Wednesday was a weird day. It began with the news that Will Wright is leaving Maxis and EA after 20 years. Wright is famous for creating some of the most well-known franchises in gaming, including SimCity, The Sims, and, of course, Spore. Then, events felt like they came full circle later that evening when Maxis gave IGN an update on Spore: Galactic Adventures, the expansion pack coming on June 23. This expansion is of interest because it looks to give a lot more structure to the game in the form of adventures that players can create and share, just like they can create and share almost everything else in Spore.
The 2009 GameStooge Awards continue with the fourth part of the Awards – the Technical category that covers expansions, digital games, and the surprise games of 2009.
Winners:
Best Expansion: Fallout 3: Broken Steel
Best Digital Game (Original): Plants Vs. Zombies
Best Digital Game (Adaptation): Trials HD
Best Multiplayer: Halo 3: ODST
Best Game You Didn't Play: Dead Space Extraction
Best Surprise: Batman: Arkham Asylum
Stardock has released Impulse's Top 10 Sellers list for the week ending on January 9.
GP writes: "The sheer scale of Will Wright's vision for Spore was praiseworthy, even if the final product occasionally felt pinched and clipped.
In brief, Spore zoomed out from the microscopic to the telescopic in five phases as players evolved and nurtured a single celled organism representing a species into a space captain representing a galactic empire. Unfortunately, the first four phases played like a rambling prologue to the final galactic phase. But what it lacked in aspects of game-play it made up for in charm and creativity."
