As a business simulation, this game does a pretty good job of showing the full range of manufacturing, retail, advertising, investment, and other areas of business. If you were a teacher of a business class or even someone who wanted to understand business and business strategy, Capitalism II is an excellent way to learn the basics of business and business strategy. It hits that nail right on the head.

However, beyond the business simulation concept, the game just doesn’t have the refinement and “fun factor” to keep me playing the game. Even if you compare it to a game like Sim City 2000, it just doesn’t hold up. Maxis really knows how to make a simulation game both fun and interesting, while the makers of Capitalism II just didn’t know how to strike that balance.

I could go on about the handful of flaws that I found, but the bottom line is this. If you are a business nerd, you might like this game for a while, but once you know how to build your business, it gets boring. The upshot is if you have a subscription to GameTap, then you can check out this game without paying for it. Otherwise, even at the $9.00 it’s listed at on Amazon, it’s not the best game you could get for $9.

Score: 2.5/5
Verdict: Good business simulation, but not a terribly fun game. Needs polish and more fun factor.

Looking at GameRankings it seems that most reviews for this game are in the 8 or 9 range, averaging around 8.5, which in the world of masterfully overbloated game ratings that would put this game at probably a 3.5 star movie equivalent. It’s good, but not quite great and very far from perfect. It seems that the consensus is that Spore is really five games in one and that makes each of the five games not as enjoyable as they could be.

So, in a sense, Spore is a watered down version of Civilization, World of Warcraft, The Sims or Sim City, Populus, and Flow. Apparently, the best part of the game is the incredible creature creator. People have already made hundreds of thousands of their own creatures, all of which are downloadable and usable by other players, which is a very, very cool feature.

Also, worth mentioning is that Spore has pretty terrible DRM. I don’t remember the specifics, but I want to say it only allows like three installs total. To make matters worse, on Vista I want to say each user profile counts as a separate install, so if that’s true than this game is going to turn into a huge headache for both developers and users. EA should save themselves the headache and just let people play their game. Sure, some people will pirate it, but if they make a great game, they will make money.

If you love Will Wright, this game might be worth checking out. I will probably hold out until the game gets cheaper because I’m backlogged with games as it is and for some reason this game looks like my wife would enjoy it more than I would. I’m sure it’s kind of fun, but it doesn’t sound like the game is “done”, it just sounds like EA got it far enough along to release, and then through expansion packs and whatnot, they’ll “finish” the game to make it what it should have been when they released it. Such is the state of the gaming industry, but I don’t want to end up plunking $200 over 2-3 years for Will Wright’s original vision of Spore to materilize.

GameTap started a few years ago as a kind of legal emulation-based retro gaming service for Windows computers. It offered subscribers a completely legal way to download and play many classic arcade games such as Pac-Man and Galaga. Also, the service offered classic games from Sega and Atari as well as classic PC games. It was an excellent idea that has only improved with age.

Now, GameTap offers not just classic games, but also newer games such as Puzzle Quest, and even episodic indie games such as Sam and Max. To top it all off, GameTap about a year ago did something really cool. They started offering about thirty or forty games each month for free! What’s better than free? How about you can play them in Internet Explorer without even having to download the GameTap client program. That’s about as cool as it gets.

Are these free games crappy ones that nobody wants to play? Nope! You get rockin’ games like Metal Slug and Psychonauts. Seriously, these are classics and you can play them as much as you want without paying a dime. That’s a killer deal, in fact it’s almost as good of a deal as their subscription.

The GameTap subscription is the best deal I’ve found as far as PC gaming is concerned. Yes, World of Warcraft is a lot of fun, but GameTap is maybe even more fun, has way more variety, and is a whole lot cheaper. Right now GameTap is only $5 per month if you buy a year at a time.  or $10 a month if you go month-to-month. The subscription gets you access to an extra 904 premium games that are a lot of fun. My personal favorite is Puzzle Quest. That game alone is worth $20, or 4 months subscription. Compare that to WoW at $15/month and you quickly see why GameTap is so darn cool.

The best part of GameTap, aside from the very very very cheap pricing is the fact that there are some really great games that are worth playing on there. Here’s a few excellent examples: Puzzle Quest, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Street Fighter 2 and 3, Sam and Max, Pirates!, Psychonauts, Beyond Good and Evil, Myst, Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, Overlord, Deus Ex 1 and 2, Farcry, DiRT, Splinter Cell, and the list goes on and on.

As a gamer, I honestly can’t even begin to scratch the surface of all the fantastic games on GameTap. Of course, out of the over 1,000 games on GameTap, there is definately some real stinkers on there too, but that’s part of the great thing about this service, even if there are some bad games, the good ones are so plentiful that it doesn’t matter. Also, you never know when you’ll find a lost gem that you’ve never played before.

There are a few downsides, but I don’t think they are real deal-breakers. Not all of the games work perfectly, especially the ones on the PC side. Some early PC games don’t run well or at all in Vista, which frankly can be expected, but if you tweak your settings around enough they can work reasonably well. That being said, most games work flawlessly and there’s only a few that don’t. Also, if you’re a Mac user, GameTap has a version available for the Intel-based Macintosh machines as well. The only drawback is you don’t get all the Windows games, but you still get many emulated classics.

All in all GameTap is a great service and a great value that I reccomend to any Windows PC gamer. It is a fantastic way to discover classic games that you never had a chance to play way back when. That alone would be enough, but with the free games, the indies, the episodic games, and premium newer games, GameTap is a steal.

Civilization IV is a game that will remind you of the Age of Empires series if you’ve ever had a chance to play it. It’s a game that takes elements of historical fact and progression and lets the player develop and shape thier own civilization in their own way. It’s like playing an interactive history game in a quasi-realistic scenario of how things progressed through the last three or seven thousand years of history.

The roots of a game like Civlilzation 4 lie in the old board game Risk. It is a turn-based strategy game where players take turns developing their empires, doing battle, and plotting strategy. The difference is that Sid Meier borrowed elements of other diety/city simulation games where you have to manage resources, keep your people happy, and so on.

You start out with a band of settlers and a couple warriors to protect them. First you establish a city and build workers. Eventually as your civilization progresses you build more warriors, settlers, and workers to expand your empire. Over time your empire can progress economically, politically, religiously, and militarily.

The fun starts to come when you have a few cities and your empire makes friends and enemies with the other civilizations. It can be quite fun to pick fights with other countries. Of course, if you choose peaceful means of progression, you never have to encounter a single fight. That’s one of the truly enjoyable parts of this game. There are plenty of valid strategies for success. Military might, spreading your favorite religion, having the most powerful economy, and trading with other countries can all be done. You can even make other countries wage war for you.

While the game is very fun for those who like strategy games, but don’t have the twitch reflexes needed for some of the more complex real time strategy games out there, it is not without its problems. For example, the game is very time consuming. A single game can take 3-7 hours just to complete. As I said, this game is a lot like Risk. Also, in the later stages of the game when you have upwards of ten or twenty cities to manage, it can become overwhelming in a hurry to decide which city should produce what and when. That really bogs the game down and can kill the experience.

Slow gameplay aside, Civilization IV has a lot of charm. Also, it will play well on most computers. It is not a graphical powerhouse and should play well even on most modern laptops with integrated graphics cards. Also, there are multiplayer options if you have friends who wish to play as well, but be warned the game can take hours to complete, so perhaps multiplayer would be best suited for a LAN party or maybe a long afternoon game. This game while casual can be time consuming enough to not be a fifteen or thirty minute pick up and put down gameplay experience. It will suck you in and might not let you go for hours. Consider yourself warned.

Score: 4/5
Verdict: Solid game, not without it’s problems, but worth playing.