Buttonbasher

The first trailer for Call of Duty: World at War has been released. It shows some of the new features of the game such as flamethrowers, and some hand to hand combat. The game will center around the Pacific theater of World War II. Also new is a 4 player co-op (both split-screen and online).

Call of Duty: World at War will be released before the end of Activision’s 2009 fiscal year.

KLind

Meet Uncle Sofa:

Uncle Sofa knows how to get the party going. He was created using the Spore Creature Creator.

The Spore Creature Creator is but a crumb of crust from the pie that is Spore. The name is pretty literal as all you do in it is create creatures. But unlike a normal character creator, this one will hold your attention for quite a while. In most games I tend to select the most normal looking character, or the polar opposite; the entire process taking around a minute. I’ve been playing around with the Spore Creature Creator for the past seven hours without getting bored.

What sets this apart from most character creation software is the feeling that you’re actually creating something unique compared to choosing Face 5, Body 4, and Haircut 9. The feeling of working with the tool is most comparable to playing with modeling clay. You sculpt out the body and begin adding features to it. There’s no correct answer as to where any of the items are supposed to go. Do you want your creature to have it’s face on it’s back? Go for it. Want every surface of it to be covered in Mouth’s? Do it. Want an upside down head? I sure did! So I did it:

(Funtime Lenny)

One of the coolest parts of the program is the many ways available to share your creatures with your friends. In the “Test Drive” where you make your creation walk around, dance, emote, you can click a button on the UI to take a picture.

(Max from Sam and Max)

If your friends aren’t impressed by things that don’t move, you can click another button to create an animated gif of your creature doing wacky things.

Finally, the feature that impressed me most was the ability to record videos of my creature (in this case Uncle Sofa) doing things, and automatically being able to upload them to Youtube all in game.

After creating a creature you can name it, give a brief description, and upload it to the Sporepedia where anyone can download your creature. You download a PNG image of the creature you want and when that’s put into the game, it’s recognized and automatically loads as a 3D creature for you to tweak and modify.

More than anything the Creature Creator makes me extremely excited for the full release of Spore. Thinking of the possibilities of evolution and cross-breeding with my pre-existing character palate makes me grin ear to ear.

A colony of Uncle Sofa exploring the cosmo’s in search of a more habitable environment for it to colonize… I can’t wait!

The Spore Creature Creator will be released on June 17th, with a free trial coming at the same time. Spore fully releases on September 7th.

Take us home Uncle Sofa:

KLind

This time in a foreign language! Note the flamethrower and riot shield looking thing.

TGFJF! (Thank God for Jeux France)

This week Epic shows up to the Steam party and it brought the Unreal collection which includes all the previous Unreal games leading up to the recent Unreal Tournament III. You’ll get 10% off everything until March 24 including the Unreal Deal (heh, rhymes) which is priced just a few bucks above UT3, and includes the other four games. I’d go for that if I were you.

-Urb4n Z0mb13

In a financial results announcement, Take-Two officially announced a sequel to the award-winning Bioshock. It will be developed at the new 2K Marin studios, with help from Bioshock designer (and current 2K Marin Creative Director) Jordan Thomas. Ken Levine will also helping out with the project.

Bioshock 2 is scheduled to ship Winter 2009.

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KLind

Shown off at the Valve Party at the Game Developers Conference, Harmonix and Jonathan Coulton showed the crowd the first look at some upcoming downloadable content for Rock Band. Still Alive swept the internet shortly after Portal came out. People fell in love with the ending song of the game, and made their own versions of it. You’ll be able to join in the fun when ‘Still Alive’ by GLaDOS is released as DLC in Rock Band some time in the future. Until then, here’s a preview in the form of a video from the Valve Party.

KLind

Bow Street Runner is a point and click adventure game, that incorporates full motion video. The story is that you are a member of The Bow Street Runners, an early police force in London.

In Episode 1 you are investigating a string of murders. You find clues, and evidence, interrogate witnesses, and even do some basic surgery! The acting is good, and the 3d world around it, are really well done. I hope to see more games like this in the future, and also look forward to future episodes of this.

If you like this, you should also check out CDX by the BBC.

Bow Street Runner Game

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KLind

Will Wright’s Spore (Sim Galaxy) has finally been given a release date. On September 7, you can begin evolving your creatures from cell, to sapient!

The announced that it will be coming to PC, Mac, DS, and Mobile. It is not clear which versions will be coming on September 7, though.

This game looks absolutely huge. Managing a whole galaxy will be amazing, though!

KLind

Audiosurf, an Independent Games Festival finalist, will be available for purchase on Steam on February 15th for $9.95. Audiosurf is a music game, visually similar to Amplitude, but mixes it’s gameplay with a falling tile puzzle game. The coolest part is that you use your own songs to make the tracks (no extra work required!). The game builds the track out of your mp3s. The track will change based on the songs tempo.

An added bonus, The Orange Box Soundtrack is included in the game so you can play the iconic Team Fortress 2 jingles or Portal’s “Still Alive”.

Having tried out the beta, I am definitely planning on grabbing this. Theres just something cool about being able to play any song without assembling the track or anything.

You can pre-purchase it on Steam before February 15th for 10% off!

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KLind

Portal goes out on a cool note, literally, by a great song sung by a character in the game. Fans of the game became instantly infatuated with the catchy tune, and have been making tributes to the song since the games release. This one is especially cool though.

Portal Fan “Thrashbarg” built an old school terminal devoted to playing the song with the images and lyrics digitized to the monitors. While the lyrics themselves are the main source of the spoilers (Which this version doesn’t contain), you will probably get more out of the video if you have played Portal.

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KLind