Transformers Animated

Based on the Cartoon Network’s animated television series, this well-crafted oneplayer Nintendo DS fighting title lets you take control of your favorite Autobot characters, including Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Bulkhead and Prow.
As you make your way through each level of the side-scrolling kids game, you collect the lost fragments of the Allspark before the Decepticons intercept it and claim Cybertron as their own. Got that? As you blast through Decepticon-controlled hoverbots, you try to solve puzzles and race through a futuristic Detroit — avoiding oncoming traffic while changing from robot to vehicle form. This makes perfect sense, if you’ve watched the show. Features include three game save slots.
Besides the cartoon violence on par with the show, there is no worrisome content. In short, this is another action-packed fighting game designed to extend and transform the Transformers into an interactive medium. Developed by Artificial Mind and Movement exclusively for the Nintendo DS.
Details: Activision, Inc. Ages: 7-up. Platform: Nintendo DS.

Link to buy Transformers Animated game

City Limits

It was with mixed horror and depression that I read Ryan Scott’s preview of SimCity: Societies, a game which purports to “return to SimCity’s roots” while stripping out everything that’s made a SimCity title for the last 18 years. No zoning? No power and water grids to worry about? No roads beyond the terribly unrealistic-looking, squashed four-lane things there now? The ability to make haunted theme parks, mime factories, Stalinist cryo-prisons, and a whole city that looks like something out of Willy Wonka’s franchising-opportunities guide is supposed to appeal to lifelong fans of the series?

I humbly beg Maxis to not allow this kind of dumbed-down gameplay style to pervade and become the whole of the SimCity universe. From every screenshot and preview of this game I’ve seen, the hype is all about making totally unrealistic fantasy-type cities: Orwellian slums. Candy Land nonsense, industrial hellholes, things out of the great stereotype playbook, Surely there’ll be fans of this type of city-building genre, a type in which what you plop down and where doesn’t appear to be half as important as what little giggly coiorfui stimulus responses you get from watching it I, however, and many hundreds of thousands of others, I would venture to guess, are not fans of this and were hoping for a rTiore streamlined but also more realistic sim - as in simulation - version of SimCity that would get us ever closer to being able to model our hometowns and cities with better accuracy and fun bells and whistles.

More types of roads. Perhaps a preindustrial starting period that would let us watch our cities turn into the skyscraper ferms that SC3 and 4 would generate over time as technology advanced. But all that possibility is thrown out for cheap graphical gimmicks and simplified gameplay. It’s a shame.

Prescription For Painless Play?

I had to sympathize with Darren Gladstone’s column about the pain he’s feeling in his left hand from using the WASD keymap. I had to quit World of WarCraft because of it.

My own keymapping system has never produced those symptoms. With it, I can play for hours and not feel any pain:

A - crouch
S - backward
D - strafe left
F - strafe right
Right mouse - forward
Left mouse - primary attack
Middle mouse - secondary attack
G - reload
Z - use
Left shift - walk/run
V - lean ieft
B - iean right
C - flashiight
Spacebar - jump

Authenticating

I have two basic requirements for games. They must run right out of the box and be playable even if tbe support services are no longer available. I think these requirements are fair. When considering that most books, movie DVDs, and music CDs meet these requirements and cost $20 or less, I feel I am entitled to expect them from a $50 videogame. This is especially true when that videogame requires a computer that costs over $1,000. Imagine my displeasure when I found out about the activation requirements for BioShock.

From my point of view, all activation does is promote and justify piracy. It’s all but guaranteed that when these activation servers are shut down for good, someone will pop up on a forum asking how to get by the activation so they can play again…and the only people with that answer will be hackers and pirates, I don t like the idea of having to do something illegal to get a game I bought legally to run.

Still Steamed

You need to stop shilling for Steam. The reason is simple: Try [to] get customer support when you cannot connect. Steam has no customer support, and if it doesn’t work…you are out of tuck. You have no options. Not a one. So take the Steam challenge and see if you can get help.

I suspect that the reason is that Steam hates their customers and, with Half-Life being such an amazing game, they can afford to lose 10 percent and still be happy. Plus, the huge savings [from] not having to employ a bunch of [foreigners] to provide bad customer support.

So be a pal and write the truth: Steam still sucks. I find I can connect about one third of the time. And now I hate myself for looking forward to the next episode [of Half-Life 2]. So thanks to Steam for ruining my gaming experience.

Rein It In

In the October issue. Mark Rein blames Intel for the proliferation of moderately powered computers that “suck for playing decent games,” Nonsense. Decent games don’t necessarily need high-end rigs. Didn’t Mr. Rein consider that the problem lies with publishers constantly focusing on games with bleeding-edge graphics?

You don’t need cutting-edge graphics - or even 3D graphics - for great gameplay. Any longtime gamer knows that. Instead of repeatedly selling us more of the same with fancy new window dressing that requires a graphics card upgrade, why not create something original that puts the gameplay before the eye candy?

Picking The Wrong Fight

Generally there is some great stuff in GFW especially the Freeloader stuff, but including a nod to Bible Fight, a game that mocks Christianity, just isn’t cool, especially to Christian readers of your magazine such as myself Please be respectful, not discriminating, towards your Christian readers who enjoy your publication.

Also, great observations about the awful Daikatana mess. After wasting time struggling with the limited graphic-card support, what a huge disappointment that game turned out to be. That ad campaign, as you pointed out, was as equally flawed as the game was.

Get A Map

Fifty percent of Shawn Elliott’s review of BlackSite: Area 51 has absolutely nothing to do with the game. Why are you talking about WWII ” when the game is set in modern times? Why are you talking about Iraq when the game takes place In Nevada? I understand that the game has some political message set in tone to Iraq, but if you want to say something - just flat out say it and not write a paragraph and a half about nothing.

Love / Hate

Good job on the seamless transition from CGW to GFW - it’s still the same great mag. I especially appreciate your bringing back the ratings, for the same reason as many other readers: A high rating in a genre I generally skip over usually piques my interest. I hereby authorize you to give yourselves a raise!

The Sun Also Sets

In your Alan Wake cover story, Alan notes that “the sun rises over the Pacific Ocean” and “sets over the Cascade mountain range,” You should have labeled this a spoiler, as he is obviously delusional. In the real world, the sun rises in the east (Cascade Mountains) and sets in the west (Pacific Ocean)