As usual I’m not promising any kind of regular schedule but we’ve been talking about what we can do to improve Max Geek and we’re quite happy to take suggestions. So, enjoy the show, it comes in at just over an hour.

We don’t have many details at this point, in fact the details are so few I almost didn’t post this. However there are a couple of things I wanted to talk about which are promising. First of all it sounds like this is going to be a role playing game first. There’s talk about an emphasis on the personal story, in fact it sounds like it will have a strong solo aspect, since they talked about companion characters which are customizable. It sounds to me like this may be a very non-traditional MMO. Other than that all we really know is the only in game footage they showed was a pre-alpha build. That means we’re probably looking at a couple of years before release.

I’m worried that letting this cat out of the bag so long before release could be a problem. A long wait like that often sets players up for disappointment. Also any details they do release are subject to change and over reaching is common in MMOs. Still it’s too early to worry about any of that really. Hopefully we’ll see some screenshots soon, it sounds like the game will have a striking visual style, concept art come to life was one of the terms used.

Anyway, I followed Star Wars Galaxies for 3 years, I’ll definitely be keeping up with SW:TOR.

Age of Conan really pulled you in with the first 20 levels. it had everything a licensed game should have. Good gameplay, an interesting and involving story line, boobs (seriously it’s rated Mature for a very good reason and it was different. Combat felt different from most MMO’s, I felt more involved in the combat and the story. The story even made you feel like you had choices, none of them were very real but it at least made you able to role play your characters attitude. For 20 levels I thought this could be my PVP (Player Vs. Player) MMO. For the first time in a very long time I was enjoying fighting other human beings. I was slaughtering those biatches. I was the anti-griefer, writing wrongs throughout the realms of Hyboria. Life was good. Then I hit level 20 and ventured out of the newbie experience and into the “real game”. Suddenly it all changed.

Gone were the immersive story and cohesive landscape. Replaced by a ragtag collection of quests which might maybe form into an over all story arc. However that story arc was a pale imitation of the opening story. I never felt like I was in control of it. It didn’t help that everthing was instanced and the world felt small, cramped and confusing. I didn’t feel comfortable in the new world I’d found myself in. The PvP combat was still fun but the nature of the new areas and the higher level characters made it more dangerous and it was definitely not the same. I lost interest in the game.

Age of Conan pulled a lot of players from WoW, the thing is half of those players went back after a month. The problem with Age of Conan isn’t the initial execution, it’s the lack of follow through. In the begining it gives Lord of the Rings Online a run for it’s money in story telling, then it just drops out.

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning

Warhammer is a based on a roleplaying system. A roleplaying and miniature game system that’s been around for quite some time. There are actually two time periods that Warhammer the pen and paper game takes place in, the swords and sorcery time period and the far future time period (known as Warhammer 40k). This game is swords and sorcery. Warhammer takes a lot of the complexity out of the game. Unlike Dungeons and Dragons online there are no stats to worry about. You simply choose your class and hit the ground running.

The biggest complaint I have about WAR is that the story is a little light. It doesn’t really suck you in and it’s not very well connected. WAR does do a couple of things to make up for this. Probably the biggest of those things are the public quests. Public quests are triggered by area and every player in that area is part of the quest. They usually start with kill X number of bad guys in the area, then destroy some stuff then kill the big bad guy. There’s an XP reward and a chest that drops. Loot in the chest is rolled on and you get a bonus to your roll based on your contribution to the battle. It turns out these are a lot of fun and helped pull me into the game.

WAR is a different approach to a licensed game. Instead of trying to place you solidly in the story they simply give you feel of the world from the game. The classes are different and again reflect the game it’s based on. The real meat of the game is the RvR or Realm vs. Realm.

The company behind WAR is Mythic Entertainment (bought by EA during the development of Warhammer). Mythic was one of the first companies to really challenge EverQuest in the MMO arena. When Mythic released they’re first MMO Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) they put a focus on battles over frontier keeps. Unlike previous PvP experiences this was meant to be large scale massive battles. Capturing keeps, using siege weapons, the whole ten yards. In the early days DAoC was excellent RvR and at best mediocre PvE (Player vs. Environment). Still that was the first game I reached level cap in and I loved it, right up until the dreaded Atlantis expansion, but I digress.

Mythic has returned to RvR in WAR and it’s going to be what keeps a lot of people in the game. There are keeps to siege and bad guys to kill. The causes of order and destruction clash on the battle field and it’s often tough not to get caught up in the action.

So Mythic got things right by keeping the feel of the pen and paper game but adding their own twist. More companies need to look to this model. Some games aren’t fit to be story driven like LotRO and this approach could do a lot to improve them.

The Wrap Up

Basically we’ve got one game that did it right and one game that made people think they’d done it right.  Hopefully WAR can steal some of WoW’s thunder and prove to the media that other games can make an impact. There are plenty of successful MMO’s out there, just none that have caught nearly the attention WoW has. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Next up (I won’t promise when because it took me over a week to get this part up) I’ll talk about Star Gate Worlds and Star Trek Online.

Well I think the changes are enough for those people in the general populous who weren’t buying the game, but it won’t be enough for the geeks who are already taking a stand against the game. They’re not going to change their minds for anything short of dropping the DRM. The thing is, it may already be too late to fix the good will they lost.

EA has caused some serious damage to the reputation of Spore. As I said earlier this fix is probably enough for the average user. The problem is they probably won’t know it’s happening. The people that this likely to make buy the game will probably never hear about it. Sure the game has already sold well and it will sale well on consoles too. But sales numbers isn’t the only thing that matters.

There are people out there who already aren’t fans of EA (myself included). Many people think EA is heavy handed in what they do to win a market. The best example being the NFL license. They couldn’t be the 2K games so they bought exclusive rights to the NFL. Of course EA is crying all the way to the bank.  Still the don’t need any more bad publicity like this.

• Google Chrome
• New CTIA devices
• New LOTRO stuffage
• SPORE, HUH, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

The Spore portion of the show is a bit heated. Take a listen and as always feel free to tell us what you think. Of course if you’re wrong we’ll be more than willing to explain why ; )

Does this rumor even make any sense? I mean what could Google want with a game company? Especially a 3D first person shooter (FPS) game company. Googles traditional roles in the industry have been about information and advertising. This would be the first time they got into a strictly for profit software venture. I mean advertising is for profit, but that’s not what I mean. This would be the first time Google would straight up charge for their product. Unless of course they go free, which with a license like Half Life, sorry, it just isn’t happening. I mean I can see a 2D webbased game company being bought by Google to release totally free ad supported games. But with an FPS game, there’s too much overhead for that. So why?

The answer is simple, advertising. The next big thing in gaming is advertising. IN game ads are already popping up all over the place, sports games, racing games (Burnout Paradise City has CompUSA ads, which I find hilarious). With Googles focus on advertising as income I can see them wanting to get into that space. So we could see ads for real products in the next Half Life game. But it goes deeper than that.

I said earlier that Google won’t be giving Half Life away, there’s really just no way, but I can see them having other advertising supported games. Smaller 3D games, even 2D games. There is a lot of potential here. I’m guessing Google has some other ideas I haven’t thought up.

If this really happens (and I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance this is true) then it means we’ll be seeing a new Half Life game, probably developed by the very same people who have been doing it all along. We’ll also see Valve ramp up design and focus towards new markets. This could mean some very interesting Half Life spin offs. Puzzle games, games which tie into the larger game. Mini games available both on in the game and out of the game. This could also put Google in a whole new venue, gaming consoles. I can see a lot going on there too.

I’m split on whether we’ll actually see this thing go through. I think it could be very interesting though.

DRM

Jeff is writing an article about the DRM. Jeff and agree for the most part, the DRM is crappy. We don’t agree on what should have been done and while it’s a deal breaker for Jeff it’s not for me. However, to be fair, I should say that I wasn’t fully aware of the DRM limitations when I bought the game. I would have made the same decision either way. Anyway, I disagree with Jeff on what they should have done with Spore. I think the creature creator is all the demo they need and they just need to drop some of the more draconian issues in the DRM. The one benefit of the DRM is no disk required to play. You could actually play on up to 3 systems. But many people would rather play from the DVD than be limited on number of installs and have the game check in every time an update comes out. In the end it’s not much of a benefit, especially since beyond the 3 you have to call EA to install, that includes reinstalls. That particular piece of the DRM definitely needs to go. Despite all the outrage Spore is selling like mad. So let’s get to a proper review of the gameplay shall we?

Creature Creator

This is by far the best feature of any game on the market. You have a ton of flexibility and can do some really fun things. The creature creator is actually a stand alone game, you can play with a few of the pieces available for free or spend $10 and get a full version with all the features of the in game creature creator. I can’t stress enough how much freedom you have in creating your creature, no two will look the same. There’s even a group of people creating X rated creatures. When you have the full version of the game you can actually chose to share you creations and have creations shared with you. When you do this you’ll run into other peoples creatures on your planet. Now with X rated creatures out there this may be a concern, don’t worry, there’s an option to block offensive creatures from the game. There is also a vehichle and building creator in the full version of the game which are both based on the creature creator.

This is by far the best feature of the game. Even if you’re not a fan of the Sim games you should check out the creature creator as a stand alone.

Survival of the Fittest: Doing it Solo

This is what Spore is really all about. Surviving. For the first two stages you’re surviving on your own. You start out as an a single celled organism. You choose whether you’re an herbivore or a carnivore (you can purchase upgrades later on that either change what you eat or make you an omnivore). This is actually an important decision because it determines what you can eat and in the early game eating is the way you level up. You don’t start the game with all the pieces unlocked, as you move through the game you unlock new body parts. At first by discovering them in the bodies of opponents or in pieces of the meteor which brought you to the planet (did I forget to mention the opening cinematic is a meteor crashing into the ocean and you spilling out?). As you move through the game you are always collecting something, in the first two stages it’s body parts. In stage two you find the body parts by searching skeletons spread across the landscape.

As you move from the cell stage you grow legs and move onto land. At any time as you evolve you can completely change your look. You purchase new features with DNA points gained in various ways. These DNA points also drive your evolution. How you gain DNA effects your evolution. As you move from the cell stage you gain the ability to make friends with creatures instead of killing them or avoiding them. Gaining allies gives you DNA points just like killing does. If you are aggressive you’ll get skills suited to combat, if you’re passive you’ll get skills useful for making friends. As you evolve you move onto the tribal stage, now you’re controlling multiple creatures.

Survival of the Fittest: Doing it With Others, is it More Fun?

Up until now you’ve been controlling only one creature, now that you’re a tribe you control them all, this is where things begin to look like a familiar RTS game. Now you’re competing against other tribes in an attempt to become the dominant species on the planet. As you begin this phase you make the last genetic changes to your creature. This stage has no creators to use. You no longer gain DNA points, now you gather food. You fight other tribes (or make them allies) and you hunt creatures. That’s pretty much it. This is where the game starts to feel very familiar and actually loses a bit of its charm.

After you’ve dominated the other tribes you become the dominant species and move onto the civilization stage. In this stage you’re competing against other cities of your race. The civilization stage is full on RTS mode. You have Spice as a resource you mine. You have different types of buildings and you have to keep your people happy (hey look, an element from the Sim games). Again you can make war or you can make friends. How you’ve progressed up to this point has a fairly big impact on what abilities you have and your abilities make it easier to proceed as you have up to this point. as an aggressive race you get things like missile strikes. I tried to make peace with a couple of the other cities I’m not sure if it was my war like nature or what, but after I had them listed as an ally they attacked me while I wasn’t looking. So I nuked the crap out of them.

There is a return at this stage of the creator system and it’s back with a vengeance. You get to design buildings and vehicles. One land vehicle one sea and one air. You have population limits based on number of houses per city and an over all population limit. Combat gets pretty intense but again the game had become very familiar and lost a little more of its charm. All in all, doing it with others isn’t really more fun (insert lewd comment here). Once you’ve conquered the world you move onto a new stage.

Survival of the Fittest: The Return of Solo

After two familiar stages we get to something a little different, you are the captain of a spaceship. You start out by building your spaceship. Then you get a bit of a lesson from mission control in how to pilot the ship and use your ships abilities. The highlight for me was the ability to abduct creatures and experiment on them to learn more about them. There is actually a lot to do in this stage from a control stand point. You can acquire new tech and abilities from other races by, you guessed it, either destroying them or making friends with them. There is definitely a feeling of exploring a very large galaxy. You can go from planet level to solar system level to galactic level. There’s even a bit of a story to start you out and teach you about exploration. This is really the pay off. The good news is, once you’ve reached a certain stage on one planet you can jump straight to that stage on any other planet.

Controls

All in all the controls are pretty simple, they’re pretty usable and definitely designed to make the game easy to port to consoles. It is interesting to see how the controls evolve with the stages of the game. In beginning you’re really navigating a fully 2D world. As you move out of the water you get a taste of 3D with the ability to glide. Once you hit the space stage you’re in full on 3D navigation mode. Each stage takes a little getting used to (well not the civilization stage it’s very similar to the tribal stage). Controls were one of my biggest concerns but they seem to have really nailed them.

Conclusion

Spore is a good game, it had a few disappointments. For one it feels too short to evolve through the stages. Once you get to the space stage it’s very open ended but they force you to end the other stages because you stop getting many of the benefits once you’re ready to advance (no more DNA points once you’re done with the land stage for instance). When I saw that you could start at any stage once you unlocked it I had hopes of stages being more complex and taking more time. I’m sure it’s harder on the highest difficulty (I went with normal for my first game). The different play styles make things interesting but the tribal and civilization stages don’t feel all that unique or interesting. If the DRM doesn’t scare you off it’s definitely a game worth checking out, but the game play is not going to change the face of gaming as we know it. The coolest stuff is really under the hood, it’s the dynamic animation and creature creation. In the cut scenes it’s actually your creature doing those scripted animations and they’re pretty flawless.