After a long hiatus, Midnight Club brings the LA streets to the PS3 and 360

When the Midnight Club series first started back in 2000 it didn’t have much notable competition in the street/import style racing games, however since then Need for Speed underground has stepped in and has been causing Midnight Club to evolve to keep up with EA’s giant racing series. There’s been no bigger jump for the series than the jump to the current generation systems, some changes for the better, and sadly some for the worse.

It’s fun to just explore the city

A most notable achievement for Midnight Club:LA is the graphics, the screenshots look great, but seeing everything move along at a very steady frame rate in such an amazing city looks fantastic. The city of LA is Midnight Club’s best feature, now I’ve never been to LA so I can’t compare to the real thing, but the layout feels a lot like a living and breathing city. You’ll see shopping districts, parking lots, plazas all placed around the city with great attention to detail and it’s all packed together so tightly that you won’t find yourself traveling through boring map areas just to get from one half of the city to the other. Managing such a large and detailed area without any load times is impressive, however this does feel like it must be pushing the 360 a little too hard, as sometimes when jumping from the map it can take several seconds for textures to re-appear and occasionally they don’t come back at all. While driving around the city you’ll find traffic to be a constant thorn in your side, however Midnight Club’s LA seems to exist in a world or nearly perpetual darkness and clear skys, so you’ll rarely have to travel through the rush hour traffic.

Weather effects enhance the LA atmosphere

Although the city is great, navigating it while in a race is beyond frustrating. Arrows appear as markers on each waypoint but they’ll often appear at inconievenient places, espically when you’re near a highway and it isn’t always obvious if you should be getting on, or off. Even when you do follow these arrows the odds are stacked against you, the computer knows best and will often take the shortest route from A-B, leaving you following the long way around like a chump. This problem may seem minor, but since the solution is to simply have a minimap with a line on it, the issue is just senseless. Blundering your way around the city does get easier as you learn the routes and learning will come quick when it seems you’re just competing in the same races over and over, because often you are. The reson you’re playing this same mission again is because your opponent is a heartless racing machine with the reactions and movement of an over caffeinated hamster.

The city detail is great

One of the best ways to aid victory is to be driving the best car in your class so your not constantly eating the dust of your rivals, but your choices aren’t particularly vast. There’s 43 cars and 3 bikes available to you, which if you’ve been keeping score you’ll find that number is nearly 30 less than the previous game. Fortunately Ford and Mazda have now been added to the lineup so even with less cars, there is at least more variation of manufactures. Both cars and bikes can be upgraded with new parts, or have their appearance modified with cosmetic changes, paint jobs and vinyls, true to the sprit of Midnight Club these visual changes can be used for great evil, turning a classy car into a two toned, neon eyesores with a spoiler like a shopping trolley. Cars can also be outfitted with power-ups like EMP pulses or the ability to slow down time and while these aren’t ‘mostly’ overpowered, hitting an enemy just right with aggro and knocking them down the wrong street will take them some time to recover.

The evils or car customization

There’s a fair selection of different activities to be done; you can deliver cars but this essentially is just a time trial with a damage limit, then there’s actual time trials, straight mana-a-mano races, tournaments and the rather treacherous pink slip races, amongst other things. Racing for pinks may not be something you’re familiar with, but when you agree to a pink race both drivers put their cars on the line. Usually in a game you’d expect some kind of mulligan or at the very least to reach to the power switch, in Midnight Club trying any of these little tricks will forfeit your ride so you better be damn sure before you enter one of these races. The tension of the pink slip races is rather unique to a racing game, but with the punishing and often unfair challenge of the game you’re perhaps better off not racing with your hottest ride, if you do then I fear for the safety of your game controllers when your luck runs out.

Bikes are fast buy risky

While your zooming around in the many races of the city you’ll be progressing in a very simple story of your unnamed character who’s moved to the west coast to make a name for himself, story is not in any way a focus here, but dealing with some of the characters you’ll find can be unintentionally hilarious. Everyone you meet seems to be a walking Cliché from some background or another with accents as suspect as their dialog. Opponents will be taunting you about how far in front they are or how you’re going to crash and they’re going to overtake you, it’s a very campy bad boy racer attitude that I personally find rather amusing but this style may irritate others. To drown out the dialog you can always turn up one of the 68 available radio tracks, I’d of hoped that in such a large list that I’d at least of heard of ONE of them but at least the selection is well suited to the attitude of the game.

The police aren’t much of a problem

Sadly I didn’t get much of a chance with multiplayer since everyone seems to be off playing one of the high profile Q4 releases, although there were enough people around to get together a game of keep away, where you simply have to hold onto a flag for as long as possible. Multiplayer seems functional and the power-ups make things a little interesting but there’s not a whole lot of draw here compared to some other racers. There’s is also an online mode called "Rate my ride" in which you can rate the cars of other random players and purchase them for a fixed price from their garage (if they allow), once again this is nothing revolutionary but you do get to see the bad cars others have created or purchase some sweet vinyls. Many of your antics are recorded online in the Rockstar social club along with your GTA4 stats (http://socialclub.rockstargames.com/) I’m all for any features that allow me to get involved in tracking my friends or see how many cars I’ve destroyed (16) but by far it’s biggest bonus for me is the ability to quickly get screenshots for reviews such as this, if only all games were as generous

Smile for the Internets

Midnight Club: Los Angeles has almost all the components of a great racer, being chased by the police through LA in my little Ford Focus has a lot of potential fun, but there’s the problem. Midnight club has a lot of potential, but it seems like the fun fairy skipped over Rockstar San Diego this year. Tedious races, a clumsy map and an unforgiving difficulty brings the game down hard, and a game without fun is just an interesting diversion at best.

3/5

Image via Wikipedia

So now I have Fallout 3 done and reviewed at Citizen Game (please go take a look), I’m now looking ahead to Midnight Club: LA and I believe this will be my first review without playing through the entire game first. It’s always been my thought that no game should be reviewed without completing the main story first, but really, where does that end? To see all that Fallout 3 has to offer would require more time than reasonable and these side quests are really no less relevant than the main one except that they are purely optional. It makes me wonder if freelance writers get paid more to review Tales of Symphonia than, say, Gears of War. Either way, it should be up to the writer to decide how much of the game needs to be played and if you trust them enough that you’re taking their review seriously then you should trust their judgement on when to cut the game short and put pen to paper (data to screen?).

What are your thoughts guys? Have you written any reviews without getting through the whole story? Where you satisfied with the outcome?

When a game is released with the Fallout name in the title it brings with it a certain level of expectation, now finally after 10 years we have the chance to see if Bethesda has cooked up something worth the wait.

For those that cannot remember, or simply weren’t gaming when Interplay began the series in the late 90’s you can rest easy that Fallout 3 doesn’t require any prior knowledge, but as a bonus, let me fill you in a little back-story to save you checking the World Wide Wikipedia. Fallout 3 is set in the Post apocalyptic wasteland of the United States, specifically around the Washington DC area. The events that lead to the fall of mankind began after the world nations started squabbling over the remaining resources left on the planet, finally an unnamed country went nuclear in 2077 causing many people to retreat into underground vaults while others perished or mutated on the surface. Fallout 3 begins in 2258 with your birth not far away from downtown Washington DC.

Don’t get too used to the cleanliness of these vaults

Previous Fallout games have been all viewed from the isometric perspective, naturally Bethesda has taken the series into 3D with the same Gamebryo engine seen in Oblivion. This caused many people to scream "It’s just going to be Oblivion with guns!" which on the surface seems quite accurate as it’s quickly apparent that Fallout 3 and Oblivion share many commonalities along with the shared graphics engine. Oblivion with guns may not be a bad thing though, depending on where you stand, and if there’s one things that video games teach us, is that guns are cool. You’ll have your first brief taste of combat before you leave the vault, this will give you change to try the new combat system that separates Fallout 3 from Oblivion and indeed any first person game that’s come before it (at least in my memory), V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tech Assisted Targeting System).

The V.A.T.S. targeting mode

A quick tap of the V key on your keyboard and the game will pause and take you into a targeting mode so you can plan your attack so long as you have the necessary action points. This doesn’t replace your ability to just point your gun at your target and pull the trigger but since combat is all variables and calculations, real-time combat doesn’t feel particularly great. Once you select your targets in V.A.T.S. you’ll not able to move until your sequence is complete, this seems a little off putting at first should you realize your tactics are woefully inadequate, but when combat slows down to show your perfect head-shot connect with the back of a mercenary’s head, the troubles of the wasteland quickly fade away. The V.A.T.S combat doesn’t get old as quickly as you’d expect, however it can be frustrating to unload 3 shotgun blasts to the back of someone’s head just for them to turn around and fire back, as this can make the weapons feel underpowered one moment and devastating the next, but since we’re talking about an RPG here and not a first person shooter these ‘problems’ are to be expected. There’s no shortage of variety; plasma weapons, mini guns, sledge hammers, buzz blades and sniper rifles are just some of the joyous weapons you’ll scavenge and having a lot of variety helps when you’re struggling to keep your weapons filled with ammo.

The V.A.T.S. effect!

Your weapon accuracy is governed by six of the thirteen available skills, the others are the usual affair of healing, sneaking, bartering etc. and as with previous Fallout  games these skills are just part of the statistics that control your character. The S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck) returns and should feel pretty familiar to anyone who’s got any past RPG experience, the perks system however is a little unique. These perks include the traits of previous Fallouts so naturally you’ll have access to the "bloody mess" perk, which causes "characters and creatures you kill [to] often explode into a red, gut-ridden, eyeball-strewn paste". Some perks, including bloody mess give you a skill bonus, others may change the gamely slight by allowing you to feast on your victims or befriend some of the wasteland creatures. The character advancement system feels very true to the Fallout universe and the Bethesda designers thankfully resisted the temptation to include their Elder Scrolls system of advancing only the skills you use. Fallout 3 also has a great many reasons to play through a second or third time, one of those reasons is that your different skills will open up new paths through the game, perhaps you can talk yourself out of a situation rather than fighting, plus having higher skills in certain areas will unlock different traits for you to choose from.

Try to get through the game without your pants exploding

It’s not just your skills that create new paths through Fallout, your actions can also drastically effect the wasteland which will in turn effect the reaction of other characters towards you. It seems as if no RPG is complete without the player going through a slew of ethical choices, but Fallout 3 gives you some rather large choices early on that can change things so much that you’ll feel that you’ve missed out on a large portion of the game no matter how you choose to go. Dialog trees fortunately feel a little more fleshed out than Oblivion and although combat is often the showpiece of Fallout 3, you’re going to spend a fair amount of time talking to the rather wacky gals and fellahs in the wasteland. Conversations and missions often go beyond the usual fetch and assassinate quests and sometimes you can adjust the lives of others by talking to a few people without any quest being attached and no rewards given, besides perhaps a little karma. Most of the people you’ll meet feel very three dimensional, with very separate personalities as if they’d each have their own back story to tell. The believability of these characters is only helped by the rather disturbing feeling of accuracy you’ll get from the wasteland you’re crossing.

No quest to replace the broken humor chip unfortunately

It’s a rather unique feeling when you find an untouched house out in the wasteland, you enter the house and see a suitcase by the door next to some human remains, more remains are in the kitchen next to the food in the oven, traveling upstairs you see a bedroom with toy cars on the floor and a doll in the toy box, there are more human remains on the bed. These simple touches created more emotion for me than any other recent game in memory, so it feels rather creepy when you’re rummaging around the belongings of this deceased family so you can find some items to sell to a trader. Sadly though, Fallout 3 suffers from the item packing as the Elder Scrolls series, although not as severe, often you’ll find that the world seems to be overly flooded with filler objects, but the areas are arranged and objects placed with such meticulous detail that it’s easy to forgive a little time saving. So you may find objects at least in locations that you’d expect, but you have to wonder how many people eat squirrel pie and only drink one brand of soda. Fallout 3 has some big shoes to fill and it has tried hard to grant good fan service, with a couple of returning characters (even 100 years after Fallout 1) and the amazing way that Fallout 3 manages to nail the feeling of the first Fallout games, while also feeling completely new. You’re not going to see the crazy pop culture references you found in the second game however, as the humor here feels more mature and tries not to break the atmosphere of the experience, even the hacking mini-games aren’t some Pipemania puzzle that breaks the atmosphere every time you activate a computer. The atmosphere is deepened even more so by tuning your Pip-Boy 3000 radio to a station and checking out the news, where you’ll likely hear about your adventures from Three Dog, who’s one of the larger than life personalitys in the game who you’ll get the chance to visit.

 
Cities look like they are barely standing

There’s no shortage of places to go in Fallout 3 to meet these unique individuals; underground tunnels, museums, supermarkets or cities are all great places to meet, greet or kill depending on your disposition. However there’s a fundamental problem with exploring the landscape of Fallout 3, it’s a wasteland. Fortunately Bethesda have done a great job of giving the feeling of a wasteland without actually having you go too far before you encounter something of interest. Quick travel also takes the potential repetitive travel away, however the repetitive nature of the locations isn’t something that can be solved so easily. Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall, all allowed Bethesda to get creative and build wondrous beautiful structures, however when you’re designing a post apocalyptic wasteland, your hands are rather tied. Most buildings are the same shade of gray, held together with battered stone or with whatever scrap has been found. Clearly though a lot has been done to stretch the limits of variety without going too far and it should be applauded.

Your first view of the Wasteland is a memorable one

Although Fallout 3 has a whole lot going for it, re-playability, moody atmosphere, detailed environments and great voice acting for every line of dialog, the engine does set it back a little. While the visuals have been improved drastically over Oblivion, such as the detail on faces, many people you meet all look rather the same facially, but fortunately Fallout 3 does include one of the most robust mustache selection systems to date. Other issues also revolve around the engine, such as terribly jerky and unnatural animations, the occasional failure for scripted events to activate, or an NPC becoming stuck behind an object while their cut-scene plays, forcing you to wait while they navigate their way around like a drunken Roomba. Of course getting stuck doesn’t just effect the NPCs, a couple of wrong jumps and you can find yourself stuck someplace without hope of freedom so you’ll once again be reaching for the quick load. Quick save and quick load will your new best friends before long and the over anxious amongst you might find themselves hitting quick save before every corner. Most of these problems fortunately are just nit-picks, like the fact that you can loot a corpse just by finding a fragment of remains and the fact that the inventory system is still as clunky as Oblivion, perhaps more so since you can no longer sort items.

Some melee sequences would fit well into Manhunt 2

The problems with Fallout 3 are rather minor, however it is frustrating that some of the issues that effected the 2006 game of the year haven’t been rectified. If you can look past these foibles then you’ll find a truthful sequel to a great classic series that has many great qualities and can provide more than its money worth in game play hours. Hey, at least we didn’t just get a multi player only cross-platform shooter *ahem*. It’s easy to recommend Fallout 3 as long as you’re not expecting a fast paced FPS, anyone else with some PRG experience should bunker down with Fallout 3 and prepare for the apocalypse.

5/5

No I’m not talking about another sequel to Cannon Fodder (click links for +1 awesome) instead I’m talking about the never changing war of Fallout, which I finally completed yesterday. I just thought I’d take a break from my review and write a quick blog post, which is gradually becoming a weekly thing. I also managed to get through Fable 2 on Saturday, so it was a pretty game-completing weekend for me. I am kinda bummed out about both games though, the endings both seemed rather anti-climactic and the Fallout 3 ending doesn’t allow you to travel around after the ending sequence, unlike Oblivion, but true to Fallout, I can’t say much more without giving spoilers. One thing I do like about reviewing PC games is that I can at least take my own screenshots without the task of pointing a camera at a TV and hoping the result doesn’t look like garbage.

So here’s the screenshots I have so far for Fallout 3, I’ve already cut some and now I need to decide on which to axe so my review doesn’t turn into a picture book.

Thanks for reading guys and just to let you know my review of Saints Row 2 is live on CitizenGame.co.uk and I surely wouldn’t be opposed to you going there and commenting on it.

As I post this the time for Fallout 3 arrives, I may be missing the midnight release, but hopefully I can find some collectors editions at a Gamestop or Bestbuy, the sad thing is that I’m still not done with Fable, I have a little more to see in Saints row and I’ve barely scratched the surface of Midnight club. At least I did manage to get my Saints Row 2 review finished, it’s only available on my blog right now, once it appears on citizen-game.co.uk for a few days I’ll post it up on GameSpot with the rest of mine.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with Fable and taking things nice and slow, but I’ve had some great moments so far:

1, The general store was shut and I have a very sexually demanding wife, so I had to search all the cabinets in the house in the hope of finding a condom.

2, I didn’t realize one of my two wives were following me when I quick traveled to see my other. I looked around and saw the wife on follow, then saw my other wife running full pelt towards us, so I had to have the both of us run HARD in the opposite direction.

3, My wife was playing with her husband, she didn’t have any condoms and she hears her husband say "I knew we should of used protection…. uhh, I mean, that’s great news darling". Up pops a baby crib in the house. My wife then accidentally hits B (spells) instead of A (action) and casts a fireball on the ground, her husband runs from the house pleading from his life, while the baby giggles in amusement.

Those are the only examples I can think of, but they’re such unique and unscripted events that I just had to share them.

Talk to you later guys, and remember; war, war never changes.

Saints Row received a lot of success as the first open world game for this current generation of consoles, now, two years later we get to see how its sequel stands up in a post GTA4 world.

Let me get something out of the way nice and early, comparing Saints Row 2 to GTA is a lot like putting Need for speed next to Gran Tourismo; both are fine games and provide very different experiences within their respective genres. That said, there’s many possible comparisons I’m could to make, not just to show how saints is the same, but to show how the two differ.

As I mentioned before, Saints 2 is an open world game, it has the usual drill of side missions, gangs, guns and carjacking. However, as games like GTA 4 are being increasingly serious and straight laced, Saints Row 2 takes a "why so serious" approach, far away from GTA’s moral choices and instead the protagonist is downright brutal, but more on that later. The story’s layout won’t surprise you if you’ve played the first Saints, the story continues from the previous game and has the same kind of structure, complete a few missions at the start of the game, then the story branches out in three different directions and comes together at the end with some final missions, while you’re forced to take side missions along the way to earn enough respect to continue the campaign. The main story has many issues, both technically and creatively; You’ll occasionally have to restart a mission because a target simply isn’t there, or you’ll walk through a door just to die instantly when many enemies instantly spawn through the doorway. One campaign has you dealing with drugs has few memorable moments, others however do have a few hidden surprises and the voice of Michael Dorn is always welcome to anyone who watched the I Am Weasel cartoon, or perhaps the lesson known StarTrek:TNG (Worf), although most of the other voice work and lip syncing is shaky to say the least. The varying quality of the missions is only equaled by the seemingly random difficulty, one mission may set its self up to be an epic battle just to have break down to be a cakewalk, another seemingly insignificant task may end up challenging your patience as much as your skill.

It’s safe to say the physics are rather exaggerated

The main story might not be where you spend most of your time in the city of Stillwater, with at least 20 types of side missions to be getting along with, most of which came from the first game, but with a few surprises:

• Streaking: Remove your clothes and run around in front of pedestrians
• Septic Avenger: Drive around in a septic truck and cover buildings with poop
• Fuzz: Stop crime in excessive ways, such as halting the activities of skateboarders with satchel charges
• Fight club

These activities, while mostly fun, can also be the most frustrating part of the game. Rather often they can be just based on the luck of the draw, as the location of any one mission will vary each time you try it and some locations are easier to complete your given objective than others. Although you are required to complete a certain amount of side missions before you can go on in the main quest you’ll still want to play these side missions, not only can some of them be a lot of fun or just over the top extreme, but the rewards are great, sometimes perhaps game-breakingly great. Some rewards will simply be a store discount or a new car, for some missions you’ll unlock unlimited ammo for a specific type of gun and having the ability to shoot dual SMGs without worry of ammo can make you feel like you’re cheating your way through the game. Some of the more amusing un-lockables give you new outfits, such as a traffic cone hat which you’ll see your character happily wearing even through the darkest and most twisted cut scenes.

Pick a larger vehicle and you choose how to get to your destination

Dressing your character and gang up as a ninjas or parading around as a giant killer hotdog is only one way of amusing yourself, as the actual character creation can really provide an unhealthy amount of joy. How about making a burly woman with a beard and cockney male voice who swings her hips as she walks, or creating a dude with a heaving chest that talks like a black woman. Personally my favorite character was a skinny white guy with glasses that has a crazy look on his face and a pimp walk. It sounds simply like a fun diversion, but I had tears down my face looking at the freaks of nature I’d created and fortunately for a small fee you can go back and change everything again by just driving to a plastic surgeon.

Taking these characters into multiplayer highlights the wide variety of customization available and allows you to reenact a 12 player epic Pirate vs Ninja battle. The Strong arm multiplayer mode is a team based battle where each team competes at the varying activities around the map, while you still have the option to just gun down the competition, you can also spray tag certain walls around the map to grant your tam bonuses or to hinder the other team. This makes for a pretty unique experience beyond the usual deathmatch mode which is included but is in no way memorable. One more than memorable option is the ability to play every mission and side mission co-op with a buddy over XBL. The co-op works exactly as expected and opens up some very intrusting ways of doing some of the missions. Even with just two players you can make even the dullest missions far more interesting and the crazy missions even more ridiculous.

Backing up a bud with a Tornado Attack Helicopter can be very effective

I’ve mentioned times before about the insanity of the game, but let me give you an example; okay, you need to teach a lesson to a rival do you:
A, Place a prank call?
B, Knock on his door and run away?
C, Buy a geiger counter, take a boat to an island with a power plant, user the geiger counter to locate and collect radioactive waste, escape by helicopter, get shot down, steal a car and drive to his local tattooist, sabotaging the procedure he’s planning on having performed?
If you picked ‘C’ then congratulations! You’ll fit will into the world of Saints Row 2 and the brutal sadism of the protagonist. You also should probably get yourself checked.

Some effects look nice, but it can look like a hi-res PS2 game

A quick look comparing Saints Row 2 and GTA 4 will reveal that Saints appears to be a budget game in comparison, and indeed you’ll have that impression throughout. There’s very little polish, graphics haven’t evolved and it all feels like a hodgepodge of ideas thrown into a package. Bugs are rampant, the old trick of jumping on a car and materializing inside still exists, sometimes when trying to jack a police cruiser you’ll get in the back and if you look away from a car for just an instant it may vanish. The frustration of these faults can get on top of you, but fortunately there’s so much to do that you can always come back to what’s troubling you and these foibles are easy to forget when you’re having so much fun being involved in the circus of Stillwater.

5/5

You’ll most likely not heard of Positech Games or their life simulations since they are a independent UK development company staffed solely by former Lionhead coder, Cliff Harris. With little time spent on advertising and the rather niche nature of the games, Positech remains an unknown, although Cliff’s discussions with pirates have earned him some attention a short while ago the company and it’s games tends to fall beneath the radar of most ‘mainstream’ video game media. Kudos 2 has been in development for roughly a year and follows on from the quiet success of 2006’s Kudos 1 with some rather rudimentary improvements, but it’s comforting to know that should you decide to purchase, your heard earned $20 is going towards helping a developer feed his cats.

Government Came and Took my Baby!

Kudos 2, like its predecessor is a simple menu driven life simulation, unlike the obvious comparison of "The Sims", Kudos’ point and click interface doesn’t involve guiding your avatar around the house to the toilet, instead the gameplay has far more in common with an adventure game where the only adventure is the day-to-day drudgery of life. Kudos is a game without goals, much like the Sims, there’s no one telling you that you have to be a high paid lawyer or a TV chef, you could simply aspire to become a 30 year old alcoholic delivery driver who spends his evenings watching HumorTube.com.

The Internet, as created by Al Gore, minus the porn

Each day you can select one activity (two on the weekends), from a vast selection of usual daily chores, such as:

• Paintball
• Staring at a blank wall
• Job hunting
• Shopping
• Learning to drive
• Taking a Kickboxing class
• Reading a book on golf

Trying to balance your life and your finances often gets rather tricky, either you have the money but not the time, or the time and not the money, giving you an often interesting viewpoint on the causality of life or perhaps a universal game mechanic to keep both lives interesting.

Grabbing a beers at a local bar makes you cool

To get far in a career you’ll need to start taking some evening classes and perhaps read a few books to get the skills you need, for higher paid jobs you’ll need experience first, so you can’t read a book and become a manager and instead have to climb the business ladder. Other skills factor into your job also, you can’t become a C programmer with just the knowledge of the language, you’ll also need to keep up on your problem solving abilities, perhaps with a few nights at home doing crosswords and playing sudoku, wearing a smart suit to your interview to boost your confidence also can’t hurt your chances of an interview. This all sounds like general advice you could give out on life, but it all applies in game, turn up to your interview hungover and depressed that your girlfriend has left and you’ll leave the interview more downtrodden than before, making getting back onto your feet that little bit harder.

Passive aggressive girlfriends accurately mirror real life

Career is the obvious path to take in Kudos, everyone wants the big bucks and it’s fun to see how instead of happiness from wealth your avatar always seems at his best when he’s just got enough money to go out with friends, have fun and doesn’t have a stressful job to get in the way, since none of your friends will want to be around you if you’re just bringing them down. It all equates to some interesting social commentary, however ultimately you’ll start a game of Kudos, play until you’ve reached whatever goal you’ve made for yourself and find you settle into a routine, much as in real life. Sure the game is fun to come back to up to a point, as life can be rather different depending on your career but Kudos’ major failing is also its major premise, it’s a life simulation. Despite the differences between Kudos and the Sims that I mentioned earlier, I believe there’s a lot of crossover between the two games and who will enjoy them, if you play Sims so you can walk in someone else’s shoes then you should at least check out the Kudos 2 demo. Personally I like the self reflective idea of starting off as a 20 year old who’s life is going nowhere and having them work hard to turn their life into something meaningful, rather than to sit at home every evening playing videogames and — oh, I’ve wasted my life…

4/5

When I say button….

Way back in 2000, when we could count the hundreds of MHz of our computers had with just one hand, Will Wright had just wrapped up work on Sim City 3000 and the original Sims to begin work on Spore. How anyone can dedicate nearly a decade of their life to a single project blows this writer’s mind but he’s the creator of the best selling video game of all time so what Will wants, Will gets. Now that the day is here does Spore live up to the tremendous hype? Or after 8 years is it overripe?

In an eggshell, Spore takes you on a journey from the very beginnings of life as a microbe, through several stages of evolution until ultimately you have the power to destroy and craft planets from the safety of your space craft. The idea seems too much for a single game to handle and apparently it is, so the game is broken up into five very individual stages of life, each step is so separate that you can choose to begin at any stage of the game since each acts like a separate game with their own gameplay elements and goals. Because of this I’m going to make life a little easier on both you and I and break this game into smaller, easier to digest pieces.

Fulfill your dreams with flying mech monkeys

Your life begins as a cellular lifeforms in the “Cell Stage”, where you’ll take the form of a microbe crashing into the sea of your chosen planet from the insides of an asteroid You’ll start with a random creature with either the mouth of a Herbivore or Carnivore and have to feed on your food of choice. Once the game begins you’ll find it very similar to a PC flash game/PS3 game called flOw (http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/) go play it now and come back — I’ll still be here. Now you should have a basic feel to the first section of Spore and It’d be foolish to believe that flOw didn’t heavily inspire the whole feel of the cell stage, but Spore takes it a step further and really makes you feel part of the food chain when humongous creatures instinctively begin chasing you on sight and other creatures around you are dueling for their own survival. You won’t just be swimming, fighting and franticly clicking as the first two stages of Flow are all about evolution, you’ll find the spoils of war often contain items as well as food and these items can be used when it’s time to evolve. Once you choose to evolve and find a mate you gain access to your first gander at the fabled creature creator, although to begin with you don’t have a lot of choice beyond changing the shape of your creature and adding a couple of eyes and mouths, unlockable items do grant some interesting abilities such as electric power or a mosquito snout where you can suck the goodness from the other residents of your pool. I had a lot of fun with the Cell Stage, but sadly it will only last about 30 minutes before you’ve grown to be one of the largest creatures in the pool and it is time to leave the waters and onto the creature Stage.

The style in the cell stage adds a lot to the experience

One nice feature of Spore is that although you can jump to any stage of the game, you will receive bonuses based on how you lived in the previous stage, generally encouraging the behavior you already set for yourself by giving you friendly or aggressive bonuses. Once you and a few of your fellow abominations of nature leave the ocean, your small pack builds a nest and you are sent off to complete a set of goals with a style and format that seems rather close to that of a MMORPG, which is rather a jarring change of pace from the previous stage (which is a feeling you’ll soon get used to). Besides the endgame this is where you will likely spend the majority of your time if you plan on building up the creature of your dreams (or nightmares) since upon completing the creature stage the design of your creature is locked and going forward you’ll only have the ability to add accessories. Since the point of this stage is to get your creature evolved most of anything you do here will unlock an item of some kind, usually along the lines of the type of items you are already using, if you have horns you’ll be likely to unlock larger horns, if you have a giant eye that sticks several meters out the top of your head then you’ll unlock more variations of that style. A lot of designs can be found in bone piles scattered across the continent where as others can be eared by either sending your creature into battle or by dancing and making a fool of yourself in front of the other species. The creature stage has a lot of appeal since you can unlock all of the creature parts here, but it feels like a little more time could of been spent on the interactions between the different species. You do get the chance to ally up with other races but nothing really seems to be going on in the world and everything feels very unnatural for what you’d expect when living amongst wild beasts.

Creatures don't have to look practical to be useful

Now we reach the rather weak midpoint of the game known as the Tribal Stage. Your little nest has banded together into a tribe with the goal of either conquering other tribes or making peace with them (seeing a theme?), now instead of doing a little dance for the other creatures you are playing instruments for them. The game genre now switches to an RTS method and you’ll be tasked with harvesting food, building structures and arming your people with tools. You’ll unlock new structures by either befriending or conquering other tribes and then you make new tools by using those structures, it sounds pretty simple and honestly it really is. Much of the complexity and detail of most RTS games are stripped down to make the experience far more accessible, this is likely fine for some, but experienced RTS players will find the midpoint of Spore just a filler and not a compelling experience.

My flying monkeys choose to attack with spears!

Next we move to the civilization stage with its roots firmly embedded in Sim City, sadly those roots aren’t feeding from the joy that is Sim City 2/3/4000, instead they’ve turned towards the evil of the Society brand. There is a little strategy involved here, you have three building types (residential, industry and entertainment) and each effects the neighboring structures giving boosts to their abilities. You could use a lot of strategy to lay out your city but since you can only place 11 buildings per city you can simply watch your cities output while mindlessly swapping the positions of the buildings that you’ve purchased. The civ stage also marks the occasion where the creator tool starts to become a nuance. So you design your city hall and your three building types, then your three types of vehicle, then the 3 types again for the other city types, Religious, Economic and Military, eventually you may have created 13 separate designs by the end of the stage. You’ll soon start to feel your desire to create new and interesting objects slip away, replaced with apathy and selecting existing objects so you can just get on with what you are doing. Your different units will effect how you go about conquering the globe: Religious units require you to right click on an enemy city and fire rays at them until they convert to your religion and join you, Military units require you to right click on an enemy city and fire bullets at them until they fall and join you, Economic units are a little different and you setup trade routes with other cities until you can ultimately purchase them. The civilization stage feels equally as weak as the creature stage and although you do get to design some interesting vehicles with the tools provided the actual gameplay here is very short and simplistic, with little strategy required to win even on the harder setting.

My pink and yellow city and toasters are well guarded by my Star Destroyer on legs

Finally we reach the Space Stage and this is where the meat and potatoes of Spore is found, in fact I’d go as far to say that excluding the creation tools it feels as if much time was spent on developing this stage as every previous stage put together. The space stage plays a lot like a space RTS, such as Sins of a Solar Empire, things are still trimmed down in many ways but here is where some standout originality comes in. Along with the available war and diplomacy options you can create new colonies on other planets, this alone isn’t a big deal until you work on improving the planet so you can place additional cities and increased planning options. To improve these planets you need to balance the ecosystem which is like trying to find the right bowl of porridge, you have to get everything just right, by heating up or cooling the planet while also maintaining the correct atmosphere levels, okay perhaps that’s not a whole lot like porridge. To begin to terraform the planet and get a template atmosphere you can perform feats such as calling down asteroids, summoning volcanoes or vacuuming up clouds, once you have met environmental conditions you are required to start dropping down plants and creatures from other planets to get everything stabilized. It seems a lot more complex than it really is, but the metamorphosis of a planet looks fantastic, espically when you decide to bring about the ice age to a less than hospitable neighbor by freezing his planet solid with a sustained ice beam. There are lots of little things to keep you busy in the space stage, trading various resources between planets or doing a few side missions to raise your reputation and earn a little extra money to buy that doomsday weapon you’ve always dreamed of. Despite these tasks there is no main task here and ultimately you have to create your own goals in a massive galaxy with so many solar systems that most people won’t even scratch the surface of what’s available, because ultimately you’re just reapeating the same actions over and over.

Just a very small section of the massive galaxy

Burning up a planet with your heat ray is a great way to stay warm

Spore isn’t much of a challenging game, mainly to keep things accessible and removing the need for any detailed strategy. Trying to add extra challenge by selecting a harder difficulty doesn’t do a whole lot to add value since the AI appears to behave in much the same and just the damage multipliers are adjusted, it’s all rather a moot point anyhow since you have infinite lives through every stage. To be fair Will’s games haven’t been about lives and difficulty in the past either, both Sims and Sim City are without any clearly defined goals or structure and rely on the player to make up their own fun just as Spore does. Most of the fun you’ll get out of Spore is really to be found in building rather than doing, which is why so much has been said about the creation tools and why the Creature creator was released early to build hype and interest. I’ve always found creation tools in games to be either overly complex or terribly simple and they never seem to feel like more than tools where the entire plan in to finish so you can use the pieces. In Spore you can use the creator to build something amazing and not really care if you ever use it, building it is most of the fun. The tools are so easy to use; draw out a spine, drag on some arms and legs, give it some eyes, a mouth and you have something totally unique to you, spend a little more time on it and you have something that can look amazingly professional without it feeling like you put in any real effort. The whole game survives because of the creation tools and everything is made that much sweeter by the endless options brought to your planets using the wonders of the internet. Anyone that has an intent of spending a lot of time in the space stage will be very thankful for all these options to keep you looking around and exploring, then rather than blocking the obscene content you can simply eradicate them from existence.

My city is well defended

It wouldn’t be a review without a little thought to the audio and visual aspects in play here. The graphics do a fine job of doing what you’d expect without anything really exceptional as far as pure power it’s more the nuances of style that you witness at some points of the game such as looking at the giant creatures in the depths of the water or burning a planet with the godlike powers of your space ship. The audio is fantastic, the generative music fits well into each stage of the game, advanced creatures banter along in native simish and the other creature sounds are varied and usually appropriate to the creature you’ve tried to create, depending on the mouth you have chosen.

Spore has a lot of ambitious ideas, but seeing them split across five games that don’t have any individual value is unfortunate. I suppose that wanting five fully feature rich games is just greedy but the experience as a whole just feels like it is spread a little too thin and simply a sandbox for the offspring of the outstanding creature creator.

5.1 or 6? Seems like a random question, of course we want 6, more is better right? 6 tootsie pops or 6 fresh Cheezburger is better than less, unless I’m talking about punches to the kidneys. But instead of it being some nonsensical question that crazy Elk has pulled from his head, I’m referring to this new wide website that all the kids are talking about nowadays, which version are we on?

   “But Mr Elk sir, how can we possibly summarize 12 years of history into a single number?”

Why Billy, thank you for asking. The answer is simple when you have the Internet, some free time (turns out, a lot of free time) and a time machine consisting of nothing but software, that lives on the Internet.

Many of you will have no idea what I’m talking about when I mention mplayer.com, happypuppy.com or geocities sites with blink text.

   “Oi Grandad” You might say “Get back in your chair and I’ll hear no more stories about the interwebs before YouTube”

Well, perhaps later. For now let me show you what I’ve found. GameSpot, this is for you.

GameSpot 1.0 - May 1996

The first version of the GameSpot Site that I’m able to find, you’ll find lots of banner ads for mplayer.com and talk of the current multiplayer revolution. The 1996 site is a shining example of sites for its age, except for the fact that it features video content and isn’t full of ugly animated gifs and <BLINK> text

GameSpot 2.0 - Late 1997

The GameSpot logo lost its shading and still hasn’t totally taking shape yet. You’ll find articles about this new AGP slot in computers and previews for Quake II and Starcraft. This marks GameSpot’s early infatuation with the colour purple and a red G sun which is the strangest version of the GameSpot logo I’ve ever seen.

GameSpot 2.01 - Late 1998

The logo takes shape and also animates, you’ll also find a poll on the site, but little other changes.

GameSpot 2.02 - Late 1999

Now flying the banner for ZDNet GameSpot sits under their breadcrumb trail. Not many changes here except the introduction of a real banner.

Fun fact: News shows ZDNet were pleased with GameSpot having 2.1% of the web audience over all competitors (IGN, HappyPuppy, GameCenter (CNET), GamesDomain)

GameSpot 3.0 - Mid 2000

Now things start looking really good, GameSpot now replaces all of ZDNet’s game pages and shifts further across the breadcrumb. You’ll find crazy stuff like forums and GameSpot Live already active over eight years ago!

GameSpot 3.1 - Late 2000

After a brief turn of blue GameSpot goes purple again and clears the ZDNet breadcrumb totally off the site. ZDNet and GameSpot are now under the CNET, however there’s no mention of anything on the site yet except that the ZDNet forums now redirect to CNET

GameSpot 3.2 - Early 2001

Now we see a GameSpot I clearly remember. Forums are tucked away under each system and you now see the CNET footer on each page, navigation is pretty slick and it’d pass for a pretty decent site even in todays times.

GameSpot 3.21 - Mid 2002

Just a few minor changes, very cosmetic giving the site a very metallic feel. Login box is now shown on the main page for members and here’s an article for GameSpot 4.0 where we say goodbye to purple *sniff*

GameSpot 4.0 - Early 2003

Hello orange! Forums and the entire site is now buzzing and busy, user profiles allow friend lists and PMs but blogs may not yet have not hit mainstream yet and are nowhere to be found on GameSpot for now.

Gamespot 4.1 - Early 2004

Each system has its own icon in a very OS9 feel, forums labeled just as community. The site really went through a whole load of 4.X revisions and added blogs (called journals) sometime in the last quarter.
Ignore the silver center of this page, looks like the new design became inserted into the old causing some strange problems in the space time continuum. Also ignore the red and white box, my ad filter at work gets a little hyperactive.

GameSpot 4.2 - Early 2005

Icons for each system didn’t last long, another slight change in the long list of 4.x revisions

Gamespot 5.0 - Mid 2005

GameSpot’s last site I’m sure your quite familiar with and it needs no introduction, forums are labeled as forums, blogs are called blogs, all is right with the world.
Little changed in the three years of 5.0 except for slight changes such as a much shorter system list and element changes, making 5.0 the longest lasting GameSpot revision to date.

Read Greg Kasavin’s words on the 5.0 GameSpot Site upgrade here

Gamespot 5.1/6.0 ? - August 2008

Here we are at the end of my little 12 year memory lane to GameSpot’s current iteration. We’ve traveled through Purple, dabbled with blue and now are cutting the orange for a little silver. The argument and the question I pose to you all; are we now on version 6 or 5.1?

I hope you enjoyed my little tribute and trip down memory lane, it sure took some time to make and research.