With all the strangeness going on on the geopolitical front these days, it’s nice that, sometimes, you can still find some international politicking that makes sense.  And leave it to Sid Meier to produce it with his game Civilization: Revolution.

In Civilization: Revolution, you’re out to become Ruler of the World by selecting a nation, as headed by one of its great mythical figures.  For instance, when playing as America, you’re led by Abraham Lincoln.  India is headed by no less than the Mahatma Gandhi himself, France is helmed by Napoleon Bonaparte, and so on.  From there, you’ll take your country of choice through the stone age all the way up to space exploration while trying to control the world through force of arms, through the sheer glory of your culture, through the glories of science by being the first civilization to develop space travel and reach Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighboring star system, or even through sheer force of economic might. Along the way, you’ll make alliances, make trade deals, fend off belligerent neighbors, and develop your own technological prowess to make yourself the super power you secretly long to be.

There’s definitely a lot to love about this game.  Beginners will get plenty of instructional help in the form of cartoonish advisors who show up on a regular basis and chip in their two cents about how your nation should be run.  You’ll have science advisors and economic advisors, cultural and military advisors.  You will not long for advice to help you through in the earliest stages of the game.

You’ll also have a panoply of game modes and options, including pre-built civilizations with specific growth targets in mind.   The graphics are fun and entertaining, and the gameplay is smooth and easy to work with.  It’s never an easy task to translate a PC title to console, so the sheer fact that there’s no reason to complain puts this ahead of a LOT of other titles.  It’s very nicely done.  There’s even a really great part of the game that kept my attention for hours—searching the planet.  Once you get to the point where you can make seagoing vessels, you can literally search the planet for ancient civilizations and long-lost technologies and all sorts of nifty stuff like that.  You’ll even get to find great places to settle satellite colonies, places near needed natural resources.  I remember the joy I had managing to find a cannon battery when the whole world was still trying to figure out gunpowder.  That cannon battery gave me a HUGE advantage, for a while.

But there are down sides here too—you’ll have plenty of difficulty options, but even the lower ranks can put up quite a fight.  And a lot of the control you might have come to expect from Sid Meier games has been pulled, probably necessarily, from the console version.  I once heard the term “beer and pretzels wargame” applied to strategy games of less involvement than the ordinary—Civilization: Revolution is very much a beer and pretzel wargame.

And if you’re okay with the lack of complexity, then you’ll get along very nicely with Civilization: Revolution.  Otherwise, you may want to stick to the stronger titles you’re more familiar with.