For those of you that don’t already own Civilization IV, a game that allows players to take over the world on a turn-by-turn building and attacking basis, and those of you that just must own these Collector’s Editions, Civilization: Gold Edition is coming out! So start mowing lawns or working overtime.

This version will include Civilization IV as well as the Warlords expansion pack. As well, like most collectors editions you will also get some little extras. The extras include:

• Fantasy style poster from Greg Hildebrandt, world famous artist
• As expected, a behind-the-scenes DVD with developer interviews and a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the game as well as a history of Sid Meier’s video game history
• A tech-tree poster
• Game Manual

Finally, your release date. You’ll be seeing this on shelves July 17th. Though if it would make you feel a bit better you can pre-order a copy on Amazon.

Wow! Sorry I haven’t posted here in a while guys and gals, I’ve been busy anwsering the 500+ emails I got from GameSoul.com fans! Remember about 3 weeks ago to e-mail me with gaming questions? Ya, there was a massive turnout. This was the most popular question, because it was asked 76 times!

Q: Other than Neopets.com, Runescape.com, and WoW, what site do you best recommend?

A: Gaiaonline.com! I recommend Gaia because it has so much Role-Playing. Not only will you meet friends, the role-play layouts are, well, amazing!

Since I e-mailed back to those 76 e-mails, 59 of them actually joined.

I will be still looking forward to game soul e-mails! Any game soul fan with a question about me, gaming, or game soul itself can go directly to gamesoul_writer_darren@inbox.com

~Darren

 

Prey is a good FPS on the XBox 360.

Graphics: 9/10 

The graphics are excellent and realistic. Nice, bloody and detailed, and reflections are shown and everything else.

Audio: 8/10 

Good audio with some real songs. There’s even a juke box in the beginning of the game before the aliens come that you can cycle through. The jukebox even appears on the alien ship.

Gameplay: 9/10 

Game play is excellent, in a very interactive environment. In the beginning you can even use the juke box and arcade games including poker and a Pac Man knock-off. The gameplay also seems to be an interesting mix between Half Life2 and Doom 3. There is a weird spirit walk thing where you can cross certain obstacles with it and slip switches. Along with killing enemies. Another thing is that the puzzles are pretty good, not hard but still good.

With the price of this game down to $30, maybe you’ll stop by a local retail store and purchase a copy of Prey. It’s worth it.

Overall: 9/10 

-Unstable.

Lara Croft is back and celebrating her 10th anniversary. The game is out on most platforms including PlayStation 2, PC and Playstation Portable.

Many gamers were disappointed with Legend on PS2, complaining because the game looked like a re-vamp of the original game.

Crystal Dynamics reps mentioned they are taking a more thorough approach to the new version. The game will be more simple and include the same storyline as the original. That was, however, quite confusing, so Crystal Dynamics says the new one will explain itself better.

But as Legend’s gameplay was quite bad, many people have been put off of buying this game as it will play like Legend.

Lara can now shimmy along at various speeds. There is no reason to have to stand in the correct place to jump since when she jumps she can latch on to surfaces.

Lara can now also flip and turn gracefully around her enimies.

We are pretty curious to see her in action!

The latest game in the Madden series made by EA Sports came out in August of last year. It’s an amazing football game.

The graphics are excellent and detailed. You can see practically every detail including individual members of the crowd, the wrinkles on the referee’s face(I’m not sure if that’s a pro or con :p ) and the mud on the jerseys.

The gameplay could be improved a little bit, but it’s still good like it always has been. It just lacks the QB vision that there was in its predecesor though a feature that allows you to control a lineman or fullback has been added to the game.

The audio is good with a good soundtrack and you can hear the audibles from the Quarterbacks and Linebackers. The referees also sound realistic, almost as if you’re at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City or historic Lambeau Field in Green Bay watching a game.

Online isn’t lacking either with many games you can have. You can either do one of several minigames or play in a game against someone. This is especially great with XBox Live on the XBox 360.

I hope that after reading this more people go out and buy this. It’s not just a game, but an experience with everything from real stadiums to real teams and players. Beware though, it may end up consuming your life.

-Unstable

Well, as we have all seen, wonderful 3D and Interactive websites are popping up everywhere. Literally. A recent poll showed that there are over 300 gaming websites to date. Which is great for all of us gamers, because a majority of them are free. So, what ones do you choose? Here is Darren’s Top 3 Ultimate Multiplayer, 3D, And Interactive Games Online:

1) RuneScape*

RuneScape, the mega multiplayer game brought to you by Jagex Ltd., is one of the biggest and best multiplayer games online around. It usually has more than 100,000 players on at a time, and most are nice. Basically, you kill things, get items, and of get course ingame money, and the bigger you get, the more stuff you can kill! Exiting, isn’t it? No, there is more to it than that.

But you will have to find that out by yourself. Just go to the following and click New Account:

http://www.runescape.com/

2) Neopets*

Ahh, the wonderful world of Neopets. Correction, the addicting world of Neopets. Neopets is a virtual Pet Community where you earn NeoPoints, take care of your pets, and sooooo
much more. However that would take more than this page to type out. Basically, go to it now, then figure it out for yourself. Millions already play NeoPets, so chances are you will like it. Click on any of the links below to get to Neopets, and sign up.

Click Here to sign up for Neopets

3) WoW (World Of Warcraft)*
“World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). In World of Warcraft, thousands of players will have the opportunity to adventure together in an enormous, persistent game world, forming friendships, slaying monsters, and engaging in epic quests that can span days or weeks.  That pretty much sums it up. Again, this is one of those things where you have to see it for yourself. It does require a fee, though. My suggestion is to go to the nearest gaming store and pick up the software.

*All websites with a star indicate that it is for users over 13, or if you or under 13, you may have to have a parental guardian send in a form to have access to all features.
I would like more suggestions! Email me at gamesoul_writer_darren@inbox.com !
 

The popular XBox FPS, Halo 2, that was released in 2004 on the XBox will be coming to the PC this year. Though unable to find the date, I am sure that many will be psyched about this.

Halo 2 on the PC will feature online play just like the XBox version.

The only negative bit of news that I was able to find was that the game will only run on Windows Vista.

-Unstable

 

 

Spore is the latest game from the brain of Will Wright- the creator of The Sims. Not only does Spore look amazing, it relies on a very new kind of playing, a very new technology.

 I’m talking about procedural generation; the downloading of other peoples creations, picked from an online database and used to create your world. This will make much more sense when we get to the actual game.

You begin, in Spore, as a micro-orgasm living in a drop of water, steadily building yourself up and clumbing the food chain in pac-man like gameplay (3D though.) As you become stronger, faster and smarter you eventually grow into a larger creature, completely (I mean completely) made by you. Every time you progress you can edit your creature with an amazingly in-depth editor. It allows you to scale parts (feet for example) with the mouse wheel, mould them to any shape with the mouse, twist spines and bones. In the demo Wright creates a snake-like fish that swam around eating smaller fish (all created by other players- they are downloaded and streamed to your computer- via the internet I would presume. The same applies to the plants and weeds in the ocean.) You can pick whether your animal is a carnivore or a herbivore, even omnivore.

 Soon enough this fish lays an egg, and clicking on this egg re-opens the editor. Adding three legs to the underside of his creature, twisting the spine a bit and sticking a ‘clamp’ on its tail Wright has the next generation of his animal. It now has legs, so it walks out of the water onto a beach. After a short period of annoying some nearby bouncing (almost Kirby-like) animals and eating one, (remember, this was a live speech given by Wright, so everything’s speeded up.) Wright continues to show us more of the editor. He shows an extremely tall dog, and one with a mouth at each end of its body. What is amazing is they all move properly, animation created for them on the fly. As you make creatures they are instantly made to walk / fight / eat / dance / drag etc according to how you make them.

 From here you have to survive, and soon evolve into a sentient creature. A small tribe of your creations band together and make a hut (again, completely customised by you) and can upgrade their society with new weapons and other items such as log fires and drums. When you give these things to your tribe (which are now fully evolved in every aspect except from intelligence) the game works out how your creatures will react to and use these things. Depending on how you played your animal originally they will react differently. Perhaps they will prefer peace and trade with other tribes, or war against them?

 We now move to the city level- (again all vehicles, buildings roads and walls are created completely by you,) and you are in control of many more of your creatures. You have to tend to them as in Sim City and such, and soon you will begin to seriously interact with other cities around you that do not belong to you; peacefully or otherwise. At this stage, you are working towards taking over your planet, city by city. This can be done diplomatically or by war, it’s your choice. After taking over your planet, you reach the second last stage of the game: The space stage. With your new UFO, designed by you again, you can fly from your planet and explore the 3D space around you. To begin with you only have a good enough engine to explore the immediate space around you, visiting planets and sometimes civillisations nearby. Now things get really amazing. The whole universe around you is full of planets, blank canveses for you to populate, experiment on (perhaps a cross-breed zoo? You do have an abduction beam and the ability to unlimitedly edit animals now…) Some of these planets are occupied by aliens, ready for you to interact with however you like. Wright demonstrates a nifty death-ray that wipes out an entire planet very beautifully.

 Now, having gained the ‘Steller-Drive’ you can venture from your solar-system and explore the rest of the universe. Zooming out Wright displays the size of it all. It is huge. Hundreds of clusters of stars, all housing their own solar-systems and possible alien-races. You can terraform planets with the ‘Genesis Device’ and make them liveable, dropping domed cities into your new world.

  If done right, Spore could be huge. Very huge indeed. I for one can’t wait for it’s late 2007 release.

 

 

Yes, that’s right. Introversion have merged two great concepts together to form one intriguing game. What are these two concepts you ask? Simple: Strategy and Nukes. I played this game, expecting it to be mediocre. I was wrong. The main driving concept to this game is to seek other players, and then nuke their cities, take out their defences, and kill millions of their civillians. Seems violent, no? Well, it’s not. There is no blood or gore (thankfully, or I’d just pass out). To play this game, you start out by choosing a few (depending on amount of players) continents for your bases/territories/land, and begin building up your defences by creating missle silos, and then dotting radars around the coastlines. Radars detect enemies, although only have a certain range. This is the one of the strategic parts. You also can build airstrips, to build fighters, bombers etc. In addition to radars for scouting, you can submerge subs, and move across coastlines undetected. Then, when they’re least expecting it, rise up, and shoot nukes (yes, more nukes) at their cities, silos, you name it. Do whatever it takes to take them out.

Build carriers, and send fighters and bombers to engage in battle with other enemy fleets. While building fleets, it is best to keep all of the naval units of the same type, so you can move around, plan with seperate units, to make it more accessible.

However, it’s not all-out war. Don’t forget the 5 stages of DEFCON. You cannot fire nukes until a certain amount of time has passed (around 30 mins real-time, but of course, my memory is terrible…). But to speed the process up, you can just click the x2/x8/x16 speed buttons after planning your attacks etc. But, if playing against humans, all players must agree on what speed to go at. This can be very annoying (in my experience). DEFCON 5 means that Naval units are allowed to be used in battles. DEFCON 4 means the same for aerial units. This is a very good system in my eyes. it means that you can’t just nuke someone off the spot, and wipe them out. You have to go slowly, and plan out your movements.

Remember: Slow and steady wins the race!

The online Element is a good one. You get to nuke people all across the world, and that is real fun, believe me. But don’t go around nuking people in real-life now, or who-knows what’ll happen? The online gameplay is fun, and added twists such as alliances, and betrayal (seeing as you can’t see them, you don’t know what they’re thinking!).

While being strategic and having a lot of nukes, DEFCON: Everybody Dies is an interesting game, with a unique system. I like it very much for this. Although it has flaws, such as slow pace, which everyone might not enjoy, it is a very good game. This deserves a good, clean, crispy…juicy:

 8/10

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review by James a.k.a. Rengarg

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A game was released by a fan of the Halo series in 2005. This game is a 2D Platform Shooter. It has nothing to do with Bungie and was made by an amatuer developer who goes by Doberman. You cannot compare this game to the other ones in the series since it obviously would not compare well.

The Campaign is based before the first Halo game during the attack on the last and strongest Human base, Reach. You get to use most the guns from the first Halo game but some of them are not in there. You go through the levels shooting enemies to get to your objectives and progress through this game. All enemies drop guns which can be a good or bad thing. The good is that since most of the guns do not have much ammo and you cannot stack up ammo, you will be able to get a new gun just by hitting the next enemy that comes along. You also get a new weapon and full health at the end of each level. The bad is that you have to be in a particular spot over the weapon to pick it up and this could result in your death if multiple enemies are around.

 The multiplayer is a fun feature that adds a spin onto the game. Some problems with this feature though, are that you can only have 2 people in a game at once which isnt as fun over and over again, and also you need the other person’s IP address to play them. This might as well make it a LAN game.

 This game’s most prominent flaw is that it is very short. It does not have very many levels and they are very easy to beat. The multiplayer gives it some replayability as do the unlockables such as the plasma sword and Mythic Mode. Overall, this game is a good thing to play if you are waiting for something and need to waste about an hour or so. This game can be found here in the games section of the site. It is 100% free and wont damge your computer in any way, it is a small file and has a patch to fix some bugs in the game. There is also a second one in the making which you can see on the site.