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raingoon
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Los Angeles
Aug 1999
time: 21:16
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You enter the Modern Era and something begins to bother you, vaguely, dimly... but you are enthralled by the world map generator, whose work you are now able to see, for the most part, after several millenia of exploration -- and it is BEAUTIFUL. Whoever programmed the map generator is a genius, and everything that was wrong with Civ 2's map generator is now RIGHT again. You have arrived at the End Game and you are delighted with the game. You have discovered flaws, but none of them arterial. Your general sense now is: Fine, here are your tanks, we'll get you the Mech stuff, now put up or shut up.
And in fact there are several new ways of "putting up" -- One is winning by U.N. diplomacy (the infamous "It's All Good" victory); another is by hitting F9 to check your score obsessively and adjusting your end game as best you can to defeat your bad self earlier on who got in this mess so that you can rise above your opponents for what is called a "histographic victory" (which sounds a little too much like something you would rather have happen to you at your doctor's office); and of course the new Big One -- the Cultural Victory which in theory is wonderful, and in practice is a good tool but you wonder if you win culturally is that really fair? Answer is Yes. Culture, you decide, is a resounding success in Civilizat---
WHAT IS THAT MUSIC??? This is when you realize you are listening to the "modern era" soundtrack. It's been dimly tugging at your concept of personal serenity since you came to this new world of radios and two Hydro Dams in every pot. Surely it does not have to be said again how much you LOVE this new Civ game, but you fear a rant coming on that no love can restrain........ FOR THE LOVE OF PETE'S HOLY GRANDMA WHO WROTE THIS ROCKIN', SOUPY, GROOVALICIOUS GAME MUSIC THAT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE CIVILIZATION 3 HAS SUDDENLY TAKEN ME OUT ON A DATE TO A UKRAINIAN PORN SET TO WATCH BAD INDUSTRIAL TRAINING FILMS!!!!!!!!
And the Sade-ripoff cool and mellow riffing, too. You WERE going to let the lack of a Gregorian Chant in the middle ages slide, just as you forgave the failure of Civ 3 to reach the bench mark of at least an Imperialism II harpsichord, but this -- somebody spent an hour recording these late game tracks, or at best they allocated ZERO imagination points to the endeavor. For the love of orange juice, there is an entire ouvre of musical sounds pervading even our car commercials, not to mention our finest, most intelligent films today, a whole range of world-music feeling evocative of the modern era -- and what Firaxis put in there definitely ain't it. Did they not even listen to the "AMERICAN BEAUTY" movie soundtrack? This is where the computer game industry runs right up into the wall of stupid and thinks it knows better than Hollywood, which mastered evocative and atmospheric soundtracks years ago. Worse, the music expectations are uniformly low in the production value department, and the vibe in the gaming community has been, to date, one that applauded the great music on the Civ 3 disc. And it IS fine music, but there is also really BAAAAAAD music in there and all you can think of is that these other reviewers were fooled by that admittedly rousing Irish Jig (which IS nice, late in the middle ages and early industrial age, but as Grouch Marx said to the woman with 16 kids who loved her husband, "Lady, I like my cigar, but I take it out once in awhile" and you come to feel the same way about the Irish Jig in Civ 3) OR there must be a lot of Ukrainian Industrial Filmmakers moonlighting as Computer Game Magazine writers. At any rate this is a rare and glaringly-out-of-place poor production value.
More pertinent troubles -- China has a right of passage agreement with your sworn enemy Russia. You learn this the hard way. As so often happens in Civ 3 you want to respond to this problem by dragging China over to the negotiation table and lighting one off under them (the other way to respond to problems is hitting the F1 key and hauling your domestic adviser onto the carpet) but this time you want to demand that China cease their right-of-passage agreement with Russia, BUT there is no third party intervention/negotiation in Civ 3, and once again you are reminded that the Diplomacy model needs just that much more fleshing out to claim all the good things Firaxis is claiming about it.
You would like to see some little peripheral things that you had in Civ 2 but are missing from Civ 3 -- Why can't you letter jump down the production list? F for Fighter, anyone? G for galley? H to the Izzo? Why can I not disable city messages that prevent the beginning of my turn from feeling as though the world had stopped so my domestic adviser could read me what amounts to a page-by-page version of the state of my union-as-Goodnight Moon? Why can't I give a "Go-To-City" command to any given unit?
Why do damaged naval units no longer move slower than healthier ones? That was of hidden strategic value, and would seem even more important since air units no longer destroy naval units, but simply bomb them into that little red line that means they're really, REALLY sorry (which is actually a nice-touch feature, see Final Word link below).
Also in the modern era -- where, mind you, your end-game war is evolving as thrilliing as it ever did in Civ 2 (and it IS thrilling; you think those who claim these later stretches are boring lack imagination or will to use the new varied avenues of victory). But also in the modern era you wonder why the Manhattan Project is not the Small Wonder is was promised to be, but in fact the same old Great Wonder it always was. This would be better were it the other way around, and every civ had to either develop or steal the nuclear ability for themselves.
Oops. Neither do they tell you how many units are sunk when the transports start to go down.
And while you are nitpicking, you may as well throw in that the governors need help not auto-building relatively obsolete units such as the cavalry unit in alternation with tanks. You have heard the AI learns your building habits and duplicates them, but to what level of specificity you remain unclear. Clearly a tank IS a cavarly unit, arguably, but you hope someone at Firaxis sees your problem... In 2018 with Russian artillery and tanks coming at you from all sides, those trusty old cavalry units just ain't gonna cut it.
And OH YES -- ATTENTION FIRAXIS: BUG ALERT! You are playing against both the Chinese and the Romans (as well as Egypt, Germany, India and Russia) but make no mistake: The Foreign Advisor Screen refuses to show you Mao or Caesar. This has not happened in other games, but it happens in this game -- saving and restarting makes no difference. PATCH please?
And while we're at it -- would it be IMPOSSIBLE to keep the production list centered on the item you are clicking, even as the production QUEQUE above it is expanding with each click?
Well. Ahem. I guess, maybe it is impossible. Perfection, after all, is perfection. Somethings, you decide, must remain forever out of reach...
End Raingoon's Unusable-but-Totally-Accurate Increasingly-Misnamed-30-Second-Review Part 5 (Modern Era/The End Game)
(Final Summary and Overall Score to be posted after surgery to remove second-person-voice from Raingoon's foppish head).
Raingoon's Unusable-but-Totally-Accurate Review Part 1 (Intro)
Raingoon's Unusable-but-Totally-Accurate Review Part 2 (Ancient Era)
Raingoon's Unusable-but-Totally-Accurate Review Part 3 (Middle Ages)
Raingoon's Unusable-but-Totally-Accurate Review Part 4 (Industrial Age)
Last Word & Final Score
Last edited by raingoon on 11-11-2001 at 00:53
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09-11-2001 22:51
. Oh well, I suppose an mp3 player in the patch wouldn't garner too many complaints...
Nice review so far. Great sense of humor 
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