CivRev Impressions

Holy crap is this game awesome.  I downloaded the demo a couple of weeks ago and played it 20-30 times, but it got more and more frustrating when the pre-set ending date of 1250AD would hit, especially as I was one move away from storming a capital city of a rival civ.  Well, with the release of the retail game, that issue is resolved.  However, ironically, I still feel the same, though less intense, feeling upon ending a game.  I played through a game on King difficulty and won a cultural victory, but I kind of hated to win as soon as I did.  I was in the process of crushing a Spanish city with my wing of Bombers and I was just a smidge away from obtaining the next economic milestone.  To me, it is a really good indication of how much I enjoy this game that, after completing a 3 and a half hour game (this isn't a typical game length, but I took my time and did some civlopedia research along the way) that I won, I didn't want it to end.  Today is going to be a really long day at work because I am dying to get home and start up another campaign.

If you haven't tried the demo and you own a 360 or PS3, you owe it to yourself to download it and give it a try.  I had played Civ IV on the PC and didn't like it because it was too much micromanaging.  CivRev scales back the micromanagement significantly.  It hits the sweet spot for me because it stripped some of the more tedious aspects of the game (managing each individual worker and having to have the right types of production for certain projects), but still leaves you feeling like you are in total control of your civ.  If you have a God complex, it is a dream game.    I almost didn't download the demo based on my preconceived notions of the Civ series, but Bevo convinced me that I needed to give it a try.  I am glad he did (even though he still likes a terrible college football team).  If you are a newb to the Civ series, you need to play on the Chieftan (lowest) difficulty, as that difficulty has an adviser pop up frequently to help explain the basics of the game.  Actually, even if you are a Civ vet, it is probably easier to play through a bit of a game on this setting to get a grasp on the basics of the controls with a controller.  The game is very well adapted to a controller, but I prefer having a nice on-screen avatar walk me through it rather than having to read about the controls in the manual (and, of course, the demo has no manual to read).

There is still so much that I haven't tried in the game (MP, scenarios, game of the week) that this isn't a review of the game, but I can already tell that this is my favorite game since Gears and it is a very nice change of pace from CoD4.

Posted by BrodysDad46 @ 9:54 am EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

New Signature

Gatsu Godhand made me the amazing signature below. I know that anyone in the AoW forum or that ever goes to the Gears forum will see it a ton, but I thought I would share it with the rest of you.  The panther logo is from one of the decks of the skater Natas Kaupas (the original inspiration for my gamertag), but Gatsu was able to replace "Santa Monica Airlines" in the banner with "Art of War."  Once again, thank you Gatsu.

Posted by BrodysDad46 @ 9:09 am EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

Trip Photos

I have been meaning to post a few photos of my trip to Atlanta since I got back, but just haven't gotten around to it.  Most of the pictures that I took are really only meaningful to a lifelong Braves fan, but I thought that the following can give some insight into the trip.

This picture shows the amazing seats that my wife was able to get us to the Friday night game.  It was incredible.  The girl bending over facing the wrong direction was our section's waitress.  The Braves won this game with Chipper Jones hitting two HRs.

These are the seats that we had for Saturday's day game.  When we left for Atlanta, we only had tickets for Friday's game.  We ended up taking a taxi to a restaurant to get something to eat on Thursday night and the cabbie was a big-time Braves fan.  Anyway, we got to talking about the Braves and my wife told him that I had never been to Atlanta before and that going to see a game was the reason for our trip.  The cabbie said that he has season tickets and that he had to work Saturday and offered us his tickets since I am such a big fan.  Of course, we accepted.  Then the cabbie wouldn't take any money for the tickets.  Amazing.  These seats are great for a day game.  We were out of the sun through most of the game and the air circulates very well through this portion of the stadium.  It almost felt air conditioned.  Anyway, Braves won again and we had a blast.

Final picture.  This was the wife and I after the Sunday game.  She isn't a sports fan and will likely never wear that shirt again, but she may wear the visor while doing some yardwork.  LOL.  I, on the other hand, will completely wear out the gear that I bought on this trip. 

Only downside to any of this is that we will have to take a trip to one of the wife's places next year (it will have to have great shopping since the unexpected Saturday tickets essentially eliminated her chance to do some serious Atlanta shopping).  After that, all of our family trips will be focused around the kid (who stayed with his grandparents for anyone that is wondering).

Posted by BrodysDad46 @ 1:32 pm EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments

The Trip is Finally Here

Well, the time has finally come for me to take my trip to Atlanta to see the Braves play.  I am very excited, but I am hoping that we can find some things to do on Saturday that will be fun for my wife.  I will see you all when I get back.

Posted by BrodysDad46 @ 12:49 am EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments

Life is Good

I sure am happy right now. I am a week and a couple of days away from seeing the Braves play a game in Turner Field for the first time ever (see blog entry about my gift). I will have gone two months without smoking on Thursday. I used the money I have saved from not smoking and bought a PSP yesterday. I am looking forward to picking up some games and movies (since I haven't owned any Sony product in years, there are a ton of old PSP games/franchises that will be new to me) for the PSP soon (any recommendations? Patapon is a definite and I am thinking about Hot Shots Golf also). I have Dark Sector at home on a rental from Gamefly and its "Gears light" vibe is getting me ever more excited for Gears 2 (to clarify, DS can't hold a candle to Gears, but the controls are so similar that it definitely plays like a broken version of Gears). And, on that note, I get up this morning to find a ton of info about Gears 2 from the upcoming Game Informer. To anyone that is interested, most of this latest info has been posted here: http://www.2old2play.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=43709.

However, even with all of the good things in my life right now, this was the way that my head looked through most of Monday Night Gears:

Posted by BrodysDad46 @ 12:59 pm EDT | Permalink | 6 Comments