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As usual, email us at podcast@ampedgaming.com and please rate us on iTunes!

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The first thing you can see is that the grid is composed of what Firaxis likes to refer to as “Hexes”. These give the world a more natural feel than the square grids of old.

The time spent developing the console version, Civilization Revolution, was apparently time well spent. Not only did it sell very well, but it also led Firaxis to learn a few things about simplifying the game a bit and making things more streamlined. Not to say that the newest PC Civ is going to be a “baby game”, as it actually still seems complex. One of the things they did was bring the advisors back. They were missing from Civ IV, but the positive feedback from having them in Civ Rev made it possible for them to return.

A few new changes were shown as well. Notifications that pop up on the right side of the screen make an appearance once something that needs your attention happens. Rather than stop the gameplay and have you choose an item from a menu after you’ve researched or built units, these notifications make it possible to make these choices when you’re ready to, keeping the pacing of the game quite nicely. Another thing these notifications do is bring you straight to some action that’s going on off screen when you click on them, such as a ship sinking across the world.

In previous Civilization games, the leader of other nations was represented by half of their body that either smiled or glared at you in anger, not really saying much. Now once you open up dialogue with a leader, you’re taken to a different screen with a full-bodied representation of the leader, with a background that shows what kind of personality they have, like Tokugawa standing in an open, peaceful looking field or Napolean negotiating with you from a battlefield.

Not only is their presentation different, the way the leader’s AI adjusts to you as well. The example given was if you’re successful at thwarting Elizabeth’s attack at sea, she’ll change her strategy and try to go after you elsewhere.

Religion was taken out of this version of Civilization. In it’s place is a new City-State system that allows you to come across a small settlement of about a single city, which you can either choose to help or conquer. If you help these city-states, you’ll receive benefits based on what they specialize in, like a steady stream of gold coming in each turn or military units.

When you place settlers in an area, you can apparently buy up land around the unit. If you end up buying too much land near the territory of another nation, the leader will call you out on the problem.

Combat has received a nice overhaul as well. Before the outcome of a war between nations depended on how many units each side has stacked into one square. Now each tile is limited to one unit, which are now represented by a bunch of the same type instead of a single person. When these units are damaged, the number of people in the group goes down.  Where each battle use to last until one side’s Hit Points are depleted, now each fight seems to last longer and can end with a unit being injured instead of just dead.

Since each tile can only hold one unit now, city defense now relies on them being surrounded by protectors. The cities are also now able to fend off enemies on their own.

Archers and other ranged units can now fire over warriors or spearmen in front of them to soften up the enemy before a strike.

That’s about all we got to see during our presentation. Civilization V is set to be released in the Fall of 2010, a time when my roommate and I will once again be awake at 3 AM wondering where the time went.

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As was mentioned here, we’ll be at PAX East this weekend and will more than likely be doing a podcast with Matt and I being in the same room, hopefully getting Arsen in via Skype and possibly bringing on a couple of guests. So stay tuned for that and a slew of articles going up over the next few days.

As always, be sure to review us on iTunes and email us at podcast@ampedgaming.com!

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The NSFW Chat Roulette related link that Arsen sent to Matt and I can be found here.

Please feel free to email us at podcast AT ampedgaming.com and be sure to rate us on iTunes.

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One of the first things that had me kind of concerned about this game is how it looks. The environments, the people, and the enemies just were not nearly as good looking as you would think an Xbox 360 game would be. Based on gameplay videos from the PC version, the 360 one took a bit of a hit when it got ported over. On top of that, there seemed to be a very limited amount of character models used in the game. So, if you are someone who absolutely has to have the most advanced, crisp graphics out there all the time, this may not be for you.

Another aspect of the game that had me a little put off at first was the combat. Everything about it just seemed awkward in the beginning, especially when there were multiple enemies on screen, thanks to the sometimes too sensitive camera. But with some patience, eventually you’ll find that after some combat training, it’s not so bad. You can also pretty much pause the combat at any time by accessing your inventory. For some reason though, after you close the inventory screen, you are out of combat mode and have to quickly try and get back into it again, something that, on quite a few occasions, caused the potion that I drank to be pretty much wasted after losing the health I just gained back.

The storyline in Risen is actually pretty interesting. You play as a stowaway on a ship that ends up getting shipwrecked on the island of Faranga. As you explore the island, you discover there are two factions you can join up with (which also dictates which class you’ll play as), The Don’s bandits or the Inquisitor’s magic users/warrior monks. Both factions eventually end up working towards the same goal, saving the island from impending doom. The character that you play as is quite funny at times, poking fun at quest givers and just generally being a jerk, something I can definitely appreciate.

Questing in Risen was kind of a mixed bag for me. There are a ton of quests to do, especially during the first parts of the game. Even questing towards the option to buy the first bit of armor as a bandit (that I actually wanted to wear) took quite a while to do. The only thing about them that bothered me just a bit was the quest log. It seemed only a little useful at times, reminding you of what exactly was said in dialogue with the quest giver while placing a sometimes misleading dot on the map to show you where your objective might be.

Which brings me to to what I think is actually one of the more respectable things about this game: there’s not really a ton of hand-holding to be found here. Too many games nowadays seem to spoon feed everything to you and get rid of the need for an instruction booklet by making the first portion of the game a tutorial that tells you everything you need to know. Not to say that the build-up to choosing your faction/class is not a tutorial of sorts, but it definitely did not tell me everything. For instance, I was sent by The Don to invade a nearby Inquisitor owned camp with some NPC fighters. Things seemed to be going fine, but then I realized that the enemies were not dying like the wolves and boars that cease to exist once their health bars are empty. These guys were regaining their health and standing back up again, ready to continue beating on us. This eventually led to them killing off my NPC party members and capturing my character, forcing him into service of the Inquisitor. While it was interesting that I didn’t just have to reload an earlier save, it was a path I did not want to take. I ended up finding the ability to kill an NPC in the instruction booklet and decided to start over again from the beginning, since there were quite a few that I wanted to get rid of.

One way Risen does end up giving you direction is through the enemies you encounter throughout the world. Unlike other open-world games like Oblivion, creatures don’t scale to your level. If you’re going to an area you shouldn’t be in, a monster that will either kill you in one hit or take many of your hits without getting damaged lets you know you’re out of bounds. This added a bit of tension for me while exploring the island, unsure of when I’d run into something that would show me the reason why I save every 10 minutes.

All in all, Risen is a solid, old school style open-world RPG. Those that are too use to the modern, in-game walkthrough style of game design may be in for a bit of a shock, while those that crave the lack of direction that was found in older RPGs will thoroughly enjoy this.

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Matt and I spoil the last half of this epic game and finish things off with a short discussion on some of the other things I’ve been playing recently.

Intro and outro music clips this week are from the Mass Effect 2 inspired song by Kabuto the Python, Those Minerals.

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Yesterday marked when Blizzard finally let people in to the highly anticipated sequel to what appears to be South Korea’s national sport, Starcraft.  I got my invite and as soon as everything was done downloading and installing, I dove right in.

One of the things that Blizzard has been talking about releasing along side of Starcraft II Is the new Steam/Xbox Live-like Battle.net system. It’s definitely a nice set-up and I can’t wait to see how well this integrates into the other games this will connect with, World of Warcraft and Diablo 3.

After spending a considerable amount of hours in the past few days playing Starcraft I, the way the sequel looked struck me more than it would have otherwise. Everything is how one would expect an 11 year old game who’s graphics have been updated to fit today’s standards would look. If anything, it seems to have a bit of future proofing.  My PC is a pretty powerful one and it is not able to handle the High settings without a considerable amount of lag.

The gameplay remains to be something I’ll have to comment more on later since I haven’t had a chance to play more than two matches so far. But before I get back to playing, here are a few screenshots.

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