and Sonic is trying to rescue them. We could potentially assume that Dr Eggman is attempting to shelter the woodland creatures from Sonic’s logging company as they transform the blue hills rainforest into a casino strip. Whatever. I can always appreciate a game where you can jump in and not be bombarded with tutorials and exposition. I don’t need to be told that the mad scientist figure is a jerk or that pressing the right button makes me walk in towards the right.

Sonic 4 wisely assumes that you’ve played one of the real Sonic games in your life and know how the controls work. You jump into things to kill…I mean liberate their woodland prisoner. You run really fast through loops. You listen to funky synth music. You hold down and repeatedly press the jump button to charge up a Sonic Spinning Testicle Dash™. The one and only holdover from recent games (besides the awful naming convention of “Dr Eggman”) is an aerial dash that lets you lock on and catapult into flying targets with the press of that one jump button. In the context of a game that’s about running really fast and letting the world pass you by, it’s a natural fit.

I mentioned earlier that Sonic 4 aims to address every negative complaint fans have had with the series since when Sega started plugging extra hardware devices into the Genesis. (Side note: I would love to have a Genesis with a 32X and Sega CD. Not to play, but as a conversation starter. I mean say what you will about the games or hardware or anything, but the visual of a fully-loaded Genesis is an impressive sight.) And they addressed EVERY complaint that Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons would have, which means they took out anything resembling change. The levels are all variants of Blue Hills, trippy casino, water-filled temple and industrial areas. You will run through the horizontal sidewinder, scramble to find air bubbles, be the human pinball in the casino and watch a crappy ending worthy of the early Sonic games. Even the Chaos Emeralds bonus level is ripped right out of the first game, in all its Lucy-In-The-Sky-With-Diamonds-trippy glory.

A vast majority of the game’s assets and ideas are plagiarized from Sonic 1 and 2. Even the bosses are near-identical, as Dr Eggman shamelessly steals vehicle ideas from mentor Dr Robotnik. There are a small handful of new ideas; one level has you lighting torches to set off dynamite and destroy historical temples. Maybe there is some truth to that logging storyline. One casino level is designed to hand out dozens and dozens of lives as practical freebies for you to lose against the final boss. Otherwise, you will sit there and swear you are playing a shinier version of the original Sonic.

The other issue is that Sonic 4 is terribly short. It took me two hours to finish all of the levels, and then another 90 minutes struggling against an annoying final boss. Perhaps this comes with the territory of being episodic, but an episodic nostalgic throwback platformer feels like a bad idea for all involved. If one really cares about their Sonic experience, then perhaps they could replay this game for the sake of the online leaderboards. Or make a not-very-amusing grab at fetching the Chaos Emeralds. Though devoted Sonic fans can already guess the reward for nabbing them all.

Other retro revivals like New Super Mario Bros and the recent Mega Man games at least make a compelling argument for their existence with some level of new content. Sonic 4 borrows so liberally from its predecessors without offering much in the way of value that it makes me wonder why someone wouldn’t just play the original games instead. They’re readily available on digital distribution services like the Playstation Network, Xbox Live Arcade and the friggin iPhone. They’ll at least last you longer than this episode.

2 ½ stars

Friday, October 15, 2010

Comic Jumper


Gah! I can’t decide whether or not I idolized or merely tolerated Comic Jumper. If you judge a title on the sole merits of its gameplay, then this is the dog’s bollocks. It’s a not-particularly-great shooter that is rife with annoying filler. But yet the overall experience is just so damned strange and amusing that it almost has to be played by anyone that can appreciate a good South Park episode. In trying to write this, I found myself flip-flopping in tone between “this game is a flaming shitturd” and “this game flings flaming shitturds at your mom.” After the realization that I had replayed half the levels and unlocked all of the concept art, I had made up my mind. Seriously, who goes out of their way to unlock concept art? What the hell, eh?

I suspected that Captain Smiley was the kind of dream hero that someone would’ve invented in grade school during moments of not-studying. The kind of character that only that one person and their friends would find amusing and would never become the star of their own marketable franchise. And I was right, according to those unlockable concept art pieces I wasted too much time getting. According to the game story, Captain Smiley’s comic series sucked so much that children chose going to class over reading it. After the first issue fails, Smiley becomes an indentured servant to developers Twisted Pixel (the game treats the Fourth Wall as if it were the Berlin Wall), and must star in other comic series to raise funds for a franchise reboot.

From there, the game gets progressively more insane. Full-motion video of random people that may or may not work for Twisted Pixel are littered all over the place. You deal with the cast of the Captain Smiley series, like the talking star on his chest. Or Brad, the Muscle Beach-bound commando with an army of well-endowed womenbots. Brad has his own theme song, an honour he shares with the game’s stats screen. And how you can visit an arcade and freely purchase The Maw and Splosion Man. Maybe the one off-putting aspect of the game for me was the excess of Twisted Pixel-narcissism. Okay, great, you put yourselves in the game, cute. It does get a tad annoying after awhile.

From there, the game enters cold-blooded parody territory with its different areas. The first sect of levels take place in a loincloth-heavy spoof of Conan the Barbarian, complete with an Arnold soundalike. Then there’s a cel-shaded, very colourful (in many ways) take on Silver Age comics. The very strange values that censors upheld (and didn’t uphold) get a very stern lampooning. Then the game flies off a cliff with two middle fingers held at the sky as Captain Smiley enters the world of manga. Every anime stereotype you can think of (and some that you didn’t want to be reminded of) is brought to the forefront with nil shame. And it is glorious!

As I’ve mentioned before, the issue with Comic Jumper is that you do have to play it. The base game is a dual-joysticks shooter with platforming. You’ll run from one side of the screen to the other, a lot of enemies appear and you’re expected to extol justice on them. It can get a little bullet hellish at times with the amount of flying lasers slowly darting in your way. Worse, the checkpoints can be on the unforgiving side if you haven’t been upgrading Smiley’s health.

And none of the shooting ever feels gratifying. It takes way too many shots to down a single enemy, and this issue worsens if you don’t make a note to purchase attack upgrades. The seconds it takes to down a single Bradbot is a complete flow-killer. The game attempts to mix up the shooting with assorted on-rails sections, ala Panzer Dragoon, Space Harrier or whatever rail shooter you may have mad love for. But it doesn’t alter the fact that the game’s action feels sluggish as all hell.

There are also a very small handful of very typical quick time events. And a handful of supremely clunky melee sections where you have to alternate between the “punch one guy” button and “punch two guys on each side” button. And the game has some decidedly creative boss fights that I would have a much higher opinion of, if I weren’t forced into repeating so many of them.

At the same time, I was able to successfully grin and bear all of the nonsense. Perhaps it was because the back and forth banter between Smiley and Star warmed the lower regions of my heart. Or how the game finds the means to get progressively more and more offensive. Or how even the individual bits of concept art, videos and such include charming and humourous backstory.

But there is something about Comic Jumper that spoke to me. Or at least spoke to me in a manner most vulgar. Because even after finishing the game, I was still revisiting some of those supposedly awful levels. So you’ll have to ask yourself if tolerating a dull video game is worth some pretty great gags. Or how about this; if you liked the ending to Splosion Man, you should probably get this game.

4 stars

Thursday, October 14, 2010

200th Review! Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain


I don’t know whether or not I should be proud that I’ve reached 200 reviews, or ashamed that I’ve made not a single dollar for it. Someone offered me free PC strategy games based on Napolean or something one time for reviewing purposes, but that would’ve been a very quick means to aggravate that site’s sponsors. So review number 200, it’s going to be a game near and dear to my heart. One that swooned me long enough to make me forget that I had rented that new Halo game and only played it twice. No regrets…okay maybe some regrets.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain is a top-down action-adventure-kind of game-thing. It came out in 1996, that weird period where everyone was dabbling in CG because it was the hip thing to do, not having any regard for how future generations will mock thee. It does feel weird, how we can look back at old NES games like Super Mario Bros and wear shirts and hats with their pixilated sprites. But more recent efforts like the aforementioned Blood Omen with this gem of a cutscene and…well, I imagine some of today’s 3D programmers claiming they can recreate that in a day.

In fact, that may as well be your biggest obstacle in trying to delve into the world of Nosgoth. This game has aged as gracefully as a homeless person’s corpse under the highway. Accessing any menu requires a segment of loading time, accentuated with a “LOADING” pop-up window. Characters don’t so much speak dialogue as they do walk around while an audio clip of a talented voice actor speaking is triggered. Sit in a single area long enough and you can hear the music track fade out and then loop from the beginning. You have to go to the Options screen to access the option of loading a saved game. The HUD takes up a fifth of the right side of the screen. And lest we forget the clumsiness of using Playstation 1 memory cards. Us console gamers take things like “hard drives with 80 gigs on them” for granted.

And you’ll have to be sure to pay close attention to that audio. The game has no subtitles, and a plot more dense than a shelf of Halo novels. The titular Kain has been slain, revived as a vampire, and sets out on a blind revenge quest against his adversaries. What follows is the unveiling of a massive conspiracy across the land of Nosgoth, involving magic, destinies, spirits, demons, time travel and other crazy stuff. It can feel a tad convoluted near the end, and the game has no primers or “Previously on Alan Wake”-like videos to remind you of past events. (And the subsequent Legacy of Kain games go well off the deep end when it comes to being convoluted as all hell.)

At the same time, I always find myself enraptured by the plot, if just because of the incredible voice acting. Simon Templeman (who would go on to not-as-great fame in Dragon Age: Origins as the voice of a guy that looks like Kain,) does a phenomenal job in making life sound awesome. Kain is constantly narrating the events of his journey, whether it’s plot events or his new power-up or even the weather. The most mundane of events become interesting when discussed by the aristocratic vampire Kain. Just imagine his every day living.

“Upon entering the laboratory, I left some vile excrement within the bowl but refused to flush the contents. The petty human whom enters this cesspool will be cursed with the odor of my vampiric digestive decay.”

The positive part of Blood Omen is that it is constantly giving Kain something to yammer on about. The game is great at consistently throwing new upgrades and weapons at your direction. Almost all of them involve some new means of gruesome murder. If you elect to venture off the beaten path and examine some odd caves, you’ll probably be rewarded with a new contraption of death. Blades that flay the flesh off bones. Orbs that shrink the flesh into exploding. Armour that sucks human blood for you. For the people that wondered why I never bothered with Darksiders, it’s because I didn’t need to. I already had my “dark Zelda” many years ago, and this was it.

The game very much plays like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, laced with several Anne Rice novels. You progress from town to town, dungeon to dungeon, cave to cave, clunky swordfight to clunky swordfight. Getting new items and abilities opens up more of the overworld. It’s just that “hook shot” and “piece of heart” are replaced by “transform into a fucking wolf” and “I am stronger because I drank mystical blood from a talking fountain.”

You do have to obey the laws of vampirism. The real laws, not the glittering-skin sissy laws. Sunlight makes you weaker, water stings, and you have to drink the blood of your adversaries to sustain your health meter. However, Kain isn’t the kind to bite someone’s neck so much as he is the kind to vacuum-suck the blood out of a stunned enemy from several feet away. Or perhaps stun multiple enemies and have two-three bloodstreams in a crimson version of getting Iced. Even more gratifying is how the game treats a sleeping person or someone bound in chains as a free meal. There are few sounds more appetizing than hearing someone cry “oh please, help me kind sir!”

Each gameplay element, taken by itself, is average at best. Dungeons usually consist of evading a series of death traps, finding the hidden switch and then suffering through a load time. Combat is usually some variant of “find the angle in which his sword attacks can’t hit you but mine do” followed by a quick red slurpee. But the game wraps all of that around a very atmospheric and interesting universe. The land of Nosgoth is dark, brooding and filled with all kinds of creepy crawlies to jab at you. Like the politicians of the opposing party, Kain is constantly quick to point out how his homeland is in a state of decay and destitution. That music, fade-out and everything, is ideally creepy enough to be played on a stereo as little children go trick-or-treating outside your house. Even with the game’s “Amateur hour Reboot-style” cutscenes, it’s hard not to be drawn into the world of Nosgoth.

It does kind of make me sad to see how the series has gradually strayed from its roots. Subsequent sequels moved away from Blood Omen’s large scope and into the realm of strictly-linear Devil May Cry knockoffs. So if you like your vampires to be badass, arrogant and vicious rather than soft, modest and abstinent, then you should give this a look. Soul Reaver 1 is pretty darn good too.

4 stars

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Civilization 5


Part of me felt confused when I caught wind that Civilization 5 would present a more streamlined experience than in the past. I never thought that the original Civilization games were particularly complex (okay, maybe Civ 3). I mean, what’s so hard to understand? Cavemen need to build the Wheel to pump out chariots in order to conquer Moscow. Seems simple enough. I figure that if you can understand what it takes for mankind to go from clay pots to nuclear warheads, you can understand Civilization. Or maybe in Grade 3, I was some kind of Sociology wunderkind and my D in American History class was a typo. Or the playing of Civilization was the reason for the D. I don’t know.

But hey, it’s Civilization 5. The latest from Sid Meier, the creator of such acclaimed releases as “Civilization” and “Civilization 2”. There isn’t any one major new addition made to this game over Civs past, but instead a few logical tweaks and alterations. The most notable being that the menus have been cleaned up and idiot-proofed. Civ 5 introduces what I would like to allude to as “the big blue button” that will consistently point you towards whatever task needs doing. If a unit needs moving, a new technology needs researching or a city needs to waste tax dollars building a new circus, the magic button will take you there. Above that blue button is every critical alert reminding you that your people want spices for some arbitrary reason. This blue button system is a very convenient means of insuring that no civilian escape a century without some forced labour. Likewise, accompanying window messages introduce concepts to the newcomer, giving all a clue as to what it means to discover Writing.

Civilization 5 doesn’t have a story mode per say, rather it gives the player the chance to set up their own campaigns. With assorted menu options to set up how they want their Earth customized, and how many human species are worthy of walking their holy land. You start as a single band of merry settlers creating your first city, and you expand your human race as you progress. Build improvements in your cities, wonders of the world for meaningless pride, or military units to bully around the Iroquois. Interact with other civilizations and either trade with them for profit or kick some ass because you can. Discover technologies over time to build new buildings and gunpowder to further bully the Iroquois. You could win the game by way of adopting enough social policies to build a Utopia in your kingdom, or develop your science to a point where you enter space. But those are the hippie ways to win, and good ol’ world domination is always the most amusing way to go. Especially when you’ve got some

I did shed a tear when I played through Civ 5 and noticed all of the aspects that have gone missing from the series over the years. The sharp-dressed diplomat unit. The introductory cutscene where the Earth develops from a pool of molten rock and chaos into a sprawling ecosystem of living organisms. (A great way to shatter beliefs of Creationism in Grade 3.) Not to knock the intro cutscene in Civ 5, mind you. That cutscene features a wise old leader telling his progeny about the night he had a dream about all of Civilization 5’s gameplay features. Also gone since Civ 1 is the ability to freely rename your nation and world-leader-that-lives-for-5000-years as opposed to being shoehorned in the role of George Washington. I do miss running roughshod over the world as president Hulk Hogan of the prosperous NWO nation. My most yearned for loss was the religion system from Civ 4. I missed the sense of passive-aggressive might that came with conquering nations through converting rival citizens.

The tweaks made to Civilization 5 feel more logical than they do groundbreaking. The map consists of hexagon tiles as opposed to squares, which makes the layout for your battle map look less like your bathroom floor renovation blueprint. There are now City-States, these small one-city nations that can be interacted with like any full-blown country. I haven’t encountered it yet, but I believe the game has a “Canada” City-State in there, as some kind of inside joke. They add a bit of extra life to the game maps to a playthrough, but my surprise is how militaristically powerful they can be! I had no problems wiping out the mighty Greek and Japanese empires in one fell swoop, but spent many decades chipping down the walls of the one single city of Belfast. What does that say about the Irish? The governments system of Civ games past (where you got assorted stat buffs for, say, being a Democrat or Communist…or something) is replaced by a Policy system. Said Policy system is basically a Diablo-like tech tree of upgrades. Only now the upgrades of “ice missiles” and “blazing inferno” are replaced by “freedom of speech” and “freedom of religion.” Sure, why not?

Now, even though the in-game tutorial does a pretty solid job of introducing the many, many concepts that come with ruling an empire, I felt like that may not have been enough. I had my share of lessons that I learned the hard way. I had to learn to expand early and not bunker in my capital for too long, lest I let the rest of humanity surround me like a group of back-alley muggers (in city form.) I had to learn that archers do not have the balls of steel necessary to conquer a city. (Robin Hood? He’s a sissy.) I had to learn that, even in the Twentieth Century, there are barbarian units. These barbarians can range from gunmen (mercenaries?) to boats (Somali pirates?) to archers (delusional old men?) And I had to learn that my computer is decidedly ancient, and takes its sweet time loading the next turn. This is partially alleviated by setting the game speed to “quick”, which speeds up the progression of turns needed to get me some nukes. But I still found myself playing cell phone Solitaire between turns. Civ 5 joins ModNation Racers on the list of new video games that require another video game to be played simultaneously to endure load times.

But in spite of all of that, I still found myself losing several days of my life due to this game. There is still that “one-more-turn” hook in wanting to push on forward, discovering Chivalry because you know having Knights will let you trounce the enemy. (No matter what Solitaire is required to get there.) There is still great satisfaction in leveling a city’s defenses with a sweep of bomber runs. There is still the unofficial history and civics lesson that comes with learning about historic landmarks or the benefits of trading silk. There is still the perverse sense of satisfaction that comes with building the Great Pyramids in New York City. Everything that was crazy-addictive about Civilization is still pretty crazy and addictive in 2010.

So all that remains is the burning question of whether or not to get Civilization 5. Long time fans of the series shouldn’t feel too much of a rush to reconquer Moscow. There is no major game-changing feature that completely alters the experience, nor is the game stripped down for the less intelligent masses. At the same time, buying Civ 5 will cause you to get hopelessly addicted and spend less time with your loved ones. I’ve been late on one major paper because of Civ 5…so far. And for the rest of the world, you should probably buy this game if the concept of building the freaking Pyramids in New York appeals to you. And it should.

4 stars