Caesar IV

Graphics

If you take a quick trip to the Tilted Mill forums you'll see how many technical problems people are having with the game at the moment. People appear to be suffering from mouse lag, low FPS, sporadic crashing and a whole host of other problems. This has led to some people describing the game as nothing more than a 'released beta'. This episode has slightly marred the whole Caesar experience for a lot of would-be Roman governors.

So what was our experience? I played the game on three separate machines of varying specs, from the mid-range system containing a Geforce 7600 GT, a Pentium 3GHz and 1 GB of RAM all the way up to the uber-gaming PC, the Dell XPS 700. I found the game ran fine on medium settings, even on the lowest PC we ran it on, however, when scaling the in-game options up the results were a little bit shocking.

The Dell XPS 700, one of the best gaming PC's in the office at the moment, couldn't play the game on full. I have to say however, when on full graphics this game does look pretty swanky. Fully 3D environments that are rendered in a cartoon-esque way. You're able to zoom right down to ground level and check out the little people doing their work in minscule detail. Considering how much can be going on on the screen, and how pretty the graphics look, we can perhaps forgive Tilted Mill for the game running a little bit slow on maximum settings. Perhaps they planned for it to be future-proof.

I was still able to put the settings fairly high on the XPS. I achieved a fairly constant frame rate of about 14. That may sound low, but due to the slow nature of a city builder like Caesar IV I found it perfectly playable. The other technical issues, such as the game crashing when opening certain trade routes, are apparently being addressed and the game should hopefully have a patch released in the near future. Still, questions should probably be raised as to why a game that quite clearly hasn't been fully tested has been released.

Sound

The game comes with a rather melodic Roman soundtrack that is at least as good as the musical vibes from the previous Caesar games. On top of the really nice background music the game also allows you to hear from individual citizens by clicking on them. They'll offer you opinions on what they like and don't like, usually in a comedic manner. Pleasingly, Tilted Mill has hired some pretty decent voice actors to play these roles. This makes a difference and is definitely an added bonus to the game.

Conclusion

This game is far better than its competitors, producing an enjoyable, challenging and graphically superior game when compared to CivCity: Rome or Glory of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, the boxed version of the game is struggling with lots of technical issues. At the moment the small patch that has been released hasn't solved many of the issues and as such I'd have to advise you wait to see a more comprehensive patch before parting with your hard earned cash.

When those issues have been fixed though, I highly recommend this game. It has a strong internet community already and with an online element that will allow you to create and share scenarios with friends the game should have a lasting appeal. You can pick Caesar IV up for £24.99 from Play but I'd imagine if you hold out a couple of months that will probably drop to around the £15 mark.