Which complaints are those, specifically. It's impossible to actually speak to your point without first blindly just jumping in bed with your major assumption that everyone thinks the game is as horribly flawed as you seem to think it is. I, for one, have very little complaints about the series so far, outside of a few minor technical nuicances that have more to do with my machine then the game proper.
Why were the reviews so wrong?
- Thread starter expuddle
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Which complaints are those, specifically. It's impossible to actually speak to your point without first blindly just jumping in bed with your major assumption that everyone thinks the game is as horribly flawed as you seem to think it is. I, for one, have very little complaints about the series so far, outside of a few minor technical nuicances that have more to do with my machine then the game proper.
Mrdarklight
Warlord
As time goes on it becomes more obvious to me: If you judge the quality of a game by the whiners in the user community, you will think every game ever made is terrible. If people don't like a game the first thing they do is rush to a board and start threads complaining about it. Honestly, it is true: If you like the game, you are probably playing it, or at least don't feel the need to create threads about how you like it.
Oh no, another nyquil invoked opinion piece.
I remember when Civ4 came out, I so wanted to play it despite the memory leaks and crashing that plagued vanilla's release. Civ4 Vanilla possessed remarkably balanced gameplay that was amazingly open ended in how you went about it. Once the crashing and leaks stopped, Civ4 Vanilla was an amazing game to keep many of us going til a yearish later....
Stop right there. Civ4 wasn't balanced at all on release. Don't you remember the crazy chop rushing, before they made mathematics a prerequisite to get the full value in hammers? Don't you remember the ridiculous slingshots you could do to reach grenadiers, rifleman and cavalry? Remember how powerful redcoats and cossacks were before they patched them? Tanks which did collateral damage? AI that couldn't use nukes?
Strategies like whipping food into hammers never got patched, the financial trait is still by far and away the most useful...... the praetorians are still the strongest UU by a long way.
Civ4 ended up being a great game, but it was never particularly well balanced. It didn't need to be: If you wanted to go chop/whip rushing as Darius of Rome, then you could bump the difficultly level up and you'd end up with a competitive game.
All of the civ games have been a bit rough around the edges on release. In time they get patched and expanded from good games into great games.
@ OP's question
Probably because reviewers probably only played 1 game. First game of Civ 5 is neat, but all of Civ 5's flaws comes out the 2nd or 3rd time around when you are looking for more options and different empire building choices that you find the game completely lacks many of the element that were in previous Civ games that made them feel like an empire building game.
Probably because reviewers probably only played 1 game. First game of Civ 5 is neat, but all of Civ 5's flaws comes out the 2nd or 3rd time around when you are looking for more options and different empire building choices that you find the game completely lacks many of the element that were in previous Civ games that made them feel like an empire building game.
ohioastronomy
King
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- Dec 14, 2005
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- 714
This is the CivFanatics forum. I'd much, much prefer writing up strategy articles, doing HoF runs, or the like. So would most other people who are vocally unhappy. We trusted the people who worked on a series that we really enjoyed.
And then we find out that it is buggy, still too complex for a mass market, and too simplified for our tastes. A lot of the critics are high profile people in the fan community - Sulla and TMIT for example. The fact that ambassadors and enthusiasts for prior versions are critical should say something important.
As someone who has been gaming for a long time, the reaction to Civ 5 is typical for mediocre games, not for great ones. When Civ 4 was released people were upset that it didn't work, but the overall environment was extremely enthusiastic about the new features. And AI flaws took awhile to become apparent; people weren't just firig up Emperor+ games as cakewalks. That's the difference; calling the messengers whiners doesn't change the nature of the beast at all.
Metacritic lists Civ V at 91%. Considering big name titles get reviewed on the 7-10 scale, you have to adjust appropriately and say that's about a 7/10 if reviewers were actually using a 0-10 scale. I wouldn't say the reviews are ridiculously positive when you look at it in that light.
Exactly. Great point. It isn't just random haters that are whining about ciV not being like cIV. There are some prominent members of the Civ fan community that have some very valid complaints.
cIV was very fun gameplay wise from the get go. Its major issues early on were with people not being able to run the game. (Me being one of them.)
ciV reminds me a lot of Civ III. Still a good game (in my opinion, the worst Civ) but definitely not a great one.
There is a lot of work to be done to bring ciV up to par. It's good but it certainly isn't great.
like every other game at its release day. Welcome to real world
Yeah well I can a few games that were not that buggy and unfinished; Left 4 dead 1 &2, starcraft II, Oblivion, etc... Lets face it; Firaxis slacked on this one, thats it.
Reviews have always been unreliable.
The magazines and websites depend on advertising money from the businesses that their magazines cover. So, they don't want to offend.
When you read a review you have to know how to read it.
Ignore the score they give to the game.
Read the text and see how they talk about the gameplay and features. Then you may get an idea as to whether you will like the game or not.
Also, there is the simple fact that different people like different things.
A reviewer may genuinely like a game that you would very much dislike.
The problem in the case of Civ 5 was also that people wanted, almost desperately, to believe that the new version was going to be magnificent and were readily willing to believe that.
All of the pre-ordering seemed odd to me.
The magazines and websites depend on advertising money from the businesses that their magazines cover. So, they don't want to offend.
When you read a review you have to know how to read it.
Ignore the score they give to the game.
Read the text and see how they talk about the gameplay and features. Then you may get an idea as to whether you will like the game or not.
Also, there is the simple fact that different people like different things.
A reviewer may genuinely like a game that you would very much dislike.
The problem in the case of Civ 5 was also that people wanted, almost desperately, to believe that the new version was going to be magnificent and were readily willing to believe that.
All of the pre-ordering seemed odd to me.
MadRat
Cheese Raider
Not really Firaxis had a pretty good rep for decent games until lately. The craptastic nature of Civ 4: Colonization then the juvenile Civ Rev didnt dent it that much. People still have warm and fuzzy feelings about the old Civs, SMAC and Pirates!. Sadly many PC companies have traded in that rep or an IP for a fast buck with shovelware. Firaxis hasnt gone that far . Civ 5 is a solid game just has an atrocious AI.
Look at the sample of the carnage
1) Star Trek Online (Cryptic) - cryptic became craptic - but it was fondly remebered for CoH
2) Master Of Orion III - (Quicksilver) basically used the IP for a fast buck and killed the franchise
3) (Mythic) - Warhammer Online - It basically bankrupted itself and got sold to EA and finally produced shovelware
4) Final fantasy XIV : (Square enix) greatly disappointing to fans and on its way to becoming a another failed game. FF XIII was also widely derided
5) (Stardock) Elemental - On a high from praised over gal Civ and Sins of the Solar empire they released a buggy trainwreck that basically blew all their street cred.
6) (EA's) NBA/NHL series - just selling incremental updates at full price for the popularity of the sports franchises' rosters and soem "updates" have been panned as a mess
7) Richard Garriott traded in his popularity from Ultima on the super mediocre Tabula Rasa
8) Let's not forget Will wright basically had his big ego project Spore blow up into a big boring mess with DRM from hell and penis creatures
9) Vanguard - MMO wunderkind Brad MacQuaid blew 30 million dollars and delivered a sloppily coded shell of an MMO that SOE is keeping as a corpse on life support.
10 Vista - Need I say more.
There is more - but you can see the pattern - big names, big IPs cranking out big budget stinkers because they figure they can get the box sales, investors make a quick buck all at the cost of reputation. It is a growing trend companies dont care about reputation or customer loyalty they can rebrand,outsource, hype and use shell companies. They just want the sale. To top it off we have to buy DLC's to get the "full experience". What the heck happened to buying a finished product? AM I going to but my next car with only 3 wheels, no right handed turns and no trunk - all with the promise of a future fix?
RAT
I went ahead and read a lot of the reviews. People who gave it 3 or 4 out of 5 had titles such as, "Disappointed So Far", "One step forward, two steps back", and "Civilization V... Ultimatelly disappointing". It appeared that about 10% of the folks who gave it 4 stars really didn't like it at all and nearly all of the folks who gave it 3 stars didn't like it. One guy wrote that he wished he didn't buy it, yet he gave it 3 stars. So, I'm thinking that the Amazon star rating is a bit misleading.
*After reading some of the 5 star reviews, it appears that quite a few folks gave it a perfect rating, followed by a list of pros and cons (yes...cons with a perfect score), then added that they gave it 5 stars to counter the 1 star ratings.
It's hilarious how "I" becomes to "we" in so many posts.
For example I loved Civ4, I have been playing Civ games for 20 years and I love Civ5, and I am sure there are others like me. So please stop saying "we" and say "I" instead
Hangly Man
Warlord
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2006
- Messages
- 247
I think the game is just fine for what it is I'm just really really bored by it. For someone used to Civ IV, Civ V just draaaaags. There's a lot less game there.
Good thing too, didn't really want to get addicted to a game right now.
Good thing too, didn't really want to get addicted to a game right now.
Which I why I wait until after release and read forums like this one before I make up my mind whether to buy a game.
lemmy101
Emperor
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2006
- Messages
- 1,064
Exactly. I could get musketmen in BC on Civ4 vanilla. No s**t.
lemmy101
Emperor
- Joined
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This is total BS and a complete myth, basically. Sorry to burst your cynicism bubble. I hope plughead won't mind me quoting him from another thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9654639&postcount=153
Stop assuming everyone's out to get you and rip you off. Most people in the games industry, whether developers or journalists, are doing it for the love, not to fleece and deceive you. So tragic people are so quick to assume so.
EmpireOfCats
Death to Giant Robots
I agree on StarCraft 2 -- Blizzard is great that way -- but you must have been playing a different L4D2 than I was. In fact, the stupidity of the bots is legendary on the Internet (and hasn't been improved much, IMHO). And of course Valve is terrible about fixing bugs, because they would much rather add cute features.
(And just don't get me started about L4D1, the game that was left to die. They still haven't fixed the bugs on that one, and won't, because after taking your money for the first game, they want you to buy the second version, too. And yes, it was always the better game.)
So yes, Firaxis is not Blizzard, but we already knew that. Nobody except Blizzard is Blizzard.
Agent Roo
Chieftain
When I compare CIV to Civ, I find it to be an over-complex bloated game.
When I compare CiV to Civ, I find it much closer in function.
I never found Religion (or Corporations) to be a valuable part of the game, more gimmicky rewards for technology advances.
I never saw the need for several different improvements for the same tile.
Now I've played the game without sliders, I've realised that they were little more than a crutch. I used to exploit those sliders, now I can't - and I appreciate the game much more as a result.
The AI needs to be more robust, but that's the problem with complex games and fixed release dates. Something almost always has to give.
All in all, CiV is a great game especially if you compare it to the original, and not another sequel.
PS. Plughead, if you're reading this, I still remember the "Rise of the Robots" fiasco
When I compare CiV to Civ, I find it much closer in function.
I never found Religion (or Corporations) to be a valuable part of the game, more gimmicky rewards for technology advances.
I never saw the need for several different improvements for the same tile.
Now I've played the game without sliders, I've realised that they were little more than a crutch. I used to exploit those sliders, now I can't - and I appreciate the game much more as a result.
The AI needs to be more robust, but that's the problem with complex games and fixed release dates. Something almost always has to give.
All in all, CiV is a great game especially if you compare it to the original, and not another sequel.
PS. Plughead, if you're reading this, I still remember the "Rise of the Robots" fiasco
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