Yes, for the next 6-8 months you are going to have to deal with me periodically going all fanboi and frothing at the mouth about the upcoming release of Civilization V. Once it does hit the shelves, you will then have to deal with me complaining about all the bugs and poor gameplay issues until the first few patches and mods finally shape it into something playable, whereupon you will hear next to nothing from me while I spend countless hours playing One More Turn.
Here is the first of what will undoubtedly be many previews of the game as the developers start feeding the gaming websites with sneak peeks and propaganda designed to whet the appetites of the fanbase. While some of the changes in the game that are discussed in the article sound fascinating, I am a little concerned that the focus seems to be pushing the game further and further along the path of being a war simulation game and less into the multi-faceted “many ways to win” model that Civ IV pursued. But it’s clear from the article that the developers are still addressing gameplay issues and aren’t committed to the final form of the game yet.
True personal story: I began playing Civilization in 1996, when the Mac version of Civ II first hit the market. The day I brought the game home was also the very first full day we had Maynard, when he was a tinky-winky li’l kitten only a few weeks old. He was so little that we had to feed him kitten formula from a dropper, and I wasn’t entirely sure that he would survive, but he turned out to be a very tenacious little kitten. The first weekend I had the game, I stayed up all night playing it on my Mac Performa, checking in on the kitten, who needed to be fed every four hours. Mister Maynard is now a senior citizen kitteh of almost 14 years of age, and I am not sure that he will be with us by the time Civ V hits the shelf, but I was wrong about his chances as a baby, so maybe I’m being too pessimistic again now.


Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
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