Civilization Rising Tide launch trailer

You might have checked out our review for Sid Meier’s Civilization: Rising Tide already, but while you wait for the game download, you need to see this awesome CGI intro trailer.  It sets the stage for the game, showing an unexpected event that opens up an entire world of possibilities.  For the first time, the ocean is your playground…if not for the massive sea creatures that already inhabit it.  Lucious had high praise for the game — here’s a bit from his review:

In the original Beyond Earth, diplomacy was really just a way to barter. Someone wanted something from you, they would or wouldn’t give you what you wanted to get it, high-fives or declarations of war would follow.

In Rising Tide, while some of this intrigue is certainly still included, as players you have finally been given the ability to sculpt your representative to your liking. Your leader’s political views, abilities, and talents are all at your disposal, free to be customized as you see fit. Your diplomacy is not only a concept of national interaction, but a type of currency to be spent between yourself and the other leaders of the new world. With it you will not trade materials (that’s what trade convoys are for after all) but ideas, favors, and support.

Envious of how quickly your neighbor can enhance their cities? Make a deal with their leader to share the technique. Do they need help policing the local wildlife? Expect to get a request to help them clear out some alien nest.

Changes like this make the leaders in Rising Tide feel like more than animated tent-poles representing their starting point. It makes them into engaging aspects to your playstyle. It’s smart, clever, and just as developed as the techweb it mimics.

You can read the entire review right here, of course.  If you are a fellow sufferer under the yoke of “just one more click”, you’ll love it.