Intellectual Ramblings

Hey there fans! We here at Intellectual Ramblings haven’t been around recently, but we’re finally back! We don’t have many Spore pictures right now, on account of being unable to get access to the Spore computer right now, but we have a temporary replacement! We recently acquired a copy of Fable 2, and Uber-Gam3r ahas happily agreed to test it for us! Enjoy Uber’s review!

Welcome Readers, to my Review of Fable 2! My sister has kindly agreed to help me with this review by playing the side of Evil. I personally am a pushover and a goody-two-shoes. I always go good first thing. My sister goes either way, but when she goes evil, she sticks to it! First of all, the graphics: They’re good! Not quite on par with games like Mass Effect, but definitely beautiful for the art style. Certain animations like your hero putting away his weapon or dancing near walls will cause clipping, and some pre-routed walking scenes can be messed up by your hero or dog.

Speaking of the dog, it lives up to the hype very well! While you aren’t able to do some of the things promised with it (but really, what did we expect with Lionhead?), he makes a cute companion and not only roped in my 2 sisters, but got me going, “Aaaaw… I love my Bosco!” Yes… I named my dog after a Sam & Max character… Anyway, from what I’ve seen so far, the dog doesn’t attack so much as claw out your enemies throats after you knock them down, CoD 4 style. Bosco’s combat level is only 2, however, so I may just not be high enough to see his combat prowess. Early into the game, as part of the tutorial time period, the dog gets kicked by an enemy, and got an instant response of “That F***ing Bastard kicked my dog! DIE!!!” from everyone involved. Needless to say, Mr. Molyneux may have overhyped the abilities of the dog, but not the “lovey-dovey” aspect everyone assumed would be skipped over.

Besides the Dog, one thing ever player was looking forward to was the updated hero morphing system. I can tell you that this system was, if anything, underhyped! Sure, everyone knew you could get darker skin or even glowing eyes as an evil jerkwad, and light skin as good, but the subtle variations between those are amazing. Sure, there is good and evil, but there is also purity and corruption, loved and feared, and even your skills will affect how your character looks. I personally went the jolly fat adventurer route, and my character (whose title is ‘The Salad Dodger’) wields a massive warhammer and sports a beard. My sister’s character (a girl, obviously), the Butcher, is scarred, muscular, dark skinned, and has two downward-pointing horns jutting from her hairline. Any number of factors can influence your looks. If you die a lot, you get scarred. If you use magic more than any other attack method, you’ll get glowing runes on your skin, similar to Black & White 2. Do you get my point now? Lionhead really outdid themselves with this system, and the limitless number of ways you can change your character means even when playing with random strangers over Xbox Live, it’s unlikely you’ll meet someone exactly like you.

Finally, and most importantly for me, is the Humor. Holy crap, this game can be funny sometimes! Think of Overlord, only with some good-aligned jokes thrown in for good measure. From a ‘Chicken Kicker’ achievement to cult leaders telling you “Friday is Poker Night” in an evil, deep voice, no matter which alignment you choose, there will be something to laugh at every 10 minutes or so at the least! Of course, this is to be expected. The game has ‘Belch’ and ‘Fart’ actions and it comes from a man who brought you the sick humor of Black & White’s evil side. Even some of the creatures you fight (though not many, to tell you the truth) are funny, and remind me personally of Overlord’s Minions combined with the Oddworld series.

So in conclusion, if you can get past a slightly tricky control scheme, and enjoy things that have great combat, humor, and a cool dog, Fable 2 is your game. the $60 required to buy it is nothing compared to the near infinite replayability, which is increased even more with the addition of online co-op! If you pay a little more or search the Fable 2 site, you can also get a Medieval Master Chief outfit or even a Chicken suit! Final Words: Buy this game! And if you see me online (Gamertag Uber G4mer) send me an invite! A 5 out of 5 Rating!

Sadly, the main trek through Spore is over, but I have plenty of photos of random events that you might enjoy! So… enjoy!

Anyone else remember the Merbura? It’s hard to forget them when they rampage through your nest and wipe you out several times =P

My first experience with flight was fun… seeing the little tiny epic Merbura wipe out OTHER creatures was very satisfying!

Another odd epic; the epic Red Crab Plushie =P

The Buras seem to permeate ever aspect of my games =P These little guys made great pets, though!

These little guys Pietoro (Or is is Pietro? Sorry!) made are also good. I had another creature aaarrrggg made (Tootookoo or something like that) as well.

This second time through, I also discovered the joy of eggs. Without these, I would have died WAY more than I did. Gamer Tip: After you domesticate an animal, you don’t need to pay food every time you domesticate a creature of the same species.

Around the same time, an enemy tribe was nearly wiped out by a giant… gear…

And this stupid thing stole my pets… TWICE!

My entire tribe went to charm most of the tribes left. Gamer Tip: Send enemy tribes gifts early on to prevent attacks.

This poor guy died pretty early on. Two civilizations pummeling you at once will do that…

My guys looked sweet massive and blue… That little thing near the bottom is the invincibility object you can launch off as one of the Carnivore perks.

Yet another random epic… this guy looks WAY better with the graphics turned up!

This is the “Dark Cloud” Ability that disable turrets and causes unhappiness. Priceless for Religious Civs.

And the All Powerful Fanatical Uprising. This thing is the same as the Media Blitz and ICBM powers, but sadly not as cool looking.

I would post more (Believe me, I have TONS more…) but I’ll save some for later… this thing is already too long =P If you have any tip requests (As you can see above, I’m going to try and give helpful tips with my pics) I’ll try to get you a few pictures to explain how difficult things work. Hope you enjoyed the photos!

–Uber–

I’ve made it to the Space phase! Well, technically I made it about a week ago, but that’s not important. Sadly, the camera doesn’t take pictures of the conversation screens, so I don’t have pictures of the species I met, but that’s really not important. I finally got my stereotypical UFO and I’m off on my way as a Trader.

I moved quickly through the tutorial missions and earned some of the earliest tools.

Now I finally get to see the crashed ship for myself, after seeing it over and over (and over and over) again in the more recent demos.

The first view of the star system was a great site. I got used to it all to quickly, but it was still an exciting moment.

I must say, flying across space is incredibly fun, and the decrease in random disasters from the patch will be welcome relief.

It didn’t take long to build my first colony, and that was fun. I’m a bit disappointed that they took away the glass bubble around harsh-planet colonies.

This is my most prosperous colony. I’ve terraformed it by now (I have pictures coming up) and I get about 26 pink spice piles an ‘hour’.

Terraforming is the most awesome thing ever, but the planet painting is a little boring when you can only color your planet purple.

I found a black hole pretty early on, but I haven’t gotten a chance to travel through it yet… it looks awesome, though!

The Atmosphere generator is pitifully slow for its price, so I highly suggest getting that “Cloud Creator” tool (or whatever it’s named) as soon as possible.

With all of my new painting tools, I went back to my Home planet and fixed up the ugly orange ocean.

After getting some important work done, I flew around unclaimed planets and had some stereotypical UFO fun… Flying Saucers are the way to go…

The ‘Money Infusion’ Special ability is great for peaceful races, but make sure you have a few million before you bother with it… buying systems is expensive!

Here’s an example of one of the few decent Maxis cities… It still isn’t consistent in color and style, but it’s not too bad… I abducted a few of the citizens as punishment.

As you can see, my computer’s relatively slow. It takes time to load up a planet sometimes.

Pretty soon into my game, I discovered the ‘Gear Seas’ tool. Later I found things like crystal seas and plateaus, but sadly, none of these instantly sink buildings the way they should.

I’ve learned to love the ‘Meteor Storm’ tool for its looks, but it doesn’t cause the havoc it seems like it should.

That’s all I’ve got on the space phase so far, and that’s really as far as I’ve gotten with my Avionn. I found about 6 races and am at war with 2 of them, but those are hard to get pictures of without seeing the HUD… Anyway, Spore is an ongoing story, so I may put up some more creature life stories or funny pictures. Glad you guys liked these, but they’re done for the time being. Thanks for reading Intellectual Ramblings and Uber’s Spore Adventure!

Firstly, we here at Intellectual Ramblings (and Uber in particular) would like to thank the HookedonSpore community for their unprecedented but welcomed support! You guys are awesome! And now, Uber’s Spore Adventure!

Welcome to the Civ phase! My creatures decided against starting a civilization based soley on pie, and started an economic city. Sadly, I don’t have too many pictures from this phase, but I’ll deal with what I have.

After designing my first buildings, I had my first city. I had the graphics turned way down, sadly, so it doesn’t look all that great.

My very next screenshot is right after I unlocked aircraft… I missed a lot of good stuff in there, too.

This epic crab thing had been bugging me throughout the phase, instantly attacking me if I built a turret. It took several waves of military ships to take it down.

These self-righteous yellow people didn’t like my free-spending ways, and I was forced to anhiallate them… poor, poor idiots.

I happily wiped out their ugly, maxis-made buildings.

Later I tested out the Power-Purchase blimps… they work well!

All too soon, I unlocked ‘Media Blitz’ and let loose a barrage of blimp capsules.

It seemed like the Civ phase blew by… I got my completely awesome UFO and moved into the space phase.

Sorry I dropped the ball on this one, but I promise I have better screenshots for the Space phase! I’ll have them up in a day or two! Thanks again for your support!

Welcome back to Intellectual Ramblings’ presentation of Uber’s Spore Adventure! Due to technical errors, the original draft was lost, but by some fortuitous circumstances, that allowed Uber to upload more tribal photos. Joy of joys! Now, sit back and enjoy!

We’re back by popular demand! Thanks to Artistvrd and Zaefyr’s comments, I’m back on the air… er… fiber optic cable. Anyways, The server swap messed up a few things, but that worked out for the best after all. Now, the Tribal phase! My little herd have discovered fire and build their first hut.

My little Shaman is dressed in his holy day best, and we’re up and running!

My first major achievement was allying myself with the newest tribe on my island. They were called “Speed Toads” or something like that… They liked my creatures horns ;-P

My people domesticated some nearby dwarves. They seemed happy enough, but they died soon afterwards.

I planned on allying with all of the local tribes, since I accidentally came out of the Creature phase as a predator. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize how Fire Bombs worked, and set one off right inside of Pink’s village when I was helping them fight off an epic Rainbow Chameleon… they weren’t too happy.

Whoops! Sorry about this… Random conspiracy photo…

Here are the little pith helmet-wearing guys who I ended up exterminating. Aren’t they cute? Not any more…

Flower petals flew as my people ran off to gift an enemy that kept raiding me. They never bothered me again.

My tribe grew quickly, but I was still constantly full. My people’s musical prowess was unmatched.

A Grox ship did show up at one point, but it was at another village while I was charming them. Still cool, though!

A nearby tribe of Pottuns were pretty cool. Their village was large and built up, and mine was too once I allied with them.

My people seemed to like the ‘Hunting Lodge’ look. Their little tribe buildings seemed obsolete.

A pic of the charming process with the pottuns. Apparently I hit the large village before I allied with them.

I saw an epic Spad II flying in the distance… luckily it stayed that way. Distant.

And so, my people reached Civilization! I was leaning towards the ‘Pie’ guy’s point of view, but my actions had made them into an economic people. That worked too :p Hope you enjoyed this installment. I’ll be back soon with the Civ phase, and the story of how I conquered my orange-ocean planet.

Welcome back to Uber’s Spore Adventure! One man’s journey through the vast realm of spore… with pictures! Today we’ll be following Uber through the Creature phase, and seeing him kill all before him! Enjoy!

Welcome back, people who accidentally clicked this link (I have no loyal readers)! Today, I’ll be walking you through the creature phase! Not only is it much longer than the cell phase, but it’s also much deeper and more interesting.

My first action after leaving the water was to eat one of R2’s creatures that was lying dead on the shore. Fun! My little proboscised creature sucked the thing dry.

After eating some fruit to stay neutral and gathering some new parts from skeletons, I moved on, and found another creature by R2.

We quickly became allies… and I never bothered with them again.

By this time, I had a lot of spare DNA, so I made some babies, and got rid of most of the cell parts and made them more bird-like.

Later, I made one of Dynonuchs’ creatures (The Torpal) extinct, and happily feasted on their bodies.

Then I killed off some crab creatures by luring a few at a time back to my nest and letting my entire herd kill them off.

Then I found a group of these things… C’thul or C’thin or something like that. I tried to be nice to them, but they were too stupid to join me…

Needless to say, they all died.

Then I found a group of pigsters. This caused quite a bit of laughing from my sisters, who happened to be watching.

Then there was yet more baby making…

While fighting off some bunny thing, I tested out my special ability from Cell phase that allowed me to summon help. They just happened to be Dragonflies…

I saw this strange Epic creature, but I don’t remember who made it… it looked cool, though, and was nice enough not to annihilate us.

I managed to find a pack of Demonic Plush Dolls… I resisted the urge to wipe them out, since I was a bit too close to being a predator.

Later I was forced to run from a massive ‘Geodermal Bell Dinosaur’ by roboraptor… the damn thing snuck up on me!

And so, after some more mating and a UFO sighting, I reached the Tribal phase. That, however, will be in a different blog post. Hope you enjoyed this, despite its length. I’ll try to get the Tribal phase post up soon!

Intellectual Ramblings has finally gotten Spore, and who better to test it than our own Uber-Gam3r? Today, we’re showing his visit to the Cell Phase, and the events therein.

Welcome to my jaunt through the Cell Phase! I started as a small green carnivore, and immediately started chowing down on the little meat packets around me.

It didn’t take long for me to build up some DNA and find a little love blob.

After some genetic editing, I continued gorging myself, but this time on something that was actually alive.

As I got bigger, these massive things showed up… I died twice, but eventually managed to escape, despite my meager speed stat.

I soon found the proboscis, and I must say, this is the best mouth in the cell phase! If you make it long enough, you can bypass nearly any defense the creature has, and stay locked on until it dies.

The phase was sadly short, but it did give me a good feel for the movement controls, and it was a fun little minigame! I’ll be back soon with the creature phase! Hope you enjoyed this small walkthrough.

Welcome, dear readers, to Game On! My reviews of the games I’m playing right now. There’s no guarantee that the games will be new. in fact, most of the games will probably be several years old! If I get some good feedback, I may keep these up for as long as I’m playing games, which will be a very, VERY long time. Let’s get this party started!

Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance 1 & 2 (PS2): Let me tell you this now. These two games are the second greatest top-down, hack-and-slash RPG’s I have played so far. That may seem like a pointless thing to bring up, but since the best one EVER is coming up, I needed something else as filler, and these games deserve way more than an honorable mention. I was never too good at the older Baldur’s Gate or Icewind Dale games, so having a Baldur’s Gate game that simplifies everything to near-stupidity level is always good! By yourself, you would be lucky to get through the entire storyline of either one of these games. The action gets pretty monotonous if you have nothing else to keep you going. Toss in a buddy, though, and the competition and cooperation brings out something undefinable about the game. I’ve played through both games at least 5 times, and am currently playing through the second one again with my little sister! If you have an extra $20 or so, these games are definitely worth it. 3 out of 5! √√√

Champions of Norrath (PS2): This game is THE best top-down hack-and-slash RPG game out there. With better graphics, a longer story, and 4-player Co-op (one reason having 3 siblings is good), it’s an improvement in almost every way over the Baldur’s Gate games. There are also several Class choices, and the game allows more than one of a single class, more things Baldur’s Gate didn’t think to add. As soon as I buy a multitap and 2 more controllers, I’m getting one there with my sisters and we’re going to hack for several hours straight! Another game worth the cash winning a 5 out of 5! √√√√√

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Demo (Xbox, PS3, PC): Only an hour ago, I finally got a chance to sit down with this demo, and it ROCKED! The controls were a bit difficult at first, but once I got the hang of flinging helpless rebel around, it was non-stop fun… for about 10 minutes until it ended. This demo is FAR too short, but the special surprise at the end (which I let you discover) lets you feel “The true power of the dark side.” If you have a 360 or a PS3, be sure you download this demo. It is worth the time it takes to download, and has only slightly less replay value than the old Dead Rising demo. 4 out of 5! √√√√

If you were running out of things to play, I hope this helped you. If not, what are YOU playing? I need to get a copy of something that can keep you occupied for longer than a month! Keep the suggestions coming, and feedback is always appreciated… unless it’s negative, in which case go rant to someone who cares. I’m Uber-Gam3r, and this has been Intellectual Ramblings! GAME ON!

Well, we only got one reply to my request asking what other games you would want to hear about. We totally understand, since Spore is going to be the best, and we already mentioned so many other good games. We will oblige that one faithful reader, however, and give our thoughts on the games he mentioned.

Maniacc0:

Personally, Spore is the only game that I’m REALLY looking forward to right now. I’m kind of interested in TS3, and I’ve actually been looking forward to Far Cry 2 for a while. Fable 2 is lookin’ sharp, and I’m also liking the looks of CoD5.

Now, we didn’t even know that a CoD5 existed, and we’ve already done Fable 2, so that leaves TS2 (We’re assuming you mean The Sims 3) and Far Cry 2, both of which are great games. We’re also going to add in our thoughts of Left 4 Dead, since we’ve been looking into that one a lot lately. Now for the list… in alphabetical order!

Far Cry 2 (October 21, 2008): I personally hated the first Far Cry… but then again I only played the first 10 minutes, which were great stealth missions, before getting scared off by the freakin’ jumping monkey creatures. Yes. I’m a wimp when it comes to horror/thriller games. This new game, however, has no hint of mutated primates, and instead is some story about killing off a weapons dealer. Who cares?? We’re not here for the story, we’re here to blow Sh*t up and light crap on fire! The little bits I’ve seen of the fire animations look great, with the fire spreading realistically through the grass and into the trees and buildings. The buildings don’t seem destructible enough to me, but we haven’t seen nearly enough rampant rocket launcher usage to be sure if you can raze buildings to the ground. The AI, which I haven’t really even heard about since the first demo of the game a while back, has me excited. If your buddies can really drag you out of a burning building with bullets whizzing by in every direction, it will be a great day for AI allies everywhere. This could be the END OF ESCORT MISSIONS! We can only dream… I give Far Cry 2 4 Daggers out of 5: ††††

Left 4 Dead (November 4, 2008): Just like “Made by Bethesda”, the words “Made by Valve” always raise my enthusiasm to a nearly ecstatic level. This game looks awesome. For those who don’t know, Left 4 Dead is a co-op zombie survival game with a control scheme similar to Counter Strike. Now, if you’re saying, “Co-op? Those zombie are so slow I’ll wipe them out on my own!” you should, because you would die, and everyone would be happy. These zombies, when aroused, are like football players. They run you down and pummel you to death with their fists of fury. There are also several ‘Boss’ versions of zombies. So far I’ve seen ‘Boomers’, ‘Tanks’, ‘Hunters’, and ‘Smokers’. Boomers are fat guys. That’s it. They puke on you and explode when killed, which will act as a beacon to nearby infected, so try to keep your distance. Tanks are just what you’d expect. Massive hulking beings of infected flesh. Apparently, if you let them smash an ally into the ground, they’re a lot easier to kill… Hunters leap at you from a distance. Think of the screaming fast zombies from Half-Life² without the headcrabs and exposed bones. They also shove you to the ground with the force of their jump, so try strafing, Einstein. Smokers are one type I haven’t really seen. I think I caught a glimpse of one in a recent demo video one, so I’m thinking they look and act something like the Tyrant from the first Resident Evil movie. If I can find 3 people who have also bought this game when it comes out, it should be a blast removing the zombies’ heads with surgical precision… or maybe just shooting wildly until I die… I give Left 4 Dead 5 Omegas out of 5! ΩΩΩΩΩ

The Sims 3 (February 20, 2009): I have to admit, I’m a major Sims fan. I played every single expansion to the first game, and have a few Sims 2 expansion cases next to me right this very moment! I’m a bit intimidated by the “Always Active” world where your Sims will age all the time, no matter who’s playing. That’s a small price to pay for an open game world, however. I can lose a few thousand families in exchange to being able to ram the next door neighbor’s annoying kids with my car. The extra character creation features are just icing on the simulated cake. Making my character fat, bald, kleptomaniac, paranoid, cheap, and a sociopath will be the greatest thing ever! There’s not much else that’s been revealed so far, but I must say I’m really looking forward to this! I shouldn’t be embarrassed… this IS a Will Wright game, after all. The Sims 3 gets 5 simoleans out of 5! §§§§§

So those are my reviews. If you don’t agree with them then find someone else to review something for you. I’m still looking for more games to review! Leave a comment or send me a PM and I’ll get right on it!

First of all, we here at Intellectual Ramblings would like to thank you, our few loyal readers, for your kind comments. With E3, Leipzig, Comic-Con, and so many other venues showing off great new games, it’s hard to know what YOU want to hear about. That’s why we’re asking you to write in, either through PM’s or comments, and tell us about the games YOU are interested in! We’ll do our research and be back as soon as possible with our thoughts. Start up the presses and help us entertain you!