Revolutions generally involve much unpleasantness and brutal devices that tend to start with the letter G, like gibbets and guillotines. Sid Meier's latest revolution is, however, a far more palatable prospect that doesn't utilise anything so bloodthirsty.

As players of Civilization on the PC will be aware, it's a complex strategy game. The idea of Civilization Revolution is to bring the series onto the next-gen consoles in a more accessible form. This means smaller maps, shorter games and a streamlining of the management aspects, particularly when it comes to the city screens.

No longer do players have to worry about complexities like their population revolting, or a town's pollution problems. Resource harvesting is also automated, although it's possible to specify a preference for concentrating on food, production, science or gold. You still have to handle building upgrades, but the whole process of overseeing your settlements is a lot simpler here.

However, don't get the idea that this game is totally dumbed down. The strategy banquet might consist of fewer courses, but there's still enough to get tucked into. Diplomacy, scientific advancement and deciding how quickly to expand your empire are all crucial tasks that must be balanced, as they have been since the original Civilization was first released all those years ago.

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With multiple means of victory (cultural and economic might can win through, as well as military and technological superiority) and five AI difficulty levels, the computer opposition provides a reasonable challenge. Alongside the main campaign, there's an interesting collection of one-off scenarios and a welcome online mode that allows up to four human opponents to do battle and engage in some true bluff and back-stabbing (with diplomacy conducted via voice chat).

Civilization Revolution boasts polished cartoon-style visuals and the world map is rendered in an appealingly clean and uncluttered manner. More importantly, the interface is also very smoothly implemented. We were concerned that playing Civilization with an X360 joypad would be quite cumbersome, but it's actually about as painless as could be hoped for. The only complaint we had in this department was that the civopedia loads up quite sluggishly, and the slight delay when looking things up in this help feature is a minor frustration.

If you're after a more casual Civilization experience, albeit one that retains a decent weight of strategic thinking, that's exactly what Sid has managed to achieve here. Having said that, hardened veterans of the series will probably find it a mite too superficial.

Revolution represents a very successful transfer of Civilization onto the Xbox. It has enough tactical depth to get you thinking, yet a far more open and accessible nature than previous incarnations of Sid's classic.