Nearly two decades ago, the first Civilization game came out. Even then it was a highly addictive and amazing game. I would lose entire weeks in front of the computer trying to get my world exactly like I wanted. Apparently I wasn't the only one. Due to the popularity of it, there have been many sequels, spin-offs, and imitations since then. The latest sequel, Civilization: Revolution, is the first one to finally branch out from the PC market and return to consoles since Civilization II from 1998.

Civilization has always had great graphics. Even if you go back and look at the original, it was awesome for the time. However, I'll admit that it's not the most beautiful game I've ever seen for the Xbox 360. Some of the lines and scenes just weren't as smooth as they could have been, but it is still very pretty. Each of the different countries you can choose to lead has a different leader and they all look perfect for their culture. The wide range of military units all look detailed and well designed. The entertainers that you get in your trophy room are very interesting in appearance. I'm pretty sure after watching some of them that the designers spent way too much time at the Cirque du Soleil.

The one thing I really miss from the older version is the background music. There used to be a wide variety of classical music for background music, and when events like "We Love the King Day" were triggered, you were treated with "Ode to Joy". Now there's just generic background sounds and a jingle for special events. You'll also notice that your advisors now speak some unintelligible language, so you just read everything they say. I'm not sure why that was done, but it's annoying to hear jibberish when you expect real words. Granted, they could have been advising me in Mongolian or Egyptian or one of the other languages I didn't know, but since the Americans didn't speak English, I don't think that was the case.

In Civilization: Revolution, you are building your own empire from one city (possibly more if you choose a scenario). When you start a new game, you're given the choice of 16 different nations. Each one has their own advantages, so it's really a matter of personal preference as to which one you play as. You'll probably want to test all of them out eventually, especially if you want all the achievements.

After you choose your nationality and difficulty level, you'll be started out in a random location with the rest of the board unknown. From here, it is your choice as to how to proceed. Your city can only build one thing at a time, so you have to balance between building troops to explore the world and buildings to help your city grow. Granted, you won't have the building ability until you discover some technologies. You learn those from science output.

There are several (8) types of terrain that you can build on. Your city will use the terrain around it for production. You can see what each square is producing from inside the city screen. If you want, you can micromanage all your workers to have the city produce whatever you want. At first, you'll probably want to just leave it balanced and let the computer control all that, at least until you know what you want.

There are several different things you'll encounter in your explorations, other than the other civilizations. The first thing you'll probably run into is the friendly villages. They will give you things like a caravan, or perhaps share knowledge, or maybe even join your civilization. Unlike some of the older games, these villages are set from the onset as to what they give you, so you can't save the game and then reload to get something else if you don't like what they give you. Once you encounter them, they'll probably tell you of a barbarian village nearby that has been harassing them. You can go clear out the barbarians to get them out of your way and possibly get gold or even convince them to join you. If you're playing as the Mongols, barbarian villages will always join you after you've beaten them, which will expand your city count very quickly. The one other notable thing I found when exploring was Atlantis. It is considered one of the 6 artifacts in the game. Unfortunately I couldn't keep it as a city, but it did give me the knowledge of several technologies (4 if I remember right) instantly.

There are four different ways to win the game. You can choose to take over all the other civilizations, thus winning in domination. You can choose a cultural victory if you have enough Great Persons and build the United Nations. An economic victory requires you to have 20,000 gold in your treasury and then build the World Bank. My personal favorite (and longest) is the technological victory. To win with it, you have to learn all the technologies and land a space ship on Alpha Centauri. After you do win, you'll be able to see your rank, a histograph, final scores, game stats and trophy room.

Civilization: Revolution is nice in that there are five different difficulty levels to choose from. So when you're new to the game, you can start on Chieftain (the easiest). Chieftain level is very easy to beat. The Barbarians you encounter are trivial and the other civilizations are easy to conquer. Also, when you play in Chieftain, it automatically starts you in the Tutorial Mode. Since there are four ways to beat the game, you can choose the easiest or the hardest way that you want. Since everything is turn-based, you can take as long as you want to nitpick at each individual city and make it just right.

Once you get comfortable with the game, you'll want more of a challenge, so you can move it up to the next difficulty. I would recommend not moving it too high up too quickly unless you're very familiar with everything. The Deity level is so very difficult to beat from what I've read on boards (not that I've gotten there yet, but even King is even so much harder than Chieftain that I need more time to work up to Deity).

If you don't think the normal rules are quite hard enough, you can choose to play one of the 10 different scenarios too. They each throw a different twist into the game so that you have to change your normal methods up a little bit to win. Online play is also another way to play a more difficult (or possibly easier) game. Depending on who you play against and how experienced they are, you can be killed or kill them very quickly.

Oh, and achievements can be very difficult to get all of them. You have to collect every single one of the "Great Persons", which can be very frustrating. If you're having trouble finding a certain one, check the messages boards for someone telling how they managed to get them.

I was quite pleased with the controls in Civilization: Revolution. Before playing, I was very worried that it just wouldn't be the same, that it would be much harder to control everything without my mouse and keyboard. Luckily they did a very good job mapping out the controller so that it all felt pretty natural and I didn't get frustrated with not being able to do something.

There are 10 save slots. My advice is to save often. To save, press (Start) and choose Save Game. If you need to reload a game, that is also under the Start Menu. Most of the things you want to know how to get to are written in the corners of the screen, which makes it very hard to forget how to get somewhere.

Overall, Civilization has changed very little over the last 18 years. I mean, why should you mess with something that is already wonderful? The few things that they have changed just reduce cheating. If you've liked any of the previous incarnations, I highly recommend you go get Civilization: Revolution today. If you've never played it, you should go to the store right now because you're missing out.