In the last few weeks the WP7 Live marketplace was blessed with two new (well actually old) titles. Firaxis developed and 2k published both these gems; Sid Meier’s Pirates! and Civilization Revolution. If you’re into strategy games these two are right up your alley. Still not convinced, well then how about they each only sport a price tag of $2.99. That’s an absolute steal if I may say so.
Sid Meier’s Pirates!
The game is everything from the original PC version of the game. You get your ships for sea battles, attacking ports, sword fighting, maps for finding treasure, and the list goes on. It looks good on my HD7 as well the graphics are exactly what I expected, the same as the original. You can find yourself losing lots of time on this game which is good for the game and also it seems required for the achievements involved. My only complaint would be in the sword fighting, I found myself just randomly going at it because there were no instructions on how to fight on my phone. All in all, this one is everything I remember it to be and it stills lives up to my expectations.
Civilization Revolution
Civ. Rev. has been modified a bit from its recent jump to the consoles. It’s still the turn based strategy of old. They’ve taken the controls and simplified them a bit more from the previous version. (Stop crying about the controls PC fans, do you really expect a smart phone game to be that in depth?) They have also turned the graphics down from the previous iteration which makes sense. The game still includes the three types of cultural, economic and domination, so you can still tailor the game play to your style. The game includes 16 different civilizations to try your hand at, and each still contains their own timeline bonuses. Terrain and the building of new cities still makes a very important difference as to what and how fast they can harvest what’s around them. My only minor complaint is that when you get a lot, and I mean a lot, on the screen you might encounter a bit of lag and at that point moving so of your troops gets a bit wonky, but those are very minor and really don’t detract from the overall performance. Be prepared to sink a lot of time into this one as each match can take anywhere from one to five hours. Luckily you can save it at anytime and come back to it.
Both games score a 4.5/5 in my opinion and are well worth the money.
For fans of: simulation/strategy games, any previous Sid Meier game (board or video), Risk, Lord of the Realms