Review: Civilization V - Digital Cocaine

I guess I'm not exactly with the times reviewing a 5 year old game, but screw y'all, I'm still playing it.

The best way to stop is to never start.

This is less of a review and more of a public service announcement.

Civilization V will ruin your life. Let me tell you about my friend. We'll call him Clark. Clark had a girlfriend, and a job, and a family. Everything was going real well for Clark until one day he fell in with a bad crowd. They offered him a copy of Civ V over Steam. Clark had never really experimented with video games before, he was a very clean-living kind of guy. But for reasons best known to himself, he tried it. He'd heard that you can't get addicted from just trying it once, so he jumped right in.

It was like nothing Clark had experienced before. The joys were overwhelming. He founded cities, trained workers, discovered wonders, built an army, and gathered treasures for his citizens. The ecstacy he felt was more intense than he had felt since playing Final Fantasy 7 in the days of his youth.

But soon things changed. When Clark tore his eyes away from the screen he discovered that it was 4am. He hadn't done any of his chores, his dog had pissed literally everywhere, he was hungry, the house was cold, and his girlfriend had sent him about forty texts. The game had turned against him too. That son of a bitch Napoleon had declared war on him, and because he hadn't focused on science enough he found himself going up against WW1 artillery with some stupid little crossbow assholes. One by one the cities in his empire fell and he was defeated. Clark felt horrible. It was late, he felt exhausted, and he had nothing to show for it.

"Screw this piece of shit game," thought Clark.

The next morning he woke; sleep deprived and cranky. He met his girlfriend for lunch. She could tell something was off. Clark wasn't very talkative. His mind kept going back to the game. Lunch ended with a fight, and Clark returned home alone. He didn't even think about it: he went straight to the computer and booted up the game. "Round 2, Napoleon," he thought.

Anyway, you get the picture. Long story short: Clark ended up prostituting himself for expansion pack money.

I've been playing this game for a long time now and every single game I find myself saying 'just one more turn', which is a phrase that I gather so many gamers have used over the course of the Civ series that the developers have incorporated it into the game's win/lose screen.

It's difficult to put a finger on exactly what is so addictive about the game, but addictive is what it is. Like everything that's addictive it gives you some free little highs to draw you in, and then they become more difficult to come by. But even although you have to work for them: you do, and that makes them all the sweeter. Early in the game you send your scouts out into the unknown and find treasures in the ruins which give you a cheeky boost over the competition. Mid game the addictive highs come from building wonders before the other players, advancing along the technology tree, improving units, earning enough points for social policies, and in the case of warmongers: crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentation of their women.

It's a solid formula, and although after a few (dozen) games the middle becomes a bit dull, there are enough ways to play to keep it fresh, and once you have a preferred way to play you will find yourself refining your strategy game after game until you are either a wise and benevolent emperor, or a great and terrible master of war.

HOW DOES IT RUN ON THE RIG?

Looks great, loads fast, plays about as fast as a turn-based strategy game can be played, I think.

The rig does get kinda hot after a while and the fans get so loud that my Vietnam-vet neighbour starts having flashbacks.

Not being an expert on these things (I'm trying to learn, but it's hard, dammit!) I'm not sure what the exact reason for that is. I can't imagine it's the graphics. Pretty as they are, it's not as if it's The Phantom Pain I'm asking it to run. I can only imagine it's doing lots of AI strategising. If I had to take a stab of a guess, I'd say it's the processor that's getting hot?

The point is: keep your houseplants away from your PC when you're playing this game.

CONCLUSION

This game is fun. You should play it.

(note to self: work on conclusions)

The Final List

Note the ultra-high quality of the iPhone 5S camera.

So you'll see that I went a bit over the budget on build.

You will recall that the idea was to keep to a price comparable to a PS4/ XBONE. The PS4 is currently £278ish on Amazon, about half the cost of the rig. The XBONE is £263, which is less than half.

That's quite the failure of the experiment isn't it?

Not necessarily.

I'm not going to rhyme off all the advantages of a PC, but the pertinent ones are that it's vastly more future-proof than a console. If there have to be upgrades down the line, it won't be a brand new computer, it will be some extra ram or a graphics card upgrade, meaning it's a longer lasting investment than a console. Secondly: the graphics are better than a console, which matters to me. What can I say? I'm a sucker for pretty things.

So, how does it perform? Find out on the next exciting instalment of The Reasonable Rig!

To the 120 viewers of my blog: sorry it kinda sucks

Evening y'all.

Or morning y'all, if that happens to be when you're reading this.

If you're reading this in the afternoon: get back to work! If you're unemployed and reading this in the afternoon: carry on.

I did have quite high hopes for this blog, but unfortunately I have zero time for many things, like writing. And as you've guessed, based on the subject matter of this blog, I am also a gamer, and if I have any spare time I like to spend it gaming. So if I have some free time I'm more likely to spend it gaming rather than writing about gaming.

I'll try to make more time for you readers though.

So here's an update.

The rig is built! I wasn't blowing smoke when I started a blog about building a PC for reasonably cheap. I actually did it, and have been in financial difficulties ever since, but that's really down to my own inability to manage my money.

Games: well that's the point isn't it? I built the rig to play games on it, and play games on it I have. I will be doing reviews from time to time. I'm going to have to come up with some sort of system for rating the graphics though, because I don't really understand the technical side of things, and quite frankly can't tell the difference between 32fps and 48fps like many people can. But I do like me some sexy graphics, so I will probably use a scale from "like having shit flung in your eyes" to "like looking at a perfectly formed diamond through a pair diamond binoculars," or something like that...

Other hopeful features for the site:

News? I'm pretty out of the loop when it comes to developments in any industry that isn't my own, so there probably won't be much in the way of news.

Entertaining stuff? Hopefully everything on this site will be entertaining. If you've enjoyed this post so far: stick around! If you think this post, and the ones that preceded it, have been shit. Well, maybe it's best you leave now and try to forget you ever came here.

Commentary on stuff? Probably. I consider myself to be fairly adept at pointing out the failures of others in a smarmy, hurt-durr, neckbeard kind of way. So there will probably a snarky article or two about stuff I don't approve of from time to time.

Articles about nonsense? Yup. I'm a lawyer in my non-internet time, which is quite a low-nonsense job. That's why I'm a fairly high-nonsense writer.

Well-researched and poignant pieces of literature that will find their way onto the Pulitzer shortlist? Ha. Aha. Ahahahahahahahahaha. No.

Anything to do with the technical side of PC-ing? I don't know much about that, but I shall try my hardest.

Ambitious, yes. But Gods dammit I'm committed-ish to making this the best half-assed gaming blog on the internet.

Yours,

Steve