My import copy of this arrived yesterday, and I pretty much spent all evening playing it.

It reminds me of Master of Orion (the original one) in a very good way.  Obviously, not in the topic or the structure of gameplay, but the way it is streamlined down to the things I care about, and how you can finish a game start-to-finish in 4-5 hrs (or less).   Having a stack of 2 armies (so about 6 units total) is a major force in the game.   A fairly well developed building (though maybe not your capital) will have like 4 buildings in it total by the end of the game.  There is virtually no micromanagement, though I suspect I may discover more as I learn more about the strategies of the game.  Your civ-specific bonuses are not little things like +5% attack, they are bigger things like auto-healing units or all cities start with bonus population.

It’s a shame this isn’t coming out for the PC, since I think it’s just a good Civ experience.  It is kind of divergent from Civ 4 though… whereas Civ 4 feels like a “history simulator” (albeit a light one compared to EU3 or whatnot), Civ Rev feels like a boardgame.  There are a few things I miss from the bigger Civ games, but on the whole it is a pretty worthwhile trade.  They just go out of their way to make some things a lot less painful – there’s no war exhaustion, no unhappiness, no corruption, and almost no population management.  Yet it retains all that core “Civ” vibe and identity and general gameplay flow.  I’m quite impressed. 

It takes a bit of unlearning from normal Civ strategies, actually.  At first I was worried about expanding too fast, or staying at war too long, and those are really just non-issues in the game.

As a totally unexpected bonus, all my time spent playing was with Xavier sitting next to me on the couch, totally absorbed.  He loved watching the armies fight and the cities grow.  He particularly wanted to make sure I fought all the barbarians in the world.   It probably didn’t help my strategies to have a 7 yr old advocating war against anyone we met, but it sure was fun.  It’s the first time I’ve seen him get engaged in a strategy game, which I think is awesome.  By the end of the evening he was making suggestions about whether or not we needed more armies and which cities to conquer, which was just plain fun for me as a Dad.  His favorite feature, bar none, is the goofy animated advisors which shove each other out of the way as you flick between menus.  Not what I might have guessed, but it clearly worked out...

So yeah, thumbs up overall.  I think it’s out here through regular channels in a couple of weeks.

Ok, the Spore Creature Creator (or at least the free downloadable version) is way more fun than it has any right to be.

My first creature?  An amorphous jellyfish with spikes and mandibles in all directions, like something straight out of Lovecraft.  I'm not sure what this says about me, but it probably isn't good.

I think I'm glad the full game is delayed until 2009 -- the rest of the year is going to be more than I can handle games-wise as it is.  Civilization Revolution, Guitar Hero 4, Mercenaries 2, Saints Row 2...  not to mention the fact that I'm already buried under a giant pile of games and my continued progress to 100% on GTA IV eats up most of my free children-asleep time...

Edit: Soren reminds me that Spore is actually out in September!  My gaming time is going to be in even shorter supply.... Well, that's a good problem to have!  :)

Oh, it's torment watching my European (and Firaxian) friends pop up on Xbox Live with CivRev Achievements.  Maybe not quite as bad as when I was spotting people playing GTA IV ahead of the release, but still pretty bad.  There's still almost a whole month to wait, too!  Curse those US publishers holding on to the 360 version until the DS one is done! 

I've managed to avoid the demo so far.  I don't like playing demos of games I know I'm going to get.  But the wait is making it hard to resist...

I have great admiration for the Lego-ization process making brutal and horrific violence completely acceptable for little kids.  I mean, lets face it, Raiders of the Lost Ark is not exactly a family-friendly movie.  Those snakes still creep *me* out!  But when Lego Indy is comically scared of a Lego snake or shoots some guy into Lego pieces, it all just works.

That's a pretty amazing franchise when you can apply it to source material as different as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies.  Yet it totally hits on the right beats... wandering around the college last night in Lego Indy, with the sweeping musical themes playing... it totally pushed all the buttons of my fond teenage memories of the series.

Will Lego Batman continue the streak in the fall?  Hard to say.  But I'm impressed so far.

One of the nice things about travel is that it gives me some quality time with the handheld systems.  Usually PC and console gaming dominates my free time, but on the road, it's the PSP and DS that come out (ok, the laptop I'm writing this on now sees a little World of Warcraft action from the hotel too).  I'm really amazed at the quality of portable games these days -- honestly, some of them are quite giving my "normal" console gaming a run for the money.

I've already mentioned The World Ends With You, and examples of good DS games are legion: Professor Layton, Advance Wars 2, Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Phoenix Wright, and Picross, just to name a few that have stayed in my "current games" DS case for quite a while.  But I'm pleasantly surprised at the quality of games for the PSP, particularly in one of my favorite sub-genres of games, strategy RPGs.  Jeanne d'Arc is well worth checking out, and the ports of Disgaea and FF Tactics are both quite good.  But recently I've been logging a lot of time with Wild Arms XF for the PSP. 

XF hits all the same beats that make me generally fall in love with the Wild Arms series -- overwrought dialogue matched with very solid gameplay, and a kitschy Western-meets-Fantasy vibe that has really grown on me.  Taking a turn from the rest of the series this one is a full on strategy-RPG, with complex tactical combat, a job system, the whole works.  I'm not super far into it, and the difficulty curve seems a little uneven, but so far I have to give this one quite a recommendation.

I'll admit I'm a little sad the way some of my favorite genres, like strategy RPGs and platformers, seem to have been exiled to the handheld platforms.  But hey, I'll take good games on whatever platform I can find them.  Who knows, maybe Operation Darkness and the new Banjo Kazooie game will turn those genres around on the Xbox 360...