CivCity: Rome Review

For some odd reason, peering into the lives of Ancient Romans has become a mini-trend in the gaming industry. Well, this is hardly surprising to be honest, given how desperate game designers have become for untapped historical periods (and how hot young Italian women are -Ed). CivCity Rome leans on the popular Civilization license (both games are published by 2K Games). And while it may borrow some elements from Sid Meier's famous series, CivCity is conceptually a lot closer to Glory of the Roman Empire from Haemimont Games.

That's a big ass lighthouse.

By and large, they seem happy.

Its very name, "CivCity Rome," is a catchy take on the game's subject matter - a mix of concepts found in SimCity and Civilization. Ironically, the game plays more like SimCity than Civilization.

At the outset, players are given very mundane tasks in order to acquaint themselves with the gameplay. The biggest challenge will be the lack of space (the building area for your city can be fairly small) or improper planning, as houses (or rather, the citizens living in them) have a limited range of influence. The slow-starting introductory missions are nothing new you might say... except that CivCity Rome does itself a disfavor by considerably stretching that introduction over a number of boring missions.

The qualities of the intuitive interface and the ease of use with which you'll be controlling your city go well beyond what was offered in Glory of the Roman Empire. Players will have an easier time learning the basics in CivCity Rome than they would in Glory of the Roman Empire.

Visually, CivCity Rome is not particularly impressive. The upside is that the game works extremely well on what might be considered lower-end PCs, but the atmosphere of the city and the art style which depicts the Ancient Roman architecture is somewhat bland in comparison to Glory of the Roman Empire. Granted, in CivCity Rome, players are allowed to peer into the citizens' houses and get a Sims-like experience of watching them do their daily chores (and even doing chin-ups when they're bored for some reason), but that still doesn't make your ancient city come to life. The musical score is great and the voice overs are decent, but the ambient sounds needed more work. You simply don't get the impression you are looking at a bustling Roman city, regardless if you're zoomed out or at ground view.

That is not to say, however, that CivCity Rome doesn't have some major things going for it. In the previous couple of paragraphs my aim was to drive home the point that CivCity Rome is simply a slow starter (and the fact that you are a jaded bastard -Ed). At first, the tasks will appear simply too simplistic and linear, therefore turning the game into a chore rather than a fun-filled experience. But as with so many things in life first impressions can be deceiving (Your date with that transsexual last week springs to mind -Ed). Dig a bit deeper and you'll discover that the seemingly simplistic interface is actually finely tuned to allow players total control over the city down to the tiniest detail. I can control which sources go in which storage house, I can cater to the individual needs of my richest citizens, while still having to find the delicate balance between keeping the populace happy and entertained, the barbarians at bay, and my bosses at Rome content. The increase in your city population is tied to the overall happiness level of your citizens. Citizen happiness is then further divided into over a dozen different categories. Often I found that, given the terrain limitations, keeping the city at a certain population level is an ideal way to ensure its prosperity, and to do so I had to stop the people from migrating to it. I would often do this by fiddling with their wages, which would in turn influence the city production in a number of different ways. The point is it's a balancing act.

CivCity Rome is challenging enough in later missions to drive you to think about what you are doing down to the very last detail. This makes the game more consuming and ultimately more addictive. After my initial complaints about the rather stale gameplay, I was surprised to find myself enjoying my attempts at pleasing Rome while making sure that my net income is in the black. Time went by pretty fast and often that is one of the defining characteristics of a good management game.

Missions in CivCity Rome range from civil to military ones. The combat is not exactly spectacular and is essentially what you might expect from a game of this type, but it's good enough to provide a welcomed break from trying to keep the unemployment levels down.