SimCity Social
During E3, I saw mention of a new, reinvented Sim City.. with city specialisation, intelligent Sims who will react to the city you’ve planned and built, and the option to work with friends and interact with their cities or create large projects together. It’s due in 2013.. but I already know I want this game!
In the meantime, EA have released SimCity Social on Facebook.
SimCity Social places you in charge of your own city, which evolves as you interact with it.. placing buildings and roads and interacting with them either as a good or bad Mayor. If friends are playing, you can visit their cities and interact with them too, building up a friendly relationship or rivalry.
Archaeology Pets
Archaeology was added to WoW as a secondary profession with the Cataclysm expansion, and one of the first things I heard about it was that I could get a pet through it. However, I was also told that the pet depended on lots of grinding and some luck..
I’ve made a few runs for Archaeology, usually combining it with herb collecting or visiting a digsite if it was on my route, and I’ve collected a couple of toys: Ancient Amber, which traps your character in a chunk of amber for a while; the Druid and Priest Statue, which produces a beam of green light, and the Haunted War Drum, which sets a ghostly drum on the ground and plays a little drum sound too. 🙂
Only a few days back, I completed a Fossil artifact and found that my next one would be the Fossilized Hatchling! Today, I completed it!
Catching More Espers
A few weeks ago, I came across Geomon, a role-playing game by Loki Studios, where you fight and capture spirit-based creatures called Espers. The game makes use of geolocation, time of day, and weather conditions to determine which Espers will appear on your radar, and it is this part of the game which has really had me coming back.. I love the fact the enemies are different every time I turn the game on.
Missions were added to the game today, adding a little more direction to the game.
These are optional, and rather simple: for instance, “Where is my Mind?” requires me to scan and dissipate (defeat) four Mind Espers. “Night Glider” suggests using a particular Esper to complete the mission, so I think there is a potential for more challenging missions later, but for now, it’s nice to have something else to make progress towards.
I also came across an Alpha this week..
The Alpha appeared as a star on the radar, and when I clicked to look, I found he was “only” level 12, compared to my level 13 Varg. He turned out to have rather a lot of health, and after a few strikes on either side, he summoned minion drones to fight in his place, which I had to defeat before fighting him again.
I would have liked to capture him.. I should probably note that I really love the creature design and sheer variety between the Espers I’ve seen so far 🙂
On defeating him, I received a huge XP boost to all five Espers in my party, even the ones that died in battle.. they don’t normally receive XP after a fight where they are defeated, so this was unexpected, though I’m not going to complain about it 😉
Geomon is still being developed, so there a few features are still incomplete, such as Bounties. I have collected some items listed as Bounty Samples, and at present they don’t have any use that I can see.. but they don’t take up any room in the inventory so it isn’t a problem. I’m guessing that Bounties will be PvE, with powerful Espers to hunt down rather than any kind of PvP, as I think this would be easier for people to drop in and out of.
There is some PvP in the game, in the form of Duels.. though when I’ve looked at the mode so far, I’ve only turned up an AI Sparring Drone. Duels work like the fight against the Alpha, with minions being brought out first. There is also a 30 second time limit for you to make your move or lose it, and you have no access to your inventory for healing items, I guess so it can’t be exploited by somebody buying a large stockpile of improvement items 🙂
Geomon
Geomon is a role-playing game for the iPhone or iPod featuring collectible spirit-creatures called Espers, which you need to fight to capture. You play the part of an Agent in the EsperCorp company, charged with capturing the Espers to study. Espers can be found at different locations around the world, and the game uses geolocation to determine which Espers appear for you. Some also only appear at night, or when it’s raining.. so collecting them all may be impossible.. I’ll have to see.
A friend was involved in the creature design for this game, so despite my initial resistance to a game which can track my location, I decided to take a look. The game is currently free.. I’m not sure if some elements will turn out to be paid, or if the company have a plan for merchandising later on.
Anyway.. I started the game up, and was asked to choose an Esper from a small collection. Each has different stats, strengths and weaknesses.. such as the ability to use toxins or fire, or being weak to physical attacks. I chose the shadow wolf Varg..
The Varg’s strength lies in Shadow: sneaking and debilitating attacks, and whose weakness is light.
This is where the info falls a little short, or at least relies too heavily on game-genre knowledge.. which I don’t really have! The information I get here tells me that Espers using light rely on healing and shielding.. but tells me nothing of what the weakness would be. Does the Varg have less healing? Will he be less able to penetrate an enemy’s shield? Guess we’ll see! 🙂
After choosing and naming my new pet, I was given a radar screen, with little blips showing me nearby Espers. Clicking on any blip allows inspection of the Esper, which tells me what the Esper is, as well as providing a difficulty rating. All the Espers on my first screen were rated as “fair” difficulty.. I’m guessing that harder fights are left until you’ve passed the first few levels and know what you’re doing.
The fights are very easy: you choose an attack, which is applied to the enemy before they take a turn at you, and so on until you defeat the enemy. The Varg’s special ability at this point is a Curse, which in addition to taking away some HP, also has a chance to apply “Afraid”, which I guess makes the enemy miss a turn, or fail to attack.
After the second fight I found an item.. a Flawed Quartz. Crystals can be used to capture other Espers, when you fight and weaken them first.. and so I collected my second Esper!
So now I have two Espers in my party, which can contain up to five. I’m guessing they can all come to fight at the same time too, maybe with the option to select two to send out, though I’ll have to capture more to see 🙂
To collect more, I can fight everything I see, or even trade with people, assuming they have different Espers. I believe this is all very similar to the Pokemon games.. but I’ve not played that for myself so I’m only going off what I’ve been told.. for now.. 😉
Homefront
Homefront is a first person shooter by Kaos Studios, set in an occupied and rather run-down America. This follows a speculative future history of rising oil prices, the collapse of the financial system, war, and the rise to power of a unified Korea and a very sneaky EMP blast which renders the US helpless to the invasion that follows.
The game begins with you being beaten and dragged out of your home by Korean soldiers and forced onto a bus, which takes you through the streets where soldiers are beating and killing civilians.. setting the scene, really. I know from all the reviews what I’m going to see, but it still hits.. especially the little boy who sees his parents shot down by soldiers who then just casually wandered away. The little boy howled, horrible, terrified cries, and ran to his dead parents.. and I wanted to blast those soldiers to hell.
However, I’m unable to move until a truck slams into our bus, and I’m rescued by the freedom fighters. I’m given a gun, but I don’t get to go on a murderous rampage.. instead I have to run away through some buildings, accompanied by my new ‘friends’. My friends quickly begin to annoy me as they keep on yelling at me whenever I step away from the immediate objective, or don’t move fast enough. The lack of a sprint button also annoys me at times, as the collectible scraps of newspaper are everywhere.. I can go and get them but if they’re not yelling at me to do something, my friends just carry on walking, and then I have to hope that they’re scripted to stop somewhere, because I just can not run to catch them up.
Mass graves.. After a mission in a concentration camp went wrong, we escaped and came across the mass graves. We took out all the soldiers around the field, as well as the turrets, but then had to hide in amongst the bodies when a helicopter showed up. I could have done without the xbox key prompt here.. as could some of the gaming press, who highlight the “Press X to jump in mass grave” as an example of what’s wrong with the game. I’d rather have had a cutscene, though I guess it was done this way to give the illusion of choice.
Later on in the game we headed towards a survivalist camp. I was set free to make my way to the top of a church to provide cover, having to pick off guards who blocked the way or were close to discovering my friends. After the tightly controlled earlier parts of the game I wished I’d been able to take out more of the guards this way, but an RPG destroyed my tower and I had to fight my way back to my friends and the helicopter. Uh-oh..
I shouldn’t have worried about the helicopter, because it wasn’t too hard to fly, and I got used to it very quickly..
Guarding the hijacked fuel tankers was one of my favourite parts of the game.. powerful rockets and plenty of targets to pick off.
Next up was the assault on the Golden Gate Bridge.. this time looking after a gun rather than flying. I also loved this part.. picking off enemies while in the helicopter, and then making our way along the bridge with less hand-holding.
Something blew up, and I ended up underneath the bridge.. I think this whole section was inspired by Half Life 2, as not only were there broken girders and walkways, but also enemy troops and a helicopter to contend with! No headcrabs, though 😉
There was even more destruction when I got back on the deck as I got to take out a helicopter and an armoured truck!
All this massive destruction let the game end on a high, despite early irritation with the too-short leash around my neck.