It’s a shame that EA decided to release this game as a rental.

Think before shelling out your hard earned $50. You have been warned!
Rating: 1 / 5

EA’s pezzonovante, they come not in respect. They come not asking to be our friends. Not once. Even though we keep financing their very existence. They only ask greedily for more.

Like Hyman Roth, EA tries once more to infect our domains with SecuROM RootKits and make us pay again and again for the same game by Limiting its installations. By claiming to fight piracy (ironic already…) EA wants to keeps squeezing its own customers. And they are ready to badmouth and brand as “pirates” anyone who might stand up to their rule.

But just like Don Fanucci, behind the white suit of an ever-menacing EULA hides nothing. Forced to accept an agreement under pain of suffering the financial loss of a worthless non-refundable product nullifies any stipulation in said agreement before any court of law. They only rule on our fear.

But we shall fear no more. Because this is cosa nostra. We have been in PC gaming long before these accountants ruined this beautiful artform.

Make them an offer they can’t refuse: let THIS horses’ head soil the silk sheets as EA is slumbering. Eventually they will wake up.

And they will do so screaming.

Gamers, I salut!
Rating: 1 / 5

The single-player game contains several features that provide the best part of the Godfather II game. Namely, the strategic and “Don view” overlay, family management, and a somewhat open-ended game world in which the player must exert their will on opposing AI mafia families.

While the single player experience will likely take most gamers around 30 to 40 hours to complete, a notable degree of linearity exists that causes the replayability to diminish quickly. This is in part due to its focus on plot and story telling–not a bad thing on its own–but also because of a general lack of randomness.

This lack of randomness extends into aspects you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see, including the pool of possible family recruits and the static nature of businesses (aka “crime rings”). This is somewhat offset by the fairly large game world consisting of three major locales (a small New York region, a large Florida region, and a moderately sized Cuba region), altogether offering a fair number of overall business locations and number of recruitable associates that will take some time to explore completely.

The game play itself has a familiar feel that manages to feel a bit novel at the same time. While it is fun to hear the commentary as your crew smashes a cafe or gives the smack down to opponents, both the one-liners and the game play strays into repetitiveness by about mid-game. Upgrading your men and finding weapon upgrades does nothing to escape this and the strategic side of the game also ceases to expand by this same point. In otherwords, you’ll be repeating more or less the same activities you were at the beginning of the game without any hope of those options and actions being expanded upon as you continue. It is what it is, nothing more and nothing less.

Some short cuts in the game design also manage to “whack” the sense of immersion and general depth of the setting, cheapening the game experience alongside. That is, some aspects have a distinct “gaminess” that is hard to overlook and, if abused, makes the game both too easy and a lot less fun. Examples include safehouse abuse and the ability to “shortcut” (via engineers, bruisers, or similar path-enabling family members) your way to business owners who must be, erm … convinced … that they should work for you. This latter aspect can allow you to utterly side step defenders of the location, convince the business owner to switch sides, and then immediately recruit in an army of defenders of your own–taking over some locations in literally seconds flat. Yes, this can be a yawn-fest that is almost unavoidable at later stages of the game.

While these gripes are tangible ones the game can be quite fun and the strategy aspects of the game help it stand out from competitors such as GTA IV. The strategy mode lacks depth but is something that adds an interesting dimension which, again, because of gaminess, tends to be engaging for the first few hours only later to become more of a nuisance.

The strategic addition is one part of the game that they really failed to exploit, a literal treasure trove still buried, at least so far as the single player game is concerned. It is utterly absent from the multi-player side of things–a huge mistake on its own, leaving a fairly slim multiplayer that quickly runs sour and repetitive. In sum, it is something that they simply failed to tap into as completely as they should have no matter what type of game you were hoping to play.

Perhaps the one aspect of the single-player game that is most damaging is that it is too easy, particularly when you’ve grown and upgraded your family. Strategically speaking, the game dies after your family becomes powerful enough and you are more or less assured that no business will fall to enemy hands.

This easy-mode factor also extends to the direct game play in which taking over rival locations is your main activity. Unfortunately, there is no means (that I’m aware of) to increase the difficulty without artifically limting yourself in some fashion. A difficulty slider or setting could at least make the latter parts of the single-player game still engaging.

Multiplayer, well, it is rather astonishing that they didn’t extend the mechanics and greater game world of the single player game to multiplayer. If they had, they really may have had a fantastic hit on their hands no matter what the single-player game provided. The developers opted to, in their words, “tighten up the multiplayer world”, resulting in smallish game maps, overly focused game modes, an utter lack of strategy at any level, and a concentration on combat-only gaming that is done much better in any number of competing games.

They really missed their opportunity with this one and a very late attempt to add some sense of strategy, via the game-day release addition of “Don View”, only managed to highlight how badly the developers and designers failed to tap into this dimension of the game.

How and why they opted to ignore this, only the brighter minds at EA can suggest. The irony is that virtually everyone I know expected and wanted the polar opposite of what was ultimately offered, so we have to imagine the designers considered it at some length on their own but decided against it even still. A crying shame, really, with virtually no chance of it being rectified going forward. Perhaps the designers will consider this mistake when they start work on Godfather III.

Having said that, in Godfather II’s multiplayer we’re offered a smattering of much more simplified game modes, each focused on one or another “specialty” such as safecracking or arson. Multiplayer families square off against one another in a manner reminiscent of more frantically paced games like Unreal and Quake than what many expected–a more strategically engaging multiplayer mode that could have taken advantage of both the setting and mafioso styled play that was just begging for a bit more cerebral multiplayer, punctuated by machine gun fire fights and ruthless “hits” of enemy players, of course. Games are notably brief affairs, usually no more than 20 minutes, and consist of frag-fest styled play with but minor hints at strategy or tactical incentive.

Frankly, if you were considering buying this game for the multiplayer I would suggest a serious reconsideration–and yes, this includes consideration of the release-day offering of “don mode” which really isn’t much to brag about, despite EA’s attempts to do just that.

In sum, Godfather II does offer a decent single-player experience that will provide many players at least a couple play throughs–some 60 to 80 or so hours in total, depending on your approach and leisure. My first play through took just over 24 hours from start to finish.

It is at least a good single player game. Not great, but good. You will feel as though another six or nine months of development, alongside a lot less short cutting and a bit more thoughtful design, could’ve made this a true classic that we’d all still be talking about in twenty years. Instead most players will give it a pair of cement shoes and send it to the same place as Luca Brasi.

When the price on this comes down about $15 it will be more worthy of the value, for single-player at least, and barring some post-release addition to multiplayer it shouldn’t even come onto your radar if online gaming is where your inclinations rest.

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OVERVIEW

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PRO:

– Capable setting with good (but not stellar) graphics, sound, and voice acting.

– Interesting strategic elements normally absent from this type of game.

– Solid plot and story telling elements.

– Fun combat with entertaining “fatality” moves.

CON:

– Linear single-player that eventually becomes repetitive.

– Narrow multi-player offering that simply lacks long-term fun.

– Obvious design shortcuts kill immersion, replayability, and overall game value.

– Console like control scheme and feel (not a negative for everyone).

– SP Game is quite easy with no ability to adjust difficulty.

– Securom DRM and EA Nation multiplayer requirements.

*NOTE: Yes, this game has DRM–it utilizes Securom 7. For those who understandably have a distaste for such things, you’re likely aware already and have probably avoided the game. Godfather II also requires that you connect to the EA Nation/EA Online system in order to play multiplayer–there is no LAN or private server capability, at least in the traditional sense. You can setup a so-called private (i.e., protected) game on EA Nation but you can’t host or join a game that isn’t in some way connected through EA itself. Ridiculous, I know, but welcome yourself to content control measures that have become a mainstay in modern gaming.
Rating: 3 / 5

The design enhancements don’t seem to be a significant enough improvement to make this game better than CivIII, while most of the problems still exist or got worse.

For example, new leader units have been added to allow you to customize your Cities/Civilization more than you could in CivIII. You can assign these leaders to be super workers, or to give you a free technology. They’re not necessary for winning, and their absence would not cause you to lose.

Also, military units gain custom abilities when they win enough battles. This is probably the coolest feature in the new game, but again, it doesn’t have a huge impact on gameplay. I found that even though I could choose to upgrade my units a little in their ability to attack cities or give them combat bonuses on different terrain, the units themselves were not long lived enough for those bonuses to have a significant influence on overall gameplay. I’d either lose the units in battle before they got too specialized, or they’d just become obsolete. Either way, I didn’t get more than a couple “promotions” before the unit was lost. Not much of a value add for me.

Also, worker units have a lot of options for what they can build on a tile. It’s not just irrigation and mining anymore. This can be great if you want to sit and crunch the numbers and figure out what will optimize your city, and then change what’s on the tiles as your city’s needs grow. On the other hand, it’s very confusing if you don’t want to make a science of it because each tile can have up to five different options. And be careful, once you chop down a forest, it’s lost forever. And there are some tiles that can never be improved. I never really understood why that was.

Where I think CivIV is actually a worse game than CivIII is the fact that automatic city management has become less complex, at the user’s expense. I can no longer tell a city to “only build buildings and don’t bug me until you’re done”. The city governor, can only be turned on or off, not customized. If you turn it on, it starts producing a slew of military units that I don’t want and am frustrated to have to deal with.

Further, it’s less obvious to me in this game what the other civilizations on the planet are up to. I found it hard to get a handle on what their level of technology was without invading them and seeing what units they were using to defend their cities. Also, I had no idea what wonders of the world they were building until I got a message box telling me that I could no longer work on the one I was building because it was built elsewhere.

Also, it became very difficult for me to see events that happens on the enemy turn, such as their attacks on my cities. They all seemed to happen at once, so that I couldn’t watch the results of their sieges if they had more than one happening on a turn. It was dizzying and frustrating trying to use the first half of my turn scouring my territory to figure out what might have changed from the previous turn.

Lastly, there are significant technical defects in the game. A lot of other reviews go into great detail in this area, so I won’t spend a lot of time, but there are three things that really annoyed me. One, the mouse cursor had a hard time figuring out what tile you wanted because of the 3D interface. It was a pain to sit there and wiggle the mouse around until it got it right each and every time I wanted to do something. Two, The UI was painfully slow. I wanted to queue up some buildings in my city’s production queues, since I have to do that manually now, and I would click wait ten seconds for it to catch up. Then I could click the second building in the queue and wait ten seconds for it to catch up. Then I could click the third, etc etc. My computer is decent. There’s no excuse for that bad performance. Third, the graphics engine would get confused and render incorrectly, which then would confuse me. For example, if a tank moves, it leaves tracks. About half the time, the tracks were drawn such that they came from a completely different tile than the tank. At first I thought it meant something was shooting at me and leaving black trails in the air, but then I figured out that it was just bad game code. Shameful and disappointing.

There are so many great game play enhancements that could have made this game so much better. For example, an explorer unit that could claim territory so that you had a little time to put down a city before someone else moved in and took it out from under you.

The two biggest improvements that I was looking forward to being added that were are a “no city razing” option that you can turn on when you start a custom game, and no pollution on map tiles which is a part of every game. Great! Unfortunately, compared to the other detractors and lackluster improvements, it just doesn’t feel like enough to keep me interested.

All in all, this game is a great disappointment for me. I’ve played and loved every Civ game since the original Microprose DOS Civ. I really wanted to love this one too. It took too many steps backwards and not enough forwards to satisfy me. I’m heartbroken.
Rating: 2 / 5

The presentation is just marvelous — with great graphics that even with all settings turned to the max, are snappy and just right. The wonder movies are astonishing as well although I did find some sound glitches in them.

Finally you can zoom all the way into your cities and every city looks different based on the choices that you’ve made through the game. Developed tiles around them slowly turn into suburban sprawl and the whole effect is very realistic. The animation on the ground is also very good and adds alot of beauty to the map.

The sound design is amazing with a wonderful soundtrack. The main menu music is just for color but i find myself sitting on the screen to let it play. The music choices are interesting and varied and suitable for the period. Mozart and the classics are to be expected. What I didn’t expect was to hear clips from the opera “Nixon in China”. Amazing to hear.

Units animate much better and combat is the pretty much the same “dice roll” type that has always been in the game. While it is more balanced than before, with city defenses a group of archers can still defeat units with guns. What adds a nice “RPG” feel is the upgrades through XP that you can give your units. This takes units to a whole new level and encourages combat.

The resources are much more developed and make it more fun. Workers now have many levels of duties they can do. While this is fun for while — like old games once you have 20 workers going you just automate them and don’t think of them again. This is a strength and a weakness. It’s great not to micromanage but why have something the computer is going to play for you? I wish there was more decisions that needed to be made in that respect that could affect how your game develops.

And as with previous versions this is an overall problem. The later stages of the game do bog down in popup clicking and choosing what to build. In the earlier phases it has alot of importance and if you are a warring nation it does. Being a peaceful, powerful nation is pretty boring though. Decision making is not as imporant or complex. Discoveries are nil and the game gets repetitive.

Battle though is pretty fun though so the best way to combat the above is to… well, combat.

The A.I. on the level I played was pretty weak. Asking someone to go to war with you gets no coordinated effort. In fact the other nation didn’t do one thing except move their units around. One time they even captured a city after watching me do all the work! This area could use alot of improvement as there is really no strategic reason to do it.

The Wonders are back although later in the game they don’t really add a whole lot. Mainly they will increase your culture. Only at the very end did any cities convert to my nationality due to culture. Occasionally a Wonder will afford you the ability to build something.

New in the game is the “Great Person” concept which adds another layer of choice onto what to do with your city. I wish they would do more than they do. After awhile it is a bit repetitive. Plus there is no explanation on who that person is so you can at least learn something. Mainly each category of person does the same thing.

The Civilopedia is back but doesn’t seem as helpful as in previous versions. It’s sad to see it actually get worse and less helpful. Also in that category are the “advisors” which are pretty useless here. Luckily other parts of the game provide insight so you don’t need them quite as much.

It might seem like there are alot of negatives but there is alot of good stuff and it is definitely the best version of the game yet. Highly recommended and still as addictive as ever. But… the replay value is lacking as once you do it a few times, it doesn’t vary enough to really warrant much repeating. The higher levels basically allow the other civs to “cheat” by getting things faster. I haven’t tried but one level so that remains to be tested.

Overall, thumbs up. Go buy it.
Rating: 4 / 5

Strengths:

While some will complain about this, the overall game has been redesigned. Unlike previous games which encouraged the building of as many cities as you could in the early part of the game, Civ 4 goes to a more strategic approach, but also gives you something to do each turn(instead of setting production and waiting several turns for what you want to build to finish). The game now eliminates the “corruption” system of previous games, and goes to a system where there is an expense that the city places on your government. So, you start with one city, and you need to build a bit slower, at least in the early game.

The graphics engine is now 3D, and with a decently powerful video card, you can see all your city improvements from the main map. You can zoom in and out as well.

Cultural boundaries are based on the culture output of your cities, and you can use culture as a way to expand your borders and capture border cities.

Religion is a system that allows the founder(s) of the different religions certain extras. If you are the founder of a religion, and you accept that religion as your “state religion”, you can see all the cities that contain that religion. Religion can spread on it’s own, or you can help it by sending out missionaries.

The game is open for mods, and there are many out there that you can download to tweak the game in different ways.

Replay value is high due to multi-player, as well as the random factor in map generation. There are some static maps, but there are also a number of random maps that can be adjusted based on your preferred play style. If you prefer there being only one continent, or higher or lower ocean levels, or a larger or smaller map, you can start the game with the settings YOU prefer.

There are also different game “speeds”, which decide how long each game will take. A marathon game on a huge map can take over six hours, but you don’t need to play on marathon.

Each of the AI civ leaders have their own personalities, with some being more warlike than others.

With the Warlords expansion, you have both unique units for each civilization, as well as unique buildings. These unique buildings and units replace a “standard” building or unit.

There are many more positives, but no game is without it’s negatives, even though I don’t really consider many of these to be real flaws.

If your video card does not support directX 9 in hardware, the game won’t look as good, and you will need to turn off certain graphics options. That is due to the video card not being able to handle certain graphics features. Even with DirectX 9, if you have a low end video card, including integrated video in most laptops, you may encounter some graphics issues. Intel video tends to be the source of many problems, but older laptops with DirectX 8.1 or earlier graphics chips tend to be the source of many display problems.

Even with a reasonably fast machine, video, CPU, etc, if you play on a huge world with 17 computer controlled civilizations, you will find that you need to wait a bit between turns(as the AI civs get their turn). This can make it a little annoying, but again, the choice of playing on a huge world with an older/slower computer is yours.

The AI at times can be a bit…slow. This is why multi-player is a good thing, because you can play against other humans. There are some mods out there that help with this. The next expansion(Beyond the Sword) has improved AI as a feature.

If you prefer a game that lets you win or lose based on thinking, and less on reflexes, then Civ 4 should be seen as a great game. If reflexes and fast gameplay are what you look for, then Civ 4 is NOT for you. Warlords and the second expansion(due out in July of 2007) add(and will add) to the base game. There are also a lot of elements in Civ 4 that will appeal to those interested in history, since there are references in the game to real life leaders, cultures, and world wonders.

Rating: 5 / 5

The game is so good it is hard to know where to begin. The dynamic 3D graphics, soundtrack, presentation, interface etc are all absolutely AAA. You can zoom in and out at will, and the graphical detail is absolutely astonishing. The music is also great and atmospheric. It changes to match the era, catching the mood nicely. All that is absolutely top-notch, yet it isn’t even the major reason why I would recommend this game.

Of course, strategy games stand and fall by their gameplay, and here too Civilization IV does not disappoint. If you’ve played any of the Civilization series, then you’ll know just what an addictive, “one-more-turn” experience it is. And I mean addictive. It’s all too easy for me to skip meals and sleep because I am so completely engrossed in planning my next strategic move.

This much is familiar from the days of Civilization II (which I spent literally hundreds of hours playing in the old days). I’m pleased to say that the latest installment has successfully captured all of the old feel of the classic Civilization. I say this, by the way, as someone who never got into Civilization III, which meant that I certainly had my doubts before getting Civ IV. These doubts were quickly dispelled. The new features which have been included in Civ IV, such as religion and great people, add whole new layers of strategy to the game. At the same time, they all combine elegantly with the basic game system of old.

What’s even more important is the radical effort that has been made to streamline the amount of micromanagement. This was always the Achilles’ heal of the previous versions of the game. I could find myself spending an hour on every move, painstakingly moving grains of corn from one tile to another in city after city, in order to avoid the waste that would otherwise occur. The great news is that the designers have at last woken up to the pointlessness and tediousness of most of this micromanagement.

For example, now surplus production points do not go to waste (as they used to in previous versions) but instead go towards the production of the next item you want to build. This “roll over” of production (which also applies to food, scientific research, etc) means that you can concentrate on managing your empire, instead of managing every single tile every single turn. At the same time, the cities have also become much smarter at managing their resources, and there is a nice array of options (all very easily accessible in the city display) which enable you to guide a city’s production priorities. Whether you choose to automate, or pursue a more hands-on approach, it is all very easy to manage.

As a result of these changes, the game now moves along much faster, while still containing a more-than-satisfying amount of thinking and strategizing every turn. This means I can sit down to start a game and reasonably expect to finish it within a week or two of intermittent playing. Sadly, the same cannot be said for many other strategy games on the market, which are often so long and complex that they are essentially unplayable.

What else? As a veteran of Civ II, I was pleasantly surprised to see what a challenge the game has become. Now, an effective military is just as important for defence as it is for attack. If you are weak, the AI will show you no mercy, and it can mount remarkably effective invasions. In general, warfare is now much more challenging and realistic. Pillaging has become a far more effective strategy than in the past, which means that fighting no longer revolves entirely around the capture of cities as it used to. The added emphasis on combined arms means that much more thought has to be given to the composition and deployment of your armed forces.

Really I could go on and on lavishing praise on this lavish game. But what am I doing? Why am a wasting time writing this review when I could be getting on with my next move?

Rating: 5 / 5

While I can edit this review, I can’t updating the ratings above; if I could, then I’d change them to 5 stars for ‘fun’ and 4 stars for ‘overall’ with the 1.52 patch installed.

I stand by my earlier contention that 2K Games pushed Civ4 out the door a few months too early. Civ4 should never have gotten through SQA (software quality assurance) and been declared ‘golden’ (ready for commercial release) with these kinds of defects. I suspect this was done to increase Christmas sales, but the net-wide flap over the Civ4 problems likely had just the opposite effect.

Since then, 2KGames had released patches to fix most of the technical problems. Because of that, I’ve deleted the section I originally had in this review regarding installation and graphics driver problems; just be sure to download and install the current Civ4 patch (version 1.52, as of this updated posting) from the 2kgames.com web site before playing.

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That said, I am quite happy with the changes and expansions made to Civ4. My highest praise goes to the actual game design changes, to wit:

–Faster gameplay. I typically play with a huge world, but I finish a game a lot faster than I could in Civ3. (That’s not saying too much; I’ve still had a few all-nighters.)

–Reduction or elimination of a lot of the micromanagement. I am _so_ happy not to be dealing with riots; in virtually every game that I’ve played, I’ve never had to open up a city and reallocate who was working where. Also, automated workers are a lot smarter (and have more options).

–The improved terrain modeling and the increased improvements options; again, it makes things more interesting.

–The combat unit “promotion” track. I tend to go for non-military victories, but this feature may make me play around more with actually conquering my neighbors. It also makes barracks more valuable.

–The “civics” and “religion” aspect. Both are interesting and fun, and both appear to be well-balanced.

–The “culture borders” concept. This allowed me to stake out territory while minimizing incursion by other nations. However, be aware that keeping your borders closed irritates the AIs after a while.

–The “great leaders” concept. There was a little of this in Civ3, but this new implementation makes it a far more vital part of the game. I managed to trigger two (2) golden ages for myself in one game (one by building the Taj Majal, the other by using several great leaders), and I also kept a few Great Engineers on hand to hurry some major wonder projects towards the end of the game. And Great Artists are very useful for ‘culture bombing’ neighboring cities or pre-emptively staking out large amounts of unclaimed territory.

Most of the complaints I had (UI response, lack of right-click menu features, raging barbarians) appear to have been fixed or, at least, improved by the 1.52 patch. Here are a few that remain:

–The “Show Friendly Moves” option does _not_ include units that are automaticly exploring (scouts, galleys, etc.)–which is where I used it the most in Civ3. Indeed, there appears to be some overall flakiness in both the “Show Friendly Moves” and “Show Enemy Moves” options–it’s hard to tell at times whether Civ4 is paying any attention to those options.

– Even with the 1.52 patch installed, when you complete a game, it’s best to exit Civ4 before starting a new game. I’ve had one or two abrupt crashes when I’ve tried to go from completing one game to starting a new one.

All this said, Civ4 is a major improvement (in game design and graphics) over Civ3. It is very addictive, and I’ve spent far more time playing it over the past several months than I should have. ..bruce..
Rating: 2 / 5