Preview: Dragon Age - Origins

We have to wait a long time, but finally we saw the end of August at the Games Convention in Leipzig, the "spiritual successor" to Baldur's Gate II. Dragon Age: Origins seems already one of the best RPGs of 2009 should be. Though, given the reputation of developer Bioware really no surprise.


In Dragon Age: Origins depends much with the origin of your character, hence the subtitle 'origins'. Race, class and the background story of your character determines how the non-playable characters in the game react to you. Before you arrive in the general part of the game, each "original" three hours of unique gameplay. You choose the Mage, then the first three hours of the game completely different than if you had chosen. Example for the Warrior Only after three hours you come to a point where all roads go together, and then the main story begins.

In the main story takes the player - regardless of the prelude of the relevant origin - his place next to the king, as the youngest of the Grey Wardens. These elite soldiers are the bravest and best soldiers in the army, so they accompany the king as his majesty finds it necessary to fight a war. Out In Origins, the rather arrogant head of state does not have much to choose, because there is a huge army of Darkspawn before the gates of his city Ostagar.

Spore

Spore is and that's great news. It is the first truly new game from Will Wright since The Sims, and moreover, the expectations are high, because Spore is seen as very innovative.

First reports Spore would godgame that in divine aspirations Sid Meier's Civilization would shame. Curiously, however, the game begins with a purely scientific explanation of the beginning of life on the planet that the first half of the game you will form home and later serves as a base for your intergalactic extensions. In the intro movie overwhelms a chunk of stone from the limited space on your planet. The lump of stone disintegrates, comes up in the sea and the debris formed the first life - there is no god to pass. It creates small-celled organisms that can develop in all directions. In the latter, you have as a player the guiding hand, you determine how the single-celled creature that you get under your care evolves into a spacefaring nation. Of course you have the necessary impact on that process. With the now famous and freely available Creature Editor, you can fully control how your creature looks like, and later in evolution in the same way you can control the appearance of your people, their housing and their vehicles. But it is not only the physical characteristics that determine how the other life forms in the universe perceive you. Spore shall define precisely how you behave and other life forms will adjust their behavior accordingly.


*Dutch

You start the game so the cell phase. Phase and Phase not because Spore is fully translated into Dutch, as usual with games of Elecronic Arts. The Creature Editor is therefore called us the Creature Creator. You start the game with the Oerwezenschepper, which you initially can not get much more than determine the color of your oersoepzwemmer. However, there will soon change. The first choice you get put in Oerwezenschepper is whether you want to eat or greens. Your animal meat In the primordial soup in which you swim around, floating green and red pieces and decide which you prefer you can consume creation. By eating chunks he grows. Every now and then there is a fragment DNA hidden in the food and that you can use to evolve. Creature you What dna parts you pick is entirely arbitrary. You can pick three different jaws and no fins, but soon you'll have everything. The differences are immediately noticeable.


*The first evolutionary steps

The control of your creature seems very stiff to expire, a tail and fins are picked up. Especially for a carnivore, this choice is important, because what further in the cell stage where you find yourself in a cat-and-mouse game. In the primordial swim larger creatures, and it's eat or be eaten. What extra speed so can not hurt. Vegetarian beings are primarily served by taking speed to escape the carnivores. Carnivorous creatures have more maneuverability, so they can focus on the enemy. Their spine You can also equip your creature with gifspuit and to share it. Electric shock from With some luck you cock the part that makes your being an omnivore, which makes it easier, especially in the next two stages in order to find food. The cell stage is a glorified Pac-Man, with the bonus of the pieces of DNA that you essentially can pimp. It's a little less exciting than Pac-Man, but you're there for half an hour sometimes done with it - too short to be bored, especially because it is fun to experiment with the equipment of your creature. After a number of times to be doubled in size, you'll pick up a piece of DNA that gives a cautious beginning of intelligence. Then it's time to leave the water and move on to the Creature Stage.

Preview: Guitar Hero World Tour

Guitar Hero World Tour to be a superlative on all fronts. The game should be better than predecessors Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and it should show competitor Rock Band far behind. How's developer Neversoft about it?

Neversoft must Guitar Hero World Tour especially to fight back. It is up against rival Harmonix, a hefty thump handed out with Rock Band, this studio where the concept of "guitar game 'worked out into a real band play. Guitar Hero is fun to play alone and it's still entertaining to play with someone but Rock Band is especially nice if you're with its celebration. It is a real board game, guitar, bass, vocals and drums. And that is catching on, especially in North America. In Europe, the less rafts with Rock Band, would particularly because publisher Electronic Arts brings the game at a high price and in only a few countries in the market. In the Netherlands and Belgium, the game is difficult to obtain, so we are still at the mercy of the guitar from Guitar Hero. Moreover, this change in autumn, both Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour will appear.


*Gezellie

Not unexpectedly tries to outdo a drum kit and to be included in Guitar Hero World Tour. Microphone success of Rock Band Neversoft The main starting point for the designers was that the party game Guitar Hero Rock Band should be noted that although more. That means it can be played together in various ways. In World Tour That can be both local and online, and these forms may be combined effortlessly. You proverbial aunt in Morocco online can take the vocals on her behalf, while the guitar, bass and drums are located together in another room. That's not all, because two full bands to compete against each other, it does not matter if everyone in the same room or that part of the musicians playing along over the internet.


*Ram

The most striking thing GH World Tour is the addition of the drums. As was seen from the first announcement about to do, because according to Neversoft this drum much better than that in Rock Band. Where the set of Rock Band is a platform with four drums and a base drum pedal, the set of GH World Tour three drums, two cymbals and a base drum pedal. Moreover, the drums velocity-sensitive, so you can hear whether hard or soft is beaten. The drums in Rock Band are not, but Electronic Arts has already announced that the drums in Rock Band 2 will be. Velocity sensitive This set will contain no basins. There is a deluxe version of the Rock Band 2 drum set though equipped with basins, but this will be sold separately. Approximately $ 300

Preview: LittleBigPlanet

When the English studio Media Molecule began to develop LittleBigPlanet, no one could have imagined how hip the term 'user generated content' would be. Game content created by gamers existed for much longer, just think modding first-person shooters, but in recent years, two things have changed. First, making your own game components become and second, 'user generated content' is increasingly an integral part of a game easily.

Media Molecule, founded by some former employees of Lionhead Studios, players use content as a serious part of LittleBigPlanet. The cuddly and accessible nature of the charming game ensures that an enormously wide range of gamers through it will be addressed. It is difficult to explain what game LittleBigPlanet. It is a platform game that you play with other gamers, and you'll have to work together to complete complete a level. Same levels you can customize and decorate all over again, enabling them to other LBP players to share, so they can work with your creations. More creative is it from the base to build a level with obstacles, puzzles and dangers, and then play and show to the world.

'Play, Create, Share, "which is LBP in a nutshell, according to Media Molecule. The game is basically very simple, if you play with the prepared by the makers levels. The idea is that you have to work to get ahead. For example you can only get to a higher platform when another player rolls an orange for that platform. In another situation, you and your fellow players can not continue after someone else has turned, causing an abyss full of jagged spears capped a switch. These are fairly obvious solutions, but these two puzzles can be solved. In a very different way Depending on the upgrades and powers of the droll Sackboy, which are the creatures that you play, you can play tricks and different customize the environment in the level.

GC: Pro Evolution Soccer 2009

Recently, you could Tweakers.net read what we think of the football game FIFA 09, in response to what we at the Games Convention had seen and played. Of course it was 'great rival' Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 is also present on the German market, and with this game, we went to work. Our preliminary conclusion? 'Pro Evo' will struggle to rise again above Fifa 09 out this year.


Pro Evolution Soccer since the jump to the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 has made clear the game is struggling with a problem. The version of these consoles reminds too much to the game engine ever built. For Playstation 2 Year after year, the development studio Konami promises that a brand new engine comes and that PES is a breakthrough experience on current consoles, but that step is always off. I also was not very happy when the Games Convention showed that Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 is not the super-edition is where fans are waiting for.

I'm at least assume, based on what I saw at the fair. Lead developer 'Seabass' Takatsuka promised groundbreaking features and big steps, and there are added to the series. Indeed new features Konami seems to want to deal with big Become a Legend, where you do not quite team, but only one player can drive out. Well and good, but such a mode is already in Fifa, under the banner Be a Pro. That smacks at least a bit of a cheap rip-off and you have to wonder whether that is the best strategy for a developer who thinks he maintains a leading series.


Pro Evolution Soccer seems so again to suffer from a lack of innovation. Yet it is exaggeration therefore to pass. Negative verdict on the new game PES 2009 does not offer much other than PES 2008, but there are important things have improved from the previous version. So the annoying framerate-drops disappeared, something I ever hoped Konami would fix it. A patch for PES 2008 That has not happened, but in PES 2009 they are gone. For fans of the series this data will be sufficient to justify. Purchase Nevertheless, the thought, that in my opinion most important innovation in PES 2009 is really nothing more than a bug fix.

GC: Mirror's Edge

At the Games Convention in Leipzig, Mirror's Edge best game for the Xbox 360 lineup. Earlier this year at the E3 trade show eyes already focused on this game. What's so special about the colorless world that developer Digital Illusions presents to us?

The Swedish developer, which is the abbreviation of his full name called 'Dice' is called, is best known for the shooter Battlefield 1942 and its successors. However, with Mirror's Edge Studio stores a different path. Also, Mirror's Edge is played in first person and just like in the Battlefield series, there are plenty of weapons in the game included. The difference is that they are almost exclusively this time in the hands of the enemy, protagonist Faith should normally do without weaponry.

Faith is an Asian lady and she lives in a large, futuristic city. The background story of Mirror's Edge is a little vague, but it is clear that the city is under strict control. Check the rulers all modern forms of communication, and the population has a lot of freedom given her in exchange for security. However, there is opposition to the strict regime. The opponents must see communicate with each other without being checked. The so-called Runners, where Faith is one of them, here are the means. Runners move above the roofs of the flats in the nameless city. They practice the popular 'parkour', sometimes called 'free running', a physical discipline which is gejumped from building to building and rapidly against man-walls sprung. Also high suspended tubes are devoted to the Runners. They walk effortlessly over or meander there to continue.

GC: Mirror's Edge
*Colorless

Mirror's Edge is especially notable for the graphical style where the Swedish creators have chosen. Most games, and certainly the most first-person games, have a dark look, but Mirror's Edge is very light. White is the dominant color of the game, all the buildings seem to be erected. Completely white surfaces That actually they are not, but as Faith sees the world, and because the game is played in first person you see everything through her ​​eyes. Faith looks like a runner, they only see what parts of buildings or may not be useful for her way of moving through the city. Everything is useless, Faith sees as a colorless, inconspicuous flat. Its purpose is rather to the parts that are useful and which are orange or red in her image. This involves the walls, ledges, planks, scaffolding tubes and she needs to move forward. Developer Digital Illusions does everything to let you experience how it feels to be. Player a Runner Not only will you see the world as Faith sees it, you can not take away from her. There is no option to deliberately added from a third-person perspective to see the game. To make the image as realistic as possible Dice brings the game into the picture like looking through a wide angle lens and for the same reason, the game has no Hud . There is only a small dot in the middle of the picture. Dice too would prefer to omit, but initial tests showed that players then the fast action sick. Now you can look to the point, a technique that ballerinas when they make a pirouette.

Soul Calibur IV

Computer Gaming started with simple games like Pong, and developed in the late eighties of the last century in genres that are still popular, such as beat 'em up. One of the first big games in that genre was Mortal Kombat, which was later joined by, inter alia, Tekken, Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter. Soul Calibur does not have the same status as the series, but the fourth approach but its quality.

Tested on: Xbox 360
Also available on: PlayStation 3


Soulcalibur IV features a new story, different game modes as well as other innovations, but the most striking news about the title was the announcement of two guest characters. The contribution of Master Yoda and Darth Vader in the game took all the headlines and was widely covered in each preview. The two Star Wars characters may otherwise not be seen together. Jedi Master Yoda leukt the Xbox 360 version, while Darth Vader is only in the PS3 version. However, there are rumors that the characters are available for both consoles via downloadable content. So there is hope for those ultimate duel is off.

How dominant the two heroic characters are, Soulcalibur IV obviously has more to offer. As a backstory, recovery: a lame background story. There may be more to it than you inherits at first sight in the game, but I do not get it hot or cold. The story is about two swords, with Soul Calibur for 'good' condition and Soul Edge for 'evil'. In Soul Calibur IV does not translate that into a clear story mode. Instead, developer Namco Bandai each character with a small, personal story and the writer of this is, to put it mildly, not a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Nevertheless, it is worth at least some of these stories, which are usually no more than fifteen minutes to complete, through play. That you develop the level of the various characters in the game and you play it with additional content free. Take the story of Master Yoda. The living on Dagobah Jedi master decides between meditating and waiting for the arrival of Luke Skywalker, to clear to deal with another evil force a trip. In the series of enemies to defeat Yoda you automatically against The Apprentice, the main character from the upcoming Star Wars game The Force Unleashed. If you defeat this "secret apprentice of Darth Vader's" The Apprentice becomes a playable character.