IGN claims Civ 5 "has no soul".

[hardcore_gamer]

Here is a recent and a interesting article from IGN:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/112/1128430p1.html

This part interested me the most:

"It's a game without cinema, a logical skeleton without blood and flesh to give it human shape or empathy. It's history as a series of straight lines whose rate of ascension can be manipulated, but it leaves out the most interesting parts of irrationality and human failing. It's more a game and less a video game, one that could have existed as easily 1000 years ago as today. That can't be said of cinema, and the degree to which it resists enhancing itself with cinema's emotional agency reveals how aging and purposeless the mechanical system has become. Consider it a cultural defeat."

I agree and don't agree with many of the points he makes. I find it odd that he complains about all sorts of things that aren't actually that annoying, but barely mentions the horrible AI and the things that are currently harming the game the most.

Thoughts?

Oh! And just to make it clear this article was not written by the same ign guy who reviewed the actual game.

 

[Biz_]

is this supposed to be a joke?

why do strategy games need souls all of a sudden

 

[hardcore_gamer]

is this supposed to be a joke?

why do strategy games need souls all of a sudden

Because without a soul a Civilization game would merely be yet another bland and an empty strategy game that you play for a week and then throw away so that you can play something else instead.

 

[lissenber]

IGN claims Civ 5 "has no soul".

So what they`re saying is that the game is ginger?

 

[dexters]

This is IGN's way of appearing serious. Since obviously maintaining good relations with 2K was top priority when Civ5 debuted, hence the softball review. And having worked in games journalism before, I can tell you those PR departments have a lot of power. Journos are at their mercy for previews, inside scoops, free trips, freebies etc. and they NEVER disclose those to the people they report to. IGN is the worst because as a corporate entity there's probably more of an entertainment tonight style arrangement of reciprocity than your odd tech reviewer from a magazine who may be at the mercy of the PR department but the news division which they report to couldn't care less.

Their video review was a joke and the kid who reviewed it appear to not have played any Civ past Civ4, so he kept comparing it to the wrong things, and attributing things to Civ4 that was innovated much earlier.

But that's for another thread. IGN is the <snip> bin of games journalism and most gaming enthusiast avoid it like the plague.

It's our responsibility to tell Rupert Murdoch and News Corp we will not put up with this.

Moderator Action: Please don't swear on the forum.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Zetler]

Soul is the perfect word for what Civ 5 lacks. Without different goverment types, revolution, and religion the game consist of nothing more than linear set of policies 4000 years in the making.

 

[dexters]

Well you could have Civics where Environmentalism is always the best choice for 90% of the players' game. Well except for the conservatives who moan that Firaxis sold out to the liberal fringe.

 

[Bad Brett]

Well you could have Civics where Environmentalism is always the best choice for 90% of the players' game. Well except for the conservatives who moan that Firaxis sold out to the liberal fringe.

That's funny. I don't think I've ever used that one. Free Market + Sid's Sushi was usually a much better combination if you wanted your cities to grow fast... And before the expansions, people thought that State Property was OP... And this pretty much proves my point. as a Deity/Immortal player, I've never used the civic you consider to be the natural choice. Obviously we played the game in different ways, and therefore picked different civics. This is exactly what made the system so great.

 

[DaveGold]

An art student journalist who plays first person games is confused by the whole concept of mathematics in a game, methinks.

I think there is something true though about CIV V not having a soul. To my eyes it looks like it was quickly cobbled together by programmers working to specifications. This tends to create software that is less than the sum of its parts. If there had been full beta testing with the original designers getting to put finishing touches to the final game then CIV V would have been given much more identity.

 

[Liquidated]

Perhaps a bit of tin foil hat thinking and one could easily see this as a sad ign attempt to jump on the band wagon of civ5 hate.

By this I mean, it's obvious a lot of people are really upset with the game so why not have an article with a eye catching title and 'too much text' for most people to read.

It's sad that after they give the game a super high rating, they still cannot put together WHY people are upset. In there effort to cash in on the public's displeasure, they put out this bit of confused criticism. I honestly don't expect anything better from IGN though to be honest as their civ4 walk though was just comedy


Cheers!
-Liq

 

[dexters]

The Frankenstein (beta) team is pretty solid. I just don't know how long they've had to give feedback.

 

[Osetjka]

As much as I don't approve of ciV in its current state, it appears to me that these so-called criticisms in the article are directed towards the civilization franchise in general. Leaders that don't age, the talk of tile improvements and terrain benefits in warfare are the hallmarks of the series and may apply to almost any game in the franchise.

In my opinion, the author's definition of a soul and cinematic gaming experience seems to be along the lines of say a 5-hour in-your face spectacle such as Modern Warfare 2. Not a bad game on its own right, though its definitely a game that (single player wise) can be enjoyed with less thought.

 

[Tyrael]

I think the game was rushed, so Firaxis didn't have time to listen to feedback. They didn't even have time to finish the game in the first place from the looks of things.

 

[HiroHito]

This game was dubbed a cultural defeat, wow just WOW.

 

[Cincinnatus C.]

I don't understand the basic thesis of this article. "A video game is cinema with interactivity, so it's closer to film than to games like chess or Go". Am I misreading this? Because it's ridiculous. You could as easily say that video games are closer to games than film, because they are by definition just games that are put on a computer. That seems to me an infinitely more logical assertion.

Tthe games=films argument is also analogous to saying "film is the same as the novel because it's all of the elements except acted and filmed" or "novels are the same as short stories, except longer." It's inherently disingenuous to make such reductive assertions, so unless there's some subtler justification that I'm missing, I really can't take this article seriously.

And as an aside, these arguments are largely distinct from whatever ones are happening on this forum because they aren't the product of a careful analysis of the game internally, but rather how it is separate from the idea of a video game that the writer wants; basically a film where you act out the parts of it. These games can be fun (good examples are recent FPS games and Mass Effect), but they aren't the only type of game that there should be, unless you are desperately elitist.

Chess has no soul. Go has no soul. And they're still better games than Citizen Kane.

And you know what? Movies don't have souls, either. They have carefully constructed aesthetic and thematic structures that make them attractive to certain types of moviegoers, just like strategy games have certain carefully constructed aesthetic and thematic and mechanical structures that make them enjoyable to certain types of video-game player. You can argue about "artistic merit" (which I don't think came up in the article, thank god) but there's no such thing as a "soul" in either medium, and use of that term is mere sophistry.

 

[charon2112]

Yet they gave it a 9.0 (outstanding)

 

[Cincinnatus C.]

Yet they gave it a 9.0 (outstanding)

I believe that that was the official review and this is the caustic op-ed thing that they run to keep up their indie cred (not that their actual review was any more reasoned, I imagine, given IGN's track record).

 

[Thander]

I read the article. The gist of it seems to be that military decisions have an immediate audio-visual payoff, but pretty much all other decisions only have a long term payoff (such as +1 food on a tile or +25% science). It's through the combination of many improvements and buildings that you get to your final victory goal. Even diplomacy doesn't have much of a payoff when you discover each leader only has a few responses, and you never really get to see their full character (personality and such). The leaders are closer to robots than the famous leaders they represent.

Actually, I think he could say the same thing about every game in the Civ series. Most video games these days have campaigns or objectives of some sort with a storyline. Civ 5 is one of the few that does not have a story. Any story is largely created by the player's imagination.

I also see the writer likes instant gratification like so many other people these days. They want each thing they do in the game to have big effects, but in Civ games it's usually about the long term bonuses, not any short term frills. I have no problem with instant gratification. Many of my favorite games are like that, but Civ is unique in how you are almost the architect of the game. When you finally win the game, you can look back at your masterpiece, all of the precise decisions you made to get the end result. It really is a shame the replay system doesn't work.

 

[Rohili]

Lame article. The author complained about all the things I enjoy about Civ and mentioned none of the things that make Civ 5 sucky. For goodness sake, he claims that Civ 5 is too complicated - when most people think it is too dumbed down.

It appears that this article is not about the flaws of Civ 5 in particular but about Civ-type games in general. The writer should just pick up a first-person shooter instead of complaining about complexity and the lack of immediate gratification in a turn-based strategy game.

 

[Morningcalm]

The author's overly high-fallutin writing masks an impatience with long-term effects in general. Clearly someone who dislikes the average turn-based game. I'm glad (sort of) to see an IGN opinion that dissents (even IGN's Civ V Second Opinions were all good opinions--check it out). That said, I agree that the writing didn't pick up on the meat of the most glaring issues. Stability issues among them.