View All (4)

Hours of entertainment in the form of enemy-taunting, new units and a nifty new map editor.

In 1990, a star was born. Sid Meier hatched one of the most captivating series of all time-Civilization. In over a dozen years, the franchise has seen a number of incarnations, ranging from pure brilliance (Civilization 2), to utter drek (Call To Power). Each one of these games offered hours of construction and destruction. Play the World, of course, follows the same time-trusted formula.

Here’s the drill, for those less fortunate children who have yet to play Civilization. You build an empire and attempt to outmaneuver your enemies, be it through assimilating them culturally (my favorite method of destruction) or by building the first colonizing space ship, or by simply annihilating them in the traditional, warmongering sense of the word.

I like to take a Borg-ish approach to the game, funneling my cash into technology, libraries, temples & building wonders. After I’ve built up my towns a bit, I can simply sit back while my rivals’ towns overthrow their own governments and join my culture. Resistance is futile!

Civilization 3: Play The World offers eight new tribes - the Arabs, Carthaginians, Celts, Koreans, Mongols, Ottomans, Spanish & Vikings. Each tribe has a new special unit (the Berserk for the Vikings and the Gallic Swordsman for the Celts, and so on).

Additionally, there are a few new small wonders, including Wall Street (brought back from Civ 2, this was conspicuously absent from the first version of Civ 3). A few new improvements or your cities are also included with Play the World - the Stock Exchange, Civil Defense & Commercial Docks for example.

Of course, there are also the requisite host of new maps and an updated map editor, along with a few new modes of gameplay. Play the World includes the Regicide and Capture the Princess options. The latter is a nod to good old capture the flag games - get the princess & bring her to your capital, and you can score mucho points. Regicide starts each civ with a “king” unit (Abe Lincoln for the Americans, and so on). When the king is killed, the entire civilization is eliminated.

But what really makes Play the World worth the cash is the online ability. Finally, you can pit yourself against anyone in the world who chooses to play. And hopefully, listen to them beg for mercy as you crush them like the little ants they are! (Cue evil, maniacal laughter here.)

Of course, there are a few little snags. Namely, online games take a REALLY long time. I was shocked by how slowly everyone else moves - I’ve never been a big one for wasting time, but apparently 90 percent of the gaming community moves at a snail’s pace.

I found myself sitting & waiting for much longer than in a single player game - and it does get increasingly frustrating as the game moves forward and the civilizations expand. Imagine how long it takes 8 individuals to each move dozens of troops and monitor as many towns.

Needless to say, fast paced isn’t the best description for Play the World at times. Thank god the programmers did provide us with Turnless Mode and Simultaneous Turn Mode as well - this does speed the game along a bit, since everyone now moves during the same timeframe, but one poky user can make a game drag out unnecessarily unless the timer is set to ludicrous speed.

Additionally, you have to stick with the game for hours on end, and for most gamers, that’s not a foregone luxury if you have sort of a normal social life. Personally, having a full-time job makes 4-hour play sessions a bit challenging. Also, there aren’t all that many games going at a given time.

I would have thought that this game would have had a stronger following, but it’s not like Diablo 2, that’s for sure (and thank god to that, the Civ users are a bit more intellectual overall). Basically, at any point that I was online (mainly evenings and weekends), there were only 4 or 5 games open, and three-quarters of those were locked games amongst friends.

And as for actually making it into a game? It can take up to an hour if you’re just shooting to play with random users. I literally spent 45 minutes last night attempting to get a game going. For one reason or another, they were all crashing. As one of my fellow players stated “if Infogrames intends on staying in the online business, they’d better clear up some of these bugs”.

Some of the crashes could be averted if the clients could be clearly identified in the setup screen. There have been multiple patches for Play the World - and if users with different versions of the patch attempt to launch a game together, the entire game crashes. Also frustrating are out of sync errors with high-ping users. I found that about 25% of the games dropped due to one player. Infogrames, are you reading this?

Some of these problems can be addressed by playing with friends - you can save games & come back to them at arranged times with random players - but it tends to be easier to manage with people you know, versus strangers in Sweden, for example. Still, the little luxury of playing a few rounds and saving your game is a foregone luxury here - you have to have a large chunk of time to devote to each game, and even with accelerated production, it takes a long time to advance.

It could take you a full day to reach the space-shuttle launch at this rate. Quite frustrating, if you ask me. And since you’re reading my review, you did ask. Additionally, like many girl-gamers (or boy-gamers, for that matter), I don’t have all that many friends who are rabid online gamers, which means that gathering enough “real-life” friends for a game is roughly as likely as me ever unpacking my apartment.

However, Infogrames did include a feature allowing you to play via email. But that simply lacks the instant gratification our generation requires.

What do I still miss from previous editions of Civilization? The wonder movies & the live-action counsel, both from Civ 2. Civ 2 still holds a certain charm after all these years that Civ 3 seems to be lacking. Bring back my little Elvis-impersonating Happiness Advisor.

Overall, though, Civilization 3: Play the World is a nice link in the fence. For all of the problems I’ve kvetched about here, my review was a week late due to Play the World. I simply couldn’t stop myself from attempting to pit myself against some of the best gaming minds on the net. And taunting their pansy-asses in real time.

And shockingly, this little girl is holding her own out there. Watch out world, here comes Poptart the magnificent (look for me online, I’ll happily play with anyone who challenges me). Of course, I have devoted roughly half of my life to playing Civilization, so maybe it’s not all that surprising that I can beat the pants off of a lot of the boys, now is it?

Review by Allyson Alt.