Super Mario, Civ IV, Katamari Hands-On Impressions

The first day of the E3 show is netting hands-on impressions of some of the most anticipated games of the upcoming year. 1up.com is offering up impressions for the New Super Mario Bros. title for the DS, and We Love Katamari for the PS2. Gamespot has a hands on with the upcoming Firaxis/2K title Civilization IV. Feel the Sid Meier love. From the article: "Civ 4 will finally update the series to a 3D engine. Firaxis is using an updated version of the Gamebryo engine that was used in last year's Sid Meier's Pirates. And yes, the early screens looked a bit muddled, but the game looks a lot cleaner and more beautiful now and in person. You can zoom out and see the entire world (presented as a rotating globe) and see continents, mountain ranges, and forests."

Comments

Thoughts

[Daetrin]

The globe sounds cool, but does that mean you can't do torus maps anymore? :)

They seem to have done a 180 on the issue of corruption. It wasn't like the players were begging for more corruption in Civ3, _they_ were the ones who thought it was a necessary play element. Not having to deal with corruption and pollution will be less annoying, but do they have some other means to address the issues those concepts were originaly meant to correct? And what happens to all the tech and structures that dealt with pollution? Are they just being removed as useless now?

I'm not sure what i think about the inclusion of religion. I have to admit that religion has had a very important effect on most periods of history, but i'm not sure i want to deal with it.

The government part sounds a bit like Call to Power but more complex. Especially the bit about slavery.

"The tech tree has been completely rethought and is no longer broken up into eras." ie they're going back to the way it used to be? :) And it sounds like they're reworking things to encourage you to do exactly what the eras concept was designed to prevent, skipping around the tech tree to get to "the good stuff" :)

"Great People" sounds pretty much like the leaders in MoM and MoO2. Not that that's a bad thing.

I'm a little confused as to how the combat change is an improvement. From the description they've gotten rid of the health bar only be giving every unit a pseudo health bar of three HP. Unless they've done something else to change the combat there's going to be a sudden increase in Phalanxes wiping out Battleships again.

Being able to see wonders and such on the main map sounds really cool though :)

Re:Thoughts

[tprox]

I'm not sure if they're really going to do away with pollution per se. I think the intent is that you don't necessarily have to manage your workers to clean up the pollution that shows up on the map. This definitely was a PITA as the AI can sometimes get glitchy during multiplayer games and you'd have to micro-manage your workers.

I'm super excited about the enhanced multiplayer. Hopefully it won't be as unstable as Civ 3 with all the sync problems and AI lag.

Re:Thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a little confused as to how the combat change is an improvement. From the description they've gotten rid of the health bar only be giving every unit a pseudo health bar of three HP. Unless they've done something else to change the combat there's going to be a sudden increase in Phalanxes wiping out Battleships again.

The game is already like this in Civ3 and Civ3:Conq. More experienced units can have up to 5 hp. As it stands in those games, a phalanx can't attack a battleship because that's a land-based unit and it can't move out to sea if it wins the attack. Even if it could, a battleship's defense rating is something like 16, far better than the attack rating of the Phalanx.

Re:Thoughts

[Daetrin]

You clearly didn't understand what i was saying.

I'm pretty sure in Civ3 they could have a lot more than 5 hp, the minimum was 10hp i think. No, phalanxes can't attack battleships. The stereotypical problem was battleships attacking phalanxes fortified in cities and getting blown up by them. The Phalanxes weren't attacking, but they _were_ wiping out the battleships.

This would happen because a phalanx fortified in a walled city has a decent defense (4? 8?) enough so that occasionaly they would beat the battleship's attack score. In Civ1 (and Civ2? i can't remember when the HP system was introduced) this would mean the battleship was blown up. This happened quite a lot. There have been arguments about whether or not it was out of line with the probabilities you would expect from the game mechanics, but it was defintitely far outside the range you would expect in any real world scenario.

After the introduction of hp losing a round of combat just meant the battleship lost a little health. Since battleships have quite a lot of health it meant the battleship would have to lose several rounds of combat in a row to the phalanx, a fairly unlikely occurance.

What i'm saying is that by reducing the number of hit points from 10+ to 3 they're greatly increasing the odds of such chance occurances happening again. They're also bringing back the ridiculous situation where a group of people with bronze spears are sinking a modern warship. They're consoling you by saying it was only one warship in the group, but it's still rather silly.

Er...

[Daetrin]

I suppose i should have stoped to mention that i was refering to Civ4, though most people could probably figure that out given the three options. Ok, so maybe i'm a little overly excited about it :)

Not every game has to be 3D

[XxtraLarGe]

I really don't see what 3D brings to the game. The screens look nice, but now the units are much larger than the cities. In Civ 2 they were the same size. Which brings me to another question. I occassionally play Civ 2 Gold using Classic on my PowerBook, is there any compelling reason to buy Civ 4, or even Civ 3? It seems to me they made the game a bit too complicated the last go around.

Re:Not every game has to be 3D

[cafard]

Well, it's mainly a matter of taste, but i *love* the Cultural Influence. It finally allows to develop (more or less) peacefully and win in a different way.

Considering the age of the game, you should find Civ3 and the Play the World expansion for quite cheap as a bundle. I would say it is definitely worth it.

Re:Not every game has to be 3D

[moonbender]

The question really isn't 3D or 2D, but rather one of perspective. Civ4 will be rendered in 3D, but the perspective is pretty much exactly the same as before - top-down isometric. I don't see any reason not to go with 3D rendering at this point - it doesn't look worse, and arguably better, and it's got the positive aspects of giving you "free" rotation and zooming and deformation and all the cool things you can do when you have actual geometry on the stuff displayed as opposed to "dumb" bitmaps.

Actually I'm not sure if I got my terminology right, anyway the camera is looking at the board at an angle somewhere in between 45 and 90, the same way it is in Civ3. Personally, I think that looking straight down (ie. a 90 angle) looks worse but plays better - I play FreeCiv that way, but in any case it doesn't play much better and it's probably just not mass-market compatible. FWIW, you could even render a 90 camera in 3D and retain some positive aspects of the 3D model. And in fact the new Civ could offer a user-adjustable camera if it's in full 3D, giving me the option to go 90 if I chose so. We'll see.

All that said, I don't think they're using the 3D engine to its full extend, judging by the screenshots. For instance, those mountains look terrible, even worse than in the previous Civs. There is no such thing as a mountain range, it's just pretty much a conical mountain next to a very similar mountain. It shouldn't be that hard to check whether a mountain is on a connected tile and make them look more natural. I also don't like the coast lines that follow the gameplay tiles really closely - I realize that's hard to cover up, but hey, at least pretend to do so.

In any event, yay for the new engine - this is something I have been clamoring for for years, and even more yay for the new Civ, it sounds just great.

And I skipped E3

[glowimperial]

Sounds like they are adapting some of the unit customisations that made Alpha Centauri such a replayable game. As well as the modular government model that made that game so much better in that area, than any of the Civs.

Woo Hoo.

Re:And I skipped E3

[Bachus9000]

Here's hoping they throw in the UN-type thing (I forget what it was called...maybe it was Planetary Council?) while they're at it, too. I like flooding the world, personally. :D

Disappointed in CIV

[eviltypeguy]

I haven't really cared for CIV since the original.

The only game in recent history that I just loved to pieces in the same genre was Alpha Centauri, which I thought was the best turn-based game Sid was ever involved with.

Re:Disappointed in CIV

[PurplePhase]

I liked lots of AC but what I disliked brought it down again, but still better than the Civ2s. Alpha Centauri was probably shunned because it was too different - though I believe it got good reviews at the time. I do think they were correct, that after a while the babble-tech names disoriented me - when I can't relate a name to a tech to a weapon or even class of improvements, I consider it confusing/poor design. But maybe I just wasn't inducted deep enough into that grade of Sci-Fi.

The original Civ was great - I still prefer their 2D GUI and used that interface when I tried FreeCiv a while ago. Colonization, though, was the best in my mind: Music, workers who can learn and specialize, a pretty determined story, distinct empires, and a hierarchy of goods (milder and more useful than Settlers)... Sounds like it's time to reinstall it, if it actually works anywhere anymore :(

8-PP

Civ4 SOUNDS good...

[Reapman]

But I'm always a bit concerned when they say they're going to 3D... 3D can be really good, IF ITS DONE WELL. Case and point is Lords of the Realm II vs III. I prefer the second one, even with all it's problems, over III because it has, imho, a really bad 3d engine interface. For some things 2D does, in fact, work BETTER (I prefer SMB3 vs Super Mario 64 or Sunshine, but I digress)

The rest sounds really cool, and I trust they won't screw over a beloved franchise like Civ... but... I'll reserve judgement when it's released. If I have to constantly change the camera because the Pyramids are blocking me from seeing the invading army all the time I'll be pissed :P

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

3d?

[Lu Xun]

I don't know if 3d adds anything to the game. I know these are still early screens, but from the maps it's obvious that there's a grid behind the 3d terrain, and it ends up looking very artificial. Civ3 looked much better than these shots.

Re:All remakes/ sequels

[BRock97]

Is anyone else wishing we would see something new?

If they're fun to play, who gives a crap?

While I haven't seen the game yet

[IncarnadineConor]

I see no reason why Civ IV would need to be in 3D. I have never liked those 3D interfaces for what should be a 2D game; I don't want graphical advancement at the expense of gameplay.

My thoughts on Civ IV

[Otik2]

Wow, I can't wait for this. The graphics don't look too amazing -- they're nice, of course, but to me, they're not much better than the previous ones. But of course, I never played Civilization games for the graphics. All the new stuff in Civ IV sounds sweet. A more fluid government should be really fun, and while religion is a lot like the old system of government, a few of the tweaks seem interesting. The ability to jump around the tech tree more will be nice, and great units seems like a good extension of Wonders. The base gameplay will probably be the same, so it won't be too different, but it does look very nice.

civ will still be Empire with a fancy skin

[snorklewacker]

The thing that always got me about Civ was the level of absolute control: every building, every unit, every city, every road, every movement was absolutely up to you, and your orders would be followed without delay or question.

Now imagine if corruption in a remote province meant that payment to the garrison was skimmed, and your soldiers there weren't getting payed. What if those disgruntled soldiers decided to back a renegade province that had been looking for a way to secede? In Civ, this sort of thing never happens. Civ3 added cultural influence, but it was laughably predictable. I'm not looking for a super-realistic nation-sim, but golly, how about a little advancement in the state of the art?

Honestly,

[Captain Rotundo]

I don't see how a 3D engine will help Civ. Unless they change the gameplay significantly I can only imagine it will detract from the game. For a turn based strategy game like Civ you need to be able to assess the board as a whole easily, this is best done with flat 2D, unless of course the 3D aspects of the terrain become that much more important.

I hope Civ 4 is faster-paced...

[r_jensen11]

That was the great thing about Civ2, you could win a game in less than a week, sometimes in a day, if you didn't have much to do on a saturday.... Don't get me wrong, I like Civ3, but Civ2 will always be king. There was just something wrong for the original, when battleships lost to warriors.... Anywho, they better not drop the ball like they did with Call to Power....

Re:I hope Civ 4 is faster-paced...

[PurplePhase]

Okay, I'm posting again without the article in front of me, but IIRC a games mag this month had an article with Sid and he said there would be 3 different ways of playing Civ4 - primarily because the networking/multiplayer was deep in the bones of the game. The first 2 would be fast - something like an hour or so and then several hours for a complete game, while the last is the typical "Play for 40 days and 40 nights" style :)

However I thought they also said the number of total turns had been reduced, which I am repulsed by on principle. If true, the XML config files they're blustering about better allow it to be set higher.

Re: Battleships vs Warriors - actually that is factually true, just like in real life Tanks are at the mercy of infantry. People will always have a chance to conquer machines, just not a 100% chance in most circumstances. To make it more correct, Civ would have to implement some combined-arms kinds of rules. Tribal warriors versus mechanized infantry, though, has much smaller chances.

8-PP

I just hope...

[DamienNightbane]

I just hope that I'll stop losing elite ironclads and cavalry to veteran galleys and spearmen.

3D and more

[PurplePhase]

Exactly - they need to be very careful about what they do with the 3D or it will be as bad as the change to diamonds in Civ2, or the inverted sliver polygons on the backside of hills in Alpha Centauri!

One of the quotes from Sid in a computer game mag this month was something like "You can only put so much into 50x50 pixels" - er, except 3D doesn't give you anymore pixels! It is possible to be precise with 2D, but with 3D you put it all the effort into the tech/engine/models and then blame the user if they can't see what they need? That's just poor design Sid, and the whole X blocking Y proliferation makes for a worse game and frustrated users.

The same article also said Sid was keeping hands-off for Civ4 - some general direction only - but isn't that what he's done since Civ (when he's around at all)? Isn't that why people keep complaining that it's really just a name now with no quality to it?

8-PP