The new Gran Turismo 5 Demo was released this week. The demo allows to you test your racing skills against the rest of the world with a time trial. The demo provides a single track and the option to race in a tuned or stock 350z.
If you have played past Gran Turismo games, the time trial is a continuous race against yourself to see how fast of a lap you can run. Each lap provides a ghost car of your previous run. After each lap your time is posted online and you are ranked against other players.
The Sims 3 is going to include an online community where you can exchange items similar in The Sims 2, and the community will include a store for buying and downloading new content to customize your Sims 3.
“With such a vibrant and active community as The Sims has, we wanted to build even further on the already immense offline experience, by offering players additional functionality, content and tools available online through the game,” said Ben Bell, Executive Producer of The Sims 3. “One example of the many online tools we’ve added to the game is the Create a Movie tool. Within the game, players can easily set up the camera angle they want, capture in-game footage, play director and producer and then post their movies online to show off to the world.”
Unfortunately the rumors were true. The Sims 3 is delayed until June 2, 2009, merely weeks before it was supposed to be released on February 20, 2009. This is a sad sad day for Sims 3 fans, all the anticipation in the last couple of weeks has been building for the latest in the one of the greatest simulation games on the market.
Spore finally released this September after several years of development, and has been highly anticipated by myself and other simulation type fans. If you can remember back when Spore first emerged in the spotlight, you probably saw this video demonstration of the game in 2005:
One thing you will notice is the game in 2005 is remarkably different then it is today. It is as if they had already developed the game to the point where it was fairly close to completion and decided to start all over again. And as you know, it took nearly three years after this video before the game was finally released.
EA has released the first patch for Spore after listening to feedback from the players. The update includes bug fixes as well as additional cheat codes for you to play around with.
One thing that still bugs me is not being able to restart a phase. I ended up having to start over because there was no way I could survive in the civilization phase after not planning accordingly. I kept getting overrun by airplanes on my city no matter what I tried to do. Sucks to have to restart a game, losing all the timeline data on your creature.
The list below shows just what was updated.
Features
* New Cheat: “evoadvantage”. Enter this cheat when are starting a new Creature game to choose any creature from the Sporepedia. Start a new game with one of your more evolved creatures!
* Display part statistics when you are in Build mode. Rollover any part and hold down the ‘i’ key.
* New Cheat: “blocksmode”. Turns creatures into their blocky representations.
* More style filters. Open the cheat window and type: “stylefilter -microscope” or “stylefilter -norainbows” or “stylefilter -nextgen” to see the new styles
* Added 70 new planet scripts with a low terraform score, especially of the “hot and high atmosphere” type
It has been a little over a year ago since I brought the gaming world’s attention to Bioshock and SecuROM, which turned out to be a rootkit debacle. Spore, another game using SecuROM copy protection, was released on the weekend of September 6th.
Once again if you dowload rootkit revealer from Microsoft, you will discover that the program will show SecuROM as being a rootkit. Some will say it is just a false positive, and others will swear it is a rootkit. It seems like Microsoft would have figured it out by now. So, the question still remains, is SecuROM is really a rootkit? This is what shows up after installing Spore:
EA is either tight on money, or is actually quite clever when it comes to its Spore marketing. The company set up a 14″ x 6″ billboard in San Francisco’s Union Square. Not quite the size for people walking by to see. Except EA provided a means for you to see it.
Finally after years of wait and anticipation, Spore is releasing this weekend around the world. There will be two editions on the shelves. The standard will cost you $49.99, while the Spore Galactic Edition will cost $79.99, which will include “The Making of Spore” DVD, a hardback art book, foldout poster, 100page Galactic Handbook and the National Geographic Channel documentary “How to Build a Better Being” DVD.
Steve Irwin was a pretty exciting fellow to watch on television. His enthusiasm kept you watching as he wrestled with crocs and subdued huge snakes. So, just what would it be like if Steve Irwin had a chance to encounter all the Spore creatures created. I think we all know his enthusiasm would be peaked.
Unfortunately the rumors were true. The Sims 3 is delayed until June 2, 2009, merely weeks before it was supposed to be released on February 20, 2009. This is a sad sad day for Sims 3 fans, all the anticipation in the last couple of weeks has been building for the latest in the one of the greatest simulation games on the market.
