I was pretty excited about playing the City Life Demo.

Developed my German Developers Monte Cristo, the game is essentially a clone of the Simcity games (few of which I’ve actually played) with one major difference, and a few small ones.

There’s probably quite a few small differences, but one I noticed, was the lack of the need to construct power lines and water supplies. You still have to construct the amenities, but it makes the game a bit more accessible and a lot easier to not have to worry about those things. There are probably quite a few other differences like that through the game.

The big difference, and what is supposed to grab the money out of your pocket, is that you can zoom in to your creation. I actually didn’t know about this, so it was a cool surprise when I tried scrolling the middle mouse button. You really have to do it to understand how cool it is. But I’ll try and give you a graphical example.

So at that lowest point, you can move around, look at people’s houses, check out the street’s, the cars and businesses. This would be a gimmick, except that this allows you to really see what your community is like. In the demo, I had mostly blue collar workers, so you could wander around and see what sort of people were walking the streets, the cars they were driving, and how congested the streets are.

Admittedly, all this info is available elsewhere, but seeing it in reality rather than as a statistic adds a lot to the game. I can also imagine that it would be pretty cool when you get to higher stages of the game and can zoom in to your advanced buildings.

Ultimately, I wouldn’t buy it. It’s not a bad game, and is quite addictive but while the ‘zoom in’ feature is cool, it’s not a deal breaker. Not when I can probably pick Simcity 3000 up for $10.

7/10

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It amazes me how long I’ll put up with something that annoys me before I search google and find out how to fix it.

So it is with the stupid drawing canvas in MS Word.

So I did a search for disable “create your drawing here” and got the (rather simple) solution.

In MS Word:

Tools > Options > General tab: Clear the check box for “Automatically create drawing canvas when inserting AutoShapes.”

Posted in Tech | | 14 Comments »

It would seem that racing games get an unfair advantage in terms of review time. I downloaded the Live For Speed Alpha Demo yesterday, and already it is played and soon to be reviewed. I have quite a lineup of other games, and they’re still waiting.

‘Live For Speed‘ calls itself an ‘online racing simulator’. This begs the question, what does the online mean?

It would appear to be that it is called this because of its focus. They claim to have a strong online community, and the game can be purchased and downloaded from online. I like this attitude, but I don’t know that it makes the game an ‘online racing simulator.’

They make all the normal claims in terms of racing games, e.g. tracks, cars etc etc. The demo comes with three cars (well, actually two, one of them has a turbo version) and one track. Pretty limited in terms of other games I’ve reviewed.

So what makes this game different from the rest?

Reality.

Like Evolution GT, the makers have tried to make an authentic racing game. I have to say, compared to this, Evolution GT are well behind. Maybe.

Live For Speed is certainly hard, but is it too hard? Are cars really this hard to get around a track?

In my mind there are three sorts of racing games. Ones where you don’t have to take your foot/finger off the accelerator, those that require you to take your foot/finger off the accelerator and those that require you to use your brake.

That last category requires you to use your brake, but usually fairly sparsely. This game requires you to almost come to a complete stop at every corner. Without using the brake it is almost impossible to even get around a corner, despite crashing into walls.

I found myself wishing I could be driving my 91 Corolla. “Oh come on, I could get around the corner easier in my Corolla.”

As with all challenging things, there is an attraction in the feeling of achievement of mastering it, but it’s not exactly fun. I think a game has to be enjoyable to get you to start it, once you’re playing, the challenge can keep you playing. The only reason I started the game was to take a screenshot for this post, so perhaps that says something.

Ultimately, the graphics were mixed at best. The out-of-car scenery looked good, but the in car graphics were pretty crap. The setup for my Xbox 360 Controller was pretty easy and worked well. There were also options for advanced features like having your clutch on an axis. What this means is that you could have your left axis button (button 11 for me) set to clutch, and you could operate the clutch like in real life.

All the menus looked pretty unprofessional, but that wasn’t a big problem.

A license to open up the demo into the full game (sounds easy) and to access all the additional content costs £24. This is US$42.89 and NZ$67.71. So it’s pretty reasonable.

Your viewpoint on this game would probably hinge on what you want from a car racing game. It seems realistic (I’ve never been on a racetrack) and it would seem that there’s lots of extra content (and more being created all the time). The price is also reasonable.

However, it’s not a game I would buy. 7/10.

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Seeing as this site is supposed to be focussing on the New Zealand Gaming scene, and this weekend we have a major expo coming up, I thought it necessary to give you some details.

Armageddon (or Armageddon Pulp Culture Exposition in full) is more than just gaming. There’s a whole lot of crap too. It would be better to label it a geeks expo. However that might not help their ticket sales.

Armageddon Pulp Culture Expo

I didn’t even know it was on until I was reading the Rooster Teeth website the other day, and saw they were going to be there. In case you don’t know who Rooster Teeth are, they’re the creators of Red vs Blue and PANICS.

They basically take games (RvB = Halo, PANICS = F.E.A.R) and turn them into short movie episodes by recording game movements and recording dialogue to go with it. They do an outstanding job, and are well worth a look. PANICS is blimmin’ hilarious. You can get hi-res copies of the movies from fileplanet.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Two of the guys from Rooster Teeth are going to be there, but they didn’t even rate a mention on the website.

The events that did rate a mention are below. I sorted them into categories for your convenience.

Contests

* Telecom Txt contest – win a Sanyo 9000
* Dominos Pizza eating contest
* Huge Pillow Fight
* Cosplay costume competition
* Beanie Babies treasure Hunt

Gaming

* Massive gaming arena, with PSP, Nintendo DS WI-FI, Xbox 360, Playstation 2, EVE Online, Singstar contest and Gelato

Comics / Animation

* NZ Comics display
* Dragonball Z movie screening as well as Kamehameha/fusion contest
* International and local comic stores
* Animation room Screenings

To Buy

* Sci-fi products
* Blockbuster Video, DVD clearance sale, heaps of titles upto 50% off
* Poster sale
* Telecom display

Spectacles

* the Original General Lee car from the Dukes of Hazard
* Xmen 3 display area

Guests

* Meet the Stars of Bro’ Town
* Jonathan Schnieder (Smallville & Duke of Hazard)
* Jewel Staite (Serenity)
* John Billingsley (Enterprise)
* Claudia Christian (Babylon 5)
* Geoff Johns and Phil Jimenez (International comic creators)
* Mike Mcfarland & Sean Schemmel (voices of Dragonball Z)
* Brian Beacock (Yamato in Battle B-Daman)
* Roger Bumpass (Squidward in Spongebob squarepants)

Sporting?

* Live wrestling
* Megazone LaserTag arena
* Trading card learn to play areas
* Magic the gathering, Yu-gi-oh and more trading card tournaments
* Gameboy tournament

I’ll add more info as I get it. The expo hits Auckland October 21-23rd, but unless there’s a specific gaming reason to go (such as a preview or demo of something), I think I’ll pass.

Posted in Gaming, Life's happenings | | No Comments »