MechWarrior fans will be pleased to know that the teaser trailer released earlier this week (see below) was indeed for a new MechWarrior game. The title is in development at Piranha Games and is said to be a “reboot” of the video game arm of the BattleTech franchise, the previous game being MechWarrior 4: Vengeance way back in 2001.

Piranha Games doesn’t need any fancy titles and has simply gone with the name of MechWarrior for the game. If that doesn’t tell the fan what it’s all about then I don’t know what does. For everyone else a giant robot on the front of the game packaging should pretty much do it.

The game will be set on the planet Deshler circa 3015 (so that’s pre-clan for those that are taking notes) during an invasion, and is planned to feature a full single-player campaign, four-player co-op player and a range of other multiplayer options. The budget is still being discussed at the moment, largely because the game hasn’t found a publisher yet. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

Apparently the game will have a sense of “information warfare”, allowing the player to use unmanned drones or light scout mechs to survey the battlefield. Following this you can pound away at your targets in a variety of mechs, and sticking in one mech will reward the player through experience. This experience translates into, for example, better accuracy and damage from your mechs weapon systems. The game will also be different depending on what type of mech you choose.

The BattleTech franchise has never been that popular here in the UK, but that’s largely because most of the gaming equipment 0r books aren’t widely available. However, the games were released here so it shows there is some demand for fighting in giant robots. I was only introduced to the franchise when I was on holiday in Florida and I bought three BattleTech novels. They’re great fun if you manage to get hold of any of them.

Finally, some other good news to come out of this announcement is that MechWarrior 4: Vengeance is to be released for free alongside its expansion packs in the near future.

The game is being developed for the PC and Xbox 360, but there’s no word on a release date yet as the developer is yet to find a publisher. For more information and screenshots check out IGN’s article on the reboot.

(Image Source: IGN)

Who would have thought that a video game series with a basic premise of looking after a farm would become so popular and be so fun? It’s like The Sims in that games that portray mundane tasks tend to sell by the truckload when the very reason we’re playing games is to get away from doing these tasks. It’s a strange contradiction. I am one of those people who has been captivated by the Harvest Moon series and I don’t regret it one bit. I fondly remember picking up Harvest Moon: Back to Nature for the Playstation and being all giddy and excited simply because I realised you could get married in the game. God, I’m such a girl.

Thankfully we can all start building the farm of our dreams and courting the local nurse again with the upcoming gazillionith installment of the series called Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness. The series is returning to the DS following the release of Harvest Moon DS, a game that wasn’t exactly praised from the highest mountain (I own a copy and there are a number of bugs that range from mildly annoying to incredibly frustrating and game damaging).

The series has often been criticised of offering up the same ideas time and time again, but this time you’re shipwrecked on an island and decide to stay and set-up a farm. Ok, so it’s really not that original but I suppose it will do. Anyway, you originally start out with four people living on the island but building up your farm will attract new settlers to the island who, as always, will open up shops for you and possibly become friends or love interests. It’s apparently the biggest handheld HM title yet and includes over 100 characters and, erm, new types of crops (yay!). Frustratingly (as there was already enough to deal with) too much sunlight or rain will be bad for your crops, but hopefully you can hire help again.

While it’s good to see a few new ideas it remains to be seen if the game isn’t just the same old thing with a new lick of paint. Japan and North America already have their hands on the game but a European release is still TBA.

Above: One of galactic formations you may come across while exploring your own galaxy.

The space stage - the fifth and final stage of Spore - is hands down my most favourite of them all. Initially I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t exactly take long to get to the final stage as I burned through the previous four stages in one playthrough (which I got a neat little badge for), but then I realised just how vast the space stage is and discovered the multitude of activities that keep you far busier than you were in the previous stages. When you first leave your home world and enter the galaxy map you are instantly confronted with a multitude of stars around your suddenly insignificant little spaceship. You may start to think that you already have enough to play with, until you pull back even further and see that your section of the galaxy now seems like a tiny blade of grass on your neatly cut front lawn. It’s just incredible to see how big this game is, and it’s something that wouldn’t have been possible without the wondrous procedural generation technology that Spore employs. Why is all this space needed though? Well, checking the Sporepedia at the time of writing shows more than 11 million creations. If you’re going to allow the player to come across the creations of other players then you need a damn big space to allow them to view all of these. Of course, you’ll never see all of them in their entirety as there just isn’t enough time in the world and more are constantly being added anyway. It’s like the big bang, the universe you’re playing in is still constantly being created even as your creatures live in it.

You’ll eventually come across your first space empire, who may initially be hostile or pretty damn nice. In my own game I had the terribly demanding Mada Empire to the north while the lovable (and soon to be dedicated allies) Warzoleski Empire rested on my east. It didn’t take long for my own economical driven Paomons Empire to establish trade routes with the Warzoleski’s, and they were quick to agree to become my ally (possibly because they had their own troubles with the Selznik Empire and didn’t want to be caught in the middle, but maybe the AI isn’t that sophisticated). The Mada Empire, however, demanded I pay them every five minutes and, while I agreed to this at first, this inevitably turned into a full scale war. This was all in the first half-an-hour of play in the space stage, and it got a lot better from then on.

There are plenty of opportunities to earn cash that can be put towards new spaceship parts, establishing and upgrading colonies, weapons and terraforming tools.  Firstly there’s a nice nod to Frank Herbert’s Dune with spice. Spice is produced on every colony you establish (except for those established on barren worlds) after you’ve built the relevant buildings (upping the ‘terrascore’ by terraforming a planet will allow you have more colonies and buildings on that planet, which will produce more spice) you can visit your colonies to pick up any spice produced there. Spice can then be sold in any colony (including your own), providing you have good enough relations with an empire to be able to trade with them. You can also set up trade routes that will eventually allow you to purchase a system and add it to your empire, but that’s only if you’re not a big fan of taking them by force.

Above: My current play area in the galactic map.  The star with the blue circle around it is a previous save game with another species.

Another opportunity to earn cash is in the form of missions. Missions will range from scanning a planets lifeforms or abducting them to wiping out an infected species or wiping out another empires cities. While you’ll gain money for successfully completing missions it will also increase your standing with the empire your doing the missions for, so you can try to keep on their good side while also being paid by them. Of course, this won’t always save you as particularly troublesome empires will continue to demand higher and higher sums of money with the threat of war, but once you gain enough allies (and their ships in your fleet) it’s not that hard to defend your planets. The problem with the missions, and constant attacks/infections, is that your constantly running around doing something. While being constantly busy in a game is no doubt a good thing it can also get too overwhelming, especially when your dealing with more than one at once and you have to choose which one has the highest priority. Some may say it gets a little repetitive but it’s also incredibly addictive trying to collect badges and more money for upgrades.

My favourite part of the space stage is exploring, as obviously with a game built on users creations there’s plenty to see. Firstly, exploring allows you to find artifacts and other rare items that can be traded for money or added to your collection. You can also discover new tools, such as a tool that allows you to colour the seas on a planet red. However, the best part is coming across new creations. For example, to the north of me is a race of sentient sofa’s currently in the civilisation stage while deep in the stars I witnessed a race of apes fighting a religious war against each other while strawberries wandered the plains. If you do discover a race that’s not yet made it to the space stage then you can install a monolith on the planet (2001: A Space Odyssey style) to help them on their way, meaning they’ll be extremely happy with you. This doesn’t always work out for the best as I did this with a race near my home star and they ended up declaring war on one of my allies, meaning I couldn’t really help them out when they got attacked or I risked losing the new space empire as an ally.

It’s not perfect - it can get extremely frustrating and the camera controls while flying (and fighting) around a planet can be a bit iffy - but it’s extremely fun. You probably won’t enjoy it if you don’t like creating things, as each of your colony needs new buildings (you can use the old ones or other users creations but where’s the fun in that?) . However, it’s great to find something new everytime you play the game and I can’t wait to see how this will be implemented in future games and future Spore expansions. It’s definitely my ‘must play’ of 2008. Forget the DRM drama, buy this game! Who knows? You may actually learn something.

You can see some of my creations below:

Although ex-ButtonSmasher writer Konstantinos has written about MySims Kingdom in the past I thought I’d give my own take on the game while giving you a little more information as we near its release date. As you may have realised by some of my posts here I’m a big fan of any game that allows you to express your creativity and The Sims franchise has always slotted neatly into that category. Also, although it pains me to admit it, I’m partial to a cute looking cartoony game every now and again (and how can that be wrong when some ‘cute’ looking games allow you to slice heads off their shoulders?).

Anyway, MySims Kingdom is the follow-up to the hugely successful MySims - which just goes to show that anything with the word ‘Sims‘ attached sells like hotcakes. Ok, so in itself it wasn’t a bad game but it was far more geared towards the casual crowd than the normal Sims games, if that’s even possible.  EA know that casual games sell and fill their neat little pockets with shiny gold so they aren’t about to add too much depth and difficulty on systems owned by everyone and their mum (although the Wii and DS could do with some more decent hardcore games). However, this sequel does somewhat expand on what MySims had to offer, as the promises of unleashing your creativity didn’t exactly live up to their name. Now you may say that unparalleled creativity is too much depth for a casual game but Spore managed it and, from my current experience, that game sacrificed a lot of gameplay-wise depth to remain attractive to the casual crowd.

The aim of MySims Kingdom seems to be a lot like Animal Crossing, and by this I mean give you plenty to do everytime you switch the game on. The aim is to help the king rebuild his kingdom, but unlike The Sims there’s also a storyline so you won’t really be making up your own. While you’ll be able to build your own things like in the previous installment the creativity controls largelly extend to solving puzzles around the kingdom, such as making a windmill work again by connecting gears and pipes. To do any building you’ll need something called ‘esscence’ so, in a way, this is the games limitation as it won’t allow you to grow crazy like The Sims would. Thankfully, the kingdom is big enough to add some much needed depth to the game and you’ll most likely never be stuck with something to do across its various islands, until you’ve completed the game of course. The storyline is actually a more structured approach to the franchise, and what we’re actually seeing is the opposite of a game like Spore or The Sims - the dumbing down of the creativity but, hopefully, providing more structered and enjoyable gameplay (just read some of the reviews of Spore saying that the tools in the game are excellent but the gameplay doesn’t quite match them).

I see myself as a hardcore gamer - which obviously should be the case if I take the time to write two blogs about games - so, in the end, maybe I’m not really the target audience for this game However, Nintendo continues to insist that Animal Crossing is for both hardcore and casual gamers so maybe MySims Kingdom can also appeal to both audiences, even if it’s just a slimmed down ‘cute’ version of its big brother.

Or maybe I’m just talking crap, but I’ll put that down to not feeling too well today. Let’s face it though, I do harp on about the casual/hardcore divide a bit too much don’t I? Maybe I’ll try to limit that in the future…

…maybe!

Anyway, you can find out if I’m talking rubbish sometime this autumn on the Wii and Nintendo DS.

Although I said I wouldn’t be able to get hold of Spore for a few more weeks luckily I was wrong and I got hold of it the other day. Since then I’ve been losing a lot of my life to the game, although it’s initially hard to discover why. The problem I have with Spore is that it’s an absolutely excellent idea but the gameplay built around it can become pretty repetitive and, foremost, it lacks a lot of depth. However, the wonderment of it all overrides this extremely basic gameplay.

It’s an absolute joy to explore the universe of Spore, and it makes it even more of an amazing experience when you know that each and every creation that populates your very own galaxy is created by other players. For example, once I’d jumped out of the cell stage of Spore and made it on to land I came across a nest inhabited by a herd of creatures that looked remarkably like elephants, except they all sported nice little mustaches. It’s really unlike any game as you know that each and every time you load Spore up you’ll discover something new, and that’s why Spore is - by far - one of my best gaming experiences of the last few years. To get this experience though you really have to immerse yourself in the game, you have to begin to love your creations and get past the linear gameplay.

Spore is also a big experiment in new technology and I think that everything that goes on in the background while you play will pave the way for games that will use this technology in new and exciting ways. Spore isn’t perfect, and if you’re not a creative person that you may hate it. I do believe that expansions are absolutely needed this time around though, as there’s so much more that can be done with the Spore technology.

I’ll have a full review of the game up sometime in the next few days (or you can check my review round-up here). I also be doing some Spore diary posts over on my other blog if you want to check those out. Feel free to share your stories in the comments section as I look forward to hearing them.

I recently wrote about the upcoming Wii game SimCity Creator and my main concerns were that many of the micro-management aspects that come with running a city had been stripped due to the more casual approach. This is to be expected with the Wii and I don’t fault Maxis for wanting to bring SimCity to a new sect of gamers. However, now that SimCity has been scaled down it leaves the door open for a new sim to step in with the features that made SimCity so addictive in the first place. So, hardcore sim addicts may now have a new game to make up for Maxis going all casual on them.

Cities XL is the latest game from Monte Cristo - the team behind City Life. At its most basic the game looks a lot like it’s predecessor but attempts to expand on this in almost every way possible. City Life introduced social classes which meant you had to think a lot more about where to place certain buildings, other than the usual ‘don’t plonk industrial zones near residential zones’ which should be basic common sense to any aspiring city mayor. So, for instance, rich people would want to eat at fancy restaurants while the poor would be happy with the nearest burger joint. Cities XL takes all this and vastly expands on it, so while you can still do the traditional zoning you can also plonk down individual buildings - something I’d always wanted to do. You can even go as detailed as placing bus lanes, creating pedestrian and bike only areas, or even build a ski resort and carve out ski routes with varying difficulty levels. After you’ve set this up you can walk around your creation as one of the cities residents (one click will return detailed information on each and every resident).

Probably the most interesting aspect of the game is what it will do when connected to the Internet. Monte Cristo not only promise to offer constant updates in the form of new buildings or micro management responsibilities (for example, you can purchase the ski resort pack described above) but also offer a full MMO style game world to play in. Thousands of players will build competing cities on an earth-like planet and will have the ability to trade for each other. For example, if your city is located near oil fields you can negotiate with another player who’s city is a burgeoning automobile production centre and trade for, say, lower cost automobiles. Some will question the need to give a city creation sim a multiplayer mode but it sounds like it’s shaping up to be pretty enticing. Be sure to check out the sources below for more information on the multiplayer mode.

Cities XL is extremely ambitious and you could be forgiven for thinking that it may fail for trying to do too much. If you’re anything like me you’ll probably be extremely excited about the game, but then again I am a bit of a nerd. Hopefully it’s extreme micro management won’t turn many people off, but there’s also plenty of SimCity fans out there who may be willing to make the switch.

Preview: Be a Massively Multiplayer Mayor in Cities XL - Wired.
Cities XL Impressions - City Building, Management, and Multiplayer - Gamespot.

With August nearly out of the way (for which I will be forever thankful for) it’s time to take a look at some of the games that will be hitting the shelves in September. Autumn is always a great time for games and this years end-of-year line-up is no exception.

Spore.

Release Date: September 5th (UK)
Platforms: PC, Mac

Spore is by far the game I’ve been looking forward to the most over the past few years. While I’ve been keeping up with every little bit of news about Spore events this month have took my mind of things so it was, to my utter surprise, that I realised we’re less than two weeks away from the game that will destroy my life.

If you’re not familiar with Spore (where have you been?) it allows you to control the evolution of a creature of your own design from cell stage through to civilisation and space stages. You can customise your creatures to your hearts extent, along with buildings and vehicles. Plus, your universe will be populated by the creations of other players across the world.

You can view the over two million creations already created by players here, and you can have your own shot at it before the full release with the free version of the Spore creature creator available here. While you’re at it take a quick look at my own creations.

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.

Release Date: September 5th (UK)
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 2, Playstation 3

As you can see from the video above it’s pretty much all ‘BOOM BOOM BOOM’ in a sandbox arena. There’s nothing wrong with this though, nothing at all. It’s pure incredible fun and that’s what video games were originally invented for. While it does have a plot who really cares when you can nuke the hell out of something?

Unfortunately it comes out on the same day as Spore and my pockets aren’t exactly crammed with cash at the moment. I guess I’ll just have to wait a little while long to blind myself with the sheer awesomeness of the explosions.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Release Date: September 19th (UK)
Platforms: Xbox 360, Wii, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Nintendo DS, N-Gage, PSP, iPhone

What can be better than flinging a Tie Fighter into a Storm Trooper? When it looks as good as this it’s apparently not much.

You’ll play the part of Darth Vader’s apprentice tasked with destroying the last of the Jedi. You’ll soon become more powerful than even Vader himself and your actions will determine which ending you get. The story fits pretty nicely into the Star Wars universe so you’ll want to get it if you’re a hardcore fan. For the rest of those who aren’t hardcore fans but still like a bit of Star Wars then you’ll probably love the amazing physics effects that occur when using the force. These effects are helped along by the Euphoria engine - the same engine that controlled the physics effects in Grand Theft Auto IV.

A lot of Star Wars games are pretty poor, but this one just may change that trend.

I absolutely adore the SimCity series. From the simple-but-fun original to fun-yet-complicated Sim City 4 there’s not much more fun than building a city up from scratch and then watching it be destroyed by aliens/meteorite/earthquake/volcano etc. (after saving of course!). I also like the micro management aspects of the series; even though setting tax rates can be frustrating they still make you feel somewhat intelligent. Recent developments in the series (such as SimCity DS, which I reviewed here) have seen many of the micro management aspects from the PC versions stripped out. I found this slightly annoying but there’s no doubting that it makes the game far easier and leaves all the fun parts in for a new younger and casual audience.

Although SimCity has been used in schools as an educational tool it’s pretty safe to say that the idea of running a city and negotiating a budget doesn’t exactly scream excitement to the younger crowd. It may help youngsters learn how to manage a budget but they’d much rather blow things up. SimCity Creator doesn’t completely remove the micro management features but the emphasis is more on the fun part of SimCity and the expressions of creativity that all youngsters (and even adults) should have access to.

The reason EA has chosen the Wii is, in part, because of it’s large user base of both young and casual players but it’s also because of the original applications of the Wii Remote. The Wii Remote obviously plays a large part in expressing your unique creativity when designing your own city. Firstly, it gives you the ability to – for the first time – create curvy roads. Now I know that this doesn’t sound like an instant sell but when you consider that past SimCity games were all rigid grid structure straight roads it does somewhat enhance the ability to create more original cities. The Wii Remote is also used, with much glee, to control the game’s destructive elements. For example, you can guide a giant wrecking ball to destroy your entire city. Hopefully you won’t have a psychotic grin on your face when you do it, like the people in the video below.

More creative elements come in the form of the various buildings and styles you can give your cities. Realism isn’t a big part of this game (I would have thought the giant wrecking ball would give that one away), which is easily shown by cities you can create made out of deserts. Yes, that’s cakes, pies, sweets – wouldn’t it be amazing to live there? You could eat your way out of a snowstorm! There’s also 32 ‘hero’ buildings that are pretty over-the-top creations such as the Watermill of Fruit – there’s plenty here for the sweet tooth in you!

The DS version is pretty much the same gameplay wise, except your guided through the ages of history. You’ll start off in the Stone Age and run through other ages such as the Renaissance, Industrialisation, Global Warming and the future. You can also share pictures and city information over Wi-Fi, while on the Wii the online features extend to challenges and leaderboards.

Although it’s been heavily watered down and then pumped up on the casual juice SimCity Creator still looks like a pretty worthy edition to the franchise. Who knows? If it catches on with the younger more casual audience then they may move on to the more complicated editions to the franchise.

SimCity Creator hits the UK on September 19th.

While this trailer for The Sims 3 may look like an episode of Laguna Beach I’m still surprisingly looking forward to the game. You see, not only does the game allow your Sim’s access to the entire town without those pesky loading screens (and the ability to see what’s going on elsewhere at any moment) but it also deals with the problem of one family aging while the others stay frozen in time - something which has always annoyed me.

I’m the kind of guy who loves to create stories so The Sims franchise has always been a favourite of mine. Unlike other people I don’t actually care about the constant expansion packs because, hey, it’s new content and at least EA are continuing to support the game. Couple that with an excellent community with literally millions of creations and you can have endless fun!

It’s strange isn’t it? Strange how ‘endless fun’ comes from tasks that become second nature in our daily lives. This time around there won’t be as much of trying to force your sim to go to the toilet as the micro-management has somewhat been reduced. The focus is more on making social connections and creating your stories from these. So, it’s still The Sims at heart but tries to emphasise the fun parts. I guess that makes the title of this post redundant, huh?

The Sims 3 won’t be with us until sometime next year.