Bored of Brain Training and Animal Crossing? Don’t have much money to spend on your loveable little Nintendo DS? Well fear not my good friends; here are three games that you may want to add to your collection (you can check prices by clicking on each of the games titles).

Puzzle League DS

Puzzle League has been around since the days of the SNES, and it remains just as addictive as it was back then. However, Puzzle League DS takes advantage of the DS by using the stylus to horizontally drag the blocks that rise up from the bottom of the screen. You then have to place similar coloured blocks into columns of three, upon which they promptly vanish. As with Tetris the game ends if a block touches the top of the screen.

It’s incredibly addictive, but with addiction comes frustration. Thankfully you can share this with someone in head-to-head modes, where clearing blocks dumps them on your opponents screen.

Theme Park

I grew up constantly playing Theme Park on my Mega Drive, so it’s a game I hold close to my heart. If you fondly remember the game like me, or even if it’s new to you, it’s an excellent addition to your Nintendo DS library.

The aim, of course, is to build a theme park across a variety of different locations with an assortment of rides, shops and other attractions. The game itself is not as complex as some tycoon games today (such as Rollercoaster Tycoon) but it’s fun enough to hold your attention for a good month or so. Unfortunately like Sim City DS (read my review here) it only as one save slot, but you’ll forgive that when you see how full of charm Theme Park is.

42 All-Time Classics

I can’t really fault 42 All-Time Classics. I’ve had it since its release in 2006 and I’m still playing it today. There’s just so much longevity in it that it’s hard to ever grow bored of it, and if you do you can just move onto one of the other 41 games! It’s even further increased when you have friends who have DS, as you can play most of the 42 games with up to eight friends (plus online) and I’ve always found it great fun at parties.

Along with the pictured Bowling there’s card games such as the ever popular Blackjack, Old Maid, Hearts, Texas hold’em and more. Board games include Connect Five, Checkers, Chess, Ludo etc. A few others are Darts, Billiards and Balance. That’s just a few of the 42 games available to play. For £14.91 you can’t really go wrong!

I have always been fascinated with creating little societies and watching them grow. As a kid these societies would be created on paper, and all the growing that these towns and cities would undergo was due to my pencil and imagination; and even to this day I’ll draw maps that plan out futuristic cities, or maps that have the giant mountains and lush forests of a fantasy land. While my imagination can be incredibly vivid, eventually I wanted to be able to watch a virtual society grow on its own through the magic of another great hobby of mine; video games.

Thankfully I grew up on the likes of Populous and Powermonger. The aim of these two games was pretty different; the former had you manipulating the landscape so your little civilisation would grow and overcome an enemy force, while the latter already had the infrastructure in place and your objective was far more combat orientated. However, it was not the main objective of the two games that interested me, as I was far more interested in watching the little people move around the landscape. Powermonger was better at this, and I would often ignore my army altogether. Clicking on a person would allow you to see such things as their name, age, sex, hometown and more; and each person would also scurry around living their own lives. They would collect wood from a nearby forest, fish from the river, or shepherd the sheep on the fields. It was like having my own world inside my console, and I was their god. I was amazed that a game could do such a thing, and these were only the early days.

Since then there has been literally thousands of god-games. From the tycoon likes of Theme Park, to the virtual cities of SimCity, there is plenty there for the aspiring god in you. While playing these I’ve always found that the main thing I thought needed improvement was the AI. I would often get the feeling that the denizens of my creation were only responding to algorithms, and they would not take the initiative and do something without my say-so. Lately I’ve been playing a lot of Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile, and I think I’ve finally found a game that, at least, feels like I’m simply watching a society go about their daily lives. Of course, these tiny Egyptians need your guiding hand to build the infrastructure that they will live in, as they are not about to build the city on their own, but once it’s there you understand that Tilted Mill wanted this to be more about the people than the buildings they inhabit.

Let’s look at a typical level from the game. You will often start off with nothing more than a few peasant villages on the banks of the Nile. These peasants don’t belong to your city, but you will soon be drawing them in to help set up your basic infrastructure. Firstly, a palace is in order, as the peasants won’t really be much impressed if their Pharaoh lives in the woods. Once this is done you should build a couple of noble estates. These estates are the key to building a prosperous city, as the more estates you have the more farmers you can support, and you will soon discover that farmers are the lifeblood of your empire. Once you’ve got a number of farms built you can watch as they scurry out to the mud banks and start planting fields. The fascinating thing is that each of these farms supports a family. The man of the house will do the planting and harvesting, while the women will go out and shop for wares (which you will need to build as soon as possible, or your farmers won’t stick around for long). The kid will help out wherever is possible, and eventually will be the one who moves out into his/her own job (and often up the ladder too). There are increasing levels of society, and each one needs the level below it in order to support it. Getting complicated, right?

While you place the infrastructure, the people will go out and use it on their own. They all have their own desires that need to be fulfilled, and they will often take it into their own hands if it’s not readily available. For example, if you’re lacking in food (an amount of which is distributed to your workers and estates; plus you, the Pharaoh, of course) then farmers may go out and forage for their own. Be aware though, as this will take valuable time away from other key tasks they should be doing, and if they can’t fulfil these tasks then they’ll start to complain. As you will soon see, the life of a Pharaoh is tough and pleasing everyone is nigh on impossible, but you can at least try. Every decision you make you have a positive effect on one part of society, while a negative effect will hit the other. All this can make the game quite a head scratcher, which should be fun for those of us who like complex city builders.

Eventually you will have a massive support network around your city. Priests will man hospitals, mortuary’s, temples and teach children at schools. People will go to these hospitals for cures, worship at a temple when the need strikes them, arrange a funeral at the mortuary (they will even carry the coffin through the streets) and children will go to school to be the priests of the future, or whatever educated job you assign to them. They will complain if these aren’t available, but when it all works it’s absolutely fascinating to see the city move under its own flow. Servants will follow noblewomen as they go shopping, shopkeepers will look for resources on their own, soldiers will patrol the streets and labourers will quarry limestone before dragging the large blocks to create a pyramid. It’s a whole living breathing ancient society inside your PC!

All this life is beautifully presented in a nice graphical display. While the graphics aren’t top notch by today’s standards, you’d be wrong if you called them ugly. You can zoom out to survey your city and the ants scurrying around in it, and then zoom in right down to the face of a farmer pulling lettuce from a field. The buildings are also incredibly detailed, improving themselves overtime (such as a noble home building a granary). The fact is all this people watching you’ll be doing won’t be ugly. It might be somewhat annoying though, as sound-wise your subjects often have little conversations that, while interesting at first, can often be grating when you’ve heard them repeat for the hundredth time.

I will say that the game is pretty slow-paced, but that can be both a positive and a negative depending on who you are. I like my god games long and drawn out, and I usually find plenty to do while I’m waiting for something else to be completed. For example, if you’re building a large pyramid outside the city you can set-up a labour camp. Labourers will drag stones from nearby quarries, but they’ll also drag stones you’ve gained from trades halfway across the map if you’ve placed cargo-drop off points in a location easily accessible to your main city. The same goes for bricklayers, even if you place more near your building sites the rest from other parts of the map will join in, meaning you have to wait for them to arrive too. It doesn’t bother me though, as I just enjoy watching the people carry out their jobs, and there’s always something else that can be done elsewhere. If you don’t have patience though, then you’ll probably hate it. Then again, if you don’t have patience then maybe the whole city-building genre just isn’t for you.

For its price (£6.93!) Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile has plenty to offer the aspiring god. Maybe I lied when I said it was perfect, but it’s surely one of the best society simulators out there at the moment. Its complexity may turn some away, but if you enjoy sitting down for a good few hours; building a great city and watching it finally work like clockwork then this game is worth every single penny. Plus, you’ll have plenty left over to buy another game, or two.

This is part of the Bargain Bin series, which is dedicated to bringing you excellent games for mere peanuts. Got a bargain you know of? Hit me an email!

In case you’ve missed it in your excitement about the end-of-year line-up then you may want to know that upcoming RTS Tom Clancy’s EndWar now has a demo available on Xbox Live. The demo weighs in at a hefty 1.6GB so read a book or something if you’re only on a lousy 4mb connection like myself. The demo includes a single-player tutorial and one-on-one multiplayer with matchmaking support.

Instead of using your Xbox Live headset for poor comebacks to the abuse thrown by 12 year-old Americans you’ll be able to command your troops through the power of your voice alone. That is, of course, if it is able to recognise your accent. My own mother can barely tell what I’m saying sometimes, so I’m not too confident that an army will - especially if I order them to bring me a cup of tea!

No word on a Playstation 3 demo yet but I wouldn’t be surprised if one came along.

EndWar is out on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 on November 7th.

You’d be forgiven for being sceptical about Stormrise, after all it’s yet another attempt to bring the RTS (Real Time Strategy)  genre to the console. While there have been a small few RTS games that have worked well on a console (such as Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium: Wars) the genre just doesn’t seem to translate well from a mouse and keyboard to the fiddly console pad. However, developers aren’t giving up yet and games such as Tom Clancy’s Endwar (which makes use of the headset mic to give orders to troops) are coming up with novel ways to make the genre adaptable. Plus, there’s that small fact that Stormrise is being developed by Creative Assembly - the guys behind the amazing and incredibly immersive Total War series.

Stormrise dispenses of the point and click method, a method that is incredibly efficient with a mouse and keyboard but leaves the player - especially those just coming into the RTS genre -   largely frustrated. The new method involves flicks of the analog sticks to select units rather than having to click on them. The game then takes the perspective of what that unit can see which, and if you can see it then you can go there. However, the click and drag interface can still be used to move troops around from another unit’s perspective. It’s supposed to mean less frustration and less error and will hopefully lead to far more fluid battles, if Creative Assembly is to be believed.

The maps will be true 3D rather than your usual overhead view, sort of like Company of Heroes. Units can go up and down buildings, in-between them, over their roofs or, to top it off, underneath them in the caverns below - or all of the above at the same time. This will hopefully lead to the player having far more choices when it comes to making tactical decisions, and should mean that you’ll see some pretty epic battles.

Normally I wouldn’t question the quality of a game that Creative Assembly puts out, but we are talking about a console RTS here. I’m hoping for the best though, and maybe you should to. Post-apocalyptic games have also been done to death, but it’s what’s done with the setting that counts - just like it’s what’s done with the RTS genre that counts. We’ll see if the new control scheme works sometime next year for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

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: