There are four intrinsic human needs that are requisite to survival. You likely know about the first three (eating, sleeping and sex) but what you may not know is that way down deep in our subconscious each of us harbors a secret desire to take over the world.

   You may be shaking your head right now, saying "nah, I'm not into that," but let's be honest for a minute. You know there were times when you were yawning your way through Social Studies and thought: "man, if I had been in charge of the German army during World War II, the Russians would have been eating bratwurst and polka dancing in a month." Or, if you want to go more old school: "man, if I had been Hannibal of Carthage, then I would have stomped those arrogant Romans and then I'd be the one getting stabbed by my best friends!"

   Sadly though, most of us never get the chance to overthrow the established order and institute our own vision for world rule (or rule of our own closets, for that matter), mainly because armies are expensive, and trying to train and outfit an entire military tends to get you noticed by the government, and not in a good way. Still, for those with the inherent need to rule something there is the Civilization franchise, and now one of PC gaming's most venerated turn-based strategy games has made its way to consoles with rousing success.

The Same Thing We Do Every Night Pinky, Try to Take Over the World!

   The gist of Civilization Revolution is simple - you must lead one of sixteen "civs" from the Stone Age through the near future, all the while fighting off aggressive enemies, researching new technologies to advance your people, and building structures and Wonders befitting your sheer awesomeness. Like an industrious little ant, you start with only your capital city (which, at the time, is little more than a couple of sticks with some foul-smelling animal skins thrown over them) and build from there. You build warriors, barracks, temples, ports, galleys, and a whole slew of other structures and units much in the same way you do in all strategy games; however, in Civilization things rotate much more around your strongholds - the cities - as opposed to just the units themselves. The technology tree (which has been streamlined considerably for the console version) is also a lot more expansive that you'd see in a typical RTS game, adding quite a bit more strategic depth to the experience.

   Every nation has its own strengths and weaknesses, and each is represented by one of its historically great leaders. So for example, if you chose the play as the Americans you'll assume the role of Abraham Lincoln, while the Aztecs are represented by Montezuma. Each leader is slightly caricatured and highly animated, leading to some rather goofy moments when you interact with them. In fact, the silliness knob may have been turned up a bit too high for this one (undoubtedly by some trembling, over-caffinated hand!), as the reactions of most world leaders to simple things like refusing to trade technologies with them borders on the absurd. Still, you have to appreciate the efforts to make each civ unique and well-represented, so I suppose overly active characters are more fun than boring, flat pictures.

Picking your poison

It's Easy Being President, You Just Point the Army and Shoot

   One of the big concerns with bringing Civilization to the consoles was the question of how to condense an entire computer keyboard and mouse down into just a few (albeit brightly colored!) buttons. Many strategy games have tried to make the jump from PC to console, but nearly all have failed due to the fact that the controls have always been simply too convoluted. Thankfully, that's not the case here, and Revolution proves that strategy games can work anywhere if you know what you're doing.

   Every turn the game will automatically cycle through all your active units, and moving them around and finding your way around the map couldn't be easier. The left stick allows you to point a particular unit to the spot where you want them to go, while the right stick controls the camera, allowing you to pan around the map to select other units or investigate particular nooks and crannies. The face buttons control simple tasks like confirming selections, skipping turns, and pulling up the Civilopedia (the source of all Civ-related knowledge), and the bumpers handle diplomacy with other nations and keeping tabs on your cities and what they're producing.

   The new controls do come with a few sacrifices though, as there is now no way to group multiple units or hotkey specific soldiers. No, if you need to move your entire army across the map, you're going to have to order every unit individually from one side of the world to the other. It's a minor inconvenience since distances aren't huge and conflicts usually involve a reasonably small number of units, but it still means turns take a little bit longer every round, and that tends to drag out the game. City building queues can cause the same issue, especially late in the game. As you start to run out of things to build (a sure sign that you've spent much more time beating the tar out of people than doing research over at the library), every turn you have to keep tapping the B button to tell your cities to just sit tight and not produce anything. Suddenly, when you have 10 cities with nothing to do every turn, it starts to get annoying constantly telling them to just sit there and read a book or something. It's sort of like every city is a hyperactive child, constantly needing to keep his hands busy for fear of doing something naughty with them if he doesn't. And you, as the dutiful but frazzled parent, just want to tie a rock around his ankles and send him for a swim in the lake.

So Easy, Even Wives Can Play!

   I played through a few rounds of Revolution at the default difficulty level and found it to be by far the simplest Civ game I'd ever played. I had to make sure that it wasn't just due to my mad world-conquering skills, however, and thankfully I found a willing guinea pig in my wife.

   Now, the lovely dear has never played a Civ game in her life, and the most complicated thing she normally does when it comes to gaming is play the bass in Rock Band. While she is able to rock out on Expert, pushing colored buttons and strumming is easier than running a country (though just barely), so I wanted to see if even she could play. We sat down and for about the first hour I coached her on the finer points of the game. I gave her tips about what order to build things in (always defensive units first, then temples to get your culture up and expand your borders), as well as grouping units into armies (done simply by putting three of the same type of unit in the same square and pressing "Y"). She played through a game and won a Domination victory (because she'd rather kill her foes than conduct diplomacy), and then promptly started another game. At this point, she's been playing for about a week and absolutely doesn't need me anymore. I'm worried that if we ever played against each other, she might even beat me and destroy my manliness. Which means we'll never play against one another now, because I don't need yet another issue to come up in therapy.

   At any rate, I tell that story to simply prove a point: this game is so user-friendly and easy to learn that even people who have never touched the Civ franchise can jump right in and play - especially if you know someone who's willing to teach you a few simple pointers along the way. So if you've avoided the series because you thought it was too complicated then you have no more excuses - this Civ game was made just for you.

There's No Such Thing As Utopia

   Even though there's a lot to love about Revolution, there are still a few aspects about it that might annoy. In addition to the issues mentioned above concerning the way leaders act (your advisors are the same way, and they'll start to grate on you fairly quickly) and the few shortcomings of the controls, there are other issues, mainly involving the AI, that could cause consternation.

   First off, the maps in this game are much smaller than those of the previous Civ titles, meaning that you'll likely start off very close to other nations with limited room to set up your base cities and start developing your empire. Also, these close quarters seem to cause increased hostilities, as other nations are very quick to wonder into your neck of the woods, make demands of you, and then declare war if you don't abide by their requests. It's not uncommon during the early stages of a game to be at war with two or three nations at a time simply because they all started getting sassy and calling your momma fat. Of course, the best way to shut them up is with a nice big hunk of sharpened steel to the temple, but that's more time spent away from working on the buildings and Wonders needed for victory - simply so that you can go convince Saladin that it's better to deal kindly with your neighbors than to get your ignorant backwards ass handed to you on a platter.

   The AI insolence carries on through the end of the game, as you can have an enemy down to one city and he or she will still likely declare war on you even if they have no chance of winning. Every game I've played has come down to me having a huge lead on another city, and the leader suddenly declaring a unilateral war and then refusing to make peace. Even after I nuke his city and trounce his entire army, he still won't admit that he can't win. While its clearly meant to keep you on your toes until the very end, this "last stand" mechanic can be rather irritating and usually leads you to spend the last turns of any game with your troops ringing the enemy's last city, occasionally taking potshots at the defenses while you try and hurry up production of whatever last wonder it is you need to win something other than another Domination victory.

Hey, that archer just punched my B-52 bomber in the crotch!

   While on the subject of battle, I would be remiss not to point out how unfair the fights can become in the upper difficulty levels. For each battle you can see the numerical stats of the attackers and defenders, and the basic reasoning goes that whoever has the higher stat should win most of the time. I understand that you can't only make it about numbers because that takes some of the fun out of it, but units that are vastly different from one another in terms of abilities shouldn't even have a close battle. And yet, the problem still exists as you can watch your tank be destroyed by pikemen due to some random calculation inside the game that screws you out of what should be a guaranteed victory. The problem isn't quite as rampant as it was in previous Civ games, but it still rears its head enough to convince you that the game is cheating on higher difficulties.

Aren't those boobs a little too big for your tiny frame?

   I know what you are thinking, but you'll see - that headline is a perfectly valid analogy to describe what's going on in Civilization's graphics department. The game features very attractive graphics, with large, colorful, expressive artwork which looks and feels delightful. That delight, however, comes at a price, because it begins to place some overwhelming demands on the Xbox 360's video card during the later stages of games when more and more cities and units have to appear on the screen at the same time. While things never get horrible, there are definite frame rate issues, especially as the game tries to pan here and there across the globe as it switches between your active units. The game even ungraciously froze on me a few times (which taught me to save a little more often).

Never Get Into a Land War in Asia

   In spite of its flaws, Revolution succeeds in bringing a great strategy experience to consoles and providing plenty of all-around fun. With sixteen different civs, four different victory modes, five difficulties and a number of pre-made and weekly scenarios, you can play this game for months and never get bored. Series veterans will love all the excitement and challenge that comes with the franchise, and newcomers will be able to jump right in and get their feet wet with what has been, until this point, a very user-unfriendly game. Make no mistake: this is a fun, accessible game which every single strategy gamer should try out.

   Now then I have to go. Gandhi is demanding I teach him one of my most advanced technologies and I'll have none of his bullying. Time for him to learn that non-violence is absolutely futile in the face of overwhelming violence.

       ... Brad