Fable II’s Knothole Island: if you don’t like the weather, do a quest!

Same place, different weather

I have just revisited Fable II to play the Knothole Island downloadable content (a sort of mini-expack from Xbox Live) and actually finish the game, which I hadn’t quite managed when it was released (having been interrupted by the appearance of Fallout III).

The gaming press’s main complaint about Knothole Island is that it’s too small for the money (800 Microsoft Points from Xbox Live, currently ten bucks). Maybe so; it represents only a couple of hours of gameplay plus some new items (a couple of which however provide significant new options, so in that sense it can be considered a mod). That’s between each player and their pocketbook, however.

Knothole Island provides a new region with one questline in three parts. When you install the expack and start Fable you’ll be notified that a new quest is available at Bowerstone Market; go there and you’ll be taken to the island, which has a meteorological dilemma. It’s stuck in winter, and the keys to the totems necessary to change the weather are located in three shrines behind critters, traps and puzzles. There’s a series of books to find, which give you a rather thin backstory “explaining” this situation, and also explaining why there’s a set of plate armor whose pieces are scattered around the place. Naturally your job is to bring back the three totems.

Sims 3 Interface Described in New Preview

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Will it explode if I click this button?

Just a note — I’m not gonna be linking all the info about every game I talk about in here, that’s what Google’s for ;) But if I see something unusually informative I’ll post it.

This new article from a Brazilian fansite has an awesome description of the Sims 3 interface, explaining every button. There’s lots of other interesting info too, some of it new, like exactly what happens when you start up the game.

And best of all:

“Q: What will we do until The Sims 3 is released? Is it possible to release an independent CAS?

A: The idea is that you enjoy the most your Sims 2, because we will eventually abandon the game when The Sims 3 releases. But something really mentioned on Creator’s Camp was the release of an independent CAS (like on Sims 2 and Spore). The Sims 3′ team is really thinking on releasing something like this to the players. Now we can only wait to see if this is really going to happen.”

Puzzle Quest Shoots for the Stars: Galactrix

Puzzle em to death!

OK, I tried to put a brave face on it, but I was depressed by the Sims 3 delay. So I was delighted when I realized that another game I’ve been looking forward to for some time — Puzzle Quest: Galactrix — is coming out at the end of the month (look for it Feb 24, initially on PC, XBLA and Nintendo DS, though it will most likely wind up on every platform in the known universe). This one’s a space opera called “Puzzle Quest: Galactrix”, and if it’s anything like its predecessor, it could keep me distracted for a good long time. You can get the flavor of it right now: there’s a playable online combat demo and a gameplay demo available from standard download sites (I got it here).

The first Puzzle Quest game, Challenge of the Warlords, was a blend of a match-three puzzle game — think Bejeweled — with a full-fledged open-world RPG. From the RPG side, the game has it all: a class system, a long, deep main quest and lots of optional sidequests, a party system with party member specific questlines, expandable player stronghold, town sieges, mounts, crafting and more. All executed with graphics consisting mostly of still 2D paintings, and a combat engine provided by a competitive version of the puzzle game… which also, in numerous variations, serves as the crafting system, the mount taming system, the spell training system and so on.

Odd though it sounds, PQ CotW was a surprise hit. It started as a handheld game (hence the lo-tech graphics) but quickly spread to consoles and the PC. A couple of versions had an expansion, “Revenge of the Plague Lord”, which doubled the number of classes, raises the level cap and adds a large new region. Although it sounds like a “casual” title, it has very broad appeal, with my hardest-core shooter-playing, WoW-raiding gamer friends all getting sucked in by it. I suspect the secret is the combination of two different types of compelling gameplay: addictive puzzling and compelling “just one more before bed” questlines.

Galactrix takes the same formula and moves it into space… dropping the conventions of the high-fantasy RPG genre and replacing them with sci-fi conventions (think Freelancer, Mass Effect, or Spore’s space phase). As in those games, there’s a huge galactic map, with jump gates connecting dozens of star systems, which contain shops, stations, minable asteroids, and other features.  The game is classless — you develop your skills as you see fit. Instead of spells you have weapons you can equip your ship with, and you can even aquire additional ships (up to three), letting you tailor  your weapons systems for particular enemy types.

They want a game? Let THEM make it: Spore Galactic Adventure

Looks oddly like the Sims in Spore!

My friend Jayzen messaged to clue me in on the next Spore expack, which turns out to be a quest design tool.

Spore. So full of promise. Such a disappointment to so many. What was odd about it was that the tech which players were looking forward to so eagerly was all there, and worked pretty well: the creature editor, the random worlds, and especially the ultra-long zoom from creature to planet to solar system to galaxy. The social aspect (which consists of automatic content sharing) worked well and was fun too — my friends and I enjoyed running into each others’ creations and blowing em up or cozying up and comparing notes.

But the gameplay felt patched together and shallow: a series of four quick and simple mini-games strung together, followed by Space… which was bigger and deeper, but not enough to compete with real games in the space sim/strategy/trading/combat genres.

Some of it was fun nonetheless. Creature design was entertaining, civ phase could be a blast, and I for one particularly enjoyed the terraforming aspect of space phase, where you can transform a lifeless rock into a Garden of Eden with the application of heat, moisture and life. Got a good couple weeks of enjoyable gameplay out of it, but Spore was a game we’d hoped we could play for months or years, and it came nowhere close to that.

The first expack was a disappointment as well: what the game desperately needed was more gameplay, and instead, we got decorations in the Creepy and Cute parts pack.

Expack two, however, is taking a new approach. It’s an in-game level editor that lets you transform a planet into a new minigame, something like a quest in an RPG, which will be shared via Sporepedia like your critters, buildings and vehicles.

Sims 3 meets MySims: Collect Those Essences!

Sims 3 learns from MySims

MySims was originally a Wii game, so even though when it first came out I thought it looked pretty cool, I wasn’t able to play it till this past Fall, when it finally came out for PC. It’s not a deep game, but I’m not always a deep person, and I enjoyed it for about a week. MySims has straightforward gameplay: you collect objects called “essences”, take them to the woodshop, and use them to craft furniture, which you use to lure gullible visitors into making your town their home. OK that sounds weird, and it is ;)

The weirdest part is the essences, which can be used as 3D objects (in which case they function as building blocks, and can be combined in the shop with boards of various shapes) or as paint (in which case each essence gives you a choice of two patterns and two solid colors that can be used to texture your furniture).

There are dozens of essences that have to be grown, mined or fished up at specific locations. For instance, in the Japanese forest there’s a grassy area where you can dig up, um, two kinds of cake, and bacon. (A fridge made out of bacon would surely attract that visiting glutton!) Ravens, textbooks and chess pieces grow on trees. Happy essences fly into the air after a cheerful conversation. Odd? Definitely! When I told my hardcore gamer friends about this, they told me it sounded “disturbing” (while they were killing ambulatory trees and skinning them for herbs in their “serious” game ;-) ).

MySims is a “kids” game, though, while the Sims series is played by all ages, so I was a bit surprised to read in the latest developer blog entry posted on the Sims 3 site about some very MySims-like features. [Update: apparently that blog has been taken off the public part of the Sims 3 site, but it can be read here.]

There are a number of different kinds of items you can collect or grow in the Sims 3, and several of them are just as surreal as anything you’d find in MySims.

Parsimonious Preview and the State of Modding in Sims 3

[Update: this preview has been moved or removed. If anybody is aware of its current whereabouts, please post a comment.]

Kate at Parsimonious (a Sims mod site) has provided us with the most extensive description yet of the Sims 3, focusing on in-game design tools but covering pretty much everything. She was at the EA Creators Camp, so she had a week of gameplay experience, quite a lot more than most previewers get. Her main critiques have to do with the limitations of the in-game recoloring tools (for clothes, Sims, buildings and objects).

It is clear that people who are used to a highly modded playing environment are not going to be satisfied with those tools… so it’s up to the mod community (again) to provide the variety players want. Reassuring to know that the modding community is already ramping up for the challenge, as evidenced especially by the new Sims 3 Tools site –  a discussion forum started by Inge Jones for the hackers who develop the tools that the modders use to make the mods. I’ll be following what happens there closely ;)

Creators Camp: Sims 3 Info Flood

No time for a long post today (massive sighs of relief around the globe)… but a heads up here to anybody looking for new sims 3 info. This week, EA is hosting a Creators Camp, to which they’ve invited guests from selected Sims fansites to teach them about content creation in Sims 3… and give them a head start on custom content for the game, maybe? You can find links to all the coverage here. Since the participants are playing as well as building and decorating, lots of info about every aspect of the game is coming out.

Risky Business: The Sims 2 Store

Shop till you drop... some cash

Microtransactions are very hip these days among game publishers. The most popular version of this trend is to give a game away and finance development solely by selling in-game items to players for a buck or two (as with many recent MMOs such as Runes of Magic). However, games you already bought and paid for are in the act now too. A few well-known cases: in 2006 Bethsoft was widely criticized for charging $1.99 for horse armor for Oblivion; they lowered the price and increased the content and wound up with a modest success on subsequent offers. In WoW you have a chance at random in-game vanity items by buying playing cards. And in July of last year, EA opened the beta of the Sims Store (a distinct entity from the EA Store, where EA sells full games online).

Is this economic model bad for games or gamers? A lot of gamers find the whole thing distasteful, but these are usually folks who would rather get the stuff for free (or included in the game at no extra charge). We all like free stuff, but game developers don’t owe it to us. Unfortunately, in the case of the Sims 2 Store, it’s the way microtransactions are implemented that’s the problem.

Maz reviews the new Prince of Persia

Is that maz? no wait... it's the Prince!

OK, I don’t usually play platformers… at least, not since the early nineties, when I was quite into Commander Keen for a while.

Lately I’ve tried a couple. Auryn Quest, a game based on The Neverending Story, which wasn’t supposed to be a platformer at all, but somehow morphed into one. American McGee’s Alice and Tim Schafer’s Psychonauts, because they both seemed conceptually interesting enough that I hoped that would override the platforming elements (and as a fan of Grim Fandango I had high expectations of the latter). But I couldn’t stick with any of them; gameplay based on running and jumping just doesn’t do it for me, no matter how pretty the graphics or intriguing the premise.

I enjoyed Assassin’s Creed, though, and have begun to hear reports that the new Prince of Persia from Ubisoft (confusingly named the same as the first game in what is now a long series) was more like AC than like a typical platformer. I’m really thinking of picking it up after the following conversation with my oldest online gaming friend, maz:

Sacred 2 part deux: Gameplay

Part 2 of my coverage of Sacred 2. Read on for talk about the world, quests, and enemies!

Map and Travel

Sacred world map... click to see the whole thing!

Besides the byzantine character development system outlined previously, Sacred 2 has a few other noteworthy features. First, the game worl♦d is huge… I mean, HUGE… and unzoned. You can move around it freely, on foot, with a generic mount (like a horse) or with a class-specific mount which must be quested for. That part is great; I like a gameworld so big you feel you’ll never see it all in one play-through. In this respect, Sacred 2 absolutely compares with Bethsoft games like Fallout 3. (Here’s the whole world map in an awesome fully-zoomable version.)