Space Engineers
Space Engineers is a lot more than just Minecraft in space, but to be honest I haven’t played Minecraft with all of the crazy mods currently available so maybe it is more similar than I realize. Right now the game is still in “Early Access” stages but Keen and I both really love what we have experienced so far. There’s a lot I can talk about so I’m just going to break down some of the really cool aspects of the game.
Gravity – There is no gravity in Space Engineers unless you build gravity generators. You get a fancy jetpack that lets you zoom around and control your positioning, but that doesn’t do a whole lot to help you when drilling into an asteroid. All of the chunks you break apart will go flying off in all directions which forces you to desperately try and fly after them. Some people probably think that this doesn’t actually sound enjoyable, and it isn’t, but it does force you to come up with creative options. The easiest thing that we discovered was to extend the gravity field that is generated by your starting ship and park right above the spot you want to chip away at. It was really satisfying to come up with a solution to that problem.
Mining, Processing, & Assembling – Everything in Space Engineers requires some kind of raw material. I’m not sure exactly how many different kinds there are but so far we have encountered rock, iron, silver, gold, platinum, magnesium, uranium, cobalt, and probably one or two more that I’m forgetting. Once you collect some of these materials you can process them in a refinery. Once you have refined ingots, or whatever, you can use an assembler to create components like construction pieces, metal plates, computers, displays, etc. All of those objects are then used when creating the various pieces of ships and stations. (more…)
Well, pretty much anyway. Disney Magical World might be more like Animal Crosing -lite or Diet Animal Crossing but it makes up for this with several cool features that you can’t find in Animal Crossing. Like in AC, the game progresses in real time. However, unlike AC the time of day doesn’t affect very much. The only real significant things IÂ noticed are visual changes, shop item changes, and requests and whatnot changing out every 12 hours. The time of year does seem to play a part though given that right now in my game there are giant easter eggs and bunny outfits all over the place. I’m actually very excited to see what shows up around Halloween and Christmas but I can only hope the game can keep me interested that long.
The game is a third-person shooter with the Plants vs. Zombies theme. Garden Warfare is essentially multiplayer only but you could play split-screen offline if you really wanted to. There are several modes including a horde-style defense mode where four plants defend their garden from waves of AI zombies, your regular TDM mode where you have to get 50 kills, Gardens & Graveyards where zombies are trying to push through 6-7 gardens to complete their objective while the Plants defend, and a newly added Gnome Bomb mode where each side has pickup the gnome and use it to blow up three objectives. Gardens & Graveyards is easily my favorite but I do enjoy all of the versus modes. The horde-style defense mode, the name of which escapes me right now, is one that I haven’t quite put a lot of time into. Mainly because it’s the kind of thing that requires good communication and a certain level of competency that I have yet to find.