TwiddleGeek

After a long install and a few good hours of playtime, I thought I might offer up some Spore impressions.  I'm in the latter parts of the Creature stage at the moment and, so far, it's been quite fun.  The main thing that strikes me is that even on normal difficulty, there's not a lot of challenge here.  I think I may try it on hard mode later, but really that's pretty much what I was expecting.

There is no way, that I've seen so far, to "lose" at Spore it seems.  Death merely respawns you with no noticeable loss in stats.  Great for exploration, not so great for the sense of suspense.  Attacking neighboring creatures has been, for the most part, a breeze.  The real fun so far, and I suspect the real triumph of the game itself, has been building my little spore into a ever larger, faster, stronger creature.  Once I get to build some vehicles, buildings, and ships... joy!

Thankfully for a game built around the joy of creating and managing a galactic civilization, the creature creator seems both dead simple to use and still very open to imagination.  The little guy above is Skoos, from his early stages to his current form.  He's been through several revisions already as I find new parts, but every step of the way he's becoming that much cooler.  Today Planet Sparta, tomorrow the galaxy! Muhahaha!  The best part?  The above PNG files literally are my creature.  The entire data needed to store and recreate Skoos is contained completely in the image.  Pretty amazing!

I wouldn't call myself a huge fan of the God of War series, but I have to admit the original GoW stuck in my mind long after finishing it.  It was more than just another mindless action game.  The story was beautifully crafted, grand in scale, and unapologetically mature.  More so, the game was fun to play. Chains of Olympus has many of the same advantages going for it.

Ready at Dawn has done a great job of translating the combat and gameplay of the original over to the PSP, and graphically they still manage to push the hardware to some impressive feats.  Difficulty wavers a bit between being a little on the easy side and then suddenly throwing some very hard challenges out without warning, but overall they hit the mark well.

My biggest gripe with Chains of Olympus is the length.  It's basically a 5 hour game on the first playthrough.  Granted, a lot of great DS games are under the 5 hour mark, but at full retail, you have to ask yourself if it's worth it.  Personally games like this make me glad to be a GameFly member.  It makes a great rental, and though the scope of the story feels a bit stunted to fit the short length, it's still just a lot of fun.

I've got to give Dennou Coil credit, it succeeds in covering lot of genres at once all while staying very simple at the heart of the story.  Dennou is something of a cyberpunk hacker tale told from a very normal, day-to-day perspective.  Our concept of computers has been replaced by ordinary looking glasses that superimpose an augmented reality into the surroundings.

At the heart of the story is Yuko, her cyberpet Densuke, and their friends.  Densuke is... well, awesome.  If you can make it through the show without a soft spot for the digital pooch, you may in-fact be heartless.  He also serves as a good illustration of a large part of the show's charm - the wonderful art style.  Dennou features simple, stylized designs that really sets the show apart from the other releases as of late.  Densuke's funny, oversized head ends up being one of his most charming features, once you get used to the art style.

My favorite thing about Dennou however was the way they mixed the everyday life stories with the over-the-top augmented reality action scenes.  Giant Satchii chasing the hackers and shooting people in the face with lasers, missiles launched at one another, monsterously large fish, you name it.  I'll admit they pushed their luck trying to pull everything together in the last few episodes, but it was a great series beginning to end.