14 DAY TRIAL // 2K Games has announced that the console exclusive title, developed by Firaxis and available for the Xbox 360, Nintendo DS and PlayStation 3, will be released on June 3, 2008. For the first time ever, the franchise moves away from the PC, after the success of Civilization 4 and its two expansions, Warlords and Beyond the Sword, and a major TBS strategy title moves to the consoles.
The basic gameplay that defines all Civ games is largely unchanged. The player, as the king or overseer, picks a civilization and guides it from a lowly start somewhere in the Bronze Age to the beautiful cities of the future and the eventual colonization of space. Along the way, cities are founded and destroyed, commerce between nations takes place, new technologies get discovered and war goes on between the different civilizations. The formula might sound old and unattractive, but Sid Meier has always managed to inject new life into it. And that's also the case with Revolutions.
Unlike the PC version, it is not the leaders that have various attributes. Rather the civilizations themselves have superpowers, one for each age and another overall one. And they all seem like game winners, which makes choosing a civ a hard thing to do. Also each tile produces only one of the resources, be it food, commerce or production, so players will need to manage cities closely. Ruin structures have been introduced on the strategic map, and they are designed to grant bonuses to the civilization that discovers them, if they can overcome the barbarian defenders. The first civ to discover each technology also gets a nice bonus. The victory conditions have also been modified a bit and there are now more incentives to go for research, diplomatic and economic victories, rather than stamp your enemies relying on sheer military power.
It's worth noting that the control of the game differs from platform to platform, but the developers promised intuitive systems and easy access to all relevant functions. With the game shipping in a little more than 3 months, it will be very interesting to see whether console gamers will adopt as their own a TBS series so loved by the PC gamers.