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First of all i had to get this out of my chest as I've been thinking about it ever since I bought Civ2, CTP and SMAC. The question I am asking is:

Does playing civ games change your whole perception on games?

First a bit of history about myself and my gaming history. Some of you might have heard a condensed form already on the Civ2 forum.

I started playing PC games when I was eleven. That was when my dad bought me an XT during the era of the 286/386. The first PC game I'd ever played was the secret of Monkey Island and back then it blew my mind away. A wonderful blend of humour, complex puzzles and great storyline at a time when i was playing arcadey console games. I was so rapt on Monkey Island that i decided to buy every adventure game out there including most of the classic Sierra ones... Space Quest, Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry.

A year later my family got a new 386 computer for the next 3 years I saw more adventure games along the likes of Monkey Island 2, Leisure larry 5, Heart of China. It was adventure paradise at its best. It was at that stage that I decided that the PC was only good for adventure games(and flight sims but only because a friend in school kept telling me how good flight sims were and for some reason I tried real hard to like flight sims) and the consoles were built for arcade games. The only exception was Wing Commander 2 which I would put on my top ten list of games which addicted me the most. Around this era the all time classic Streetfighter 2 was out around that time and I rated it as one of the best games I'd ever played at that time.

Strategy games for me were few and far between. I played a bit of simcity and decided it was a bit dull and so never bothered checking out it's descendant, simcity 2000. Only one strategy game managed to catch my eye and it was, of course, the grand-daddy of all RTS, dune 2. Funnily enough, I'd heard of a game called Civilization and even had a family friend introduce it to me. However due to my obsession with adventure games and my high requirements of having decent graphics(forgive me but I was only a child back then that was easily impressed with eye candy), I sadly didn't see the appeal of civ back then.

When I was nearing the final years of high school, the old 386 was no longer capable of playing any more new games. I was lucky to experience the great Ultima Underworld 2(for all you RPG fans out there I'd strongly recommend this product even in the today's world dominated by the baldur's gate and the might and magic series). Then the old 386 finally died on me... it was a sad day. My brother bought a SNES and it had some good games on it(ie Mario Kart) but even then I knew that the passion that I once had for games was slowly dying....

I went to university in 1997 and for a whole year I lived without a personal computer and had limited knowledge of PC games. The only game which I can say impressed me a lot was probably quake. My brother then bought a new pentium 200 and when I came back for the holidays I was impressed. Having never even experienced the OS that was Windows 95(I never installed it on the 386), I was surprised at how far behind I really was with regards to computers. Plus there were new games to be played quake, hexen, duke nukem, red alert, warcraft 2. Although these games were fun for a while they never really captured my heart like Monkey Island 2 or Wing Commander did back then. I had a friend tried furiously to show me the greatness of warcraft 2 but I merely yawned and said to him that I was getting too old for games. At that point I knew that my gaming heart was truly dead...

I tried to revive it again by purchasing the two biggest adventure games out at the end of 1997-- Monkey Island 3 and Blade Runner. They were fun for several weeks... until I completed them and the gameplay ran out. I went back to uni and bought my own computer a 233MHz pentium2 (which I still own to this day). A friend of mine introduced me to a gem called starcraft. I thought my gaming passion had come back again as I spent many days playing it over it the LAN that was in my college hall. But there was still something missing with starcraft... it was good but something was still missing. I enjoyed the multiplayer aspect of starcraft but for some reason I couldn't enjoy the single player missions to want to play on.
Even to this day I havent finished the single player missions in Starcraft. I wanted something with more....with more... meat! Then i recalled back to the time my family friend tried to introduce me to civilization. I noticed it was horribly complex back then but I had heard rave reviews on it. So I went on the internet and tried to find out as much about civ as I could. That was when i found CTP(Call to Power) and this site(Apolyton) and my life changed forever. I wanted to get civ2MPG at first but then I heard of this new civilization game being released by Activision. I followed CTP's progress for 3 months until it got released early april here in Australia. It was the first time I bought a game staright away without reading any reviews about it before. My initial impressions of it was that it was average at best. Even more disheartening, some reviews of CTP came out which gave it at best a mediocre score. My heart sank... I no longer knew what I wanted in a game.

However I decided to push ahead and try to enjoy CTP to its fullest and slowly I was starting to enjoy this product. Plus with user modifications i was beginning to see the appeal of civ games through CTP. I couldn't get enough of civ... I wanted more... CTP was good but still didn't have that certain something...yet. I visited the civ2 forums and checked out some of the threads there and one day as I was visiting a computer swap meet, I managed to buy both civ2MPG and roller coaster tycoon. I played a bit of roller coaster tycoon(and proclaimed it as good) but then my satisfaction with Civ2 was what pleased me the most. Together Civ2 and CTP changed my gaming life....

I started to get that passion for gaming once again. I visited Apolyton every day to get the latest news on CTP and Civ2. i bought more games than I've ever had since coming to university. Although most of these games were good and higly acclaimed (Alien Vs Predator, Myth 2, Half life ) I would get sick of them after a while but I knew that I would always have Civ2 and CTP to fall back on whenever I got bored. Then I could go back to those other games and play for a bit more. However it was the complexity of civ and that "finding a new trick syndrome" that have so far managed to pull me back to it. Starcraft by comparison is a simple game compared to the vast strategy pool of civ.

But i still lusted for more Civ games and about a week ago finally broke down and bought Alpha Centauri. The gaming circle was complete... Civ2, CTP, SMAC and Apolyton... what more could a gamer need? These three games are the only games that I've been playing recently and I can' seem to stop. I know in my heart that the gaming passion has been rekindled and I have all the civ games and this site to thank for that. Now I wonder what Age of Kings is like?

NOTE FROM AUTHOR The original article below was posted in the Civ Comparison/other games because I wanted to know if playing Civ games changed your perspective on other games. However today as I was reading it again, I came to realize that it isn't really about Civ but more of an evolution of myself as a gamer. I believe that every gamer needs to evolve at some stage in their gaming lives or else the enjoyment and fun of games will die. For me it took Civ2, CTP and SMAC, for others it might be something else. Who knows how long I'll be with civ games before I come to my next evolution point again. I urge everyone who is a bored gamer to try a new game today... from a different genre, different people, or even a different platform! Happy gaming everyone and I hope you enjoy my story as much as I enjoyed writing it!

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About the author: "A gamer who has just started an important journey" (quote).

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