#1: Civilization IV (2005)
My history with the Civilization games is checkered at best. I remember when the original first came out. I was right there in line to buy it the day it was released. I bought it along with another game which I don’t remember. I brought them both home and started playing the other game. I hadn’t even opened Civilization when Doug “Finsternis” Linder came over, saw the box, said “I’ve heard this is really good, can I borrow it?” and I said sure.
He left with the box that night, and I never got it back. I didn’t much care, either. I’ve had a lifelong ego struggle with this man, and even back then I knew that if there was something he liked so much that I couldn’t get even a borrowed copy back from him, it certainly wasn’t anything I wanted anything to do with. So I missed it. That’s okay, I didn’t even know what a “4X” game was.
To the uninitiated: “4X” refers to “explore, expand, exploit, exterminate”, a type of strategy game in which you generally find yourself in the middle of a large, unknown map, then set about 1) exploring the area, 2) building cities or military units in order to expand the amount of territory and resources you control, 3) wash, rinse, repeat until you’ve blown up all the competing players or otherwise found a way to victory or defeat.
My very first experience with a 4X game would come later, ironically with a much older game. I had to work late one night, just to monitor some overnight job for hours on end, and that same Doug “Finsternis” Linder handed me a worn, dogeared floppy disk with a game called Empire on it, and suggest I use that to while away the long, boring hours. Well, it had been years since he’d played it, so I figured that was enough time for the “Doug germs” to die and fall off of the game’s packaging, so I loaded that sucker up.
I started a game of Empire, and before I was able to finish it, and before I knew it, it was 3 AM and the job was over and it was time to go. I never went back to Empire because of the obsolete graphics and unwieldy user interface, and also because I could still smell some Doug on it, but one thing I learned that night was that the 4X genre was the finest, most addictive, most compelling genre of computer game that I would ever come across.
As an aside, I’d like to give you a sense of how terribly addictive this type of game can be. There is another venerable 4X franchise, set in space, called “Galactic Civilizations”. I was a huge fan of the first game and played it for countless hours while I was taking my year-and-a-half “finding myself” tour of the country. At the end of a game, if your score was high enough, you could have it automatically posted to the GalCiv website for all to see.
All I remember was that there was one guy, named “Technician”, who would play the game every single day, once a day, with the game set to the exact same settings every day — highest difficulty level, small galaxy, same number and type of enemies. He owned the first page or two of the all-time high score list. He had obviously mastered the game, at least with these (extremely difficult) settings, as he would win every single day. Not a loss on his record.
I looked back through the history, and he had been doing this for months. More than a handful of months, at that. Once a day. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. Eventually I asked the guy, you’ve obviously mastered the game, you’re obviously never going to lose, why on Earth would you do this day after day, month after month?
He said, simply, he enjoyed it.
That’s how addictive it is.
Shortly after that first encounter with Empire, Empire Deluxe was released, and that remains to this day the only computer game I’ve ever faked an illness so I could stay home and play it the day after I got it.
I told Doug about my affinity for these games, and he suggested I go back and try Civilization, since it was, in his words, like “super-Empire”. I couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful, but still my repugnance for this man’s tastes and suggestions was stronger than my desire for a super-Empire game, so still I steered clear.
I would have to wait for Civilization II to truly get my first taste of the game that I bought and never played, lo those many years ago.
It was, truly, super-Empire. Turns and hours just melted away for weeks on end. It was, and still is, hard to believe that a game could have that strong a hold on a player for that much time. It truly is one of those games which just never gives you a reason to stop playing, all the way up until the game ends, which in Civ II’s case could have been 10-20 hours in the future. And then there’s not that much reason to not fire it right back up again.
Since those days, 4X games have come and gone, even another Civ game had come and gone. People didn’t like Civ III but at that time in my life I wasn’t playing games much, so I’m not sure why.
Then Civ IV came out and it was like that night with Empire all over again. I was under the spell again. The perfect gaming genre had won me over again. But this was different. You could fire up the worst 4X game in the world and it’ll still draw you in for a few hours before you realize how much it sucks. As my hours with Civ IV went on, though, it began to occur to me that this might not just be the best genre, but the perfect entry into it.
The graphics were, for the first time, not merely functional, but very beautiful. The lush landscapes seem to come alive on your screen in a way no 4X game has managed. In one of the more impressive special effects I’ve seen in any game of any kind, you may seamlessly zoom in to a single city square, and hear all of the bustle and music within the city, and then zoom back out again so far that you are floating in the solar system, seeing and rotating the entire globe, hearing nothing but wind and emptiness. Sure, you can’t hear wind in space, that’s not the point. Does it affect the strategy or game design? No. Does it finally raise the 4X genre to the level of art?
Absolutely, and with poetic flourish.
The rest of the game is similarly polished and wonderful. World Wonders, when accomplished, bring back the little movies from Civ II, but this time fully computer-generated and magnificent. Leonard Nimoy’s voice resonates with the perfect balance of studiousness and whimsy. The icons are all clear. Everything you need to know about the game is no more than two mouse clicks away. Everything is spelled correctly. Search the game from nook to cranny, and everything is just right.
On the gameplay front, 4X has never been deeper. It is not just about territory. Layers upon layers of shifting power overlay the landscape, offering countless ways to “expand and exploit”, from religion, to cultural influence, to economic power, to resource monopolization. It is like several games in one, all being played at the same time, and all brutally effective at sucking away your time and brainpower.
And they even managed to make the gameplay smoother than all of the predecessors. Games are mercifully shorter now, without losing any of the punch.
This is the desert island game, the last and only game you will ever need. You will never be done with it, and the only way to lose is to stop playing. Everything else is endlessly joyous, endlessly fun, and essentially flawless.
Civilization IV is the greatest game of all time.
Ice Cream Jonsey