EA is a company that I tend to loathe and despise and yet have to hand it to them for producing very creative games that other companies didn't pick up first (or can afford the rights to). Even though the latter doesn't make up for the former too often, their latest production, Spore, is a game everyone should take a crack at or at least the free trial creature creator. Starting from the single cell stage and evolving one small step at a time into a space exploring race is the direction for this very creative game. Much like the Sims, there isn't much to compare this game to because of all of the aspects that make it a one of a kind experience. My Trogdor creature is an example as to how uncreatively creative you can be. Most character building is done very simply and has so many options that an seemingly limitless amount of possibilities can be chosen to combine into your little crumudgeon.
The first choice is whether you would like to be a carnivore to rip the cute creature creations apart or a benign and passive trust fund hippie herbivore. From there you begin anew in the cesspool working to gather up food, aka, DNA, defending yourself, and exploring the liquid world around you. After gathering enough DNA you have the opportunity to mate and change your appearance adding and subtracting parts and pieces for aesthetics and utility further continuing on as an offspring. Evolving enough times will allow you to progress onto land and begin interaction with other creatures that also made it past the goo phase and so on and so forth.
The other interesting thing is that not only do the creatures evolve but the type of gameplay does too. The first single cell stage feels more like a classic 2D arcade game as you float around gathering food (DNA). As you evolve the game turns into a type of platformer then onto a strategy based game as you begin to hunt/gather/build. Now not as complex and difficult as other games that are a single type of play, the other novelties with a focus on survival for your creature's race make it enjoyable and replayable. This game also has an attribute few games have: Watching what friends and family can do when they put their little imaginative minds into work is often times equally as enjoyable as being able to play. So get out there, disperse, deposit, and germinate your spores.
In preparation for it's release later this year, Fable 2 creators Lionhead Studios (yeah their French so they already start at a large loss) in conjunction with Microsoft have made a trial game of something very interesting available for download. So it claims it's a trial game and the free version does have limitations put on it but it is no where near the stops that every other trial game has. You can still play all 3 minigames in addition to a few versions of each but if you preorder Fable 2 at Gamestop or want to pay about $8 you can download the full thing which in the end also has rewards for when the full game comes out. It's well worth either the $8 or preorder (free if you preorder online choosing the in-store pickup through Gamestop and go to your local store to tell them you did that).
What's impressive is that the trial game is actually minigames that are going to be in Fable 2. These minigames are gambling type games that you play in a pub. One is a card game, one is a mix between craps and roulette, and the third is a slot machine look alike. Even though each seems very similar to their casino counterparts, they have redone rules and added features to make it just as addicting as a trip to your local gambling boat. What Fable does extremely well compared to other games is adapting to the person playing the game with a karmic type of changing difficulty and humor. One warning given to the player of pub games is that problems may arise for you within the world of Fable if you borrow too much gold from the bank and have a large debt lingering over your head. I've also read speculation that if you have too much gold won from gambling that something else may occur like changing your character to look very ugly or giving you very bad luck with gold digging women.
You start off with a small debt and buy chips from the bar to play any of the three games just like a casino. Each game has slight variations like added rules or higher betting yielding larger payouts or debt. The extra variants have to first be unlocked by playing through and winning the earlier ones or playing in tournament style versions where you play against a set number of people and hope to place in the top five after a set number of rounds. Winning in tournaments also gains Fable items from weapons, to free haircut cards, to the "Sleepmaster 3000" bed as well as gobs as gold.
The best game is the craps/roulette hybrid called keystone. Keystone is played by rolling three dice and placing bets on a board with the possibilities like single numbers, black or red, Yahtzee rolls, etc. There is an outer arch containing blocks from three to eighteen and each time a number is rolled it's block is removed. Initial betting is done by choosing any numbers on the outer arch and becomes locked once the game starts. Other betting on colors, single number, etc can be done before each roll. If a number is rolled and it's block is gone already the next block going downward in direction on the arch is removed. So if the top of the arch (ten and eleven) or the bottom of either side (three or eighteen) is removed the arch falls and the game is over.
Opening up the in game minigames like this in preparation for a game's release didn't give me much of reaction at first and if anything a bit of confusion as to why that was chosen instead of a gameplay demo. The more I played each pub game and thought about it the more it helped me realize that if just these minigames (and mind you they're just minigames) are this fun, then the full game is going to be done quite well just like the original. Other games I have played that inserted minigames have usually been just to side track you temporarily for a small reward while playing something very basic like GTA's tetris game. These minigames are a little step above most others. For example one of the neatest things that is noticed is when the sound is turned on. The background noise while you play actually mimics the sounds of a pub and Irish type music plays over the top of that. The animations are quite fluid and charming which only adds to the appealing atmosphere. Lionhead has truly given these little games an entrancing and delightful experience instead of a bland basic quick finish and here's your reward scheme.
Since you can actually can gain items (a chance for 15 total) and unlimited gold you actually feel rewarded for the time put into playing these pub games whether you prefer to be sober or drunk doing so. The addictive nature of having the chance for large payouts is always fun when you only spend digital gold instead of the life's savings or kid's college fund. Or does little Billy really not need that degree in communications?
Notice what it says under the stack of chips in the upper left hand corner.
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