Over the past few years, there has been a whole lot of hype about a game created by Will Wright, the maker of The Sims. This game was Spore. It allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. Well that’s what Wikipedia says, and yes, it is about that. As well as the big PC title, there was also a mini version, Spore Origins for mobile devices. This concentrates on just the first stage of the main game as a unicellular organism.

To start off, I played Spore Origins on the iPhone. The controls on this are very basic, using the accelerometer to control your little organism through the level on its objective to eat enough guppy creature things to collect enough DNA to move on. Most of the levels are this, except they start including unique creatures for you to attack or defend against. There are also special levels where you have to traverse a maze-like setting and your goal here is to get to the end without being killed by other creatures. This goes on for most of the 30 levels in the game, except for the 2 boss levels where you have to attack and kill huge creatures. This game is small, a little challenging at times but is worth checking out.

After getting to the end of that, I evolved onto the full PC title, Spore. At the start, it is much like the Spore Origins game, where you eat meat to grow and evolve. There is a fair bit more depth to the unicellular organism stage of Spore compared to its Origins counterpart. From here, you get to the stage where you grow legs and go onto land and either become friendly with another species or kill them. For me, this part of the game was the most interesting. It’s also where you get to customise your creature the most and turn it into your own unique creation.

Unfortunately for me, this is where the game all goes downhill for me. Then comes the Tribal stage where you either form friend a tribe, or again destroy them. Although the difference this time is that it is done in a RTS kinda way. The problem is it is not quite an RTS and is a bit weak. After this is the Civilisation stage. This is where it get completely ridiculous! It’s still the RTS type game but here you create the buildings yourself. that may be fun for some people, but I can’t be bothered with this. I couldn’t find any auto or random button so the game throws some random parts together to whip something up quickly in 5 seconds so I can get back to the actual game. Maybe I am missing something, but it’s still pretty annoying and ridiculous. I endured anyway and through the taking over of cities and silliness of creating building and vechiles.

From here, the game started getting better again, although not as good as the second stage of the game, in my opinion. Here you traverse through space, encountering other civilized planets. There are missions you have to do here to get through the game, and there are even missions to be done so you can form a good relationship with a civilization so you can form an alliance with them. Or you can annoy them and go to war with them, your choice. What you do through this stage, you collect badges for various objectives and such. This is by far the longest part of the game, and the rest of the game has literally been building up to this point.

To get a good feel of the game, you’d have to play it yourself, either by purchasing the game, or acquiring it by other methods. I did enjoy the game, but there was a lot I didn’t like about it. The game felt like a whole bunch of little mediocre games all thrown in a blender and released as some sort of huge game. For example, for anyone who has played a real RTS before, the RTS stages of this game will feel horrible to play and fairly weak. Although they definitely aren’t going for a full experience like you would from an actual game from that genre. This game is probably not going to give much to gamers, but for non-gamers or casual gamers, they might enjoy this a whole lot more because it offers a wide range of different things to do. This game was definitely not for me, but hey, it might just be the game for you.

Yesterday, my friend Morgan hosted an Xbox LAN party for his birthday. There we had 3 Xboxes, 3 televisions, 3 copies of Halo 2, 3 Ethernet cords, 1 router, 12 controllers and 12 people playing. There were a lot of people there, many experienced Halo 2 players, me on the other hand, was not. It was a lot of fun and I had a great time. But afterwards it got me thinking about myself and gaming, shooters in general.

I got my arse kicked! There are many reasons for it. I have never played Halo, I have never played a FPS, I have never played an Xbox, so it is understandable that I would get owned by everyone there, well maybe not everyone, but most people. It has got me thinking that maybe I should start getting into shooters. Every second game coming out these days involves guns or shooting of some description. I am missing out on an important part of gaming and should get on the bandwagon as soon as possible.

When I get my next generation, or should I be saying current generation now, I shall get some shooters. I am going to need a game to get me into the genre, enough to get me hooked into it and getting me to purchase other titles. This should improve my skills in this area, something that is considered as an important part of gaming. Being able to competently go around killing other players is a skill that anyone who considers themselves a gamer should have, which is something that I currently don’t have. Someone needs to help me become a gamer, and they better do that stat!

When I heard the first rumors about the possibility of a God of War title coming to the PlayStation Portable, I was pretty excited and would love to see it come over to Sony’s little game machine. As well as being excited, I was a bit worried, thinking that a random company would either make a port or do a really bad job doing a prequel or something of it, spoiling the God of War franchise. When it was announced that Ready At Dawn was doing the game, all my worries were gone because I knew they would do another brilliant game, just like they did with Daxter.

There wasn’t a well defined storyline of the game, you help the Gods by going where the path leads. You start off doing one thing and then you go off on another arc that is unrelated from the first one and then there is another arc that is unrelated from the first and second arcs. The only similarities are you, the main character, and that each story has something to do with the Gods of Olympus. Basically, there is no main storyline.

As in the other games in the series, you are equipped with the blades. At the start, you are limited with what attacks you can do but as you level up the blades and acquire new weapons and skills, there is quite a bit you can do. The attacks do get quite repetitive but using different combination on different enemies, makes it a bit more enjoyable. You tend to use the strongest attacks most which makes them get old quite quickly. There is some magic but I only tended to use it when fighting a boss, when I really needed it.

There are a few unique enemies, all that look really good. They could have put a few more enemies in the game to give you more things to attack and new styles of killing your opponents.  There are also many unique environments that look amazing. They have really done a lot to make this game look stunning. The very few cut-scenes were very interesting to watch and gave you a sense of where the game is going. The mini-games which consist of pushing certain buttons at the right time give the game some unique killing sequences which turn away from the regular button bashing hack and slashing of enemies.

I do have to say, the end of the game was the best part. The last two bosses were so much fun to battle and did take time and strategy. I do have to say, the game difficulty does decrease towards the end as you get the Gauntlet of  Zeus which does a slower but more powerful move that can take out an enemy in a couple of attacks instead of the usual dozen or so with the blades. The end of the game is enough reason to play this game.

One problem I had is if I went into battle with low health, and got killed, I resume at the last checkpoint with the same low health. This made boss battles ten times harder because I would have to attack him but make sure I didn’t get attacked myself. One stage in particular is when you have to push a cart through fog and you get attacked by unreachable archers. It ws really hard to do without getting hit, unless you took ages to get past this part. Then after the archer have taken some of your health, you are put into a battle with a big difficult creature. Its very hard to do with little health and took many many attempts.

Another small problem with the game is the inconsistent save points. You might find 2 save point within 5 minutes of each other and at other times, they are miles apart. I never have liked it how many games only let you save at certain points in the game, generally before going out to battle or after a big boss or before going into new area. I like to be able to save the game so I can quit out of it. The problem is less of a problem because before going into battle with enemies, there was always a checkpoint so if you died you can easily return to just before the battle. Also with the PSP, you can power the system off in a sleep mode and return to where you were when you turn it back on. This is not really a big issue in the game but it could have been nice to ditch the save point and let us save anywhere. I can see they have done it to be consistent with the console games.

If you loved the other God of War titles, you are going to love this one too. It is considerably short, I was able to go through the game in about 6 hours on normal difficulty. In saying that, it does have a lot of replay value allowing you to go through the game again with a higher difficulty. As well as lacking in length, it also lacks in the amount of puzzles. If you enjoyed the puzzles in the console games, you might be a little disappointed that there aren’t many in this title.

Ready at Dawn did an amazing job at this game, just like they did with Daxter. This is definitely the PSP game of 2008, possibly of all time. This is a must have title for the PSP and I can easily see it becoming the best selling PSP title and possibly even surpassing the huge success of Daxter. If you have a PSP and want a great game for it, God of War will not let you down.

Last Sunday, I was fortunate enough to get hold of the popular title, Portal. Before starting to play this game, I had heard a lot of great things about it. To my memory, I haven’t heard anything bad about it (excluding Yahtzee’s ranting, but even he gave it a positive review.) The main reason for me finally getting my hands on this game was not because of all the talk from last year, but the song at the end. I am not going to go into the story of the game because there is Wikipedia for that.

The idea of this game, going through one door (or portal) and ending up at another door, that is basically what the game is about. Something this simple makes it an amazing game. There is so much you can do with these portals such as getting to unreachable areas, getting from one place to another in a matter of seconds, falling through the sky as well and dropping things through the portals. It may sound like nothing but it is genius idea!

The only issues I had with the game is that is so awesome that I had to finish it. I couldn’t do anything else till I had gotten to the end of the game and got some cake. Another issue I had was that it didn’t work well on my laptop, and it ran a little less sloppy on my sisters laptop (which I used to play Portal because it was the only machine that played it decent.) This did ruin the experience of the game with the dropping of frames and the lag at times when things got busy. It is annoying trying to get through a portal but because the game lags, you turn too far and miss the portal. That was slightly frustrating. I know I can’t blame Portal for that, but it was part of my experience of playing it.

Some people probably think the game is really short. There are only 19 levels and you get through the first five in a couple of minutes which doesn’t seem to pleasing but I do have to say that the length of the levels gets longer as you progress (thank God.) The last two levels were especially long but it made it more enjoyable after going through a whole heap of small and easy levels in the game. I think the game is a perfect length, not too short but not too long either.

But the real incentive for me to play and finish this game was for the song and the end (oh, and the cake is a lie) which is by Jonathan Coulton. After hearing him sing this song on Rock Band with a few web celebrities, I went to find the one that is played at the end of Portal on YouTube and loved the song. After that, I had to get to get the game and get to the end of it to get that song during the ending credit. Still Alive was the only reason I played the game in the first place. It was extremely satisfying getting to the end of the game and getting that song.

To conclude, Portal is the best game I have played in a while and it is definitely on my list of games to play while you are alive. Great level design, great gameplay, great concept, great puzzles, great 5 hours of my life to be honest. If you haven’t already played Portal, you HAVE to get your hands on it, beg, borrow or steal it! You will not regret using half a day to play this game at all.

I had the fortunate opportunity to have access to Nintendo’s next generation console, the Wii. My neighbour bought one. You know the advertisements where you see the older people playing it and you think “Yeah Right!”, well my neighbour is in that age bracket and she bought one for herself (and a nice HDTV to go with it. ) Anyway, I set it all up and have been playing it today and yesterday.

My first impressions were good, I enjoyed it a lot. I only had access to the two games that come with it, well technically the game that came with it, Wii Sports, and the game that came with the Wiimote, Wii Play. Wii Sports was a lot of fun. Tennis was cool but it was weird. The ball went in places that any normal person wouldn’t hit it, so the controls on that are a little janky. Baseball was very difficult. I did get the hang of it eventually but someone without persistence could get frustrated very easily and dislike the game. Once you get it right, it is good. Bowling was by far my favourite. It was awesome playing two or three player, the competitiveness was just what the game needed to make it fun. Single player bowling just isn’t the same. Golf was okay but the controls were a little difficult, that’s really all I have to say about it. Boxing was definitely the most energetic one. I really worked up a sweat after a few games of it. Wii Play is a great game to introduce you to the Wii and I think it was a good move to include it with the console.

Wii Play is bad. To be honest, all it really is, is a tutorial on how to use the Wiimote. Most of the games on it are crap and it is stupid you have to play all the games to unlock them all. The only games really worth mentioning from this are the fishing game, billiards and the game with the cow (don’t ask.) The fishing game is what you would expect it to be like, you pull up when you get a bite. This game is a little annoying when you have two people playing because when one person pulls up a fish, it ruins your fishing. Billiards is the best thing on the disc, it is billiards. Not much more to say about that one. The random cow game is a racing game where you knock things over and collect points. You have the controller horizontal and steer it. You lift the controller for jump and tilt it forward to make the animal go faster. It was a cool game and I with it lasted a little longer.

All in all my Wiiperience was great. I enjoyed it and wish I had the opportunity to try out more game, some decent titles, to see what this thing is really made of. At the moment I still agree with it being a fad and I am a little bored of it already. I am sure there are people in the same boat as me, and there will be people who disagree. I am glad I got to play with the Wii, although I am not so glad with the sore arm it gave me, haha.

Today Team M33 released their 3.71 Custom Firmware for PSP. The major thing that this adds is support for 3.71. It had been a while since the last release and the day before they released a statement saying that the firmware was ready but they were delaying it for various reasons. The release also came with another surprise, M33 is Dark_Alex, the king of Homebrew and Custom Firmware.

I hadn’t updated since 3.10 OE-A and I though now would be a good time to update. There were various reasons why I had held off for this long, one being that I was happy with the firmware I was on and everything we working perfectly and there was no compelling reason to update when there was the possibility of breaking all the stuff I was using. There was also a small chance of bricking my PSP but I like to feel I have the hang of it, for I have downgraded and upgraded 3 other PSPs other than my own.

Then when Dark_Alex announced his retirement of the scene, I was a bit worried about who would take over and release custom firmware. Was someone going to take over or was I doomed to 3.40 OE and the eventual death of custom firmware and go back to the official, most likely 4.XX. A new group rushed in and took the spot, Team M33. They said they reversed-engineered the OE firmware to create their own M33 firmware. When they released it, there were mixed opinions about this group. Some disliked them and wanted Dark_Alex back, other accepted them and decided to worship this new group that has entered the scene.

I was unsure. I didn’t want to go out and update the M33. I waited for the outcomes of other people. I also had a worse fear of everything breaking if I update to this M33 firmware. I quietly hoped to myself, that one day he would return, the king, Dark_Alex. I stopped participating in PSP homebrew but I did keep one eye on it. As time passed, Sony released more official homebrew updates, Team M33 were closely behind them releasing their custom firmware and a thin layer of dust covered the plastic enclosure of my PlayStation Portable.

Eventually I decided that it was time to wipe down my PSP, give in and update my PSP, for better or worse. 3.70 arrived from Sony so I waited for M33 to release their custom firmware of it. This was my entry back in, to bring life back into my PSP, hopefully. I waited and waited until today, it was released! The news was also that Dark_Alex is M33, which gave me comfort and made it definite I was taking the plunge, again. I eagerly downloaded all the files needed for me to make the big jump, from 3.10 OE to 3.71 M33. I did it. The process was a lot smoother than previous updates, it even used the official Sony updater instead of the black and white text screen. It was nice.

After the update was complete, I went to snoop around. My PSP crashed as I entered the setting menu, but this is nothing new. I then had a play with all of the new features. Themes is the biggest update from what I had, other than that, it was little updates that were either bug fixes or something I couldn’t/didn’t use. I had a play with the themes I downloaded and it looks nice and different but I went back to the original default look. Themes are just a fad and the one Sony has released are a little ugly. I can’t wait for people to make their own theme, those are going to be leet!

I also tested playing some ISO’s that I had on my memory stick. These ran amazingly, with no problems. I didn’t even have to modify the clock speed in the recovery menu and even online worked for Ratchet and Clank, it didn’t in my previous custom firmware. Also my favourite homebrew application, PSPTube, still worked in the firmware. I was extremely happy with the update and would recommend everyone update to 3.71 M33 now! Custom Firmware is AMAZING!

As I said two weeks ago, I pre-ordered my iPod. I did so a few days after the announcement of the new models. On that same day, there were pictures of people in the US with their new iPods. I knew I was going to have to wait a few days for them to get to my country.

Well now it has been exactly two weeks since I have pre-ordered it. Today I went to Dick Smith’s to see if my iPod was there yet since the expected date at the time was the 20th of September. That is a long time to wait for a product that is out everywhere but here. The status on the iPods is that there has been a delay in shipping. This now means I have to wait longer.

This could result in me getting it next month, possibly exactly 30 days after its release date. This would be okay if it was launched like the iPhone and I wasn’t expecting it but I think they someone should be putting a little bit more effort into getting these things to us here in little old New Zealand. Our neighbours in Aussie have probably had them for two weeks now.

But this is not new! We are always the last people to get products (with the exception of third world countries,) no matter what it is. Okay, that is easy to understand. It it can be a lot of work getting a piece of hardware released worldwide in a short time period. It is also just as hard to get software, such as video games released simultaneously worldwide with the PAL and NTSC and languages ect. ect. I have just counter-argued a point I was trying to get across.

Lets move onto to one last thing then, television shows. Why is it so hard for them to be released at the same time as New Zealand (and possibly Australia.) I can watch the show a few minutes after it has finished airing in the US so why do I have to wait a month, half a year, a whole year in some cases before I can watch a show broadcasted on TV in my country?

No wonder people pirate television shows, its because you make us wait so bloody long. Also you try and target piracy by using tactics like offering some shows cheap or making it easy to pay for stuff, but the big problem is, all this stuff is only available in the US. Why can;t you give anything to us international viewers.

It sucks that the world revolves around the US. Maybe I should just move there so I can get in with all the action and getting things on time and as soon as they come out. New Zealand is a great place but it is behind in a lot of things, some of that is our fault but sometimes some things are just out of our hands. It’s not our fault we have a tiny population and we are insignificant to the rest of the world.