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!
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!
Galactic 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!
Galactic 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.
Ready 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.
One 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.
Since 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.
Kids don’t know how good they have it this summer. There was a time (not too long ago) when nothing was released during the summer, forcing us to replay old games we’d already finished in the winter and spring. But there’s a ton of great titles shipping in the next few weeks, almost making me wish I had a summer break to look forward to. Here’s a few titles I can’t wait to add to my playlist:
The Sims 3 (6/2)
I never got into The Sims 2, but I’m thinking I might check this one out. I loved the open sandbox feel of the original, plus I have a new PC to break-in. Though if I’m not careful, I’m afraid I might get sucked-in and play nothing else all summer.
Prototype (6/9)
Here’s another title that could possibly eat-up tons of time. The whole shape-shifting thing looks amazing, as does the freedom of movement. Can’t wait to dive into this one.
Ghostbusters (6/16)
We’ve all been waiting to play this one. As a fan of the movies and the original C64/NES game, this one has been at the top of my list since it was first rumored a few years back. From what I’ve seen, it looks like it’s been worth the wait.
Spore: Galactic Adventures (6/24)
Yeah, I may be a bit biased, but I really am looking forward to playing this one. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of adventures the inventive Spore community can come up with. I also have a few of my own I’m ready to share.
Last Monday I was on vacation in New York, and like any serious gamer, felt compelled to make the pilgrimage to Nintendo World near Rockefeller Center. But this was no ordinary Monday. This was the day the new Punch-Out! was released. In my opinion, there are few NES games that hold up better than the original Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out! Yeah, 007 373 5963 is seared into my memory forever. So I was giddy at the opportunity to try out the new version, using the Wiimote and Nunchuk to fight my way past Glass Joe. To my delight, the game plays just like the original, albeit with a more intuitive control scheme. It took me a little while to get used to the controls, but I was still able to drop Glass Joe in the second round…and I didn’t even use a star punch.
I didn’t need to see much more. I grabbed a copy off the shelf and made a beeline for the register. Since it was launch day, they threw in a Little Mac T-shirt, a Punch-Out! themed chocolate bar, and a Punch-Out! sticker. Apparently these freebies were leftovers from the big launch party they held on Saturday. I inadvertently attended a similar launch party a couple of years ago, so I didn’t feel too bad about missing out on the wall-to-wall crowds. Still, it was nice to get that sweet schwag! Anyway, if you ever make it to NYC, be sure to check out Nintendo World. There’s lots of cool stuff to look at…and buy. Here’s a few pictures from my visit.
Lately Valve’s Left 4 Dead blog has been a great source of information, especially for those of us still hooked on blasting zombies. Last Thursday, Kerry Davis and Scott Dalton dropped some juicy details about the Survival Pack DLC, releasing later this week…for free! The bulk of the discussion centers around the new Survival mode. Included in the post is the graph above illustrating how the various infected respawn throughout the course of a Survival mode match. If you’re having trouble making heads or tails out of these curves, let me summarize: the longer you survive, the tougher it gets. Though that might be a gross understatement. Just look at how the difficulty ramps up over time. Most disturbing is that red “Specials” line representing spawns for Hunters, Smokers, Boomers, and I assume Witches. Now I know why most matches don’t last much longer than five minutes. Still no details on which maps are playable in this new mode, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough. For more details and a greater appreciation of what went into balancing this new mode check out the Left 4 Dead blog. And be sure to download the Survival Pack on Tuesday, April 21st.
