Spore Hands-On: Creatives Juices at Work Resulting in Monster Orgies
I picked up Spore for the PC (compatible with Macs with Leopard) earlier this week and took it for a little test drive. I haven’t played The Sims or any of Will Wright’s works and I was curious to see how my experience with Spore will be.
Spore is a game where the player creates his/her creature through various stages. I’ve only played through the Cell and Creature stage. In the Cell stage, you control a cell by using the mouse and your objective is to eat meat (if you’re a carnivore) or veggies (if you’re a herbivore) in order to fill up your progress bar, which is required to move on to the next stage. The more you eat, the more you grow. It sounds simple, until you encounter other cells that are trying to eat you. So you weave around the area, getting your cell its fill and avoiding hazardous cells, and your cell will eventually become sentient.
Once you’ve reached the Creature stage, the game feels a lot like a PC RPG/MMORPG. I recommend using the WASD keys to move your creature but people are free to continue using their mouse. In this stage, you will encounter other creatures on the land and it is up to you to befriend (by impressing them with singing and dancing) or slaughter them (using various hostile attacks like biting and striking). Using both methods, you’ll eventually rule the majority of the land.
The game isn’t difficult at all, regardless of its adjustable difficulties. The harder the mode, the more hostile creatures there are. The reason the game is accessible to everyone is because there is no penalty for dying. When your creature die, you simply play the offspring of your species. It’d be a tearful moment to see your kind become extinct, wouldn’t it?
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Tags: Hands-On, PC, SporeMercenaries 2 review…and a whole lot of flames to go with it.
Ok, let me get this out of the way first, if you like destroying s**t, then Mercenaries 2 is a game you should get. This review is a little late I know, so because of that this will just be a quickie of a review.
Well, since many people these days are graphics whores and cant stand anything not on Gears of War standards then they shouldn’t dare look at this game. This game was made for two, and only two types of people: the fans of Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction ( not me, never played) and people who just like to have fun, (me). Yes I do know the graphics could’ve used a bit more graphical touches, but when you have the power to level an entire country, I’m sure some things had to be sacrificed. And these sacrifices are: major pop-ins no matter what you are doing, repetitive buildings, and terrible textures. But if you look at the glass half full like moi, then; beautiful, sometimes jaw dropping explosions that light up the screen. Seriously, they are gorgeous. Also, great destruction, and lovely scenery when you aren’t seeing pop-ins.
Now for the gameplay, which may be the worst part of the game. Controls are the absolute worst, with driving just being an absolute pain. The cars are just so…heavy and…ugh, unresponsive. It just feels dirty and so slapped in there, and there are only about 10 to choose from anyway. Heli’s are better, yet still could’ve used some work as well. The combat is very unorganized, and that’s not even talking about the friendly/enemy A.I. . When calling in support, you have to pull up a menu in game which stops you from moving and has you take damage, which then makes you almost dead when your support comes in anyway. The shooting mechanics seems like it was just put in at a good enough point to ship the game, kind of like Army of Two, meaning the guns sound like pellets, or Dante’s guns, and it never fully feels satisfying killing anybody. It also doesn’t help when the enemies basically stand there and wait for you to kill them.
Wait, you know what? Forget everything I just wrote, cause everyone should buy this game, well everyone who wanted to crucify GTA4 that is, cause this game is as unrealistic as you can get. And if I remember correctly, everyone hated the realism going back to Liberty City, so this game should sell instantly when you think about it. I enjoyed this game very much, its fun to blow things to high heaven, and I do beleive it deserves atleast a rental.
Tags: mercenaries 2, mercs, PS2, ps3, review, xboxEven a Super Hero needs a Hero
In this industry there seem to be a trinity of games that will generally be terrible; movie games, games aimed specifically at kids and super hero games. Movie games are one thing, they’re rushed to meet a certain dates to go along with a movie release, kids games are made to be unchallenging and developers don’t truly put effort into the presentation, however, superhero games have no excuse. Superheroes are so versatile, they can be in many different genres from RPGs, action games, fighting games or even RTS games. They’re easy sellers, the sell themselves with whichever comic book character the game is based on.
Now not every superhero game is terrible, but none particularly stand out. Spider-Man 2, Xmen Legends/Marvel Ultimate Alliance series are decent games. None stand out as the memorable classics they could be. Its sad that I can say in my honest opinion the best superhero game ever made was Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage of the 16 bit era. Sitting down with Producer Joe over some games, we were able to come up with ideas for different superhero games that could be easily executed right. Namely, a 2d or 3d fighter that would force you to play a character exactly as they would act in battle, and I don’t literally mean force you too, but you’ll get the best result by playing that way but of course you would be able to play your own way. Just one of a few ideas we came up with, but that there alone is better than Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects.
Developers sit on the rights to these titles and when they do use them, the games seemed either rushed or just plain not thought through. Marvel Nemesis could have been an amazing title, but it was just not executed properly and just felt clunky. EA bought the liscense to make garbage like that? Activision has done a mediocre job with the spider-man games, hopefully that will change with Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, and it will play as good as looks. All in all, superhero games need a hero to make a great comic book game that can be considered a classic and an example that the rest sould follow.
Vice Weekly 011 - Marathon Men
This week we discuss the 360 price drop, SOCOM: Confrontation, Facebreaker, TNA Impact & much more. If that wasn’t enough for one show; Gary & Stephen have the longest conversation about Street Fighter, ever.
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Hosts: Mel, Gary, Stephen
Producer: Joe
Kickin’ it Old School
I was just giving the old amazon a quick check for a collection of games, SNK’s King of Fighters:Orochi Saga, a collection of games featuring KOF ‘95-’97, imagine my surprise that SNK decided to be generous to the states and throw in ‘94 and ‘98 as well. That’s off topic though, while making my pre-order I noticed something under the “buyers who bought this, also bought this” There was a heaping helping of other companies classic collections. It seemed like almost every company had way more than one as well. I was torn as to how I felt about it. On one hand, for a young person like myself, its a chance to play all the hits and gems your big brother,cousin, older friend have been going on about. On the other hand it seems like its a companies lazy way of making a quick buck.
When thinking about it, it really doesn’t matter which it is, both we as gamers and the companies win. They make quick cash and we get our nostalgia. One can argue that this is a better deal than paying out for a full priced game for a rehashed formula. The Dynasty Warriors franchise comes to mind as I say that. Also we get many full games for less than a third of the price of one, and when you really take a good look, these old school games might as well be brand new to a large population of gamers. Take Capcom Classics Collection vol. 2. Many newer gamers know who Strider Hiryu is, but how many have actually played Strider? How many newer gamers can say they’ve played Metal Slug, or the original Ninja Gaiden or Dead or Alive games?
Upon seeing all of those collections dangling there I’ve found myself quite into collections of more old school titles. Its essentially a company’s story from when they started until now. Whether or not it was their intention to show us how they came up in the industry or were truly just trying to nickel and dime us remains unknown except to them. One thing is for sure however, we can be glad they do it, for all of us who’ve missed out because we were either too young or just not even born yet, we can now truly appreciate why gaming became such a phenomenon in today’s society by playing the games that laid the foundations for what we play today.
Tags: collections, old, schoolGallery
