Greetings fellow crab-people. This month marks my second month at Full Sail University, one of the top schools in video game design and development. It has been my dream since the days of the Super Nintendo to create video games. Of course, back then I assumed we’d still be playing the Super Nintendo to this day. While the technology has changed, my dreams and ambitions have not. (continue reading…)

This post is for those of you with a Steam account, or a PC in general. Giant Enemy Blog now has its own Steam group that is open for anyone to join. Now, instead of wishing you could play Team Fortress 2 with the strangers you met on some blogging site, you can actually invite said strangers to a game for a jolly good time!

Steam is a digital distribution service created by Valve. Through Steam, numerous gamers may purchase and directly download a variety of games, mods, demos, and videos. Steam has its own in-game overlay that lets you surf the web and IM your friends without having to Alt+Tab your game!

P.S. If you don’t have steam, and you still haven’t gone to the site, you can download it here.

The Survivors (from left: Francis, Bill, Zoey, Louis)

So Left 4 Dead has been out for a while now and I’ve noticed that there’s a severe lack of teamwork and skill amongst the XBOX LIVE! community. Every game I have entered I have won. It’s a good feeling to win constantly but sometimes I just feel bad for the other team. Therefore this article will be about all the dos and don’ts of Left 4 Dead’s versus mode.
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It’s probably universally agreed that SPORE is a train wreck. The game was in development for around eight years and turned out mediocre. We expected a game that would blow us away, and instead we got a huge game of follow the leader with a hint of dating Sim. SPORE was fun the first time, but the only replay value it had was in its various creators. I’ve probably spent countless hours creating new and awesome creatures, vehicles, and buildings only to delete them all within a month of having the game. Does this game show eight years of evolution and hard work? I don’t think so, but I think I know what could have fixed it.

Cell Stage

The cell stage is essentially perfect. There isn’t the repetitive follow the leader that’s present in the following stages. The cell stage is just too plain though, all you do is eat and grow and eat and grow until you proceed to the next stage. To expand on this I would have made the player continue playing the cell stage until their cell was ready to grow fins. When fins are gained the game changes from a top-down cell stage to a full 3D underwater stage where all that is required is you survive and breed. This stage would bridge the gap between the cell and creature stages, thus giving the game a non intrusive transition between the two stages. The underwater “fish stage” would continue until your “fish” grew limbs and settled on land. An added bonus would be if you could continue your evolution at sea and evolve into a race of underwater people.

Creature Stage

The creature stage is nothing like it sounds. The whole stage consists of your creature making friends or enemies and adding parts to its inventory of evolution. The stage is only fun when you get into a fight since the fights take a little strategy, but befriending other creatures is just nauseating. To befriend another creature you must dance, pose, sing, or charm them in a game of Simon says. This is fun the first time, and afterwards it becomes tedious. To flesh this part out the developers should have added a hunting element where you are required to kill other creatures for nourishment rather than to heal. Adding the option to play as a pack or a nesting creature. Should you play as a pack you would always have your family of creatures with you to hunt and do tasks with. As a nesting creature it’d be ideal to have you and a few other creatures go out and search for food to bring back to your nest. To befriend other creatures it shouldn’t simply be a game of Simon says, instead you should be tasked with gaining the favor of the creatures by doing tasks for them such as bringing them food or wiping out another pack of creatures; or instilling fear in them to make them bring you food in exchange for protection. When your creature is finally ready to evolve then the game should let you start using tools and give you tasks such as creating a hut to begin your tribal stage. Do you see where I’m going with this? GETTING RID OF THE STUPID CUT SCENES. These cut scenes do nothing but take you away from the game when instead it could be a seamless game play transition.

Tribal Stage

Tribal stage should begin where creature stage would leave off after building your first hut. You should be tasked with educating your tribe, hunting and gathering food, domesticating the creatures that feared you, and expanding your tribe village. The stage should also involve trading with other tribes to establish a friendly relationship with them, offer protection for other services and vice versa, and start tribal wars with other tribes. During tribal wars your allied tribes should be able to fight with you (depending on how much they like you of course), and should they be involved in a war of their own then you should have the option of helping them or not. There should also be a village building mechanic that would require you to gather resources and build more huts to house more people. In a way I guess the game should play between a mix of The Sims and Civilization, as during the tribal stage you should evolve to a village, town, city, kingdom, country, etc. There should be nothing stopping other races of creatures from evolving to the civilization stage but you. After you have established your own country it would be time for the civilization stage.

Civilization Stage

The civilization stage shouldn’t be the one city crap fest that it is; having once city for a nation is BS and is just lazy design. Instead you should be in control of your race’s entire country with many different ways of playing out the civilization stage. You should be able to either take over the world and enslave the other races, establish your race as the dominant race yet allowing the others to live, attempt world peace and enter the space stage together, attempt world peace and be the first to enter the space stage, or becoming the world’s wealthiest country and entering the space stage yourself. These are just some of the ways your race’s country should be able to play through the civilization stage. The civilization stage should also not stop being playable. Say you go into the space stage and you took over your world, well there should be times where a country launches a resistance attack instead of being docile like they are now. Little things like that would spice up the game and give it more replay value than just hunting spice and killing everything to proceed to the next level. Not only should you control your country but you should have a city builder to create different unique cities. If you go to war then you should have to take each capital that the country has until you own all of them. To proceed to the space stage you should always be investing in your country’s space program to create a ship that can explore the final frontier; or you could also collaborate with other countries to create a ship. Once you establish a space program and create your ship you should launch into the space stage.

Space Stage

I believe that while your in the space stage you should still be able to mess around in the civilization stage to improve your economy, culture, military, etc. When traveling in space you should have complete control of your ship, instead of that point and click crap. This would let you engage in space combat, thus giving the game a whole lot more replay value than what is currently offered. There should also be tasks such as building space stations, develop your own wormhole portal, create a space fleet bigger than four ships, and so much more. Space stage should be the equivalent of civilization stage but on a much larger scale. An awesome feature would let you exit your ship and explore the planet you are currently on and interact with whatever was on there. Maybe you want to compare the culture of your planet to another and see what other races do for fun, play some kind of sport that each race has invented, engage in relationships, become president of another planet, anything that you want to imagine.

Honestly, for eight years in development the game is lacking. You can’t argue that they didn’t have the time because, come on, EIGHT FRIGGIN’ YEARS. Until we’re able to fully mod SPORE into the game we deserve, I’m just going to be content with creating new creatures, vehicles, and buildings.