Review: Civilization Revolution for Windows Phone 7

Review: Civilization Revolution for Windows Phone 7

 

I started playing Civilization back in the day when the game could fit on a stiffy or two. In other words, the game was not bigger then 5 meg!  

 

As time went on. sequels to the game expanded in size and scope until you would need a thousand or more stiffies to accommodate the game.

 

Recently though, the game was shrunk back to 5 meg so that it would comfortably fit on you mobile phone. Civilization Revolution for Windows Phone 7 has been released on Xbox  recently and I decided to take a look since I am a long time fan. 

Game play

Image from: phonearena

 

The goal of Civilization is to take you tribe of savages in year 4000 BC, build big cities, raise armies and learn new technologies up to the point where you start exploring space and colonizing new planets.

 

You start of with a small town of your own, and then much like chess, each player on the board gets an opportunity to move. Instead of moving pawns and bishops, you move infantry, tanks, battleships and bomber aeroplanes. You must also build buildings in your cities, develop new technologies and explore new territories to colonize.

 

You move your military and select what buildings should be built in which cities. After you made your selection the other nations get to move their military units and build their buildings.

 

Another crucial point where Civilization (CIV) differs from chess is the different ways in which you can win the game. Chess you have limited ways. In Civ you can either go for a brutal victory  by wiping out all nations on the planet using your military or you can go for more sophisticated victories like the economic victory, cultural victory or technological victory. 

Achievements

The achievements for the game has not been thought through at all. To unlock the achievements, all you have to do is play the game with each nation on the easiest setting and soon you will unlock them all.

 

They could have made the achievements more diverse by handing out achievements for completing the game at different difficulty levels or by achieveing victory by the different victory methods. 

 

Verdict

Although the achievements are not challenging at all, Civilization will keep you busy for a while as you try to become the ultimate leader the world has ever seen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Real-life Transformer Robot

Real-life Transformer Robot



 

 

 

This 1/12 scale real-life Transformer robot by Japanese designers Brave Robotics is for sale and you can pick it up for only $24,000! It really works but it still looks a bit wonky.

 

Even though it still looks like a toddler first finding it's feet, it is not hard to imagine them getting better and better at it and that one day we will have life-size models that will follow us around. Hopefully can program them to pick up dog poop so I don't have too anymore.

 

 

Friday Time Waster

Friday Time Waster

It is Friday and as soon as your d@mn boss leaves you can stop predending to work and mess around on the Internet.

Here is a little something to help you waste time - Terry Tate Office Linebacker.

Originally, Reebok produced just one of these adverts for the Super bowl but after the runaway success of the first one, they (thankfully) made some more.

See Terry ‘bring the pain’. It is a thing of beauty.

 

 

In the second episode things heat up as Terry get some competition.

 

 

After all that hard work, Terry deserves a holiday. 

 

In need of more Terry Tate? Open YouTube and do a quick search, you will find many more videos there.

 

 I will now leave you with this quote from Terry Tate: 

"I don't have time for pain. The only pain I have time for is the pain I put on fools who don't know what time it is."

2011 Tech Highlight (sort of anyway)

iPhone 3G

When the iPhone was first released I read this review:

“The iPhone is a piece of shit and so is your face.” The review influenced me so much that I never gave the iPhone a second thought.

However, through the years I have heard so many good things about the iPhone that when my Blackberry got “nationalized” earlier this year I thought that maybe it was time to get an iPhone and see for myself what the big hoo-haa is.

I bought a second hand iPhone 3G and was (un)pleasantly surprised by it. The phone is beautiful to look at and it works like a charm but the battery life was horrible. I had to charge the phone twice a day, but that was not the bad part…

I used the internet on the iPhone like I would use it on my Blackberry and in the first month I racked up a R900 data bill! Did I really consume so much data with my Blackberry? So I had to kill the 3G, turning the iPhone 3G into just an iPhone.

I also have a lot of documents on my phone and find it hard to navigate inside a lot of text without the help of some arrow keys. I really miss the slide out keyboard from my old phone.

So here is my suggestion for the ultimate iPhone: unlimited internet bandwidth like a Blackberry and an elegant slide out keyboard like the Sony Experia.

Now that would be a brilliant phone.

 

Bonus disappointment: my iPhone have not slipped any random sexual innuendo into my conversions yet.

 

 

Source: runt-of-the-web

 

I am the proud owner of: Xbox 360 and an iPhone.

Spot the geek - Friday Time Waster

Of these three celebrities below, can you spot the biggest geek? Hint: he runs his own gaming company.

 

Did you guess tough guy Vin Diesel? If you did, congrats, you got it. Of the three people up there, he is by far the geekiest. He likes to beat the shit out of people in movies and he likes to beat the shit out of people in games.

Vin started playing video games when he was young but he soon got bored with the one dimensional stories and switched to something with a richer and fuller storyline - Dungeons and Dragons. The nerdiest of nerd games.

He has been playing D&D for 20+ years now!

He always kept quiet about his dark secret until he heard that Steven Spielberg is working on the Medal of Honor games. That was his cue to come out of the geek closet and announce that he is going to start his own gaming studio – Tigon Studios.

Tigon Studio is dedicated to making games with great story lines. One of their first games was based on the Pitch black / Chronicles of Riddick movies, Chronicles of Riddick, Escape from Butcher’s bay.

I have noted before that games based on movies suck badly, but Escape from Butcher’s Bay is something else, it scored a whopping 90% on Metacritc. The critics and players loved the game.

Other games by Vin Diesel’s studio have also done well scoring (Wheelman) 65% and (Assault on Dark Athena) 80%.

Bonus geek fact: In the movie XXX, Vin Diesel sported a fake tattoo that read Melkor. Melkor is the name of one of his D&D characters.

Honorable Mention – Ice T

When Ice T is not rapping about shooting people, he is shooting people on Xbox. On his Twitter account he talks a lot about games and the games he is playing. Some of his favorite games include Call of Duty and Dead Space.

Buy your own super villain lair online now!

Have you been dreaming of becoming a super villain? Is the only think holding you back the fact that you don’t have a kickass stronghold?  

If you are going to demand that world governments bow before you and you are doing it from your mom’s basement, they are just going to laugh at you.  

What you need is one of these ultra modern real-life super villain lairs.

Image: Missle basis Properties

These innocuous looking buildings are actually nuclear missile bases in disguise! Above ground they don’t look like anything spectacular but below ground it is a different story. They consist of reinforced concrete structures that continues deep under ground where they used to house nuclear missiles.

Image: Missle basis Properties

The US army does not need these bases anymore and are selling them to the public. Misslebases.com has several of these old nuclear bases for sale. They go for anything from $200 000 to $2 million.  

Ultra luxurious on the inside, you can now send your demands to world governments in style!

Image: Missle basis Properties

Bono teams up with Spiderman

 

A Spiderman stage production with music written by Bono? Now, I have officially seen everything.