Civilization Revolution

Yup, I'm taking over the world. But seriously. In an effort to share the things that we enjoy with the person we're dating, Rae and I made a deal. Saturday is my day, we're going to one of the three free museums in Raleigh, and Saturday night was to be his time and I told him I would play video games with him because that's what he loves to do. Sadly for Saturday, but thankfully for Rae, he's picking up hours for someone he works with Saturday night. We wont be playing video games Saturday but we will still have Saturday morning to do the museum.

Since Saturday evening has been canceled we rescheduled the activity for last night. I picked Rae up from work and we went back to his house, while he did dishes I made egg and cheese burritos for dinner. And then he set me up with an Xbox live account, which was actually quite fun! I got to create a person to look like me, or how I think I look anyway. Then we played a game called Civilization Revolution. Once I had died twice and we had to restart the game twice, I got the hang of it and it was really fun. Now don't go thinking that I've changed my stand on video games, I still think they're a waste of time... why is that? Well, let me explain that before I go on to explain Civ Rev.

People who play video games don't usually just do it once in a while and for a little bit of time, They hop on their Xbox, Wii, PS3, etc for hours and days on end. I know people that play games for days without sleeping, and that's just sad. It's not healthy to waste so much time in front of a screen (I do that enough at work) it hurts your eyes and you're just sitting there getting fat... well except maybe if you're playing on the wii because that thing is very active, shoot I want one. Anyway, Rae usually plays for hours and hours late at night and then sleeps late during the day and gets up to go to work and then comes home and does it again (when he's not spending time with me he's playing games). My brother plays video games incessantly as well and spends more money buying video games than anyone with 2 kids should. Scott and I used to play WWE Smackdown! vs RAW or some silly racing game, but we did it once in a while when we had a little down time and had gotten everything else done that needed to be. I'd say on average when I lived with Scott we played games together maybe three times a month. He played by himself a lot, when I wasn't home and he didn't have some tramp over he was probably playing video games. Why is it people are so enthralled by these things? I just don't get it.

Personally, I have a PSP and a gameboy micro, both given to me, both rarely get used. I used to use the PSP to watch movies at work and occasionally I played a tetris-like game and when my brother gave me the micro for Christmas I used it for about a month while at work to play Mario. The thing is though, I can't play games like that for very long before they just get boring. I much prefer being outside or around a group of people interacting and doing something physical rather than talking over a headset and pushing a bunch of buttons. Granted I do have my issues, Internet TV anyone?

So, last night I played a game called Civilization Revolution. Basically you get to pick which country you want to be, India, Germany, Russia, England, US, etc etc... and you start a civilization. Once you've created your civilization it is your job to protect it, expand it, and explore the area around it. It's pretty much a really cool turn based strategy game. Here's what wikipedia has to say about it:

Civilization Revolution is a turn based strategy game in which the player can take one of 16 different civilizations, each with special abilities, from prehistory to modern times and the near future. In past installments the player had more control over the rules of the game and often the game could last for more than ten hours. In Civilization Revolution the games for the most part can be finished within three hours. For the console version, the gameplay has been streamlined and simplified to make the game easier to play for newcomers to the series.
In addition to naming cities, players are randomly allowed to name a geographical feature such as a mountain range, plains, or rivers.

Rae and I played for about 3 hours and my eyes started to hurt and my armies started to die as I got more and more tired. But honestly I can say it is an extremely fun video game to play and I'm glad that I got to have that experience, even if I never play it again lol (although I'm sure if it's up to Rae I'll play it numerous times over and over again until I get to "rule the world" like he and Todd have done). Next he's making me to watch animated movies (Madagascar and Madagascar 2 more specifically)...I don't really like animated movies.