But they all wear thongs?

I don't know, since I only look at girls' crotches. It follows that I would never have seen a thong being worn that wasn't being worn by a girl. 

do the cutscene killmove button sequences get any tougher on the harder difficulty settings?

Not that I noticed but I'm universally shite at them too so it may not say much. I think the delays are shorter? But it's not like they explode at you XXYXYAYBYAYBAY or anything. 

playing it on the PC, but I can't be arsed to dig up the correct thread.

I like it. I'm not going to the spirit realm much because I am being careful and trying to enjoy the gameplay. Still, I haven't really gotten annoyed with the spirit realm, as it gets me back into the game as fast as quickload in Q4 on my machine and doesn't break up the gameplay quite as much.

Love the spacecraft sections - feels great after playing Quake 4's fucking abysmal vehicle sections. These sections and the game in general runs much better on my pc than Q4 also.

The only bad thing so far is the first boss. Despite being a Cyberdemon ripoff, he looked cool, but fighting him was boring - I basically just hid in the corner and popped him in the face when he started growling. I'm guessing the designers thought I would just die and go back to the spirit realm, but I am trying not to die (God knows why).

Anyway good stuff, and I'm really pleased with the performance on my system. Runs fine with a meagre 512mb of RAM and feels like HumanHead have really optimised the Doom 3 engine well despite all the crazy shit they have added to it. 

I got this today (It wasn't released in Europe until last week) and I played it now for 7 hours straight.

It is a Zelda clone really, except it's good. It's more than good, it's fucking awesome.
The drawing gimmick that I thought would be nothing more than a gimmick is perhaps the best gameplay element I've seen in any game since, well, forever.

Example; to defeat a certain enemy you have to first agitate it by slicing it (draw a line across it), then it shoots fireballs that you have to deflect back at him (by slicing the fireballs), then when he's stunned you have to make him bloom (he's an evil flower) (draw a circle over him), then you can attack his core using either your melee weapon or by slicing him with your brush or by drawing an explosion on him (cirle + a fuse = a bomb).
Then there's the first boss where you have to tie it up in vines and stuff using the brush before you can attack it and and and it is the best game I've played forever and I am now a rabid fucking fanboy.

And like like stupid stuff like you can feed seeds and herbs to bunnies and pigs and sparrows to make them love you and when they love you enough you can get more ink to draw with or more health or whatever.

And the graphical style holy shit what can I say.

The only thing I object against is the fact that an artist took his time to draw Amaterasu's asshole.

The game even has a sassy frenchman and a girl with an assless skirt and a fairy living between her breasts.

Wow, just wow.

http://tothegame.com/screenshot.asp?id=3244 

pls stop pimping games for platforms I don't have.

thank you. 

The art book for that game is bloody fantastic. Although most of the illustrations are simple little drawings of the people, the actual detailed ones are just jaw-droppingly good. I wish it weren't for PS2 but for Wii, but once I get my PS2 back from my friend I may just pick that up.

Hurray Manhunt 2! 

Wonderful game. I really enjoyed it, and despite how silly and contrived the world seemed, I didn't care because it was inventive and fun to be in.

Also, I thought about deathwalk a bit at the end of the game and realised that although it meant I spent less time playing the game, it did mean I spent more time enjoying the game and not REplaying the game. Upon completion I was left with a satisfying feeling and realisation that I hadn't once let out a yelp of frustration. Sure, I was basically invulnerable for the whole game, but it never felt that way because I was trying to stay out of deathwalk as much as possible - I must have seen deathwalk at most 20 times during the whole game. Contrast that with doom 3 for instance - I must have at to replay sometimes large unenjoyable sections of levels way more times than that - some of Doom 3 was intolerably frustrating - especially if I saved when low on health before an annoying encounter.

During my time spent playing Prey I never shouted "FUCK" or grunted "ARGH!", though I often felt under pressure to stay alive. I think this was because of the heartbeat noise when you are low on health and also that you know there is a little more health to keep you going in every new area. Basically it was intense without the frustration that often accompanies intensity.

Anyway, after playing Prey, I'm not really sure I can be bothered to finish the FPS by numbers Quake 4 - which is so far a bit meh, the graphics are shit compared to Prey, and the level design isn't interesting.

By the way, the ending to Prey was great, and there was a huge buildup at the end where you keep thinking you've hit the end but you haven't quite got there. When you finally do finish the game, the ending isn't incredible, but it was certainly enough to make me feel really great about completing the game. 

Did you stay after the credits? There's another scene once they end. 

yeah, I watched it all. I was feeling pretty good when I finished the game so I just read through the credits and listened to the music. Prey 2, eh... Let's hope we can bet on the Duke before Prey 2. 

I think you mean. 

WOOOOOOW. I know it's only psuedo-mind bending, but this game really has a great transition from 2D to 3D. This is like the Prey of Mario games (or 2D side scrollers, really.) The levels are witty, and the game is just plain fun. It's just crazy how they could imagine this stuff, let alone do it so well. I've only beaten the first chapter (out of 8 worlds so far) but this game has already got me hooked.

Hurray Wii! 

There is a Super Paper Mario? Gotta grab that as soon as I see it... thanks Zwiffle! 

I played it on my PS2 last evening. It was a long time I didn't switch on the console: Quake mapping has eaten my "playing time". Crash Bandicoot was in its time a fucking good game, but still enjoyable to play. The more I love is the "tornado" move, and the apples concept...
Still have fun with it :P 

I stayed at my parents' house the last week and my dad has a gamecube (huge racing game fan :-) so I got pretty deep into Battalion Wars.

It's a 3D realtime strategy game, without the resources part. You're given a number of units and an objective, and when you lose all units, you usually fail.

The cool thing is that you can "warp" into any unit in your battalion; you can become the rifle grunt, or the gunship, or the heavy tank. The missions are varied, from defend-the-flag to storm-the-castle to destroy-all-radar-stations so you can start a bombing run. The scenarios are HUGE, and the landscape is varied. There is a number of cool vehicles to drive, and many different unit types. You can assign tasks to every individual unit, or to a unit type, or to all units.

The graphical style is comicky, and the game's factions are caricatures of the USA, the Russians, the Germans and China or Japan (didn't encounter the last one.)

You can have frantic action, or chess-like tactics. There are multiple ways to complete your objectives. There is lots of air-to-ground and anti-air combat. There are counter-units to pretty much anything. There are even faction-specific units (the "Germans" have Giftgas (chemical weapons) and Panzerfaust troops, for example.)

Every faction's units are looking differently, from tidy green ("Western") to rusty and Sputnik-like style ("Russian") to field-grey and brutish ("Germans").

Every faction gets different background music and sounds; each has a band of "typical" leaders and officers who are really funny. I found the Western officers slightly annoying over time, they're real smartasses ("Enemy checkpoint... don't stop to show them your papers!") The Germans are just hilarious: "Expendable! You're all expendable! Ver arr my gunshipps?" Funny.

Literally all controller buttons/directions do something important; the game is demanding (you really need to RTFM here) and once you get the controls down, very fun and addictive. My dad, who is perhaps a typical "grown up computer user", couldn't get past the second mission because there are so many controls and he didn't bother to RTFM.

I couldn't put it down for days. Really, really cool game. You get to play all factions, too.

The other game I played was Need for Speed Most Wanted, which was very cool in the beginning but failed to keep my interest in the long run. Like all racing games. It all feels the same, you compete against a number of faceless blacklist drivers, and 80% of the cars are crap anyway. *shrug* Too simple, not deep enough, not enough replay value. But not bad for a racing game I guess.

Mario Kart was more fun, because you could play with 4 people, you had to work together and there were power-ups and stuff. But not enough tracks. A track editor would have been cool (like in Tony Hawk 2, which is by far the coolest console game I ever played.) 

what about Marc Eccko? 

I just finished playing this and it's rather good actually. You guys should all buy it. 

GET OUT 

I'll buy a copy when you release it on PC (or Wii) 

main character is Trent Reznor! 

No it's not, it's Mike Patton, who owns Trent's voice anyday. Actually I'm not sure if he did the voice for the main character, too lazy to check.
Looks like a nice game anyways, too bad I have no 360/ps3. =( 

an old native from our flat brought in an xbox a month or so ago, and people have been playing some nhl hockey games. It's quite dull. The Sega 2k5 version isn't any better than the EA one.

I guess all hockey games since NHL 94 for PC or so have just required one-timers for instagoals and never any from breakaways or straight shooting.

I guess I'll buy more memory for my comp and start playing ufo2000 again some day. When the internet starts working. The apartment company fucked it. Well, it's summer anyway so who needs it. 

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/21742.html

Nice and high-res video showing mario galaxy gameplay. Looks cool, and the video is nice and high-res.

P.S. Why do the narrators of these videos always sound like morons? The guy is basically describing the game in the terms of a 5-year-old. "That is colorful." "I can jump from place to place." "I want the shiny thing."

I wonder if it's the same problem as when you try to have a conversation with someone playing a video game, where most of their brain is paying attention to the game, so they aren't able to put any real thought into what they're saying. They should probably get a second person to do the talking while the first guy plays. Maybe an actual designer instead of some associate-producer-drone guy that doesn't really understand WHY the game was designed the way it is.

"I wiggle my hand to climb the thing. It's real real intuitive and feels real good." How about "Older consoles have arbitrary commands mapped to buttons that all interact the same way, but the wii controller allows us to finally break from that and create a system that involves more muscle memory. So we use as much gestural input as possible, and tried to map distinctive hand motions to the most analagous in-game activites." Or SOMETHING. 

Yeah Mario Galaxy looks really nice, can't wait.
About commentators (that a word?), yeah they always sound silly, some of the presentations for E3 this year have been really bad, like the girl describing Assassin's Creed, just bleh, where do they get these people? 

what does look nice about it? the 2001 5-year-old-style?

ps. metl, that age group seems to be the target audience? :P 

What looks nice about it is the gameplay mechanics, the level design, the amount of imagination present, etc. The general stuff that makes mario games good. I like mario games.

Oh and just the fact it isn't a super-lossy-compressed 200x120 youtube clip, that's nice too.

The target audience for press shows at E3 is adults. Also, just becuase a game is designed for kids (i'd say more like 10-year-olds in this case) doesn't mean it can be designed by kids. I'd rather hear about the philosophy and the decisions that went into the product that the most superficial play-by-play of what we're already seeing.