Why I chose Elemental over Civ 5

By GaelicVigil on September 5, 2010 8:34:01 PM from

GaelicVigil

Join Date 08/2010

Money has been tight lately, as most of you can probably understand in our current economic climate. Having always been a TBS fan, I had to make a decision as to which game I would buy this fall. I've been anticipating Civilization 5 and Elemental for quite some time, but I had to go with the latter, and I still don't regret it.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting pretty tired of the Civilization series. It's starting to remind me of Madden: Release the same game, add a few features, and call it the best thing since sliced bread. I've played every one of them, and every spin off since Civ 1 and the whole tour through history bit is getting a bit long in the tooth for me.

So I'm left with Elemental, which kind of feels like the old pick-up truck your dad gave you. It doesn't exactly run all that great, needs a new set of...well, everything, and doesn't impress your friends all that much. So would I rather take the old pick-up truck that can potentially take me to places I've never been before, or do I stick with Civilization, my shiny ten-speed that's always been safe and reliable my whole life?

I've read all the reviews, seen all the crap hit the fan, and even felt a bit of disappointment in the past few weeks. However, there's something about this game that just gets me excited, something unique, and something I don't feel very often with games. Even with all of the bugs and problems this game has, it has something special that I can't quite explain. With Stardock's commitment to improve things, I am giddy with anticipation as to where we will be led in the next few months and years. It's expecting the unexpected with Elemental that is holding my interest. It's hoping that perhaps one day Elemental will defy it's launch in a way that we have never seen before.

I'm sure that Civilization 5 will get reviewed really well, I'm sure it will be everything that everyone has hoped it would be. I'm sure it will be polished, stable, and relatively bug-free. I'm sure, at the core of it all, it will still feel like the Civilization we've grown to love. Unfortunately, this is where I become bored. I'll take the old pickup-truck, but I'm not sure why.

Perhaps Trinity had the answer: Because you have been down there Neo, you know that road, you know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be.

Quoting Kalin,

reply 394

That's just how you feel about it, and while that's a perfectly acceptable view on the topic, and perhaps even be one of the vast majority, that doesn't mean that the view of someone, who can't get the game to work at all due to steam and votes 1 because of it, is wrong and shouldn't be counted.

The problem I have with review and metacritic scores is that it depends on averages. And while an average of a bigger group tends to be more accurate than one of a select few (less prone to bias), it has been proven to be wrong many times before. There's a whole science devoted to this, just look at polling methods. In general, if given a good sampling, you can properly estimate value/result (with a low margin of error). The problem with review averages is that there is no technique for sampling, you just get whoever decides to review.

Even worse is the fact that the scores completely fails to account for YOUR bias on the matter, which happens to be the most important factor when it comes to deciding whether a game is good or not for you. The game might be seen as "crap" by the majority, but if it's right up your alley, then the majority's view doesn't matter at all. This is why you can't depend on a numerical value, and have to read what they say and decide for yourself.

Again, if the game doesn't work because of DRM, I agree, but that wasn't the case with that review. But as I've mentioned, I'm not saying people should ignore Steam in their reviews, just that they should review the game and take away a reasonable number of points because of it. Not just go blanket one star for any game on a DRM system (unless it's terrible, like Ubisoft's).

But then, I play very few games so I must not be seeing why Steam is such a big deal for people. I own two games on it.

True, people don't work like that and most scores are all over the place. We all mostly go to forums anyway.

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Quoting Mtn_Man,

reply 397

Or you can look at the overwhelmingly glowing reviews on release day and the deteriorating player opinion in forums a week after release and draw your own conclusions.

And my conclusion would be that both the initial glowing reviews and the less favorable opinion shown today were true at the time of their writing. Initial impressions of the game are buoyed by the shiny graphics and novelty of the new mechanics. Once that novelty wears off, as it always does, then the game compares less favorably to the deeper play experience of Civ IV. Expectantly I might add considering the amount of time, polish, expansions, and mods available to Civ IV at this point. Nothing to do with the Sid Meier name but rather human nature.

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