Sid Meier's Civilization V

Introduction

      Whoooooooooooop it’s time for a new game review! With Christmas right around the corner, it’s time to get seriously festive, be it with family, friends or relatives. But of course, with festivity comes Steam Christmas Sales which means games, games, games and they are all cheap, cheap, cheap!

            Okay enough of my festive spazz, let’s get into this review!

            In this review, I’ll be taking a look at one of the best 4X games I’ve ever played. What does 4X mean you may be asking? No they are not a company, nor are they an instrument, 4X refers to a genre of strategy-based games. The 4 X’s stand for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate, why they don’t call it 4E games is beyond me.

            Alright, so what is this 4X game? It is none other than Sid Meier’s Civilization V, released 4 years ago, by Firaxis Games, a company also known to be the ones behind X-Com: Enemy Unknown, among other games. A review for another day, to be sure!

What is Sid Meier’s Civilization V?

      Civilization (the whole franchise in general) is a turn-based strategy game at its core; it tasks the player with controlling his/her civilization, starting from humble beginnings of a small town, it is then up to the player to decide how they wish to eXpand their civilization as they progress through the years turn by turn, either by being a warmonger and declaring war on all the other city states and civilizations (yolo right), or by being economical and slowly but surely build up by creating other towns and establishing trade routes and becoming the most reputable leader in all of history leading up to the present and the future, thereby cementing your place in ancient history for the future people to see and remember, but that’s boooooring.

A gameplay screen of a regular Civ 5 playthrough

            Each civilization in this game is unique in the way they work, with different civilizations having different units they can utilize starting from a specific era onwards, all of the civilizations also have unique abilities that carry them through the entire game, this results in amazing replayability value as each civilization has their own positive traits and are weak in certain aspects as well, depending on what civilization the player is controlling.

The description of the leader and the civilization he leads, his ability below, and his unique units below that.

            Civilization V consists of the base game and two DLC’s, the DLCs add extra civilizations for players to control, and the later DLC, titled Brave New World, refines and improves certain gameplay aspects of Civilization V, making it more replayable for players with different victory conditions.

The more recent DLC

            Speaking of victory conditions, victory in Civilization V is achievable in many ways. Space victory requires the player to assemble parts of a spaceship and send all of it to the capital for launch; a diplomatic victory requires the player to form the UN and call for votes. There are several other victory conditions, but all of them are common in that they require a lot of effort and researching to achieve, as all players start out during the prehistoric era, and progress through the eras as certain technologies are researched. Victory conditions can only be fulfilled in the last era, the Information Era.

One of the many eras, the Atomic Era.

            Alliances and trade requests can be made to other civilizations as well to allow the player to gain an advantage, be it through players or AI characters, with fully animated civilization leaders (e.g. Augustus Caesar who is in the leader of the Roman people) and dialog that is spoken in the native tongue of that leader’s civilization, from the English of England to the Mayan language of the Mayans, watch as they go through the journey with you thanks to their timeless age, and watch as some of them totally flip out because you defeated them or how they’ll smile at you and then plunge a knife right into your back, the AI’s cool that way. But, seriously, these leaders help to immerse you into the game, as you will soon feel like you are waging a personal war against one leader of an entire other civilization, *cough* Gandhi *cough*.

DIS GUYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Is this game good?

            Yes.

            Seriously, it is. Civilization V is those kinds of games where once you start and you have a game plan in mind, you’ll get sucked in very easily. In your mind, you’re like “I’ll research this and I am done”, “I’ll destroy the Hunnic Empire and then I’ll sleep”, then you look at the clock and realize you’re half past 5 in the morning hearing that Singapore morning bird’s annoying chirping (or your regional equivalent). I cannot recall how the tutorial is like in this game, but it was good enough that it allowed me to understand how the game’s base mechanics work, and that was enough for me to get sucked into all the various playthroughs I’ve played.

No flaws? Nothing?

            Nope.

Really?

      Uhhh nope.

You’re pulling my leg, right?

            Alright, if there’s one gripe I have with the game is the extremely similar progression all civilizations seem to have. I understand they all have differences in terms of units and their different abilities, but that difference is so slight that usually it does not affect the way you would play if you had a mindset on how to play in the first place, like “okay, I’ll start by building up an empire before attacking other civilizations”, chances are, this strategy works for almost every civilization, with no regard to their specialty unit or ability.

            The randomly generated maps help to mitigate this slightly, and the random opponents you will meet during each playthrough, as each opponent AI have different personalities and do things in the certain fashion, some would befriend you THEN backstab you (how civil), others would be loyal to you once you’ve gained their trust no matter what (is dis reel lyfe?). The game does manage to put you in enough situations that require you to think on your feet and handle it accordingly, making the civilization progression part more varied and random.

            Although, honestly, I can’t really say much as I’ve only clocked 69 hours (lel) into the game. And within those 69 hours, I was definitely captured by the game’s level of detail and its level of complexity, and despite my complaints above, I definitely do not regret playing those 69 hours, whilst others who have reviewed the game, unlike myself, have clocked up to 2000+ hours playing the game. The reviews on Steam about this game pretty much speak for themselves, and my complaints above are probably the result of my habit of nitpicking at a game’s level of replayability.

Yeah... just a little

So do I buy it or not?

      YES, DEFINITELY. The game has very good replayability and has tons of different civilizations to try out. If, as a child, you ever played Heroes of Might & Magic II, III or IV and you LOVED those games, let me tell you, you’ll have an absolute ball playing this game. It’s like those games and way more!

            With Steam Christmas Sales currently on, you can get the complete pack, containing the base game and ALL the game’s DLC for 12.25SGD, so why not?! 12.25SGD is about 2 Temasek Polytechnic McSpicy meals, so you’re honestly not losing out at all! The offer is only lasting for an hour at the time of this writing, so grab it if you read this review! It’ll probably be about 15SGD+ after the offer, which is still solid in my opinion.

Conclusion

            Civilization V is truly one of the best turn-based strategy games out there in my opinion, with X-Com following after. The amount of depth and thought put into the production of the game really shows in its gameplay, and that itself makes it a successful game. With depth, comes replayability, and this game delivers a ton of it, so enough reading, get into the game, pick whoever looks the most badass, and build a civilization that will stand the test of time!

            Thank you all for reading! Have a Merry Christmas!

Town of Salem

Introduction

            It’s definitely been a while. With so many of my reviews being in the realms of full-fledged games and some triple-A titles, I figured it was time to review something new and fresh out of Kickstarter(as of six months ago). This game is known as Town of Salem, and can be played here (if you want to experience the game BEFORE reading the review): http://www.blankmediagames.com/TownOfSalem/

What is “Town of Salem”?

            Town of Salem is a party game created by BlankMediaGames LLC. It takes place in an alternate reality of the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts. It is based off the popular party game Mafia, and is about murder, mystery and deception.

Just your everyday basic... POSSIBLE HARBINGERS OF DEATH

Gameplay

            First thing you would realize after creating an account and joining a game is the sheer amount of roles in this game, with a whopping 29 (soon to be 32 and more) roles, including those well-known roles such as the Godfather and the Serial Killer, both of which are the killing roles (there’s still more) in Town of Salem.

29 + 3 roles in one zoomed-out window of a screenshot

            Not to worry, though, you don’t have to go through the trouble of finding custom setups and set-up a game for yourself if you’re new. Just jump into classic and you’re find that the roles assign themselves according to the number of players, with the maximum player cap being 15.

            After the game is launched, players will have to type in a name they wish to use in the game. This is to give each of the players’ anonymity from their usernames, and to give each player a temporary identity within that one game.

Names that players enter appear on the bottom-right and positions are randomized around the circle.

            The role is then assigned. The role can place you in one of three factions. These three factions are: 1. the town, you win by winning with other town-related roles through working together. 2. The mafia, you win by killing anyone who would oppose you through, this includes town members and neutrals who pose a threat to the mafia. 3. The neutral (I personally call them “indie” for being individual), you win by fulfilling a specific goal in your role. For example, the Serial Killer is an example of a Neutral role that can kill everyone else, and he wins if he does so successfully, which requires skill, a level of cool-headedness and cunning.

"I am... the Godfather."

            The game starts with all 15 players gathering around the gallows and the first day will commence. The Day Cycle is when town members come together to share information and attempt to find the bad guys lurking around the city, and bring them to justice by lynching (hanging) them. Lynching only happens if the WHOLE town can reach a majority vote to bring the person up to the gallows (so if there are 6 people left, a majority vote of 4 are needed), and sometimes the Mafia or the bad Neutral roles could throw certain correct suspicions into disarray or support bad claims from town roles by voting innocents up to the gallows, with lynching being a good way to help them thin the Town’s numbers, making it easier on their part to get rid of the townspeople.

One of them may just visit you at night

Once the player is up on the gallows, they can defend themselves for 20 seconds with no interruptions from others, and this is where they must prove their innocence. After the player’s defense, players can pass judgment on the player, whether they are innocent, guilty, or one could abstain from the vote, meaning they add nothing to either the innocent or the guilty counter. If the innocent counter is more than or matches the guilty counter, the player in question returns to his original spot and the voting phase resumes if not already over and the whole town can discuss who they think is the criminals. If the guilty counter is more than the innocent counter, the player will be hanged and his last will (if any) will be read to the crowd and his role will be revealed. A true test of trust and quick thinking happens within these precious seconds.

Have some executed animations whydoncha

After the lynching occurs, or when the timer for voting runs out, day turns to night. During the night cycle, many things occur. The Mafioso coordinates and talks of whom to target next. The investigator sets out on his target to find out his role. The lookout keeps watch of the man sleeping next door. The sheriff hunts for the Serial Killer whilst keeping a list of suspicious people. The Serial Killer sharpens his blade for his next target. The framer places guns and suspicious items in the homes of the innocent. Many things will happen, most of which unpredictable, but the ones who do things at the right times, at the right people and say the right things are those that will evade the next day unhanged.

This plus the music playing at the end is just 2spooky4me

Strengths

            The true strength of this game is in its sheer replayability. I’ve played many hours of the game and I am not even sure that I have played all available roles yet. The huge amount of characteristics and variety found in all the random public people you get matched with all act differently from, say, the previous game you played, in terms of how they act and how they react to certain situations. In essence: every game is like a snowflake, and one snowflake is never the same as the other (I think).

            Every role is truly different and every role has their strengths and weaknesses, but knowing how to play each and every role effectively is the key to mastering this game. This is one game I would dub “easy to learn, hard to master”. I mean 29 roles holy moly even RPGs don’t have 29 jobs to choose from.

            Knowing when and what to do during specific parts of a match is crucial and can help swing the tides of whoever you’re helping, be it the town, the mafia, or the neutral party, and that learning process is also another strength of the game: how it draws you in to WANTING to learn how to play the game well. Many games these days don’t do that well other than flooding you with tutorial messages until the end of days, hoping something gets into your mind when clearly you just want to chill out and have a great time playing something simple. 

Weaknesses

            As Town of Salem is based off a party game that not many people may have heard of, most of the player community is new to this concept of Mafia. Some people may have heard of it and know the infamous role of Mafia or Serial Killer, but definitely not the many uncommon roles such as Amnesiac, Executioner, Janitor and many others, thus many people could still be unfamiliar with about ¾ of the roles, but of course, people will learn of them over time and this isn't that bad of a weakness.

            Another weakness of the game to add on to that is the lack of any form of tutorial explaining the game’s highly useful UI, which is albeit wordy but still informative. With about 5 boxes of information taking up about 60% of the screen space, players might at first be intimidated by the amount of information they have to take in, and may become unfocused on the game at hand. Certain role abilities such as Jailor and his ability to jail one person every night has to be selected via a player selection screen, but to activate it, one must press the Sun-like icon on the top. This icon does not obviously state what it does and is rather misleading as an icon and is something I hope will be changed in future versions of the game, but as a whole, a tutorial in the game for new players is something I would feel that would help them understand the game faster.

REUSED: but still it shows how much info the game and how its squeezing everything in.

            Finally, one weakness is the game’s lack of localization for various languages, and also servers dedicated to the different languages so everyone can enjoy the game in their own language and be able to understand each other. This, of course is being developed as I speak so this should not be an issue in the near future.

WARNING: WALL OF TEXT WITH LITTLE PICTURES INCOMING.

What the game taught me

            Of course, after playing for a fair bit, there are certain things I’ve learnt and I feel like it’ll be good (and humorous) to share what I think of when I play the game.

            There is a lot of thinking involved in this game, whether you like it or not, some people are lying, some people are speaking the truth, it’s how you evaluate what others say and try to place it side-by-side with fact and see whether their statements add up.

If you’re town:

The long and short of it is, as a town-related role: never trust anyone until you 100% know that they are good.

            It is also good to communicate with the town and gather information together to eliminate the mafia and any neutral killing role. Being quiet and being a town-related role offers no help and you’ll often be seen as a target to by lynched just so the other town-related roles have lesser people to suspect and target.

            It is also a very good habit to constantly write in your will (the piece of brown-colored paper on the top of the screen) if you’re an investigative role of any sort, or an escort, and constantly keep track of who you investigate/roleblock, what happens the next day and (if any) note down any suspicions you have of anyone, drawn from the conversations during the day. This information can be crucial to the other town members who could be deciding between one guy and the other to lynch.

A bloodied will = death will (any killing role can write it). An unbloodied one = a regular will.

            Oh, and another thing, don’t leave even after you die. Even after death, you can communicate with a Medium and convey any suspicions or things you’ve noticed from wills not caught by others and tell the Medium of such things so he can point out who the bad guys are, and effectively helping the town win, even from the grave.

If you’re Mafia:

            It’s important to communicate on the first day and coordinate attacks well. Telling the Godfather his target is immune the next night helps to single out one role effectively in the Classic mode, which is Executioner/Serial Killer, who has night immunity. Singling out people like this makes life very easy for the Godfather to find who to kill and in what order to kill people in.

            The role of the Mafia is to not be informative during the day, but this doesn’t mean keeping mum and hoping for the best. More often than not, you would be aimed at by a town role and asked for your role, and silence only begets suspicion to other people, and you would probably be lynched off on that day. So, how would you be not informative and also not raise suspicion? Say things that are redundant and repeat what others say, for example a lookout points out that a person (as long as this person is not your mafia brethren) is suspicious of being a Serial Killer or Mafia, direct suspicion at him and back up the accuser, and if it turns out to be wrong, say something that sounds like you are disappointed that the “town is losing”, or something along those lines.

            In essence, the goal of the mafia is to kill with discretion at night without raising suspicion in the day by gaining the trust of the town.

If you’re a Neutral:

            This is tricky, because Neutral roles differ greatly between each other. But in the game, Neutral is separated into 3 different kinds of Neutral, known as Neutral Killing, Neutral Benign, and Neutral Evil. Neutral Killing refers to Serial Killer and Arsonist, and is responsible for the (surprise surprise) killing. Neutral Benign refers to Amnesiac and Survivor, and their role is rather passive (not Amnesiac when he takes over a role). Neutral Evil refers to Executioner and Jester, and they are put into the game to create chaos and disarray with the former having a target (that is always a town role) to kill no matter what, and the latter having a life goal of being lynched.

In summary…

            Town of Salem really is a unique game that tailors to any sort of playstyle with a huge array of roles. The result is a highly replayable game with various numbers of outcomes, and the players who have the better playstyle and strategy will come out on top.

            The game also teaches the player how to work together with other people when the player is a town or mafia role, and how they should adapt to different situations when they are playing a neutral role. After all, every vote happens and swinging the town’s favor towards you will only help to substantiate any of your claims. If you manage to do that and you’re a town member, that’s great, if you’re mafia… even better, but if you’re the serial killer…

            That wraps up the review for this week. They haven’t really been written in big frequencies over the past weeks and that’s because it’s hard to commit long hours of gameplay time when school’s just started. But of course, when the reviews do come in you can be sure that they’ll be of good quality and quantity just as the ones that came before.

            Town of Salem is accepting donations on PayPal and is currently having their Kickstarter campaign ongoing! If you wish to donate/be a backer of the game (like yours truly), you can do so in the link below that has both donation buttons!

Link: http://www.blankmediagames.com/

Assassin's Creed Review Final Part

Introduction

            Welcome back to the fourth and final part of the Assassin’s Creed series review. To end the review off, I’ll be taking a look at the latest of the Assassin’s Creed series releases, and that is Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and in about 2 months’ time, the game to replace Black Flag would be Assassin’s Creed: Unity, which I would talk about for a bit. So without further ado, let’s get on with the final part!

Assassin's Creed Review Part 3

Introduction

            Welcome back to the third part of my review of the Assassin’s Creed series, this time I’ll be taking a look at Assassin’s Creed III without spoiling too much on the story and talking about what has changed and what has improved. So, without further ado, let’s get started!

Assassin's Creed Review Part 2

Introduction

            Welcome back to Part 2 of the review of the Assassin’s Creed series, with our focus now shifting to the Assassin’s Creed titles of Brotherhood and Revelations, both of which continue Ezio’s story from Assassin’s Creed II, in his fight to restore the Assassin order, and to eliminate those who killed his family. So now, a continuation to the series review…

Assassin's Creed Review Part 1

Introduction

            Good day readers! It sure has been a while since I ever touched Word (yes I use word for these blog posts) for anything but my assignments. But now that everything is done and dusted, and my holiday mood is just about to pick up (if not for those pesky exam papers), I figured I push out a new, long review out there! And what better way to do so than to do a review on the main installments of... the Assassin’s Creed series.

The Sims 3

Introduction

            Continuing on from last week’s review of the recently released game, Murdered: Soul Suspect, I’ve decided to look at the prequels of the games from E3 that are scheduled to release at the end of the year. The game under the microscope this week is The Sims 3.

            The Sims 3 is a strategic life simulation game developed by EA Maxis and published by EA, released on June the 2nd 2009. Throughout this half a decade, numerous amounts of expansion packs have been released to add on content to the game and increase its playability, such as increasing the amount of careers available and the number of things a Sim can do. The game has sold over 10 million copies since its release, making it the best-selling PC game of all time. The sequel, The Sims 4, is scheduled to release on the 2nd of September.