I’m so looking forward to this event and we’re only 2.5 weeks away! The London MCM Expo will take place this year in the weekend of 29th and 30th of May at Excel London, for two days of geeky fun.

Tons of stuff will be happening there that weekend: a Comic and Anime section with stands featuring artists and writers; a Games section showcasing some of the latest games; a Steampunk exhibition with art, contraptions, sculptures and clothing; a Cosplay masquerade; and of course lots of guests from our favourite TV shows and movies.

From the guests announced so far the ones I’m most looking forward to seeing are John Noble and Jasika Nicole from Fringe (Walter Bishop and Astrid), Warwick Davis and Ron D Moore (BSG). Here’s a video from last year’s Expo:

Tickets are available on the London MCM Expo site. Only Early Entry opening tickets are available in advance and with these you can access the Expo from 9am on (2 hours before the General entry).

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to attend a special Doctor Who day in Sheffield, all about the upcoming downloadable games. The day was brilliant and I’ve got tons of stuff to blog about: a Q&A with the creators, playing around with real life Daleks, a studio tour of the game creators offices and a hands-on demo session of the first game. Oh, and I got to see the upcoming Saturday’s episode… but I won’t spoil anything about that, just go watch it this Saturday!

The first of the four new Doctor Who games was revealed to be called ‘City of the Daleks‘, where for the first time the Doctor visits Kaalann, the Dalek city capital. This first episode will be available as a free download from www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho on June 5th 2010 for both PC and Mac.

I’ll be doing a more in-depth preview soon, but if you’re curious to know what the ‘City of the Daleks’ game is about, here’s a short description:

The TARDIS materializes in 1963 – and London is in ruins. The Daleks have seized control of time and the only chance of saving Earth lies in a desperate quest to Skaro, the Daleks’ home planet – before time catches up with Amy, the last survivor of the human race!

From what I saw the game looked great; easily accessible for those who have never really played games before, but with some smart game mechanics in place to make it more difficult for those of us who have. I think these games will be great to tell more Doctor Who stories!

What do you think so far of the Doctor Who games? Something you’re looking forward to? Or couldn’t-care-less?

I haven’t blogged much about the Tron viral/ARG, but I’ve been following everything so far. About one and a half week ago there was a live event in San Francisco, where Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner’s character from the first movie) announced that Encom would be releasing an online version of their Space Paranoids game. And now there’s a trailer:

I think Alex from FirstShowing is right, in that Kevin Flynn will probably try to contact us through the game. There’ll be 15 new levels designed by Flynn himself, so there’s got to be something hidden within that. I’m guessing it’s going to be something collaborative, like the Dark Knight pixel picture from 2 years ago. Like each level represents 1 letter, but letter is only revealed after 100 scores above a certain threshold?

The story behind the ARG so far is that Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) disappeared 7 years after the events of the first movie; nobody has heard of him since, including his son. But there is a group called FlynnLives who still believe he is alive and that “he is out there, that he’s waiting for us, and that he will return when the time is right”.

If you’re interested in playing along, just sign up on FlynnLives.com. You can still earn badges for all of the previous steps, except for the live events (which I don’t have anyway).

Via FirstShowing

I’ve been mainly playing Final Fantasy XIII the past weeks and those of you who follow my tweets will know how frustrated I am by it. It’s not that it’s a bad game, but I really don’t like how linear FFXIII is; the first 30 hours there’s basically only 1 way to play the game. So when I got a review copy of Rune Factory: Frontier, it felt like the perfect antidote to the linearity of FFXIII: this game is so open and non-linear, there are tons of ways you can play it.

Title: Rune Factory: Frontier
Type: Puzzle, Nintendo Wii
Number of players: 1
Release Date: Out in Europe since April 1st (released in US last year)
Cost: £23.97 (on Amazon)

Rune Factory: Frontier is the third title of the Rune Factory series, but the first to appear on the Wii (the previous two were for the Nintendo DS). The original was a spin-off of the Harvest Moon video game series, and takes the farming aspect of the Harvest Moon series, but adds a dungeon crawling sword wielding side to it. I haven’t played any of the predecessors (neither from the Rune Factory series or the Harvest Moon series), but you don’t need any knowledge about any of those games.

This game starts with your character Raguna waking up to discover he has amnesia (of course). He moves to a new town, gets his own farm and some tools to start farming. Oh, and you get introduced to a bunch of girls, who you can potentially woo and marry. There are barely any forced tutorials or anything like that; the game just lets go and gives you the freedom to do whatever you want.

You start the game with the main activity of farming. You get a couple of seeds, a hoe and a watering can, and your own little field where you can sow and grow your crops. After sowing seeds, you have to water your crops once a day, until they are fully grown and you can harvest them. It of course depends on the type of seeds how many days it takes for them to grow; turnips (the seeds you start the game with) take 4 days. One minute in real life is one hour in the game world, so 24 minutes is one day.

Next to farming, you can dungeon crawl. You can buy a proper weapon (like a sword) or you can be cheap and use your hoe. Either way you can start dungeon crawling and destroying monsters straightaway (well you’re not actually ‘destroying’ them, you’re sending them back to the First world or something like that). Besides those two main activities, you can also learn to do other stuff, like cooking and fishing, but you have to find the right tools to start those (mainly by talking to the right people).

And then there’s the ‘love’ game. There are twelve girls in the village you can woo (and eventually end up marrying), each with different likes and dislikes. Each of them (and each of the other NPCs you come across) has a “Love Points” bar that increases as you show them affection. You do this by giving them presents they like (for instance, one girl might like turnips, another one roses). The girls are a bit stereotypical (you have the librarian, the inn keeper’s daughter, etc), but it’s still a lot of fun, figuring out what to get for each of them.

Rune Factory: Frontier is a cute RPG and one that requires more than a few hours of dedication. I love how much freedom the game gives you, letting you focus on those parts of the game that you like (instead of having to do everything). It’s perfect for someone as neurotic as me, trying to collect and create all the items (seriously, if I didn’t have video games, I’d be a crazy cat collector or worse: stamps).

Rune Factory: Frontier is available on Amazon.co.uk for £23.97 and on Amazon.com for $29.99.

A couple of weeks ago I was asked whether I’d like to try out the game Animal Kororo for the Nintendo DS. Sure, I thought, it looks a bit cutesy, but it’s a puzzle game and looks like fun. Surprisingly it’s actually a pretty tough puzzle game, despite the fluffy animals and pastel graphics.

Title: Animal Kororo
Type: Puzzle, Nintendo DS
Number of players: 1-2
Cost: £10-£20 (depending on where you get it)

Animal Kororo is a puzzle game similar to Bejeweled or PuzzleQuest, where you have to match up same coloured objects. Here those objects are cute fluffy animals; you’ll have pigs, blue polar bears, frogs and all other types of cutesy critters. The idea is to roll the animals across the board and make them bump into identical animals to make them disappear. It’s touch screen controlled, so it’s simply tap on an animal and send them rolling in the whatever direction you want. You can’t stop an animal halfway a roll though, once rolled it will continue until it bumps into anything (so wall, other animal or obstacle).

To make it even trickier (and believe me the above is already tricky enough), the directions you’re allowed to roll are always in the same order: up, right, down, left. On the right hand side of the screen, is a bar that shows you what  direction is up next. So it’s not just a matter of rolling animals when you want, but figuring out what the next roll is going to be.

There are three types of modes (Attack, Challenge and Battle), each with varying levels (Easy, Normal and Hard). In Attack Mode, you get a list of which and how many of each animal you have to eliminate (see the top line in the above picture). In Challenge Mode, obstacles appear to make the levels more complex. And finally in Battle Mode you can play against a friend through single or multi-card play. In Attack and Challenge mode you also earn points, which can be then used to purchase items for a virtual house. It’s a bit silly, but the creatures are soo adorable, it kind of makes sense they added the tamagotchi element to it.

Animal Kororo is a cute little game, yet surprisingly tricky. I know I’ll be able to waste a good number of hours on this while on the tube or plane. And the animals are cute!

Animal Kororo is available for £12.00 on Amazon.co.uk.

Last year I blogged about a cool “game” that was a giant image where you had to solve cryptic clues of movie titles. Now there’s been a new chapter in the Tron viral game that does something similar but for video games.

If you haven’t been following what’s been happening with the Tron viral game, head on over to Firstshowing.com who have done some great coverage of it so far. The latest discovery of the game is the site Arcade Aid which features an image of a huge pixel city with 56 hidden video game references. Once you solve all 56 references, you can get a “Special Access” Encom ID, which will most probably lead to another step of the viral game some time in the future.

I’ve only got 10 so far (and then I decided I should blog about it first before continuing with it), but I already love some of the cryptic clues. How many were you able to solve?

Regular MissGeeky readers will know how addicted I am to the Final Fantasy games. I haven’t played that many games the past two years, but FF is something that will always get me hooked. The latest edition to this epic series will be coming out on March 9th, after a 4 year gap of no FF games. Like I said in previous posts this game is what will finally convince me to get a PS3 or an Xbox360.

So I was excited to see that there’s a special UK launch event happening on the 9th at the HMV on Oxford Street! Both Yoshinori Kitase, the producer of the game, and Isamu Kamikokuryo, the game’s art director, will be there to sign games and answer any questions. Also the first 50 people to show up dressed in Final Fantasy costumes will be treated to the soundtrack cd of FFXIII. Plus anyone who attends will have the chance to win special goodies.

Date: 9th March 2010
Time: 5.30pm – 7:30pm
Address: HMV, 150 Oxford Street, London, W1D1DJ

Awesome! I wish I could make it, but I’m flying in that day from the Netherlands, so regrettably won’t be able to join.

Funny little flash game where you have to turn gears. It’s only 20 levels, but gets pretty tricky:

I can’t wait till this game comes out in March! Regular readers here will know how much I love the Final Fantasy series, and this latest installment looks gorgeous. I haven’t heard that many good reviews about the storyline though, but even that won’t stop me from getting this game. Enjoy:

The past couple of years I haven’t been gaming that much; besides the occasional small game on the Nintendo DS, I think the last real proper games I played were Kingdom Hearts 2 and Final Fantasy XII on the PS2. A couple of months ago I borrowed a Wii, but I haven’t actually “played” anything on that besides EA Personal Trainer. There are however a lot of games out there that I want to try, but just never got around to getting.

Also so far it hasn’t seemed like a good idea to invest in a PS3 or an Xbox 360; I know what type of games I like, and nothing that has come out so far seems worth getting a new console for. Especially with the amount of PS2 and Wii games I have yet to try out. But looking at the titles to be released in the next couple of months, I think that’s going to change. For starters Final Fantasy XIII is coming out in March and that for me is finally a game worth getting a PS3 for.

So here is a list of the games I’m interested in getting. Some are pretty old, some aren’t even out yet, but they all look like fun.

Final Fantasy XIII (PS3 & Xbox 360)

As I said above, Final Fantasy XIII is a must-have on my wish list. I’ve been addicted to this series ever since VIII came out, and I still can’t get enough from them. I’ve actually only finished 2 of the games I’ve played properly (from the 8 I own), but with “properly” I mean unlocking all items, all secrets, etc. I think I’ve put in at least 50 hours per game (with some of the extreme ones topping at least 150 hours). It’s one of the few games I know I will play exhaustively and the price-to-hours-of-gameplay ratio has kind of spoiled me for most other games. Release Date: March 2010

Dante’s Inferno (PS3 & Xbox 360)

I got to play this last week at a demo day from EA and I really like the look of it. I’ll try to post a full review of what I saw later this week. It’s based on, well, Dante’s Inferno, the first part of Dante’s poem Divine Comedy. The levels in the game actually correspond with the 9 circles of Hell mentioned in the poem and it’s interesting to see how they’ve interpreted the different aspects of the poem. Release Date: February 2010

God of War I, II & III (PS2 & PS3)

I’ve never played any of the God of War games, but they look awesome! You know how much of a sucker I am for Greek mythology, so God of War shouldn’t disappoint. Release Date: March 2010 for III, I and II are out now.

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel (PS3, Xbox 360, PC)

I was addicted to Sacred when it came out 5 years ago, but the game was so buggy I got stuck and never finished it. I’ve been eyeing it’s sequel since it came out, but was never sure if it was worth getting or not.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (Nintendo DS)

I’ve played all the previous Kingdom Hearts games and it’s another series I just love. It combines Final Fantasy with Disney! How could you not love that!

Scribblenauts

I’ve heard so much about this game, but have yet to play it. You basically have to solve puzzles by summoning objects by writing their names. You can write down anything you can think of which might help you, like ‘ladder’ but also stuff like celebrities, animals and internet memes.

What are the games you are hoping to get for Christmas? Any suggestions of games I might like?