Star Wars: The Forces Unleashed Demo

I downloaded the Xbox 360 Demo (available for free on the Xbox Live Marketplace) yesterday and I have now played through it a couple of times. Firstly, download the demo. The graphics are awsome, the physics are awesome, the star wars troopers clinging on looks great. Some times they can be a little sensitive, but the demo is a great fun to play through. My recomendation is play on lowest diffiucltly level so you can have the most fun by treating it as a sand box game.

However, the demo has further made me decide that if I get this game at all, I get it for the Wii. Why? Well because, it doesn't matter how cool the physics are, that and the story are all that is selling it for me for the 360. The controls are sometimes difficult to use, particully with Force Move (although that is inherient of moving anything in 3D with joysticks). The lightsaber fighting is highly unsatisfying and there is a force meter. How randomly bad is that? The one cool thing about the game is walking around being awesome, and your putting a cap on it?! The game isn't hard on the easy difficultly settings, but it isn't fun on the harder ones' because you can't be awesome.

Spontenuity is the cooler part about it, deciding to randomly rip out an iron bar and place in the Tie Fighters path is cool. I am not going to deny it. But I don't think it is quite enough.

But all the Wii has got is the controls right. And maybe they will ware off too. But it does have an exclusive versus mode. It's still going to have the incredible story, and maybe they will do away with things like the Force Meter and power ups (I know!)

The problem with the 360 version is the physics is a gimick. Just like the Wiimote thing might be. But if there is any company that I trust to make a decent game for the Wii that doesn't just use waggles, it is Lucas Arts. However, I will be waiting for reviews of this game, and I do wish they had made it for Wii Motion Plus. (What, did you think I had forgotten about MotionPlus in my E3 post, no...., just saving it because it is so big *shifts eyes nervously*)

Finally, I would like to publicly appologise for my mistake in the Spore post. There are, as Mr. Anon pointed out, more colours if you simply hold down the colour and more pop up. Also, Project Entropia is good, and I will be telling more about it soon. Very soon.

Spore Creature Creator and Project Entropia

I got the Spore Creature Creator today after finding out that you get the cost subtracted from the game (making it free) and I am loving it. it is so simple to use it is amazing.
You can create some really interesting and diverse creatures. What really makes it though is the simplicity, as I said. Being able to drab and drop legs, arms, eyes and feet on and them just work is out standing.
But above and beyond that the absolute best feature is the ease of sharing. For example, it comes with a built in Youtube uploader.



Perhaps the only bad thing I can say about it is the colouring system. As random as this sounds, it is really bad. Instead of, as you might expect, being able to colour every single limb independently, you must choose a colour scheme of which you can only choose 3 colours. What is worse, is the colour palette is limited to just 10 or perhaps 12 colours. Personally, I was expecting the complete computer spectrum of 256 million.

**Update: As an anonymous reader pointed out, you can infact press and hold on each colour for a further selection. Woops!

I also downloaded Project Entropia. It is very confusing start and I am still not quite sure what I am doing. What initially drew me in to the game is that it doesn't have a pay per subscription, but instead you put (real) money in, but, here is the clever bit, take real money out. So, theoretically, you could make money on it. That, and it's got loads of cool concepts. However, at the moment, I am struggling to learn the controls. Hopefully, in about a months time, I will have sussed out what is going on and tell you more about it. As usual, stay tuned.

Dawn of War 2 Will Have Tyranids

Everyone knew it, but it has finally been confirmed. THQ released this video this morning. Apologies if the video hasn't appeared yet, Youtube can take some time "Processing"

Nintendo @ E3

How embarrassing. How disappointing. How painfully bad. These are just some of the ways I could describe Nintendo's press conference. It started with a detailed account of someone's skiing injuries. Then an interesting but lie ridden demo of a snow boarding game using the Wii Balance Board. Then some statistics that don't correlate with Microsoft's, and 3 average looking game trailers. They did, some what inevitably, announce a microphone along with Animal Crossing. It might not look great, and no backwards support was announced, but a room mike is better than no mike I guess...

Animal Crossing looks decidedly average. Average graphics, average set of features etc. However, judging by the rest of the of the show, they might have been underplaying it.

Yes, that's right, Nintendo has a cunning plan. It involves under talking and deliberatly missing out key information to upset core gamers to a point of suicide. The problem is, I haven't worked out how this plan benifits them in any way at all. For example, it turns out a new Mario and Zelda are being created. All they had to do was say along with a quick render of Link. THATS ALL THEY HAD TO DO. No effort, shut everyone up for months. But no.

Then the stage goes dark, at first you think it is Wii music because they haven't mentioned it. But then dry ice starts pooring on to the stage and crazy lights start going. Oh my word! Nintendo have some big old hard core announcment. There is litterally nothing else this can be. Nothing. Wait a minute, thats a drummer. Wii Music... *Collective sigh* Wii music is a game I kind of had hopes for becuase if there is one company that can make an affordable Rock Band it is Nintendo (I actually have an idea of a Nintendo Rock Band which I will detail later, but rest assureed doens't envolve hundereds of pounds) because they have a huge music collection that they can use for free. I will happily drum away to Zelda main theme, you can use Brawl as a juke box, so just take it to the next level.

Sadly not, there is no skill. You press buttons at random. When you want. In any order. GH (Guitaur Hero) managed to breach the gap between non gamers and gamers. It isn't so much Nintendo are breaching this gap, they are just catering to non gamers. Why? Probably because they are making a fortune at the moment.

On the plus side, The Conduit looks intense, and actual real people thought it was a 360 game. Plus, it will, apparently, support Wii Speak. On top of the fact, there is a halrious reinactment of Ninty E3, so every cloud does have a silver lining.

Blog Update

OK, I am going to have to post a short post now and then post E3 stuff after I get back from France (for the third time!)

Tomorrow, I set off for France by Eurostar with my friend. So I will be away again, then I get my GCSEs on the 21st then back to school in September. I have holiday snaps, but have not got round to putting them on Picasa, so tough if you were the slightest bit interested.

Personal update out the way, what gaming stuff do I have. That's what you were thinking. I got STALKER. I wanted to get it when it first came out, but it wouldn't run or fit on my old computer. So, having got a new computer, I thought great. Got it for my birthday. It doesn't work on my brand new straight out of the box £500 computer. The most bizzare problem. The disk works in other computers (A vista and my old computer) and my disk drive can read other DVDs. However, when I put the Stalker disk in, it groans for a few minutes then says "Please Insert Disk". A long (and possibly very expensive) phone call to Dell has not resolved it yet. In the mean time, I persuaded (read bullied) my Mum in to letting me install it on her laptop (a Vista XPS). It is a cracking game, difficult with survival a key element. You can't just go running and gunning, a) because you do not have the ammo and b) you have not the got the health or the arms to ever do it and live to tell your Stalking buddies about it. Besides, you also must fight the enviroment, which just refuses to lay down and die. I have not got very far, but I am so far loving every minute. Although, I am very relectutant to drop anything so I am constantly carrying too much causing my character to tire quicker.

While on my French exchange I got the chance to play on Gears of War (which I have played on before, but not to this extent) and it reminded me why it was such a fantastic game. It wasn't the bloody chainsaw gore (although that probably helped) but the fact the campaign is so damn amazing. It never ceases to be like a film. There is so much untold depth once you start turning the difficulty up and you can no longer run and chainsaw. The last act was my favourite, as when you are battling your way up the train, that is Gears of War at is's best. Cover, shoot, psuh forward and so on. As I result, I am now super looking forward to Gears of War 2.

Also got the chance to play on 2 less good games. Firstly, Vegas. Maybe because it is older than I think, but this game looked terrible. The models for the characters looked great, but then the buildings and surrondings looked terrible. Sometimes there would be a physics engine, other times everything would be brittle as a brick. The cover system, on the plus side, did allow you to feel very proffesinal. But, for the most part it was decidedly average.

Lost Planet was weirdly bad. Like, who would have a dead zone anyway. Ceartainly not when you are controling with joy sticks. For the un-initaited, the dead zone is an area in the middle of the screen where the character does not turn when the cross hair is moving about there. This feels slugging (which when on a 360 controller is really bad) and this was after Halo, so there really is no excuse. The game also looked terrible, and had possibly the worst intro level. You were fighting this boss, it wasn't hard, but if anything touched you, you died. No health. Randomly frustrating as there was little you could do except keep moving to the bit where you could beat it. On top of which, it had some of the worst acting/story line I have ever seen. Your body is found in one of these armoured suit things called VS. Then the character who finds you goes, with his tongue no where near his cheek, "If only there was someone who could pilot the VS" I laughed out loud. I don't think this was the intention.

Short update for now, but I am going to be writting one massive rant about Nintendo (they are slipping, fastly, out of my good books) a quick analysis of the console war as it stands at the moment, and my offical review of Brawl. This is going to be like my Halo 2 review, so Nintendo fanboys, watch out. Still not settled on the score, but as a sneak preview, I am torn between 7 and 9. Nothing in between.

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Now playing: Blondie - Picture This
via FoxyTunes
Enjoy the rest of your summer/winter (if you are getting as bad weather as me at the momement.