Im tempted just to download the demo on xbox live this morning just to confirm what i know already that i will end up deleting it within a few minutes.

Im not knocking people who enjoy this sort of thing but in the year 2012 and all the technology to produce really beautiful games i really struggle to understand why you would really want to waste hours with this when there are far better looking games of a similar strategic nature already on the market that do next generation consoles and PC some justice.

Its a bit like the majority of the downloads that come out on the xbox live and psn service,why would i want to play sonic the hedgehog and resident evil 1 when i did that 12 years ago on playstation 1 and mega drives.

Never understood why Microsoft and Sony release far superior consoles and give us retro games from the past [obviously money spinners] if i wanted retro i would have stuck with my Nintendo 64 Mega Drive and Snes and never have bought the latest consoles.

The other thing to mention is that it is...I forget the name... Randomly generated as you play. Each time you start the world it generates around you but then you could start walking in a direction and it would generate new areas as you walked. Procedural maybe?

In reply to a post by MrTAToad2:

It was created when voxel technology made a comeback a few years ago and rode of the wave of that. I must admit I dont see much point to the game either, but then I avoid sandboxed games too - just no point too them...

The graphics have a certain limited charm to them, especially from a distance... And with the monitor switched off...

Haha. From a distance. Yes.

I thought something looked familiar about that Minecraft video. Saw a good demo for voxel graphics some years ago, if I remember rightly, it had very high system requirements but would really have led the way for in-game physics and destructable environments had anyone been able to get more than 3FPS from a (then) supercomputer. In many ways, it's a shame it didn't take off though understandable how the industry came to favour polygons instead.

Even though the graphics ain't exactly pretty, I expect the processing requirements are pretty high if it's using voxel/volumetric pixels. Perhaps that's why Minecraft looks so pooey but also the reason it has such appeal as it's graphics are literally made up of building blocks?

Edited by deleted (Wed 09-May-12 15:14:03)

Well put and thanks for enlightening us a little more about the gameplay. I don't think T2D read your comment btw. He doesn't like too many long paragraphs.

I think I can see the appeal this game has and it'd be nice to be able to build and design something using your own creative and individual style, but it sounds like it takes absolutely ages to get anywhere in the game to me.

From all the mining of resources, I wonder if there are consequences? Like structural instability if you undermine your own buildings by digging underneath them? And, what about pollution and environmental degradation? Probably thinking too hard about this really but hey.

Not sure I'd want to go to hell personally, not unless there was something good down there, and I could bring it back up with me. But let's face it, what's down there anyhow? Just a lot of hot rocks no?

I think if we all played this together it could be good therapy, especially for T2D. We could each build our own tower and catapult stuff at one another to see whose stays up longest.

Retro gaming seems to be a big business for some reason...

I downloaded the demo Spook and as expected its not my cup of tea and deleted it 3 mins later.

Like i said each to there own and if people like it i see little reason to be critical just because it aint my bag,just surprised more than anything as why people would spend hours on this when in all honesty there are far better build this and create this games about.

Anyway spook if you did dig down to hell ........T2D would be waiting with a shiny new Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 beautifully gift wrapped just for Spooky .

I can just picture that, T2D holding a nice shiny Xbox 360 in one hand and PS3 in the other with a big grin on his face and then... nowhere to plug them in! And a million pounds an hour for leccy. Temptation and torture combined.

Yea I went to my friends last night and we downloaded the demo and he then bought it...for 1,600 Microsoft points might I add! Played it for about an hour and it didn't really do it for me. My friend seemed to really enjoy it, said he could see himself getting sucked into it and spending hours building a castle with a big tower lol

But it's not for me, I can see it being a lot easier on the PC with keyboard and mouse as the controls on the Xbox are shoddy to say the least. It seemed like a lot of effort for not much gain to be honest, my hour basically went like this: Attack some trees to mine some wood, turn that wood into planks, turn those planks into sticks, turn those into a wooden sword, kill some creature at night, start again but this time mine some gravel so turn into ore to turn into something else etc.

It's not for me! I would much rather play an RTS game like Tropico, now that is a game! Have you played that btw T2D? Tropico 4 is awesome.

No mate i have the patience of a gnat and i have been hooked on prototype 2 which i loved and have now completed,looking so forward to the next few weeks with Max Payne next week [really excited] and Ghost Future soldier the following week.

Max Payne 3 has me drooling and I'm hoping when the reviews hit the net next week I'm not thinking oh no here we go again,will be surprised as its Rockstar makers of GTA and the awesome Red Dead Redemption and there games usually have a massive dollop of quality .

Think the last time i was excited about a game as much was after playing the beta for MW1 in 2007.

1600 points is a bit of a joke for a game that looks like that in all honesty,Microsoft getting extremely greedy if you ask me and i would not buy this for 200 points,actually i would not bother if it was free.

Edited by time2die (Thu 10-May-12 09:35:32)

I finally put my screenshots up:

My castle!
The courtyard of my castle - I had planned on moving the wheat farm etc and making roads and buildings but I never got round to it.
The great library in my castle.
The stairs. This goes from the top of the main tower well underground to my mine.
The ravine of death! Water on 3 sides of the castle with the ravine covering the 4th - you can see the waterfall from where the sea falls into the ravine. Im stood on the bridge over the ravine which is the only way in - the fall from the bridge itself would kill you 3 times over but I filled the bottom with lava just to make sure
This is from the lower bridge you can see in the previous pic - you go over this lower bridge to enter my mine proper.
Looking down from the lower bridge.
The start of my minecart track - the yellow tracks are powered (speed you up) so you jump in the minecart and hit that button on the wall to the right of the track and off you go deep into the mine.
This is part of the huge mine I found - it is hard to explain just how big it is but you can see the hundreds of torches I put down during my exploration. Basically enemies spawn where it is dark (they can move into the light no problem but they can't spawn there) so when you are exploring you put torches down all over the place to stop them from appearing where you don't want them to! Exploring a cavern like this is hard work because it can take many trips down into the mine to even light it all up - and until you do you are living in fear of enemies landing on your head!

As for structural requirements - there are none! You don't need foundations or any of that [censored]. Some people build their... whatever in the air. If you look at the last screenshot there you can see the pillars on the bridge but you don't need them at all!

Hell has different mobs in it (so different types of enemies) and different rocks. The enemies can drop things that you can't find outside of it - but generally you would want to go down there with your mates otherwise you might be in a world of trouble.