I didn’t post last week due to playing some Civ V. I wanted to get some decent time on it before writing a review, which I have done. And the more I played the more a terrible realisation dawned in my brain. Something that is so alien to me, so against all my video game virtues, I felt that I simply had to push it to the side. But I cannot ignore it any longer.

Civ V is not fun.

There, I’ve said it. And this coming from someone who has purchased every Civ game ever immediately on release. I have them all, every box set. I even purchased the box set for this one, (more on that later). It is my number one favourite game of all time. And yet, it’s just not happening for me. They threw the civ book out the window for the fifth installment in the series. And if you compare it with CivIV it is a completely different game in so many ways. Which I am fine with. I have no problem with that, if I want to play CivIV I can load up CivIV. And there are some great improvements in Civ V. The biggest change is no more stacks of doom. Only one military unit can occupy a hex. This has made making war actually strategic and not just a production race. Which is a shame seeing as the AI has about as much strategic sense as my cat, (which is dead).

I’m not going to go into all the technical details of the changes here, you can find that in a bunch of other places. It just feels like we are playing the Beta version of the game. Why isn’t it fun? Well, a huge reason is the fact that the further you get into the game, the longer the time you have to wait between turns for the AI to get through all its bits. This might have something to do with all the city states that are now present, as well as all the civilations, (and before you ask me the obvious, yes, I have a very powerful gaming computer. I built it from scratch with a mate who has a gaming rig shop. My rig is the super powerful awesome rig that gives me 100fps in Dalaran). We are talking around 20 to 30 seconds between turns by the time you get to about the year 1700. This is excruciating in its slowness. I spend most of my time just waiting for the computer to finish saying ‘please wait’ so I can press the enter button again. I am sure that they will eventually sort this out, but as it is now it just sucks. Either I stop playing at this time and start a new game, or I only play on very small maps, something which I never, ever do.

They got a lot of things right with this release. For example, one of the huge problems of previous titles was the fact that there were very few turns between giant technological leaps. So you would discover gunpowder, and get your muskateer as the French, only to be staring down the barrel of some panzers a few turns later. This has been fixed in Civ V. Lots of things have been fixed, too many to list here. But it still isn’t fun. Why …?

I don’t know. That’s the frustrating thing. I’m not over Civ, I’ve been playing CivIV Beyond the Sword for months now. But this version is just lame-ass. For one thing it is way too easy. Winning on Prince is a snore. But maybe I do know why it sucks. I think that Firaxis got greedy. They wanted to expand Civ and introduce it to all the casual gamers out there. So they reduced everything down to its very basics so the drooling retards could play it. But this is a strategic game. If you do that then what are you left with? Fuck all, that’s what. There are no choices here, no deep ones anyway. This was the highest ever selling simulation franchise, and I think they fucked with it just to sell more units. They were never ever going to sell more units than they already were. The geek simulation crowd is maxed out baby. But they tried anyway. And it shows.

One more thing. Amazon? Are you listening to me? Firaxis too, are you there? Yeah? Good. So go fuck yourselves, seriously. I ordered this from Amazon so I could have that one thing most dear to Civ fanatics everywhere – The Civ Manual. That big book that you take with you to bed when you are finally able to drag yourself away from the computer. So you can flick through it at your leisure and get even more Civ. And what did I get? A plastic case with no manual and a computer disk that had no game on it. I had to download it from steam anyway. So I waited 5 days for nothing. And the manual? In PDF form, which I would have to print out. In colour too. Thanks a lot, I don’t have a laser printer. And I can see myself taking all those printed pages to bed and ‘flicking’ through them. Seriously, go fuck yourselves you cheap arse wankers.