eye candy

I have decided that Civilization IV definitely falls under the addictive category. There are some very high expectations here, so I haven't had enough time to decide if it meets them, but I am certainly having a different reaction than when I bought Master of Orion III a while back, a downright terrible and worthless addition to follow the masterful Master of Orion II. The tutorial was amusing in that there's a little animated Sid Meier giving you instructions to follow as you start a new civ. I do have some of the negative reaction wondering why so much of the eye candy one expects in a first person shooter video game has to have migrated into Civ IV, particularly as it requires much more processing speed and RAM and the DVD has to be in the drive to run (I really don't know why it doesn't allow you to do a full install; there are internet features with multiplayer options, so surely they could check serial numbers that way for copy protection). But I will say that much of it does add to the gameplay, and aside from the time and expense of development and greater system requirements, none of it really detracts from the gameplay; it appears they didn't sacrifice playability to spend more time doing fancy graphics.

Religion finally does something interesting, and there is more flexibility among governmental effects. However, at least with the government civics, it seems like a lot of real world effects have been blurred for the sake of playability, which is an interesting choice given that the Civ series has been the benchmark for making playable computer games that bear some semblance to how things have worked in history. It is quite likely this will seem more realistic as I have a chance to spend more time with it, but it feels like there should be more benefits in going from, say, hereditary rule to universal suffrage than there are built into the game mechanics.

Or maybe that's just my cultural relativity biasing my opinions. At any rate, clearly an issue needing further inquiry and research. Enough with this writing already.

Before I go, Brian, I have to ask, do you need money or something? I know law school is expensive and all, but turning brianshank.com into a porn site, come on man. At least it should have been something a little more your style, a little Asian flavor or something.