World of Zoo (PC) | byteme

Το World of Zoo ανήκει στην κατηγορία των family games, παιχνιδιών σχεδιασμένα έτσι ώστε να ικανοποιούν όλη την οικογένεια παίζουν τα πιτσιρίκια και οι γονείς να τα παρακολουθούν. Αν και σύμφωνα με την THQ ο τίτλος της Blue Fang Games, δημιουργού της σειράς Zoo Tycoon ανήκει στο life simulation genre, προσωπικά θεωρώ πως ταιριάζει καλύτερα στην κατηγορία edutainment μιας και συνδυάζει την ψυχαγωγία με την εκπαίδευση αφού σε κάθε ευκαιρία προβάλλει στους παίκτες πληροφορίες σχετικά με τα είδη ζώων που περιλαμβάνει, κατ’ ευθείαν από τη database του National Geographic.[next]

 

I’ve been a fan of the Sims when they first came out.  My son and I had a blast with it especially when our sim forgets to take a bath and starts to stink. It’s just a game after all, until I met Alice and Kev.

Alice and Kev is a blog created by Robin Burkinshaw, a student of games design at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK.

photo from http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/

The story is about the life of a homeless SIM family. With no house, no bed, no food or money…getting through each day is a constant struggle. Kev is a mean father, and poor Alice is stuck with him. It’s a digital soap opera unfolding right before your eyes and Robin Burkinshaw is doing a great job narrating it.

You have to read the blog from the beginning, it’s really quite something else. You start to feel for the characters, especially for Alice’s selflessness.I love how the story is unfolding and I couldnt wait for the next post to come. And this little blog has hundreds of fans already!

But one thing we shouldnt forget is that this “game” is happening outside. You find homeless people everywhere, and what these game characters are going through are also happening in our streets. We should do our part to make sure that children or teenagers like “Alice” get the chance they need to get out of the rut they are in.

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On another note, I didn’t know that you could study game design now. This might be a whole new career that I can just imagine my son would like to get into someday. Kudos to Robin for making this blog and I wish him all the best to his career! visit him also at http://www.roburky.co.uk/

Format: GameCube Genre: God Game Released: 2002 Developer: Nintendo

I’ve got to admit that this game was a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. It’s obviously a kids’ game, and I obviously wasn’t a kid when I was playing it, but let’s face it, kids shouldn’t get to have all the fun.

Doshin the Giant managed to suck me into its world entirely. At its core the game is incredibly simple, yet somehow utterly compulsive: you play a friendly yellow giant whose aim is to help four tribes scattered across several islands. The villagers’ requests are pretty simple – they generally amount to raising or lowering the ground or moving trees about – and every time you help them out they send a bit of love your way. The more they love you, the bigger you get, so that by the end of each ‘day’ in the game Doshin is usually towering above even the highest mountains. However, come the next day, he always reverts to his original size, although all the changes you made to the islands remain the same.

A lot of the game’s charm comes from its visual appeal – all primary colours and smiling faces. More than anything though, it’s the sound effects that wormed their way into my head: there’s no music as such, but the background noise is a symphony of birdsong, animal noises, the lapping of the sea and the weird, high-pitched mewlings of the villagers. The whole soundscape is strangely hypnotic and relaxing: playing Doshin is almost like undergoing brain massage. Click on the video below and you can hear what I mean for yourself:

It’s not perfect of course – the simple concept, although appealing, ultimately becomes repetitive – but it’s the way this game made me feel that ensures its place on the list. As you make your way from village to village, planting and landscaping, you can’t help but build up an affection for your tiny wards, and there’s a sense of fatherly pride as you watch your little denizens go about expanding their villages and building monuments in your honour.

But there’s the catch – the ultimate goal of the game is to get the various villages to build all 15 possible monuments, but only half of these are ‘love’ monuments. In order to get the remaining ‘hate’ monuments, you have to terrify your villagers by tapping the shoulder button and turning into Jashin the Hate Giant, allowing you to destroy the villages and murder the inhabitants.

After nurturing my villagers for so long, watching their families grow and listening to them burst into cheerful song at my approach, I was quite reluctant to rain down fiery destruction upon them, yet it was the only way to proceed. As they ran in terror while I systematically destroyed their houses, I couldn’t help but feel terribly guilty – and there are very few games I’ve played since that have managed to provoke such emotion.

Who’d have thought a kids’ game could be so provocative?

Lewis

Si me he desaparecido del blog, del fanfiction, del messenger… es por culpa de este condenado juego del año 2000: Black and White

Esta cosa ES UN VICIO

Este juego para PC, es una joyota.

¿De qué trata?

El juego comienza cuando una familia de un pequeña isla, ruega para que su hijo, que está en el mar a punto de ser deborado por tiburones, sea salvado. Estas plegarias te crea a tí, un nuevo Dios. Ellos te llevan a su aldea, que ahora te alava a ti, y tú podrás hacer de ella lo que desees.

Una vez que ya aprendiste los controles básicos, te dan a escoger entre tres criaturas: La maca, el simio y el tigre.

Cada una es diferente, y cada una tiene sus pros y sus contras, con unos parchespeudes desbloquear tres más: el mandril, el caballo y el leopardo.

Después de jugar un rato, y al final del primer nivel, sabrás algo muy importante: No todo es felicidad, y hay un dios, Nemesis, que quiere ser el único dios, y saben lo peor? (y obvio xD), el es “malo”!

Y lo pongo entre comillas por que en este juego, puedes ser malo o bueno, y sólo tú puedes decidir qué cosa es buena o mala, dandole a la luz y a la oscuridad un siignificado ambiguo que depende únicamente de ti.

Modo de juego:

El juego se juega (valga la rebusnancia xD), con el teclado o el ratón, desplazandote por tus aldeas (luego veo si pongo capturas) e interactuando con todo lo que está a tu alrededor: puedes agarrar piedras y tirarlas (y destruir o matar aldeanos), arrancar y plantar arboles, agarrar grandes cantidades de comida, ayudar a tus aldeanos… uff 

A lo largo del juego, aprendes a hacer milagros como: milagro de comida, lluvia, madera, tormenta, rayos, bola de fuego, curación… y un montón mas. Estos milagros, a su vez, puedes enseñarselos a tu criatura y esta pueda ejecutarlos (lamentablemente no es como pokemon y no le podrás ordenar que lo haga, ella lo hará cuando se le antoje y cuando lo crea adecuado), pudiendo tanto ayudar a tus aldeanos como proteger tus aldeas en la guerra contra los demás dioses.

Requerimientos pc

Conclusión:

Este juego es genial, no hay más palabras. Como habrán visto, las gráficas no son la gran cosa, pero no se dejen llevar por las gráficas! recuerden que es un juego viejo xD.

Pero no tomen su antigüedad como algo negativo,sino algo positivo! por qué? habrá quienes, como yo (u.u….U) no tienen una tarjeta gráfica buena (mi laptop sólo tiene 128, y hay quienes tienen menos aún), y no pueden jugar lo mejor de ahora, este juego gente, la MAYORIA lo podrá jugar.

Si te gustan juegos tipo age of empires, the sims, en si, los god games…NO te lo puedes perder!

I feel like a kid again, as Im anxiously waiting for Spore to be released!

SPORE is the latest EA game created by Will Wright, the creator of “The Sims Series”. I am a huge fan of EA games. And now these “god games” just got a little better.

Spore starts you off as a single-cell organism, an amoeba, and in order to survive you have to eat or be eaten.  As the game progresses, you start to “evolve”, and this is where things get a little interesting! There is the Cell Phase (where you are start of as a little parasite devouring anything smaller than you), The Creature phase (where you get to crawl on land and learn to make friends or not), the Tribal phase (where you can now live in a schmanzy neighborhood), civilization phase (where you can start your own UN) and the space phase (where you finally end up conquering the galaxies).

NOW, this kinda makes evolution interesting. Can you imagine what our politicians like Barack Obama or John McCain would evolve to after the US presidential elections? How many unfortunate “spores” would they devour or make alliances to, to get to the final frontier? hehehehe! (Sorry about that, im just imaging what a McCain spore would look like)

OMG, I think I’m going to have a heart attack waiting for this game to arrive! This game is set to be launched on September 7, 2008, but news is that you can now download it on Bit torrent.

Spore will be releasing in September for the PC, Mac, and DS lite.. Spore is also going to be on other platforms besides PC and handheld consoles. Supposidly it will be released later to the Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii. 

Spore is another God game where you create your own creatures for your own planets and you watch them grow into civilizations into the future.

http://www.spore.com

Gotta luv the God games !

My fav. God games so far are: The Sims 2, Sim City 4, Black & White 1,2, and at somepoint later Spore.

Spore logo

When I first heard about spore, I thought it was just another simulation game. Yesterday, I read its review in CHIP,June 2008 and my first reaction was pure awe. It has become my favourite game though I havent even played it! Who could ever get such a good idea as to combine so many genres in one game? Will Wright could – Yes, the creator of the Sims franchise is back with a bang! The game is about helping a species rise from a simple cell to the ruler of all universe and is divided into phases. The first phase,  or Cell Phase is a bit like Feeding Frenzy (though obviously with really good graphics). You are a cell swimming about in the ocean, eating what you can and avoiding things that can eat you. You gain Evolutionary points by eating (the currency of the game) and spend them on upgrades. When your creature enters the Character Phase, you will be faced with the character creation tool. This amazing tool lets you design a character as you wish- you can give it sixteen limbs, three eyes and two noses if you want! The type of your limbs, jaws, etc. will determune the attributes of your character. The remainder of the phase is essentially Role Playing. After crossing this phase, you enter the Tribal Phase. This phase is Real Time Strategy, but what is great is that the people of your tribe look like the character you created in the beginning. After this phase is the City/Civilization Phase- it is essentially City Building, like SimCity or CivCity Rome. The last and longest phase of the game is the Space Phase in which you have to conquer the galaxy. It is still a mystery what happens after this phase- perhaps the player will be able to continue playing and exploring the innumerable planets that populate the Spore galaxy.

The legendary Sir Peter Molyneux arrived at DPoT towers today to show off the latest fruits of Lionhead’s labours.

“Imagine you could change the course of history.” He said, as we lounged in the comfortable and subtly-lit DPoT smoking-room, watching pre-alpha footage of ‘Prophet‘ on the 70″ plasma. “That is exactly what our new title allows you to do. You jump into the role of any holy-man in history, or create an entirely new one.”

Intrigued, I motion for pjmaybe to refill our Martinis, and he continues. “Imagine starting in the first century as Jesus, or as one of his competitors. Its up to the player to understand the culture of the time, make his message appealing to his targeted audience, and also decide the best way to perpetuate your new religion. Will you risk that magic trick to impress your faithful flock? Will you take the short-term gains of dire prophecy that wont stand up to later scrutiny? Will you allow your character to be martyred to increase the impact of his message, or should you stay alive to try and keep your faith from schisming for as long as possible?”

He knocked the ash from his cigar and continued; “After your death, the future of the faith is calculated and you are ranked in 3 areas: Number of converts, amount of money earned and political influence. You will also get a description of the effects your faith has on the world, ranging from a footnote in religious history to glorious flaming nuclear armageddon. Although your final score will be more based upon the three rankings, this will be a nice bit of closure for the player at the end of the game.”

“Its a game you can really have fun with, creating all these outlandish alternative histories,” He continued; “What if Jesus decided against introducing the concept of hell to christianity? What if Mohammed hadn’t been illiterate? What if L Ron Hubbard wasn’t bat-shit crazy?”

We look forward to finding out when Prophet is released at the end of the year, for Nintendo Wii.

From/De: 2K Games and BHPR via GamesPress

Sid Meier’s Civilization: Revolution wins ‘Best Strategy Game’ award at 2009 Video Game BAFTAs

Wednesday 11th March/…2K Games is happy to announce today the success of Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution in the Best Strategy Game category at yesterday’s 2009 GAME British Academy Video Games Awards ceremony in London. Producer Barry Caudill from Civilization Revolution developer Firaxis was present to accept the award. This achievement is testament to years of dedicated effort at Firaxis and 2K, and demonstrates that classic strategy gaming is as relevant today as it ever was – if not more so. The latest current-gen console incarnation of the traditionally PC-based Civilization series, Civilization Revolution beat off stiff competition from other noted strategy titles, including Advance Wars: Dark Conflict and Command And Conquer: Red Alert 3. About Civilization Revolution: In 1991, Sid Meier put computer gaming on the map when he delivered Civilization to the PC gaming world, launching the “God Game” genre and creating one of the most award-winning and addictive strategy series of all time. Built specifically for console and handheld systems, Civilization Revolution features the franchise’s fastest pick-up-and-play action to date and still honors the most beloved elements from the core series: strategic global reign and encounters with history’s most intrepid leaders. An intuitive tutorial has been designed to ease newcomers into the world of Civilization Revolution while varying difficulty levels are included that provide challenges to players of all skill levels. Civilization Revolution also takes advantage of the console architecture, providing a graphically and acoustically advanced experience that immerses players in the world of Civilization. Civilization Revolution for Nintendo DS™ delivers an experience that shares the same game core and features as its console counterparts In the new streamlined and intuitive multiplayer component, players can log on to the PLAYSTATION®Network, Xbox LIVE® online entertainment network or Nintendo® Wi-Fi Connection and challenge other fans worldwide to determine the greatest ruler. PLAYSTATION Network and Xbox Live users will also be able to download multiplayer maps and scenarios, and all three platforms support the Game of the Week online feature which provides new challenges every week after launch.