Darwinia+

[MinisterofDOOM]

This is an opportunity for console gamers to find out what you've been missing for the last 5 years. It's just too bad it won't hit PSN (apparently due to the way PSN's approval process works).

Anyway, Darwinia is a fantastic game. It has a wonderful coherence to its look, atmosphere, and feel that work with the gameplay to make a very memorable experience.Basically, Darwinia is an AI research project run by a Dr. Sepulveda. In the game, you accidentally stumble onto the project servers to discover that the world (home to Darwinians, a reproducing, learning, evolving AI race) has been overrun by a virus. Dr. Sepulveda enlists your help in destroying the virus and saving the Darwinians, who have come a long way since their creation and whose loss would be unfortunate.

You never have direct control over individual Darwinians, but you can lead them as groups and can directly control individual Programs like squads (your primary attackers), defensive turrets, and Engineers. Over the course of the game you progress across different areas of Darwinia, liberating them and reactivating technology.

There's also a research/upgrade system that allows you to enhance your squads offensive abilities, upgrade your Darwinian's intelligence and even give them lasers (which is more a defensive measure than an offensive one) and increase the amount of Programs you can have active at once.

Multiwinia is simply a multiplayer variation of Darwinia, allowing you to fight other players' darwinians.

The control scheme for Darwinia is incredibly well-suited to the gamepad, so it should play just as well on consoles as on the PC. Basically, you have an overhead view as in most RTSs, but it "steers" more like an FPS, with a reticle in the middle of the screen, a "sprint" button to speed up movement, and full 360-degree rotation. It works really fluidly and uses so few buttons that the gamepad should work great.

I highly suggest picking it up, as it's a great game. For $15 it's a hell of a deal. It's due out tomorrow.

[SkinnyKibbles]

+1 Go buy the game. Its awesome.