First off I should say I'm a huge fan of the Civ series. I still have all the Civs from 1 on. I had big reservations about how deep this game would be vs Civ 4 on Pc. Ideally I hoped the game was going to be more of the same, with controls well ported, better online service over live and achievements just to put a cherry on top. Heres what we got:

Graphics are a deffinate upgrade from Civ4. The battles are well done, the camera zooms in on the opposing units, you see individuals bein picked off from the armies and you get vibration feedback from the controller. All nice little touches and had me glued to the screen during important battles.
The sound is far from anything special. The characters that appear, while pretty, soons becoming annoying and eventually become background noise (thankfully). The music is standard issue for civ games, pan flutes etc while idle and big drums while at battle. Its just there, it doesnt really add much to the overall feel of the game and you'll soon be swaping it for your ipod.

So thats the gloss out of the way. Now down to the game play. There are 16 Civs to chooses from. Each has its own unique abilites through each of your civs 4 eras. ie.Extra food from plains in anicent era, and half price roads in modern era. The technology tree seems to more linear than before, and as a result there seems to be less units. Everything else is pretty standard, unit exp., Wonders. Obviously enough it has single player and multiplayer. The single player has normal games and various scenarios, nothing new here. The have included a "Game of the week" scenario. Every sunday they will release a different map, using a different civ, with different victory conditions, available over live that you can compete against other Xbox live users with a leaderboards. Its a nice touch and a nice little competition, nice touch. The multiplayer has a few different gametypes, free for all (4 players, 1 AI) teams (2 x 2 players & 1 AI). Once again nothing spectatular here, but it does it well.

Now for the guts: Civ Rev. is deffinatly a step back in depth for Civ games. Building armies is much simpler, 3 units of the same type can form an army, that is all. Stacking of units is deffinatly back, a problem they elimated in the last installment. Tech victories are also gone, yesterday I had an army of Pikemen detroyer a wing of fighter jets. Workers have been removed, all work is automatic, no farms, no mines, roads are built between cities only and a price of gold. Control over you cities has been watered down. Everything seems to be more generalised. The maps are always similar: 1 snakey continent and few stumpy island. Games generally last between 3 and 4 hours on King difficulty.

Civ Rev. is deffinatly a game that has grown on me the more I played. It is watered down, it has been generalised. I don't seem me playing any epic games that last 50 odd hours on this one. If you're a Civ fan you'll not like it at first but it does grow on you. It would be a good intro to Civ games for first timers, but I really think everyone should play Civ 2 and then if you like it move on to 4. Its priced well at 40 euros. I'm not sure renting it is a viable option on this one, you mightn't get involved enough in the game to appriciate it for what it is.

Good effort lads, but its not the full experience.

7/10

agreed it is not the full experience that you get from Civ 4 BUT it has really grown on me and I think its perfect for the console experience.

Great review and I'll probably have an official review for TAG in another week or so

I think this will open the CIV world to some gamers who were previously perplexed by some of the intricacies. I, like Parris, am considering checking myself into rehab too ween myself off the demo off of this game and I have to say that despite being something of a stripped down CIV game it sucked me in completely.

Ok, this game is absolute freakin' Crack!! I wanted to try it out tonight and figured I'd play for about 15 to 20 minutes and then turn off the console to go to bed. It is now about an hour and a half later and my fingers are twitching and wanting to start the demo over
I've never played the Civ games before but this one is really fun for me.

I just love droppin nukes to germany and russia..soo much fun!
I like playing as Germany because they have cool tanks and other units

This game is the new hotness.