Alright, alright, yeah, yeah, my list is the new and fair more unknown Duke Nukem Forever. There, I made the obvious joke. Burn in hell.

Civilization 4 -- Publisher: 2K Games, Developer: Firaxis
Anyone who's anyone knew that Civilization 4 was going to end up on this list. The only question was whether or not it would take the number one spot -- and, just for the record, it didn't. It was a close call between this and numero uno, but let me tell you, them monkeys I had tied up in my closet do make reliable fun-factor calculations and comparisons, and they decided that Civilization 4 is all kinds of fantastic, but the number one game is all sorts of fantastic + 1.

Now, related anecdote time... Let me see here. Ah, yes. Now, back in the days shortly after people discovered they could they could pry their eyelids open with their mind, I was in my room popping in a PSX game disc that my Uncle and Aunt had gotten me for a Christmas present. I looked all over, and all I saw was the title "Civilization 2," and then I saw the back of the box and the screenshots. The only thing I could possibly think of was that this game was some kind of edutainment title. Now, let me clarify, I wasn't a very well-informed gamer back in them days; I contented myself with any Final Fantasy titles... Or the original Armored Core (I still have yet to play any other game in this series).

So, when I plugged in my original PlayStation into the TV in my room at BioDad's house, and threw in this... Civilization 2 thing, I will tell you the one thing I learned very quickly: "GOD, WHERE IS THE MANUAL?" After I flipped through the game's meager manual, I started figuring out the bare necessities I would need to actually play the game, and I began to enjoy myself fairly quickly. As the weeks went on, I began to immensely enjoy the game, playing a number of long, long games -- and when I say "long" I want you to get my full meaning of the word, because the PSX version of Civ 2 had the AI's turns take up to, and I kid you not, about three minutes a piece. So if you're playing in a game with eight opponents, we're talking a fairly lengthy amount of time between turns. It really made players fear the "end turn" button.



That was the first and last Civilization game that I ever played (though I gave Alpha Centauri a nice chunk of my time, it still wasn't a Civilization title) for a number of reasons; namely the fact that I don't believe I ever heard a positive word regarding the quality of Civilization 3. Though reading through numerous previews about the fourth entry in the franchise just made me hot -- the big PC Gamer article on Civilization 4 (the month the game took the cover of the magazine) is probably the single-biggest reason that I ordered the game as soon as I possibly could.

And the final released game could be called anything but a disappointment. The first time I played it was after a series of nights of three-four hours of sleep each, and the little computer-animated mug of Sid Meier teaching me the ins-and-outs of the game through his freakishly-frightening scary in-game representation. The still drowsiness of my early-morning comatose has actually helped to solidify that disturbing image into my mind's eye. Whenever I'm down, whenever I need that thought to lift me up from my dark abyss of depression and self-reflection, Sid Meier's computer-generated body is there to help.

And by help, I mean horrify.



Honestly, though, Civilization 4 is the best turn-based strategy game I have ever played. One of the many testaments to the game's greatness is in the fact that I, a complete state-certified moron with a dog-like capacity for advanced thought, was able to get into the game relatively easy and have some semblance of what was going on. And one related testament to the game's greatness is just how insanely complex it is once the player gets to a point where he wants to peel away the layers of user-friendliness that cover-up some of the less "understandable" components of the game. Firaxis did such a fantastic job covering up the more complex aspects of the game that when I searched the vast reaches of The Internet to find out exactly what the hell I was doing, that I actually wondered if this tutorial was actually talking about the same game that I had been playing. I mean, the screenshots looked similar, but I just couldn't be sure.

I guess, in the end, Civilization 4 is the new turn-based strategy game that developers across the country will be copying and trying to improve upon before Firaxis' next entry into the genre. The new rendering engine of the game makes every aspect of it look fantastic -- though, occasionally, I do miss the highly-detailed art of the 2D era, but the flexibility that the 3D look allows the game is enough to make me forget about it (though I can't help wish that they had taken a Rise of Nations-esque look). And, despite any misgivings I may have about the new look (which aren't many aside from the ones I listed here), the ability to seamlessly zoom out and check out the world as a whole at any point in the game makes it all worthwhile. And, from the sounds of it, all the launch issues of heavy memory consumption, CD troubles, and so on have been pretty much resolved by now, so that's all good too.

The only real trouble I have with playing Civilization 4 isn't really even a fault of the game itself, just a personal one. The idea of starting up a new game of Civilization 4 is simply so daunting, that I have yet to do it in a month or so, simply due to my fairly heavy workload for the time being. And I know, for a fact, that the second I finally get a new game going that the rest of my day is absolutely forfeit. It's simply such a good game that it's damn near impossible to force yourself to stop pressing the "End Turn" button and going for that one... last... round. It's apparently a real issue for many others as well. I've heard tales of people who laughed at the in-game alarm clock when they first saw it, but have since become avid supporters and users of such an ingenious idea.



There's not much left I really have to say about the game. You really just need to play it. Now. Go. And, until tomorrow or the day after, you better only stop playing it long enough to read the impending article about the #1 game of 2005.