Revisiting Civ V reviews (or a Civ V retrospective)

[OrsonM]

I remember it was the Gamespot review that just really made me need this game, not wanting, but needing.

http://www.gamespot.com/sid-meiers-civilization-v/videos/sid-meiers-civilization-v-video-review-6276783?tag=summary%3Bwatch-review

I mean, look at that, all those brand new things Civ V had, the graphics, the leaders, the interface. And other video reviews also made it look just as cool:

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/review-civilization-v/704828

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ud4mrIgG9s

After a while the flaws of the game came out. And I specially think this was a bitter year for Civilization: the patches were few and far in between (fixing everything and nothing at the same time), the expansion pack is a no show, no Pitboss or DLL for this year, the DLC's were a mixed and expensive bag, the modding community is still not that vibrant and within the confines of this forum we discovered that there was a bit of a copyright violation that Firaxis never bothered to address (and probably never will, but that at least for me and the time I spent researching about it is still there).

Within that same year, I worked a bit on the art side of at least 2 mods (Nights and Zombie Apocalypse), coming to the conclusion that the tools were very limited, but that the modders are very talented to make wonders with what they have. Anyone who has played any of the wonderful mods available can say the same.

What an awesome game we all saw on those early reviews though and what a bittersweet year it was for Civilization.

 

[HappyBuilder]

Yes, early reviews from people who didn't really play the game for any period of time or the reviews would have been far less glowing. I don't know if game magazines pay a price for half-assed reviews. I don't know if anyone cares if they get it right or wrong.

HB

 

[mattavich]

I don't think i've seen any none mmo game with patch notes as huge as from Fraxis. So I don't believe there was a lack of patches.

 

[Songkok]

I don't think i've seen any none mmo game with patch notes as huge as from Fraxis. So I don't believe there was a lack of patches.

Huge patch notes only means there is a lot of things to fix.

 

[sadsquid]

I've been quite happy with the support this year. There have been some massive patches changing the game quite a lot, and the game is better for it.

I am a bit disappointed that no expansion has been announced yet, but I still have hope that there'll be one! With some adjustments to the current gameplay and with some extra gameplay features (religion, a decent espionage system, more diplomacy options like alliances, etc), this game would be even better.

 

[Babri]

I've been quite happy with the support this year. There have been some massive patches changing the game quite a lot, and the game is better for it.

I am a bit disappointed that no expansion has been announced yet, but I still have hope that there'll be one! With some adjustments to the current gameplay and with some extra gameplay features (religion, a decent espionage system, more diplomacy options like alliances, etc), this game would be even better.

This. ciV badly needs an xpack now. Most of the things are balanced. The areas which require attention is AI, diplomacy, multiplayer & MORE content. I repeat MORE content & concepts !

 

[Revoran]

Yes, early reviews from people who didn't really play the game for any period of time or the reviews would have been far less glowing. I don't know if game magazines pay a price for half-assed reviews. I don't know if anyone cares if they get it right or wrong.

HB

The majority of Civ 5-haters are Civ 4 veterans not happy about changes (although of course, not all). Reviewers need not necessarily be Civ 4 veterans or "civ fanatics" and frankly most of Civ 5's flaws at release (apart from numerous bugs) were things that only a strategy / civ veteran would have noticed.

It's highly arrogant of you to assume that "they didn't play the game or obviously they would agree with me".

Also it's entirely possible that reviews were simply bought by 2K. That practice is becoming more and more an everyday thing. I certainly don't trust any of the major reviewers like IGN and Gamespot any more.

 

[ilmonstre]

there is only 1 issue with the game that is a big issue and that is the way the npc approaches combat and how it places the troops to attack.

if you are not behind in tech you can easily beat the npc with a very small army

 

[bcaiko]

The majority of Civ 5-haters are Civ 4 veterans not happy about changes (although of course, not all). Reviewers need not necessarily be Civ 4 veterans or "civ fanatics" and frankly most of Civ 5's flaws at release (apart from numerous bugs) were things that only a strategy / civ veteran would have noticed.

This. On the surface, CivV showed a lot of promise from the beginning. It's only after getting to know the game, logging in a ton of hours and getting to a higher difficulty level that the issues with the game became apparent (especially if you don't have a lot of history with the Civ games). You can't expect a reviewer to be able to go into that level of minutia. I think the review scores correctly reflect the first impressions of the reviewers.

And the developers have been consistently trying to live up to those scores. Frankly, a lot of the issues with the game have been addressed, if not outright fixed. Sure some fixes still need to be made, but with yet another upcoming patch to improve gameplay, no one can argue that the developers don't care...or else they would have abandoned the game long ago. I'm glad to see the game continues to be supported and improved. And I for one have fun playing the game.

Oh, and a little off topic, but IGN's marketing department is deliberately kept behind a "Chinese Wall" from editorial/reviews. We've seen poorly-recieved, headlining games have the misfortune of advertising on IGN at the same time IGN's scathing review goes up. Though the reviews are obviously subjective, I have trouble believing that IGN's reviews are "bought."

 

[cuc]

Oh, you should definitely read 1UP.COM's well-written Civ5 review. The reviewer gave it a "C", and actually caused a little controversy back then.

http://www.1up.com/reviews/civilization-v-review

This. On the surface, CivV showed a lot of promise from the beginning. It's only after getting to know the game, logging in a ton of hours and getting to a higher difficulty level that the issues with the game became apparent

The above review described exactly that in its second paragraph.

 

[Sullla]

Wait, what?! You can't expect a professional game reviewer to notice serious flaws in gameplay? Um, that's EXACTLY what a professional reviewer is supposed to do! Someone who writes official reviews for strategy games (and gets paid a fairly good salary to do it) should be knowledgeable enough to catch issues with a game that might go missed by your average, run of the mill consumer. Anyone can write up their "first impressions". A professional is supposed to provide superior analysis and insight. Would anyone here defend a movie critic with a line like "You can't expect a reviewer to be able to go into that level of detail"? Again, that's exactly what I expect them to do!

The Civ5 reviews are another example of the embarassing state of gaming journalism. The 1UP review was the only one that made any serious attempt to evaluate the issues with the game on release; all of the others were puff pieces that seemed more interested in selling the game than accurately describing the state of gameplay. And while I don't think the reviews were "bought" per se, there certainly were plenty of incentives to grease the wheels along and not rock the boat. (Close to 100% of the income for gaming websites comes from publisher advertising. The publishers would prefer them to handle all big new releases with kid gloves. Ergo, you will very rarely see any serious criticism from gaming websites. Honestly, when was the last time a "big" game from a publisher got a score less than 8/10? Not often.) The only way that you will ever get unbiased reviews of games is to look at sources which are not dependant on advertising from publishers. You might get that from newspapers, or from individual users who aren't getting paid, but you certainly won't get it from IGN or Gamespot. (Would you trust a movie reviewer whose salary was being paid by Columbia or Universal? Of course not! So how can we trust any gaming websites when their reviews are directly paid for by advertising from the gaming publishers?)

I do appreciate that Firaxis has released a steady stream of patches for Civ5. The problem is, and always has been, that the base game they're working off of simply isn't that good. Civ5's core mechanics are flawed in a number of different ways, none of which can ever be fixed. While the game isn't terrible, it's far inferior to Civ4, and now that the "newness" shine has worn off, the results of that are telling. Look at the forum traffic here at CivFanatics: outside of the General Forum, every single subforum for Civ4 draws more activity than Civ5. All of them. This is particularly obvious in the Stories and Tales subforum, which is vibrant with life for Civ4, and practically dead for Civ5. Remember how Civ4's Game of the Month attracted over 300 players per game in its heyday? Civ5's GOTM has struggled to top 40 players. Multiplayer and modding are both far inferior for Civ5 compared to its predecessor. And the Succession Game forum for Civilization 3 is more active than the same forum for Civ5. It's pretty clear that Civ5 is not holding the longterm interest of this community in the same fashion than Civ4 did when it came out. (I don't care what "Steam Statistics" say, since we have nothing to compare them against. How many daily users was Civ4 getting when it came out? No one knows.)

Here's the sad truth: if Civ5 didn't have the "Civilization" brand name attached to it, it would have gotten mediocre review scores, and very few people would have bought the game. Firaxis has been coasting on the Civ brand for some time now (Civ: Revolutions, Civ: Colonization, CivCity: Rome, Civ5, CivWorld, Civ: The Mobile Game, Civ: The MMO) and the quality has gone way downhill. 2K is doing what it always does, acquire the rights to a major franchise and then milk it into the ground. Then use the profits to acquire another franchise, rinse and repeat. Remember what EA did to destroy SimCity? It's happening again. Have fun continuing to purchase an endless stream of new civs/wonders/buildings/units in DLC packets at $5 each.

Man does this ever stink.

 

[OrsonM]

Sulla, you shameless self promoter, you are worst than me and that copyright thing.

Civilization V does have a fantastic presentation, the animations, the interface, all of those things are exceptional as a whole. I do not agree that it would had not received spectacular reviews had it not been a Civilization game because the game does indeed look the part. It would be unfair not to say so.

And it's not like these reviews are flat out lying, it's that in turn they did not delve deeper into Civ V (more on that later). I mean when they say that Civ looks amazing and they show this screen cap, they don't have to overly embellish it, it's already there:

look at that thing, that's in the game!.


When they say that the game is fun, again, they do not have to word it up differently, they show it and it looks really awesome:

Yeah son, make that cannon jump on that unit.


And it's not just these reviews, even other reviewers that are in no way affiliated to larger corporations gave it amazing reviews, for example this guy:

http://angryjoeshow.com/2010/09/civilization-v-review/

AngryJoe would never lie!, and he doesn't, he's 100% sincere about it when he says the game is like cocaine (his words). He also mentions problem with multiplayer and Diplomacy, yet still thinks the game is awesome (final rating: 8/10).

And even Tom Chick thought the game was great, but that just needed a few patches here and there. And to be fair his review does read like he's flip floping badly:

"Civilization V is one of the most immaculately paced and addictive strategy games you'll ever play. Firaxis' latest iteration of the venerable series features a gorgeous graphics engine to humble your videocard, streamlined gameplay to make it easier than ever to pick up, and a few bold changes that declare this isn't just Civilization IV.V. Unfortunately, it also features some questionable design decisions, an A.I. that can't play the game Firaxis has designed, and the need for a couple of patches. "

So which one is it Tom?, I kinda feel you are just honoring 1up's classic fair but whiny editorial style.

First 50 hours?, Civ V is awesome!, 50 hours later? a few seams start to show, and then some (150+ hours you know all of the stuff that's lacking).

For me this has been a bitter year for Civ V for reasons that are completely different, I felt Firaxis has been a bit standoffish with the fans by not addressing established crowd-pleasers that they know will mean a lot to their super loyal fan base (mods, multiplayer, ai and end game). I know they have released many patches (again, fixing everything and nothing at the same time), but it seems their main focus after a year has been elsewhere for the most part.

Coming to the knowledge that the Civilization franchise is more of a business to them can be just heartbreaking (probably because it is a business, but lets not bring reason into this). I think that's were a lot of us are now, because revisiting those reviews made me thought "damn I want THAT game that they are reviewing so bad".

 

[MadDjinn]

yes yes, almost every reviewer writes a 'fluff' piece and some are directly 'bought off' (either via advertising $$ as Sulla already pointed out, or directly).

There are very few game reviewers that actual play a game deep enough to warrant listening to their opinions.

Take a look at metacritic if you want some hilarity.

critic score: 90 (90/100)
User Score: 68 (6.8/10)

There's a big difference in score there.

of course, it's because of:

"In 24 hours time I've seen enough of Civ V that I'm familiar with its rhythms and generally understand the interlocking push-and-pull of its military, diplomatic, commerce, science, and cultural systems, but I suspect it would require hundreds of hours of play to master, if such a feat is even possible. " - from the Giant Bomb review.

Hilarious. 24 hrs worth of play time. Ok, for reviewing a game, he's right that most of the garbage games that he plays only needs that amount of time to finish them. But for a strategy game? It's less about the time, and more about understanding the mechanics.


"There are some issues but those are so minor in comparison to all the great things Firaxis has done to not only make this accessible to new players but even returning players as well." - from Darkstation's review.

- really? Just "minor" issues existed at release, and you still gave it a score of 100?


Anywhom...

the overall point I guess I'm agreeing with, is don't trust scores from game reviewers. Or even listen to them in the first place.

except for zero punctuation. He's at least funny about it and refuses to give a score.

 

[SuperJay]

Here's the sad truth: if Civ5 didn't have the "Civilization" brand name attached to it, it would have gotten mediocre review scores, and very few people would have bought the game. Firaxis has been coasting on the Civ brand for some time now (Civ: Revolutions, Civ: Colonization, CivCity: Rome, Civ5, CivWorld, Civ: The Mobile Game, Civ: The MMO) and the quality has gone way downhill. 2K is doing what it always does, acquire the rights to a major franchise and then milk it into the ground. Then use the profits to acquire another franchise, rinse and repeat. Remember what EA did to destroy SimCity? It's happening again. Have fun continuing to purchase an endless stream of new civs/wonders/buildings/units in DLC packets at $5 each.

Man does this ever stink.

HEAR, HEAR!!!

VERY well said, Sullla. I agree completely. I think that "milking the brand" strategy is what had so many of us veterans feeling betrayed / duped / mislead when we first rushed out to buy Civ5 only to find that once the novelty wore off, the underlying mechanics were shallow and generally uninteresting. Without "Civilization" in the title, this game wouldn't have gotten the review scores or the sales figures it received - too many people (myself included) bought the game on the strength of the franchise alone, only to find that it's seriously deficient compared to previous iterations.

Always a pleasure reading your posts, keep up the good work.

 

[bcaiko]

Wait, what?! You can't expect a professional game reviewer to notice serious flaws in gameplay? Um, that's EXACTLY what a professional reviewer is supposed to do! Someone who writes official reviews for strategy games (and gets paid a fairly good salary to do it) should be knowledgeable enough to catch issues with a game that might go missed by your average, run of the mill consumer. Anyone can write up their "first impressions". A professional is supposed to provide superior analysis and insight. Would anyone here defend a movie critic with a line like "You can't expect a reviewer to be able to go into that level of detail"? Again, that's exactly what I expect them to do!

In the (maybe?) week they get the game before the release date (when their readers will demand the review)? Yes, I do think a "first impressions" review is all you can reasonably ask for.

This isn't a two-hour movie (the faulty comparison referenced above), this is 100+ hour strategy game. Did you know about every glitch in CivV within the first week? C'mon, dude, even if games are the reviewer's 9-5 job, these people have lives.

 

[gaiko]

This: "Civilization V's wonderful new combat system, which should be a lovely centerpiece for the design, turns into a gaping hole that all but pulls the rest of the game in after it."

The reviewer hit the nail right on the head. 1UPH is at the root of most of CivV's problems, outside of diplomacy and the social policy structure.

Oh, you should definitely read 1UP.COM's well-written Civ5 review. The reviewer gave it a "C", and actually caused a little controversy back then.

http://www.1up.com/reviews/civilization-v-review


The above review described exactly that in its second paragraph.

 

[HappyBuilder]

In the (maybe?) week they get the game before the release date (when their readers will demand the review)? Yes, I do think a "first impressions" review is all you can reasonably ask for.

This isn't a two-hour movie (the faulty comparison referenced above), this is 100+ hour strategy game. Did you know about every glitch in CivV within the first week? C'mon, dude, even if games are the reviewer's 9-5 job, these people have lives.

It's not a question of finding every glitch. It's getting a feel for the game itself. In the case of Sullla, he never lost any game he played. Not only did he never lose, he wasn't remotely challenged. I played Civ IV at no high a level than Monarch, yet I was wrecking Civ V at high levels right out of the chute. That's a screaming alarm bell that something is wrong. But to hear the bell ringing, you have to play the game. And these reviewers are paid to play the game. You get the suspicion they fired up a game at Chieftain level and may or may not have completed it before sending in their copy to the editor.

If I passed on recommendations to my company over software purchases after watching a demo, I'd be fired pretty fast for gross negligence. Yeah, these are just video game reviews, but if we've reached a point where we all know the review is worthless, then why is anyone buying the magazine? Is this really what the reader wants?

Maybe you're right. The magazines are still in business, aren't they?

HB

 

[TPQ]

What an awesome game we all saw on those early reviews though and what a bittersweet year it was for Civilization.

Accurate observations. I wasn't too disappointed with Civ5 as I thought the issues would be addressed through patches, but many bugs and flaws remain and I've grown tired of waiting for the devs to finish the game.

Having said that, I still play Civ5 a lot and I like the game (I wouldn't play it a lot if I didn't like it lol), I just wish the devs would listen to the community and change what needs changing.

The whole thing has taught me to ignore "professional" reviewers in future and wait for other people to play the game first and report back. Those "pro" reviewers are either in the pocket of the games companies, or completely inept. Either way, they're to be ignored.

 

[Davor]

While I do not have proof, I still say all the reviewers (ok 99% of them) were all bought/bribed/co-ereced into giving awsome reviews for Civ V.

If they were not bought/bribed/co-ereced into giving awsome reviews, then I will buy the explanation of they want 2K's advertising $$$ for the future, so treated Civ V with "kids glove".

All I want is an explanation of how Not ONCE was there any mentions of bugs in the game, but as soon as Fallout New Vegas comes out, all I read in reviews is how buggy the game was.

So how come New Vegas gets scolded and Civ V doesn't? Right there, that tells you that the "proffesional reviewers" do not reviews games equally. There is other factors that come into their reviews and it usually revolves around $$$. BE it bribes or future advertising dollars.

There is no way in hell that Civ V on release deserves a score of 9.0+. Game play wise and stabability wise. If that is the case then New Vegas, Star Ruler, Elemental War of Magic and hell even Sword of the Stars II should be getting 9.0+ reviews as well.

Funny they don't and Civ V did.

Also funny is how Star Ruler was fixed properly in a short period of time while Civ V still has glaring bugs and doesn't seem very polished compared to SR.

 

[apocalypse105]

Yeah non of those big reviews said something about diplomacy how it was anoying.