Scenario Review Scenario Title: Clouds Author: Giant Squid Reviewer: Mr. Temba Fantasy Scenario. Fight through the sky with meterological phenomena. Download Squid.zip from Mr. Temba's Site.

Overall Rating 14/30 SYNOPSIS: * Small Map * Normal Game Length * New Units and Improvemetns * No New Concept

Playability Rating 4 / 10 COMMENTS: This scenario is what I think off as a blend between a mod and a true scenario. The player starts off as one or two settlers and the normal game is played but almost entirely changed. Each tribe starts off the same, and research is pretty much as open as it is in Civ2. While I coudln't find any direct technical faults many aspects of this scenairo decrease its playability. For example     * A poor readme that gives almost no info about the scenario     * Confusing terrain, what does what?     * No changes to the pedia file to describe new wonders     * Roads that are for all practical purposes invisible     * A not so great map, someone went crazy with 5x5     * An undescribed tech tree     The atmosphere is appropriate for a meterological scenario, mostly. What I mean is that there are many good units such as weather ballons and hurricanes that fit in perfectly, then there is the "Doom Bomber" and other "Doom" units. What is this? The first few times this is played the computer will have the advantage because you have to learn all the tricks again. But after that is pretty simple.

Level of General Care 5 / 10 COMMENTS: Mostly I give an average score here because the general care is usually either wonderful or awful. The advances and units are very well done for the most part. However the map is poorly drawn and pretty small. City names have not been changed (note - this could be a problem with my version and it hasn't affected my score) and like I said above a few edits to the pedia for the wonderscould do this scenario a world of good. The wonders have cool names such as BengalFlooding and the like but some of them are really badly drawn, just spending a littlemore time on each icon would help a lot too.     Also another area that dropped this a lot was that there were no events in the entire scenario! I feel that if one aspect of a scenario makes it a scenario it is the events. I would really have liked to see some events that made the tribes different with the technologies and all.

Art and Originality 5 / 10 COMMENTS: The new artwork is not all that great, usually this doens't bother me at all but I didn't like the way to terrain didn't blend together well and was confusing. Also the icons were very simple, they weren't BAD per se, they just weren't very good.     The originality is a bright shining part of this scenario. The author obviously knows what he is talking about with all the meteorlogical phenomena and such. Needless to say this has never been done before and was truly original.

NOTES: For a first scenario this has all the signs that my first scenario did, going overboard and editing everything, sticking in stuff that you just wanted to have in like Doom Ballons and having a good time making it. My advice can be summed up as "Consolidate" this scenario needs to have a goal to it.

HTML Design by Blackclove and Monk

Back to Fictional Scenario Reviews