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?
Continue reading Spore Hands-On: Creatives Juices at Work Resulting in Monster Orgies
Tags: Hands-On, PC, SporeThe Power of Gaming
This time last year I was pretty bored as a fan of video games in general, something was very wrong. The industry revolved around the Dragon that was the PS3 and the Phoenix that was the Xbox 360. (if you’ve gotten a red ring you can figure out why the 360 is the phoenix) The two monsters fought what was essentially a cold war. There were very little exclusives and there only seemed to be one difference between the two consoles, the 360’s smaller price tag. For the whole year I felt as if there was no competition between the two major platforms. This year, however, I feel refreshed because it seems as instead of simply staring at one another the two beasts have finally begun to make moves. With the prominence of blu-ray discs developers have been boasting its power of storage, even claiming to be able to take gaming to new heights with the new technology.
We’ve already seen examples of how they’re attempting, breathing the flames that are MAG, Killzone 2, Heavy Rain and the like. Does this mean that 360 owners are doomed to regret their purchase? Not at all, the bird’s still got some life in it, The 360 seems to be getting more cost effective by the minute with its frequent price drops, Sony has some catching up to do in that regard. Soon you will be able to store games onto your hard drive which will allow cut back on load times and increase the longevity of your disc by cutting down on the disc spins in the console. This allows developers to use multiple DVDs to equal the quality of a PS3 title because not only will multiple DVDs eventually reach the amount of space of a Blu-Ray game, with the new storage feature load times should be not a thing of the past but an inconvinence so minor it could hardly be considered one. Sony though has more than just the format to fight with, a Dragon’s got other tools and those would be the fact that Sony not only has 3rd party support but that also their first party titles are for the most part amazing games.
At this point it seems like the dragon has that phoenix pinned down.
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Tags: 360, Gaming, ps3Top Ten Fighting Games of All Time
Fighting games used to be the premier genre in the U.S but now they’ve seen a small drought in popularity due to the death of the arcade scene and rise of console gaming which allowed us to play games at home. Unfortunately, this meant no longer being able to constantly find competition. As avid fans of the old school genre we’ve decided to make this list explaining the top 10 fighting games of all time.
Games were placed by a combination of fanbase and depth.
10) Samurai Shodown
The Samurai Shodown series makes its way onto this list for being the original weapons based fighting game. With an excellent mix of character designs and weapon choices it’s no wonder it was able to go head to head with the almighty Street Fighter 2 back in the day. What makes Samurai Shodown unique is that the pace of matches back when it first came out made each match feel like real samurai fights by focusing less on flashy combos and instead combining both an overall strategy and being able to quickly adapt to your opponent to make slight alterations in said overall strategy to win games.
9) Virtua Fighter
Virtua Fighter comes with each iteration expanding on the last and adding new material. Gameplay elements added never tone down the time or effort needed to master the game, nor are they ever random. Every addition to the game feels fresh and welcomed, rather than unused and meaningless. Virtua Fighter has always been and still is one of the most difficult games to master even though it requires only three buttons to fight with. Every attack is categorized making you truly think about what moves to throw out to counter the moves your opponent throws out. Even if you choose to side step you have to know if you’re opponent will throw a move that attacks in a circular or semi-circular direction. The game really forces the player to examine the opposing character and have a full knowledge of all characters while fully mastering the character they’ve chosen.
Eternal Sonata US release for the ps3 confirmed
Eternal Sonata Ps3 - Story #4 from Mel Francis on Vimeo.
After some speculation and weeks of suspense, Namco-Bandai has announced that Eternal Sonata will make its way to the US this fall on the Ps3. At first it was said that the game wouldn’t be released here for the Ps3, leaving those who don’t have an Xbox 360 out in the cold. The story follows renowned composer Chopin, who on his death bed begins to blur the lines between life and death by having dreams. One dream in particular is where a girl is in some type of danger and a young boy who has to save her. This is where the game picks and the player begins to experience his dream first hand.
The game debuted last September for the 360, and seemed to be under the radar because it launched around the same time as Halo 3 did. Fortunately, with the re-release on the Ps3, anyone looking forward to the game can rest assured the not only are they going to get the same experience that 360 owners had, but also the pleasure of some added features such as new quests, multiple endings & added characters.
One thing I really enjoyed about the game from playing the 360 version was the battle system. It was a mixture of turn based and real time battle. What the game did well was take these two systems and combine them into one interesting experience. As with most RPGs, you had to wait for your characters turn before they could go, but when it comes time to battle you have a five second timer that came up which allowed you to attack your enemy with button specific moves. This helped keep the game unique because it allowed you to do more than press a button then watch a move, you were actually able to fight the enemy yourself which kept the game engaging.
Eternal Sonata Ps3 - Battle Gameplay #1 from Mel Francis on Vimeo.
The game also seems to feature some form of online co-op, so that you’re able to get into the game with friends and enjoy the game together. Based off of how the 360 version was, it would seem that you’ll be able to play the entire game with two other friends, which will add to the replayability of the game. I’m looking forward to the game, as I wasn’t able to get my hands on the 360 version.
Check out our screenshots of the game, as well as some videos of the game below the cut.
Continue reading Eternal Sonata US release for the ps3 confirmed
Break is over
I’m sure some of you were wondering why we hadn’t updated the site with more thought provoking articles in the last day, so I figured I would give you an answer. We took a rest day yesterday to relax so we could regroup and come back strong tomorrow to start the week off.
We have many things planned for the next week that I’m fairly sure you will enjoy. Tomorrow, expect an all new jam packed Vice Weekly for your listening pleasure, as well as a few articles to whet your appetites.
Also if you’ve noticed, we’ve had a more prominent link at the top of the site so you can all access the Vice Forums without hassle. Go sign up and start a few discussions, as we’re always looking for something new to talk about.
So until tomorrow, I leave you with this question:
What game do you think had the best showing at E3?
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