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Prima Games Blog

The Prima Games Blog is the place to read about new video games, get expert strategy, tips, downloads,
free walkthroughs, and insider game info by gamers for gamers.

All posts tagged with ‘gaming’
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Visiting Egypt in Sims 3: World Adventures

World AventuresYour Sims have toured the town, made dozens of friends, held down fulfilling careers, and developed all sorts of fun skills. Now it’s time to reward them – with a vacation! The Sims 3: World Adventures is the very first time your Sims have been able to leave town and go on exotic travels. In World Adventures, your Sims can visit three destinations: Egypt, China, and France. In each location, your Sims meet new people, learn new skills, and explore dangerous tombs in search of treasure.

While working on World Adventures, I did not develop a favorite between the three destinations. Each location offers something special — a certain unique local flavor. It’s not just limited to the architecture either, which is definitely different for each location. Local identity is also quite personal. You find it in the little things. Egypt, for example, is the only place where Sims can buy a snake charming basket and then start practicing this special ability. The longer your Sim charms, the better they get at it. Soon, they can snake charm for tips and even coax a cobra out of the basket. (The cobra is pretty cool. If you ever get a mummy’s curse, the cobra is one of the surprising cures for the nasty hex.) Plus, you can take that snake charming basket back home when your visa to Egypt expires and play with it there, much to the amazement of friends and neighbors.

Egypt’s tombs can get pretty intense. The first few tombs you explore while going on adventures for locals ease you into a world of traps and trickery. But it doesn’t take long before you are moving deep into dangerous territory, trying to find the right switch to turn off fire traps or poison darts. Usually, the more dangerous a room is, the greater the chance of finding rare relics and valuable treasures. In our guide, we map out every single tomb in Egypt (as well as China and France) so you get the most of each expedition. Some of these tombs are really tough, but with our full-color maps and legends that point out how to open every door and locate every secret chamber, you will emerge from catacombs and tombs laden with awesome stuff. These treasures will look great in your house back in Sunset Valley or Riverview, but if you successfully undertake adventures in each location, you can build up your visa until you can purchase a vacation home. How cool would it be to have a vacation home in France loaded up with gilded relics from Egypt?

Like China and France, Egypt is also peppered with lots of collectibles, such as scarab beetles and new butterflies. Just like our Sims 3 guide, we show you the locations of all of the new collectibles in every destination in our World Adventures strategy guide. Your house will be decorated with all sorts of new insects, gems, and metals. If you are a hardcore collector, you definitely want to scour the new destinations in World Adventures to find the new collectibles. Next week, I’ll talk more about some of the fun things to do in France, which is home of the new nectar making skill and some very cool tombs, like the giant Tomb of Isael under the Nectary. That place is huge!

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Battlefield 1943 Tips

bf_1943_02

So are you hooked on Battlefield 1943 like I am? Like the other games in the series, this one is seriously addictive and well worth the $15 it costs to download from Xbox Live or the Playstation Network. But by now, even the novice players are getting the hang of it. So if you’re late to the party, here’s a few useful tips to help you survive.

  • My favorite class? The Rifleman. The M1 Garand (available in both the Marine and Japanese kits) is by far the most balanced weapon in the game offering the perfect balance of power, range, and rate of fire. It only holds eight rounds, so be sure to reload after each engagement. For best results, crouch and peer through the iron sight view before squeezing the trigger. Also, let the rifle settle after each shot to combat the effects of recoil.
  • Learn to Defend! Too many players simply race from one control point to the next, never leaving anyone behind to defend captured territory. As a result, the match resembles a game of whack-a-mole, with players wandering all over the map. Remember, your team only needs to hold three out of the five flags to bleed the enemy ticket count. So capture three control points and defend them!
  • Tanks are absolute beasts, if deployed correctly. Don’t drive headlong into a swarm of enemy infantry; you’ll quickly get picked apart by explosive charges and anti-tank rounds. Instead, use tanks as standoff weapons during assaults. Hold back and shell a position, providing support while infantry move in for the capture.
  • A tank’s front armor is the strongest, so keep it facing toward your enemy at all times. Likewise, look for opportunities to flank enemy tanks, targeting the weaker side or rear armor. The rear armor is the weakest, making it the most effective spot to hit a tank with rifle grenades and anti-tank rounds.
  • Flak canons are great for taking out fighters and bombers…just be sure to lead them. But they inflict no damage against tanks. So if you see an enemy tank rolling toward your position, jump out of the flak canon and seek more suitable cover.
  • Air raid bombers can be shot down by fighters and flak canons. So don’t let those enemy bombers reach their target. Shoot them down before they can drop their bombs.
  • Always use the bomb sight view when controlling the bombers during an air raid. Steer the bombers toward the largest concentration of enemy units, as noted by the red icons on the HUD. Enemy held control points make decent targets too, as they’re constantly spawning fresh units. If targeting a control point, hit one near the frontlines, as most players spawn closest to the action.
  • When strafing with a fighter, use the rudder to line-up your target. The rudder is mapped to the left analog stick and controls the plane’s yaw. Applying rudder during tight turns is also effective, sometimes allowing you to out turn a pesky bandit on your tail.
  • Is your plane damaged? No need to land and repair it with a wrench. Simply fly over a friendly airfield or aircraft carrier. If you’re low enough, your plane will be repaired. For best results, cut the throttle and glide over the runway to maximize your flight time, ensuring your plane’s health is completely restored with one pass. However, you’re extremely vulnerable when performing a low speed fly over so make sure the airspace is clear of threats.
  • The Japanese Zero is much more agile and maneuverable than the Marine Corsair so take this into account before charging into a dogfight. The Corsair tends to stall, so stay on the throttle while climbing and keep up your airspeed during tight turns.
  • Use Squads! If you join (or start) a squad, you can spawn on your squad members’ positions. This is useful when launching an assault against a well defended control point. Have on squad member hold back and serve as the spawn point while the rest of the squad attacks. You can have up to four players in a squad.
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Battlefield 1943

bf_1943_011Another Battlefield game is heading our way this week! Battlefield 1943 is a download-only title set to release Wednesday (7/8) on Xbox Live and Thursday (7/9) on the Playstation Network. For only $15, the game promises tons of gameplay, all on WWII Pacific Theater maps. In fact, some of the maps may look familiar. They include Wake Island, Iwo Jima, and Guadalcanal. A fourth map, Coral Sea, is unlocked once 43 million cumulative kills have been achieved. So it will be interesting to see whether Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 gamers hit that milestone first. My money is on the 360 crowd. But this isn’t just a rehash of Battlefield 1942. Everything has been recreated with the Frostbite engine, used in Bad Company. So this time we get to play WWII with fully destructible environments. Not to mention the awesome sound effects. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get back to Wake Island. Hope to see you online this week!

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Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood – Chapter 3 Walkthrough

In the third chapter of Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood you’ll have to face the sheriff in the first of many showdowns. Find out how to kill your opponent in this and every showdown with part 3 of the official walkthrough.

Includes a map with locations of all Secrets, Money Bags, and Weapons!

cojch3

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Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood – Chapter 2 Walkthrough

In the second chapter of Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood you’ll head to the McCall family Homestead. Check out the strategy for getting through the homestead with your brother alive.

Start exploring Atlanta, GA with part 2 of the official walkthrough.

Includes a map with locations of all Secrets, Money Bags, and Weapons!

cojch2

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Spore: Marketing Your Adventures

sga_06Galactic Adventures has only been out for a few days and there’s already more than 1,000 community-created adventures available for download. So with so many adventures, how do you make yours stand out from the crowd? There are a few simple things you can do to increase the visibility of your adventure in the already crowded Sporepedia. Think of the Adventure Title Interface as the marketing panel; click on the blue “Name Your Adventure” button at the bottom of the screen in the Adventure Creator. Here you can write a description for your adventure, enter keyword search tags, define the genre, and assign detailed view pictures. While all of these fields are important to fill out, the detailed view pictures are critical. These four images appear on your adventure’s title card in the Sporepedia.

So how do you take a good picture? I like action shots so I start up the adventure and advance to an act I want to show an image of, such as a battle scene. While the action plays out, pause the game and enter freecam mode: Press Ctrl+Alt+C to enter freecam mode. This allows you to move the camera anywhere on the planet. And since the game is paused, you can take as much time as you want to frame the shot. When you get the shot you want, press the C key to take a snapshot. Repeat the process at least four times so you have four different shots. Once you have your shots, return to Build Mode and assign the detailed view pictures. Make sure you select your best shot for the first slot, as this is the image that appears on the front of the adventure’s card. The three other images only appear on the card’s expanded view when you click on the blue information bar at the bottom of the card in the Sporepedia. Now that you have four good images, a description, tags, and genre, your adventure should stick out a bit more.

By the way, I uploaded a new adventure a few days ago titled Colonel Grihm’s Last Stand. It’s a defense-based adventure…and it’s really tough. My goal was to make an adventure worth a lot of Spore Points. And it seems to have worked. Currently, completing the adventure earns your captain 75 Spore Points. So feel free to check it out and let me know what you think. I’ll give you a hint…use the grenades!

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Galactic Adventures: Spice Trouble

sga_05Galactic Adventures is out now and as of this post there are more than 140 community-created adventures available for download. Among the new adventures is Spice Trouble, the adventure we created for our guide’s tutorial. Feel free to take it for a spin or open it in the Adventure Creator to find out how we put it together. In this adventure you must assist a meek group of colonists threatened by a mysterious alien race. It’s probably not the best adventure you’ll ever play, but it’s a good example of how to put together a simple adventure. For best results, open the Spice Trouble in the Adventure Creator and read the Adventure Creation chapter in the guide, starting on page 155. By reading and studying the adventure you can get a better idea of how we put it all together. Or better yet, start a new adventure and follow the tutorial’s step-by-step instructions to create your own version of Spice Trouble.

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Robot Chicken Adventures

sga_04Ready for the release of the Galactic Adventures expansion? It comes out this Tuesday, and it looks like we’re not the only ones eager for the release. With the help of Maxis, the writers behind Robot Chicken have put together some wacky adventures of their own, including My Big Fat Pig Wedding, Litterbox Gulch, and Whiney and His Poo. All of the Robot Chicken adventures will be available to download on the launch date through the in-game Sporepedia. For more information on the expansion, be sure to pick-up our guide on Tuesday. Also, check back here for some useful gameplay and adventure creation tips.

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Spore: Creating Adventures

sga_02One of the most exciting features of the Galactic Adventures expansion is the new Adventure Creator. This allows you to create your own planetary adventures consisting of a variety of activities and goals. Even more exciting is how easy it is to share these adventures with the Spore community, allowing others to edit and tweak your adventures. But don’t worry, every time an adventure is edited, the original author retains credit within the adventure’s legacy, listing all contributors. So what does it take to create an adventure from scratch? I spent a couple of days at Maxis talking to the producers about their process. After all, why not ask the pros? They break the process down into several logical steps:

Brainstorming: Every great idea has to start somewhere. In this phase the team throws out ideas for adventures, discussing what they want to accomplish. As the adventure evolves, goals are discussed, determining how gameplay will function.

Story: Most adventures tell some sort of story, so developing a narrative is a key element of the pre-production process. This can include a backstory (what happened before the captain arrived) as well as snippets of significant dialogue; when the captain speaks to someone, what will they say?

Production: Once the team has a good idea of what they want to do, they jump into the Adventure Creator and start blocking out the adventure, ensuring they have all the cast members they need. If not, they create them. Thanks to the intuitive design of the Creator, it only takes a few minutes to block out an adventure by creating environments and placing key gameplay objects. After placing all the objects and implementing the goals, the adventure is playable…but it might not be very pretty.

Art Pass: During this stage the team makes several passes through the adventure to ensure everything looks just right. This can include adding visual and sound effects. Maybe you want to add a lightning storm or the sound of wind blowing? Even simple additions such as these can have a dramatic impact on how an adventure looks and plays.

Testing & Tuning: This is the most time-consuming part of the creation process, requiring the team to play an adventure over and over to ensure everything works correctly and looks perfect. It’s a good idea to test an adventure with different captains of varying abilities to ensure it’s not too easy or too difficult for anyone. For example, a captain equipped with a Jump Jet could easily circumvent some obstacles.

So when you’re ready to start making your own adventures, follow the advice from the developers. For more information on the Adventure Creator, check out our guide, releasing next week. It includes a detailed overview of the entire Creator as well as a step-by-step tutorial.

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Spore: Galactic Adventures Preview

sga_01Since there’s only a couple of weeks to go until Galactic Adventures is released, I figured this would be a good time to discuss some of the new elements of this expansion. In particular, the new captain parts. In all, there are 32 new captain parts that enhance your captain’s abilities. Some of these parts are weapons, useful during combat-oriented adventures. One of my favorites is the Swarm Magnet, a ranged weapon that summons a swarm of viscous insects to attack your target. But there’s also social-based parts, helpful for boosting your captain’s skills during social interactions, such as the Fettipopper. This device launches confetti into the air, helping impress others during pose-based social interactions.

But you can’t load your captain down with all 32 parts. Individual parts are unlocked each time you level-up your captain. Since there are only ten attainable ranks, there are only ten parts that can be unlocked per captain. So this forces you to plan out your unlocks and determine which parts are most beneficial to your captain. But it’s also important to take into account what types of adventures your captain will be undertaking. For instance, if you prefer action or combat-based adventures, choose weapons. Or if your captain has poor dance skills, consider choosing the Hop Gogs or Princely Pad parts to augment your captain’s ability.

For more information on all 32 captain parts, including exclusive stats, be sure to check out our guide, releasing in a couple of weeks.