No big hits this year? I beg your pardon?

Well there is Warhammer40k - Dawn of War 2 which is surprisingly interesting in single player story mode. Would not have thought it because Relic seemed to massively aim at multiplayer aspect of the game. Overall epic strategy! "Remember, the faithful shell have the Emperor's Protection."

... and then you have Empire: Total War which alone is enough to play for the next 2-3 years. It's the same for me like playing Civ4 over and over again.

If you are not a strategy player this may not be for you of course. But for me these two titles are already two more games worth byuing than last year which was overall quite dissapointing (slightly exxaggerated ). And still there is more to come with Mafia2, Dragon Age and of course StarCraft 2.

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"*** the World and drop the Neutron!"

After finishing Persona 4 (all endings) I'm now about 6 hours into Persona 3 now

matneee:

God, I remember Persona3 - brilliant game full of imaginative touches. But about 15 hours in I just couldn't help but feel the social system was subtly trapping me in an abusive relationship with my PS2. I mean,

You might like P4 more, there social links don't degrade & are less demanding than P3.

quaseman:

This is the way Godfather 2 looks 200. Nice explosions one has to admit though.

I like the looks of Godfather II. It looks like a great Vice City clone, mayhap that will be what I hoped GTA4 to be. The first was a huge disappointment though. Not really looking forward to Mafia II, never got into that.

 

That Persona games sounds actully fun, but the fact that it is from Enix scares me off, weren't those the FF guys?

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"Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude.
It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them."

Square are Final Fantasy, Enix are Dragon Quest - they merged a few years back to form Sqaure Enix.

Persona is by Atlus - P4 is published in Europe by Square Enix, P3 is published by Koei

Daninsky:

quaseman:

This is the way Godfather 2 looks 200. Nice explosions one has to admit though.

I like the looks of Godfather II. It looks like a great Vice City clone, mayhap that will be what I hoped GTA4 to be. The first was a huge disappointment though. Not really looking forward to Mafia II, never got into that.

Nah, Vice City was way better. To even compare it with Godfather is a sacrilege. The graphics are maybe similar in some way, but the gameplay of Vice City is far supperior. Even though I think it was the weakest GTA in the series, but that is me for hating the 80ies and the Miami Vice atmosphere.

Mafia and even more so the stuff I have seen from Mafia2 reminds me of fellas which is the best Mafia-movie ever made up to today and also one of my most favourite movies at all. An interactive Mafia-opera with the charackters like fellas is what makes Mafia oustanding and Mafia2 seems to hit the same route. I read today that there will be no multiplayer because 2K Czech promised to focus on single player story and design. news! Maybe they add the multiplayer with a patch after the release, but who cares.

I am playing nothing right now because I am of to the pub for a ... mmh lets say ... the discussion of the fine arts of cold beverage consumption. Quaseman in action ... woosh.

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"*** the World and drop the Neutron!"

I don't game on the PC anymore. I got tired of having to throw cash at the constantly increasing spec you need to keep up. I'm quite happy with my collection of every console of the generation instead

Glen Watts1:

I don't game on the PC anymore. I got tired of having to throw cash at the constantly increasing spec you need to keep up. I'm quite happy with my collection of every console of the generation instead

I wish I had every console. That really must be nice.

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Glen Watts1:

I don't game on the PC anymore. I got tired of having to throw cash at the constantly increasing spec you need to keep up. I'm quite happy with my collection of every console of the generation instead

Did not notice it myself. I played the Crysis demo on a 5+ years old PC on low detail and it still looked better than FarCry for example, playable it was anyway. What more do you want? I updated my PC last year nonetheless because the CPU missed SSE2 feature so many games did not work anymore. It was an upper mid-range PC last year and I can still play most games full detail today. So I don't really see the necessity to constantly upgrade. Although the current CPU and RAM prices are pretty alluring. Maybe GTA4 would be the only game in my property that would benefit, but I am through with it anyway. Question remains if it is necessary to gain another 5-10 frames per second, but you can not have enough power, can you?

So far I would say, I spent less money than buying all consoles of the current gen and my favourite game genres nearly solely resides on the PC. No way I could change the platform. Each to his own I would say.

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"*** the World and drop the Neutron!"

Glen Watts1:

I don't game on the PC anymore. I got tired of having to throw cash at the constantly increasing spec you need to keep up. I'm quite happy with my collection of every console of the generation instead

And that worked out cheaper than upgrading? Yeah, as Quaseman said, I've not needed to upgrade as often as I know some people do. It's been quite a number of years and all I'm wanting to get now is a new graphics card.

And all my mates have consoles, so if I really need to I can pop round for a bash. Generally that's just the latest Tekken though, which I am absolutely incredible at. Hardly play it anymore, yet completely frustrate everyone by still kicking backside (well, punching mainly) with Heihachi Mishima. The man with the power nuggy. (He's in them all, so he's been a safe bet to get at).

Just finished Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Couldn't be bothered getting it when it was released, so it has been a GOG.com purchase (I've been a tad obsessed with that site lately). Loved the story, the implementation of the time dagger, the scenery is gorgeous and the music is immersive. The only thing I didn't like was the bit where you're in a sort of dream world and you have to find Farah. I thought it was just my soundcard playing up, only making dripping sounds in certain places. Totally didn't click that I had to walk through the doors when I heard it. I'd been following Farah's voice, which had been fiendishly panned left, right and occasionally centre to confuse me. Bastards.

Combat got a bit repetitive after a while, but thankfully it did give a balance between that and the platformer bits, which were mostly very satisfying. I love running up walls and I think you should be able to do it in every game.

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The only thing worse than beating a dead horse is betting on one.

I'll tell you what's wrong with Windows as a Gaming Platform. What's wrong with Windows as a gaming platform is that I got so sick of all the little niggling bugs with games in Vista x64 that I spent a big portion of one of one of my days off (yesterday) buying a new hard-drive, partitioning it, installing XP then Vista in dual boot (not the other way round, oh no, you CAN'T do that, that would cause the earth to crash into the sun without lots of tricksy faffing about with the MBR that usually unravels itself a month later) so I can have either 4GB or a reliable fallback gaming system, re-installing all the drivers, updates and so on. Which took about 4 hours.

And all so I could just play fallout 3 downstairs wihtout it crashing -literally- every 2 minutes. Unless I played in in windowed mode. In which case it crashes every 20 minutes.

Now, I get that some people like al this relentless tinkering and searching for the latest drivers business, but I do this shite for a living and I'm on holiday. So I'm sulking. Also Joe Public just wants to sit down and go, much like consoles do...

*Sigh*

Still, it was worth it - I've got a shiny new telly since I last played Fallout 3 and dead trees have never looked so beautiful. Seriously - they're gorgeous.

I love my PS3, but 4xAA with transparency at 1920x1080 rocks

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Glen's PC:



as long as the interface looks like Win 98, it's fine

(as for what I'm playing, I'm still on a Persona 3 kick)

Yeah, had very few problems with either Xp or Vista. I guess I just generate luck out of my pores or something.

The only problem I can think of right now, is that I can't get Aliens Versus Predator to work. Bought it for 99p with free P&P off Ebay, and the CD looks fine, it installs alright, but it's a no go on running the application. What is frustrating is that no matter how much I search, every website seems to have conveniently removed the latest patch, and the PC section for the Xplosiv website just comes up with some Microsoft error. That's what I would be playing right now though, maybe I'll have better luck if I get Leora to pirate it....

But in all seriousness, that is one of the only problems I've had, so I'm happy with gaming on Windows. I'd rather something come along that does the job better though. Consoles only really play games well to my knowledge, they don't do anything else. So seems a tad pointless from my perspective to throw money away on them. I get my gaming fix, my creative writing fix and my internet fix in one handy machine.

Don't do computer drugs kids. It ruins your life.

Edit: But now I feel like a broken record, I'm sure we've gone over this many many times.

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The only thing worse than beating a dead horse is betting on one.

I've been playing a lot of Company of Heroes with friends lately. It's truly the best RTS to have come out in years.

Relic recently upgraded the AI, so suddenly now I suck and can't easily beat Expert AI anymore. Which is , because it's more challenging.

Oblivion. Still Rocks

And it occurs to me that despite having clocked well over 120 hours in Cyrodiil, I've still barely started the main quest. Y'now - the actual point of the game. Or done the Thieves Guild arc either for that matter. Simply staggering the amount they crammed into that game. If you're willing to go looking for yourself rather than be dragged about by the nose, there's just so much to do.

But I'd forgotten just how it is, and the sheer sense of freedom it gives compared to Fallout 3. Still up there in my top 3 games of all time...

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I enjoyed oblivion too, I probably got over 120 hours too, I havent completed the main quest though, Ive got half way through it but its just so easy to get side tracked on that game. I Traded it in though a while back (stupid me) been trying to get hold of another copy though.

At the moment ive been playing phantasy star, the original phantasy star. Its on the Sega Mega drive collection you can get on the 360. Christ the game is retro but I like it, its hard and confusing but the nostalgia makes me want to play it. had to put a different sound track behind it though, the music was horrible.

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

So having been on an Oblivion schtik, I thought I'd blow the dust off my copy of Morrowind! Which runs quite well on your average Netbook, providing you're willing to dial the settings down. Although you'll need a US English copy if you want to run the 1.2 patch (trust me - you do) and a No-CD crack.

And it was instantly great Coming off the boat, wandering round Seyda Neen and finding a corpse, organically leading onto a murder investigation, followed by a little detective work to tail someone to a hiding place. Then a bit of optional cave-crawling involving some Slavers to recover some loot - - all pretty much flawless RPGing.

That one village alone is a microcosm of everything RPGs should be, with the freedom to amble about at your own pace, decide what you want to do during quests, use your skills how you want and so on. If anything, this was better than Oblivion. I mean, the graphics are pretty primitive now, but still really quite evocative - there's great art design in the game and it's aged a lot better than you might expect.

So off i went out into the world. And that's when I remembered why Morrowind wan't the classic it first appeared to be. Two Words - Cliff Racers.

For those who don't know, Cliff Racers are big leathery flying things in Morrowind, and once you get out of town they attack you something like every 20 meters. It's infuriating! You just want to get out there end explore, but you can't because every 30 seconds one of those bloody flappy things descends on you and tries to rip your head off. Horrible game design.

And then there's the Journal, which is such a disorganised mess it's impossible to find anything. Although a pen-and-paper (yes!shock! writing by hand - we used to do it once, y'know) is and the Journal vastly improved with the Tribunal expansion.

And then there's the lack of fast-travel. In retrospect, this is one of the main reasons I stopped playing Morrowind five years ago. I mean, I loved it despite it's flaws because it was the best open RPG by a big margin. But I remember one quest that basically dragged me up north miles from any Port or Stilt-Rider, literally spending an hour and a half of the game just walking up a road. And once I got there, I had to turn round and just walk all the way back again *sigh* I just couldn't face it.I'm all for exploration, but the return journey was just too tedious, so I stopped.

Anyway. Fortunately there's a stack of mods for Morrowind (just google Planet Elder Scrolls). The biggie is one that stops Cliff Racers being so homicidally insane that improves the game immeasurable. Then there's a fast-travel mod that rocks, providing you have the self-discipline to use it judiciously. Throw in the Resolution Changer to play it widescreen in modern definitions, a texture pack to make it sharper, tree mod to make things look a bit livelier and the Better Bodies mod to stop everyone looking like robots, and you've got a game that's really very indeed by any standard (I've got a short list of these 'essential' mods - PM me if you're interested.)

I still prefer Oblivion because Morrowind ultimately feels a little 'dry' in places. And ultimately some people just don't 'get' Bethesda's games. I suspect this at least partly might be because the level of freedom largely depends on you choosing to play an interesting character - if you decide to play the game in a dull fashion, of course the game is going to be dull. A point in case is one guy I talked to who said they hated that every time they cleared a dungeon, they had to spend hours going round getting every last scrap of loot, taking it to the entrance, go sel it in a town, come back, get the next sack of loot, go to town, etc until they'd sold it all. Now, the obvious solution to my mind was 'If you don't enjoy doing that, don't do it and do something interesting instead', but apparently they thought that's just what you had to do in these games. I think they saw the light in the end.
But Morrowind with those few choice mods to smooth it's more obvious shortcomings - really well worth a go. GOTY available for less than a Fiver on Amazon...

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I played Morrowind before I played Oblivion and its what got me in to Oblivion. To be honest I enjoyed some aspects of the game, like exploration, the large world, the dark feel Ect.. but I hated the combat and thats what put me off of it. Battles relied on a role of the dice  to check weather you'll hit or miss, they may sound like fun to a D&D nut but to me it was just annoying and bad game design, it also stopped that feeling of immersion, I find a creature or some one I just want to kill and I swing my sword, then it just tells me I miss, then it keeps telling me till I die, same think happend with the archery. Thats why I enjoyed Oblivion, the combat just felt right, When my foe ws attacking me no longer did I have to relly on random variables, The thing I had to relly on is getting my sheild up before he chops half my face off. When using the bow I didnt have random vairable ruining my well placed shot. I carnt wiat for the next Elder scrolls game, I hope they hire better voice actors, along with more voice actors. Also I hope they mke the animation less stiff when I'm talking to them, thats just annoying.

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

Infamous demo, the climbing stuff is awesome and surprisingly , you always feel like you got control of it (unlike some other games... yeah i am looking at you PoP). Graphics are ok but damm it could have used some anti aliasing and also got a amount of pop ins. Fighting also seems pretty but a bit hard, at least for me.

The frame rate is also pretty bad at times but nothing like gta4.

I think this game is going to be great if the missions dont go too repetive.

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a demo! Will be trying that later.

Well they pulled it from the hong kong psn store you will need for someone to share it with you, let hope they just release it already now.

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I just finished the campaign in Dawn of War 2 the other night.  Overall I enjoyed it but the missions were very repetitive and bland.  I didn't find the story to be all that compelling but I didn't play the first game so maybe I'm missing something.

The various abilities your units have are fun to use and add a tactical edge to the game.  You can also change the armor and weapons your units use.  The downside of that is every weapon and piece of armor (in each class of weapon and armor, ie. power armor, chainsword, plasma cannon, etc.) all use the same models which makes it seem generic and a little pointless.  Also, many of the bosses in the campaign use the same skins as one of the enemy units you just fought in the mission, they just have much more health.

To sum it up, I would say Dawn of War 2 was fun but not a great experience imo.

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Are you an ODST (fanboy)?

So how is inFamous' morality system? After seeing one of the vids, I thought it was a bunch of contrived problems with ridiculous choices, but maybe it turned out right after all.

I am playing Lure of the Temptress on my mobile with ScummVM. What a nerd I am when I could actually play it right here on my 22" flat panel screen.

Well I am basically testing the capabilities of my phone for mobile gaming and thus far it is awsome!

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"*** the World and drop the Neutron!"

Readdicted to Fable II but I'm trying to load Discworld II: Missing Presumed...!? onto my laptop! I've played it like..20 times already but I just love it!

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Danse Macabre.

I've now finished Persona 3, so I've been playing about with Pixel Junk: Eden and Flower.