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 :)

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?