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 game has incredible graphics as expected and it has a more realistic racing feel than past games in the series. I’m going to have to brush up on my driving skills because I am getting no where near the top of the rankings so far.

Check out more info at the official Gran Turismo site.

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.”

Key Online Elements Include:

- The Sims 3 Store: Included with purchase of the game is £6 worth of SimPoints, which players receive when they first register their game online at TheSims3.com. They can use their SimPoints towards downloading exclusive in-game items from The Sims 3 Store, to customize their game. For additional items, players can purchase bundles of 500, 1000 and 2000 SimPoints in $USD, EUR, GBP and other major international currencies using a variety of payment methods including international and national credit cards, PayPal, and EA cash cards (in North America only). Whether it’s the must-have new outfit or the latest style of plaid furniture, players have the opportunity to further customize and populate their Sims world with additional items.

- Game Launcher: The Game Launcher is the key entry point for players into TheSims3.com community. This hub page connects players to both the Store and the Exchange, and provides them with news and information about game updates. Players can keep track of their downloads, uploads, installs, game updates and their media portfolio that includes the videos and photos they can capture while playing the game. The Game Launcher also alerts players to new content in the store, localized game and store promotions along with relevant updates to the Store and cool new content from the community.

- TheSims3.Com Site: With the launch of the game on June 5, the marketing website at TheSims3.com will be replaced with the full community and product site for the game. The site will not only connect players, encourage new ways to be creative in the game, and offer personally relevant information for each user, it also will serve as the hub site where players can share their content with other members, and embed them on social networking sites and blogs.

Key Site Features:

- The Exchange: Building off of The Sims 2 Exchange’s success of more than 100M downloads, The Sims 3 Exchange highlights featured items, most popular downloads, powerful search and browser capabilities, along with giving players the ability to see what other players are recommending.

- Create a Movie and Create a Story: New easily accessible tools inspire creativity and allow players to create movies and stories and then show them off or share them with friends. Players can show off their Movies with the Create a Movie Tool by embedding them on external sites or with an email link back to their Movie on TheSims3.com.

- My Page and My Studio: The Sims 3 product site will allow players to maintain their profile pages on their My Page section as well as offering them the new My Studio section to manage all their creations – Movies, stories, Exchange objects. My Page is also a blog space where players can post news, customize it with a personal avatar, track favorites and more. Users can make friends with other The Sims 3 players and share their content across a number of social network sites.

More Sims 3 News

“The Sims 3 is an incredible game that lets you play with life, create art and show off your creations,” said Ben Bell, Executive Producer, The Sims 3. “In the game, players are inspired by endless creative possibilities like the new Traits and Lifetime Wish features which allow players to create Sims with real personalities and destinies. Players can then take their Sim into town to interact with other Sims in the game and capture the action on video to show off online.”

“The June launch combined with the break-through game the team is building gives us the perfect runway to create awareness for The Sims 3,” said Russell Arons, Vice President of Marketing for EA. “The Sims 3 will be the original IP summer blockbuster of 2009 as we build off the success of the best-selling PC franchise of all time to create awareness with both loyal Sims fans and new players.”

Am I reading this correctly?  They are delaying the game to create an awareness, meaning they want to advertise the game some more, FOR 4 MONTHS?  This is the biggest load of shit I have ever read.  But, it is no surprise that EA would make such a move.  Did someone forgot to mention that they should be making commercials of the game or something?  Reading the reaction on Sims 3 communities seems like EA’s plan to delay is going to backfire quite a bit.

This reminds me of Spore.  Big hype, big delay, shitty game.

I guess we can be assured that The Sims 3 will be ideally prepared before its release, instead of EA releasing a buggy version that requires 20 patches.

Source: thesims3ea.com; New Ship Date for The Sims 3

Visit the Sims 3 Design forums to discuss latest Sims 3 news, your designs, your thoughts and more!

Windows XP:

• Windows XP (Service Pack 2)
• 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
• 1 GB RAM
• At least 6.5 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content
• 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0

Windows Vista:

• Windows Vista (Service Pack 1)
• 2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
• 1.5 GB RAM
• At least 6.5 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content
• 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0

For computers using built-in graphics chipsets, the game requires at least:

• Intel Integrated Chipset, GMA X3000 or above.
• 2.6 GHz Pentium D CPU, or 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, or equivalent
• 0.5 GB additional RAM

SUPPORTED VIDEO CARDS

NVIDIA GeForce series:

FX 5900, FX 5950
6200, 6500, 6600, 6800,
7200, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950
8400, 8500, 8600, 8800
9600, 9800, GTX 260, GTX 280

ATI Radeon™ series:

9500, 9600, 9800
X300, X600, X700, X800, X850
X1300, X1600, X1800, X1900, X1950
2400, 2600, 2900
3450, 3650, 3850, 3870,
4850, 4870

Intel® Extreme Graphics:

GMA X3x00 series

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.

The one thing I think about is what happened from 2005 to 2008?  It seems as if they decided to build an entirely new game for some reason.  Of course the first thing that comes to mind is EA.  In my mind, if Maxis had complete control of Spore it would have been released as you saw it in the 2005 video demonstration.

Instead what we got was a cartoonized version of the game to appeal to the “masses”.  No blood, no complex thinking like you might see in a Sim City game.  I have played through all five phases of the game, and have come to the conclusion that this game isn’t at all what I expected it to be.

The cell phase was fairly fun to start off with, creature phase incredibly boring, tribal phase too easy, civilization phase not so great, space phase pretty boring.  The steps to reach the space phase seem like they are rushed, and don’t really take much effort to complete.  I started the game out playing in hard mode, and admit I had to eventually start over after the civilization phase because for some reason you can’t restart a phase.  The only reason is because I had no idea what was really going on when I started, ended up making enemies with everyone, and eventually got destroyed without any options other than deleting my save games.  A little explanation during the civilization game would have helped.

Everything seems to quickly lead up to the space phase.  It is definitely the more complex of the phases, and requires a bit more planning.  But, the space phase seems a little tedious.  The amount of traveling back in forth between star systems just to gather a few spices is a bit ridiculous.  They should have just made the game so that your income would increase without having to go to each star system to collect your spices.  You would think intelligent creatures that travel through space could develop an intergallactical bank of some sort that would automatically update based on your trade routes.

Overall, I don’t think Spore should have taken as long as it did to finally release.  The customizable creatures, buildings, and vehicles is impressive, but I think the developers should have stuck with the original concept that was presented in the video we saw in 2005.  The only thing that comes to mind is EA wanting to maximzie the amount of sales of Spore by releasing a game that would appeal to the general population.  I feel like Spore could have been a game that would have truly defined a new step in simulation gaming, but in the end it did not live up to my expectations.

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

Graphics/Aesthetics

* Animation improvements
* Improved the planets fogging, blooming and lighting
* Fixed animation issues with tool handling, hand walking and some of the more oddly shaped creatures

Tuning

* Creature phase: Improved the pacing towards the end of the game, and increased the challenge in Normal and Hard modes.
* Tribe phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
* Civilization phase: Increased the challenge in Normal and Hard difficulty modes.
* Space phase: Made Empires in Easy and Normal modes demand reasonable amounts of money in exchange for peace and adjust the level of punishment if the player doesn’t pay
* Space phase: Made disasters less likely to occur in Easy and Normal modes and increased the time between each attack from the enemy empire when the player is at war.

Miscellaneous

* Creature phase: Improved the way posse members behave during threatening situations and fights.
* Space phase: Made finding your home world and colonies easier in the Galactic view.
* Tribe phase: Made it so that tribe members can travel on steep hills if they need to do so now, but their speed will be reduced a lot.
* Fixed an issue with attacks not working on some bigger animals and larger animals not dying correctly
* Fixed collect mission not completing correctly when all parts have been collected
* Fixed problems with the “Rolling Thunder” and “Déjà Vu” achievements not being awarded as they should
* Fixed floating parts not being deducted from the budget when loaded into creator
* Fixed an issue with the rotation rings not resizing correctly when a part was resized and improved their look
* Fixed an issue where the terraforming score of planet could differ when revisiting a solar system
* Fixed the keyboard controls for zoom & pitch in the Colony Planner not working properly
* Fixed a crash that could occur when watching an epic creature attack a city
* Fixed some issues where the game would freeze when using the Creature Tweaker tool or when capturing a planet in solar view
* Fixed an issue where not all tribe members would obey the raid order when a large group was ordered to raid
* Fixed an issue where banning a creation from one of your other saved games would black out the main menu

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:

There is still one thing that is for certain, removing SecuROM isn’t an easy task for the everyday computer folks.  To remove SecuROM from you computer you have to delete several registry keys and other files and folders from you computer.  And, it requires downloading separate programs to do so.  To remove SecuROM from you computer you should follow these steps, keep in mind this doesn’t always work with all the left over files with SecuROM:

Download RegDelNull here and place in C:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sys…egDelNull.mspx

Download MoveOnBoot from here:
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/moveonboot.html

Regedit (or more specifically..Securom) will not allow deleting of Securom Registry keys, hence the need for Regnull.

From command prompt (assuming RegDelNull is in root of C, type/paste

C:\regdelnull HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-2052111302-1757981266-725345543-500
\Software\SecuROM -s

(Im assuming this key is the same for all users..you can check yourself using Regedit)
When asked to delete..choose Yes

Do the same with this Key from command prompt (Start..Run):
C:\regdelnull HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SecuROM -s

Now run MoveOnBoot and navigate to the “hidden” securom folder in:

Docs and Settings\Admin\AppData\Securom

I chose 3 files for removal upon reboot. After I rebooted, Securom
wasnt in registry or Docs & settings folder.

Delete UAService7.exe from your windows/system32 folder.

Besides the SecuROM bundled with Spore, the game has been fairly enjoyable so far. I’m still in the creature phase. I’m not condoning alcohol abuse, but I really enjoyed the cell stage while extremely drunk. I felt a sense of accomplishment emerging from the sea with by defensive spikes killing the larger cells attempting to eat me.

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.

There is a conveniently placed Spore telescope pointing up to the billboard, giving anyone one curious enough a chance to take a look.

Head over to Kataku for the pictures of the telescope and its location well away from said tiny billboard…Spore Gets World’s Tiniest Billboard, Requires Telescope To See

Spore will be on store shelves around the world on the following dates:

September 4th : Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland,
Austria, Finland and Australia

September 5th : Rest of Europe and South America

September 7th : North America

“Spanning hundreds of millions of years, Spore’s scope is unprecedented in gaming. It has been a long time in the making and the team at Maxis is excited to finally share the game with the world,” said Will Wright, chief designer at Maxis. “We can’t wait to see the amazing worlds that our fans build, as they tell their own stories with the game.”