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Retailers Listing Spore 'Expansion'
Posted by Luke Plunkett at 12:20 PM on October 4, 2008
Listings have turned up on both GameStop and Amazon's store pages for a Spore expansion. Sorry, "expansion". Called Spore Cute & Creepy Parts Pack, it's got a shipping date of November 18, and is currently listed at $20. Going by the name - and really, that's all we've got to go off at the moment - we're subtly led to believe it's a new box of spare parts than anything that'll add any new meat to the mechanics of the game. And for $20, there'd want to be a hell of a lot of spare parts in there.
Spore Cute & Creepy Parts Pack [GameStop, via Hooked On Spore]
GTbyCITROËN has been unveiled at the Paris Motor Show, and it's an interesting spot of marketing fun. Citroen partnered with Kazunori Yamauchi from Polyphony Digital to design an ultimate fuel cell concept car, and then engineered the beast as a driveable concept vehicle for the Motor Show. The car is now available as a downloadable addition to Gran Turismo 5 Prologue so anyone can take it for a spin. Naturally, they claim the car's in-game and on-road performance are true to form, but how many of us will get the chance to test that theory? Full release after the jump.
No, Pangea is not reforming, things aren't that bad. Take this one with a hippo sized grain of salt for now, my European friends, but CVG is reporting that hope for a European Afrika release sounds like it might actually, despite 
The core idea of making a movie on The Sims is a solid one. Solid in the storied Hollywood tradition that The Sims is popular, and movies based on popular things make money. But the execution? 
The 2008 version of Colonization seems like it's too good to be true. Like, a remake? Of 1994's brilliant strategy game Colonization? Pure remakes of games are rare enough, but remakes of such a niche, underappreciated title? Its like the PC gaming gods took a break from the usual fire and brimstone and were instead dispensing smiles.
And EA's DRM back-tracking continues! First it was
Laminar Research has released an iPhone version of its well regarded Flight Sim X-Plane 9.
I'm clueless about racing games, but even I can see a huge difference between RACE Pro and every other racing game out there. Whereas other games all have some gimmick going to trick you into racing (like in Burnout, where the point is to wreck the car, or in Need for Speed where the point is to make the money to buy the best car), RACE Pro is just about racing.
In the beginning Wil Wright created the idea, but not the name. Now the game was formless and empty, darkness was over the deep concepts, and Wright was hovering over his small group of developers. And Wright said, "Let there be five stages in the game," and there were. And Wright said "Let the waters teem with living creatures, let birds fly above the planets, and let gamers produce them all." Wright saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was real-time strategy, and there was procedural animation and perhaps even firmament, though I'm not quite sure what that word means. It was the sixth year.
A little background: Panasonic released "Joba" in 2005, a horseback riding machine. The machine mimics, well, horseback riding and provides riders with an ab workout. Aimed at seniors and those not keen on doing actual exercise, the key feature of Joba is that you really don't have to do more than simply sit on it to get a workout. (Though, arm movements are encouraged.) What's more, unlike, say, a treadmill, Joba does not take up much space in cramped Japanese dwellings. Panasonic has launched this product outside Japan to varying degrees of success.
Spore's about evolution? What are you thinking? It's not evolution at all! Well, that's what Tim Dean over at Trembling Hand theorises:
Game industry legend Will Wright is no stranger to creating life, but Spore marks his first attempt to create it from the ground up. One of the most highly anticipated PC games of the past decade, Spore's ambitions don't stop at expanding what a life simulation can be. The game also seeks to expand the PC gamer audience beyond the hardcore, perhaps acting as a stepping stone for the ever-growing numbers of casual PC players. With a scope this large and ambitions this great, you just know the game critics are paying extra-close attention. Let's see what they saw when the put Spore under their critical microscope.
Spore owes a debt to the research carried out by scientists at the SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute - in particular the work of SETI Director Jill Tarter.
Spore isn't the most resource intensive game around, but it still needs a fairly beefy system. You would expect, therefore, to have problems running it on older 'legacy' machines. Last years laptop should be ok though, right? Right?
Aside from the rather intriguing gameplay features I discussed during my 
Ubisoft's new Tom Clancy air combat title is looking damn good. I got a chance to sit in on a demonstration of Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. - High Altitude Warfare eXperimental squadron - earlier today at the Games Convention at Leipzig, and what I saw was a very exciting title that could finally give the arcade jet fighter crowd a much better reason to dust off their flight sticks than another load of downloadable pink airplanes courtesy of Ace Combat 6.
The story behind Need for Speed: Undercover is you're a cop working the corrupt streets of the Tri-City area who goes undercover (get it?) to bring the crime syndicates of the streets to justice. Helping you along in this quest is Agent Chase Linh (Maggie Q), as your FBI liaison, talking to you in a series of live action cutscenes. All the story stuff is live action, actually - the game having been built around a Hollywood style of storytelling. So, flashy visuals, gritty cop story, and tattooed gangsters... like The Wire, only with Need for Speed.
The Pure press party wasn't much to look at - a huge dark room with some faux Italian statues and sweet-looking bikes you couldn't touch - but that might've been Disney Interactive Studios's plot all along, because compared to the party, Pure itself looked awesome.
Developer Codemasters is unveiling multi-plat title FUEL at the Leipzig GC. What's FUEL? It's a racing game, so big that it deserves ALL CAPS. It's hailed to have the "largest racing environment to appear in gaming — ever". The game supposedly has a 5,000 square-mile playing area with "no boundaries". Up to 16-players race it out in D.I.Y. cars through places like Nevada's Grand Canyon. The game boasts a full day-and-day cycle and even features a weather system with tornados, thunderstorms, snowstorms and sandstorms. Hope it looks and plays as promising as it sounds.
