Spore, Crysis Warhead, and more!

I've recently been on a gaming binge and it has been quite a wild ride. Right now, PC gaming is really booming because we have so many big releases coming up and in our face. The games I've been playing recently are Crysis Warhead, Spore, and soon The Witcher: Enhanced Edition. I'll discuss the first two, as I have yet to move on to The Witcher, but I still have much to say

We'll start with Spore, which is really a tough game to describe unless you've actually seen or played it. Essentially, Spore is a game in which you create a species from scratch, then guide it through the different stages of evolution. This means that you'll move from being a small cell to a land-based creature to a tribe of your creatures all the way up to a space-age species of creatures which control space itself.

The game is really fun, but not as good as it was hyped to be. Some of the stages are not very fun to play (well, pretty much all of them, to be truthful), and the game doesn't have much depth at all. What this means is that your actions really won't have many deep consequences and there isn't a ton of replay value nor thrills to be had based on the gameplay alone. In this case, the game rides on its creativity, which probably isn't a surprise to many. The creature, building, and vehicle creators are extremely fun to use and allow you to create an enormous variety of whimsical things.

I would go as far as to say that without some form of a creature creator, Spore would be one of the most boring games in existence. I know that you're still asking, "But why?" because I still haven't answered that question, but here it goes: As I sort of mentioned before, your actions have no real, deep consequences and the stages of the game are quite boring. Below is a quick summary of all stages in the game:

In the Cell stage, you swim around eating pieces of food (meat if a carnivore, algae if you're a herbivore) and avoiding or attacking and eating other creatures. In the Creature stage, your creature heads to the land and you begin attacking and/or meeting and greeting new species. In the Tribal stage, you guide a tribe of your species around a landform, taking over or allying with other tribes until they've all been dealt with appropriately. In the Civilization stage - when your creatures suddenly become irrelevant - you construct cities and use land, air, and sea vehicles to capture resources and attack or deal with foes using religion. In the final and deepest stage, Space, you control a flying saucer/machine and deal with other empires by either trading with them, attacking them, or even defending your homeland if that's a priority. You can also add tools onto your ship to allow you to terraform planets, color them, etc. and you are also given a beam that allows you to suck up plants and animals on planets in order to use them for purposes such as locating them elsewhere.

In all honesty, none of these game modes is all that fun to play. Even the Space stage, with its huge star system(s) and tons of planets to explore, missions to undertake, planets to colonize, and so forth, still becomes repetitive quite quickly. The Civilization-aholics will probably enjoy this more than I did, but it's nothing to write home about. As I've seen others say, the other stages are more or less "appetizers" because they're much shorter and have little to no depth. It's also disheartening to know that your species becomes obsolete and no longer changes past the Civilization stage, and that as you move around in the earlier stages, the 'changes' you make to your creatures only determine whether it's a carnivore or herbivore. Other, deeper characteristics based on the way you play are never put forth as we probably would have expected. For example, you can build a completely different creature from stage-to-stage and have no drawbacks as a result. It simply doesn't matter what you do - if you do it and move along, the game moves along, too, just like any other game would. I was really expecting more - a "species life simulator" of some sort, but a project that ambitious would take more than several years to complete I'm sure.

With that said, here's a quick video I whipped up showing me creating a strange scorpion-like creature in the Creature Creator:



Now that Spore is out of the way, let's move on to Crysis: Warhead!

Without a doubt, Warhead has given me the best $30 value in a long time. What you're getting is an excellent standalone expansion (original game not required) as well as an improved multiplayer component that is marketed as a completely separate game known as Crysis Wars and that comes on a separate disc as a result.

If you played Crysis and were bored every now and then with the constant stealth gameplay, Warhead is definitely the game you're after. Shortly after the beginning, the pace picks up with explosions left and right and better gunfights than in the original game, and it doesn't let up until the credits start rolling. The missions are a little more linear than those in Crysis, but it doesn't hurt the experience at all. It's hard to say Warhead is the same type of game because the two just take such different approaches. In this game, you're being funneled into frantic battles and you'll notice small touches such as more explosive barrels littered around the landscape, vehicles having much lower armor and therefore being easier to destroy, and more. Some of the more exciting segments include riding around in a fast anti-armor vehicle, blowing the hell out of everyone and everything in your path, and riding on the back of a train, either manning the guns on top or using your own weaponry to take out forces and camps appearing both to your left and right. The train ride was one of the better missions in the game and I'd put it up there with some of my favorite moments in gaming. The ice levels are back, but they actually show up sooner than you'd think and pack more variety and excitement than those in Crysis.

The story is told better, too, because the voicework is better and the characters are more engaging. You really care about the different characters in the game and you also get to see a deeper side of the main character, "Psycho," by the end of the game that will leave you in tears. I would say that it's certainly one of the more touching cutscenes I've seen in a first-person shooter in a long time, and the downright gorgeous visuals only make it that much more immersive.

Speaking of the visuals, Warhead's performance isn't a whole lot better than Crysis', but you'll still find yourself getting better frames especially in DirectX 9 mode, which offers similar visuals to DX10 but with 5-10+ higher frames in most segments. The visual quality is only slightly better than that in the original game, but it's still the best shooter when it comes to visuals by far. There is simply no matching any of the Crysis games at this time when speaking of that area.

I haven't yet tried the multiplayer component/game, but I do look forward to installing Crysis Wars and seeing the improvements they've made. I've been looking around, and some early reports indicate that the experience is better and plays more smoothly all-around. I think it will definitely be a great second-half to the game and will make the game(s) that much more worth the thirty buckaroos.

With that said, Crysis: Warhead is a game any shooter fan should play. I know that the market is over-saturated with shooters at this time, but you should give this one a try just because it does so many things right. It's hard to find great shooters these days that pack a punch in almost every area, but I think Warhead hits the nail on the head wherever possible. Even if the performance may still not be at the level we desire and even if the ice stage and alien battles will still piss off a few folks, this is a damned good shooter, through-and-through. And for thirty bucks, you'd be a fool not to buy it, even if you're a DRM crybaby.

Because I recorded a Spore video, I decided I would also record a Crysis:Warhead video showing me taking out North Korean troops in one of the earliest levels in the game. The video is set to the theme song of the well-known movie The Terminator, and I think you'll know why by the time the video is over. Once again, enjoy:


Now that we've discussed the evolution of species in Spore and the total annihilation in Crysis:Warhead, we'll probably be moving on to a completely different type of game when I begin playing The Witcher when time allows. I recently purchased The Witcher: Enhanced Edition which is actually the original game with tons of great enhancements and some great extra content such as the game soundtrack, a "Making of . . " DVD, a world map, and more. Ya'know, the typical collector's edition content. But still, it's well worth the money! I've heard only good things about The Witcher, and it's time for me to hop into its crazy world and experience the adventures it has to offer. I'm sure they'll be exciting.

Damn. It's good to be a PC gamer.