I remember being blown away when Will Wright gave a talk at Georgia Tech about his new game Spore. The game wasn't even out yet - he was just showing off demos and prototypes and the big picture vision behind the game. And it was wild. Spore came out in 2008, so this must have been a few years before that? At least one year...
And Spore had so many cool little things - one of which was the creature creator. I think this was released separately (or maybe released before, so people could play around?) - and this game must have been the attempt to make a game about the first part of the game of Spore (when you're a creature just wandering around). Actually, I think it's the 2nd part - because the first part was more about small but not quite monocellular organisms? Anyways...this is on the DS, so it's already kind of quirky...and the game works!
Interesting (to me) things:
a. It's on a DS, and it's 3D 3rd person - but the creatures are all flat sprites (like little cardboard cutouts) and the game's visual style is very much in the low poly, flat sprites, not quite cardboard-craft vein. Smart choice given the target platform - and.. it works!
b. You guide your creature around the map with the stylus. It's 3rd person and moving towards the camera is awkward. You can move the camera around, but I find pressing L/R while holding a stylus and the device abit too clunky for me.
c. There's a really good tutorial and encyclopedia that explains what different animal parts do and so on. The game has tons of icons - but again, good help system and explanations.
d. There's different areas with goals and such - e.g. fight X creatures or befriend all the Y creatures. It really helps give you a sense of what to do other than just wandering around eating stuff and collecting body parts to modify your creature.
In all, I'm really impressed by how much game there is in the form factor and the smart decisions when it came to visual design.
Sidescrolling platforming Assassin's Creed game? I've only played 30 mins or so - just part of the tutorial for the China section and I have questions: will there be a tutorial for each of the three locations? (China, India, and Russia) I hope not - but that's assuming that the gameplay and controls will be the same for all three. Or perhaps there's significant differences? (this would also make sense because you can pick any location and don't have to do them in order - so each provides it's own experience)
Anyways, so far I'm pretty impressed with how smooth the animations are and how they been slowly introducing new buttons/actions that - I'm sure - I will get overwhelmed by at some point because I won't play for a bit, forget everything, and then have to relearn.
I would love it if someone wrote something about the Lego games - especially the ones that are essentially variations on the same theme (gameplay-wise) because I have the feeling that they have little differences and innovations that go unnoticed. Or perhaps the changes are just improvements over the years? Either way I'm curious and would love for someone to do the analysis and publish it somewhere.
As for the game's ending itself? There wasn't anything out of the ordinary - there's a boss fight, some cut scenes I didn't pay too much attention to and...well, I didn't really want to go back to replay levels and such. However, I am curious because I didn't unlock all the abilities over the course of the game - there's a "crawl through small spaces" ability (I'm pretty sure) that is used in some places I could interact with. Maybe I should go back just to see?
I started this YEARS ago. Never got too far, but started it up again a few days ago. Of course I don't remember anything related to the story, and it took me a little bit of time to figure out what I was supposed to be doing next - but, it's a Lego game with all the common patterns and gameplay that pretty much all the other games in the series have. So, once you've figured out what the special moves are, where to activate them and so on, it's pretty straightforward. I'm not familiar with the "chima" universe or whatever it is, but this game seems to skew a bit higher than the rest in terms of difficulty (not from combat, but the puzzles seem a bit more sophisticated)? I'm not saying it's hard - just that it's a little bit harder. There's some puzzles that have multiple steps - nothing too complicated, and it's also easier to get lost (less linear) in the sense of not knowing where to go next.
I've played enough of it at this point that I might just finish it to see what the few character types' powers are? But then again, perhaps not. I haven't decided yet.
