That looks to be a good title. My nephew has already asked for it for Christmas. Of course, I'll completely take over his system for a few days as I don't have a Play Station. 

I guess the graphics are technically advanced, but the style is questionable imo. It's bright and vibrant, but very cartoony, maybe too much so. That turns me off from the game initially. 

:( 

Already wrote my positive experiances with my Nintendo DS and Mario 64 DS in the General Abuse thread, so I'll just be brief and say that I'm totally loving the DS and love having it to mess with while I do compiles at work.

In the last few days, I beat Metal Gear Solid 3 (PS2), and loved every second of it. A little more than 64800 seconds (18 hours and something mins) to be exact. I need to go back to the other games in the series to remember exactly what all the signifigance of the story is, but the story still felt meaningful on it's own and I loved some of the turns it took. The sneaking aspects of it are just as fun as they were in MGS2, but my fave areas of the game were the bosses. A few were kinda boring, Ocelot and sadly the Bee Boss, but were completely made up for by the awesome sniper battle with The End (took over an hour to kill him cuz you had to sneak up around him without him seeing you, shoot him, then track him) and some of the final battles which I won't spoil. I will say that the bit with The Sorrow was one of the high points for me. So, if any of you liked the previous games in the series, definatly go grab this. And if you like games with some good combat and sneaking puzzles, try it out.

Also been playing a bit of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2). What can I say, anouther awesome GTA game. Really enjoying the addition of the Bicycle and being able to change your appearance. Been fucking around and I'm still on the first island, but so far the missions have been a good mix and there are a few differant guys to get them from even at the beginning. I'll update with more about them as I go, but I will say that this game will be very enjoyable to anyone who liked the othe GTA games.

And finally, been playing Final Fantasy 1 through the Final Fantasy Origins collection (PS1). Old game, updated graphics (I think it's the engine from FF3/FF6j) with some cinimatics added too. Really been liking this as the last few times I've attempted FF1, I was either too young to really 'get' how to properly play an RPG, or just never got very far before moving onto newer games. Currently, my party is all lvl 14. I have Bal the Warrior, Metl the Theif, Biff the White Mage, and I, Scamp, am the almighty Black Mage. Got 10 hours into the game so far, and I'm just about to go into Terra Cave to restore the light to the Earth Crystal.

After FF1, I'll start on the other game on the disc, Final Fantasy 2, which is FF2 Japan, not FF2 US which was FF4 Japan. Peeked quickly at it and it looks interesting, can't wait to get to it! 

on being in your ff2 party 

I was thinking Myself, you, a female func_mapper or #terrafusionite, and someone else. 

. 

That's stupid. 

<czg> jesus christ people! I've been sitting on f5 on func_qmap all day, and +there's only been like 2 new posts! I am so bored here people! I need some +socializing or at least some new posts to read (interesting ones and maybe +about barney and dicks)

So. Are there any other poker players out there? 

No.

Also: I've heard Barney has a dick. 

I'm glad I brought that up. 

 

is hip and cool 

I just got re-addicted to it over the weekend. I think it's a prime example of a game that comes in cycles for me. I'll play it none stop for a week or two, then not pick it up for a month. Strange.

The game is truely fun tho, great balanced between HL2DM.

Also I've been playing Soul Calibur on my buddies DC since my copy is scratched to hell and back. Forgot how much fun that game is. 

I've started playing the PC version of Escape from Butcher Bay, having previously completed it on XBox... So far I can't see any real differences, apart from I think the textures might be higher res, but it's difficult to say that for sure without comparing side by side. Also, there is a "commentary" option on the difficulty selection screen, which I haven't tried as yet. (The menus are the same crazy design as the XBox ones by the way)

The game itself is pretty good - a mix of reasonably non-annoying and often actually enjoyable stealth sections, shortish bouts of run-and-gun, and RPGish talking to people and doing 'favours' for people (which usually involves killing people). It's not showing any signs of lasting any longer than the original yet - which is a shame as the XBox version was a very short.

It's worth noting that this game has something I thought impossible - the minimum specs on the box are actually surprisingly honest! I fall somewhere between minimum and recommended and the game runs fine with everything pretty switched on - admittedly only at 640*480 though.

Oh, and sadly no printed manual except one of Sierra's cacky "keys you'll remap anyway" cards. This sucks because the manual for the XBox version was really worth reading and explained some stuff more clearly than the ingame help.

And HL2DM. Must harrass some of you for friends list addition (for those rare occasions when the Steam friends network isn't "being maintained"). I prefer to get whupped by people I already know! 

nick: DaZ
Email : daz@dazv3.co.uk

shame hl2dm chugs and lags like a mofo on my pc tho :( 

Cheers for the comments Starbuck, intending to get this one next.

I'm mostly playing "that game". 

Fuckin' ell, fucn_tabbed again =/ 

I'm now on my second playthrough on this game, and enjoying the hell out of it. It's not really a "pure" RPG (whatever that means)--it actually reminds me more of Deus Ex than anything else. You can approach problems in a number of different ways, depending on your clan/skills/attributes, the story is good, the HL2 engine keeps it looking relatively nice, and the dialogue and voice-acting is mostly really good.

Bad stuff: It could have really used another week or three of QA. The dialogue subtitles are full of misspellings, there are various small dumbass scripting issues, at least one encounter is ridiculously hard, IMO, and, although I didn't get it, there's at least one show-stopping script bug that crashes the game out and requires fixing via the console.

That being said, I really, really like the game and recommend it to one and all. If you get it, there's a fan-made patch that fixes the crash bug and a host of other bugs and dialogue problems available here:

http://www.planetvampire.com/bloodlines/files/patches/ 

I'd been wondering about that one. Sounds like it could be my kind of thing.

Lots of people have been saying that although it is source-engine based, it is nowhere near as pretty as HL2. Would you agree with this? 

Out of all the new MMORPGS (EQ2 and WoW), this is the only one that really holds any interest for me. Plus, no online fee. I haven't played any of the open betas, but all the articles I've seen say it looks/plays amazingly well. It cracks my defense against MMORPGs. Anyone try this in open beta, and if so how does it play?? :O 

Calling it a mmorpg is a sham. It's no more massively multiplayer than Diablo was. You start off in a town where you do the whole merchant / find a party thing, and then when you take a quest you end up in an instanced land or dungeon. So basically it's Diablo except you have avatars in the chat room.

For a hack and slash game it's not bad. I didn't feel that the abilities tree was particularly intricate or creative. The terrain is pretty though. 

it is nowhere near as pretty as HL2. Would you agree with this?

Yep. Don't get me wrong--it's not ugly by any means, but the aesthetics aren't as good.

But the boobs are better, complete with Boob Physics(tm), and a console variable to make them bigger. You go, Troika. 

and a console variable to make them bigger.

Come in id software, your time is up. 

Yeeeees. Hmmm.

In other news, I finished the Riddick PC yesterday. It was still really short, although there was a new combat sequence during the doublemax section which was cool, I won't spoil it by giving specifics on it though. I suspect there may be a few more cigarette packs around than there was on XBox, but I'm not certain of that (finding cigs unlocks stuff in the 'extras' menu). Directors commentary mode adds floaty icons scattered around the levels that can be used to pause the game and hear some blather from Starbreeze folks.

One thing that I've noticed is that most of the weapons are hopelessly inaccurate at ranges greater than three feet. I think that this is to encourage you to move closer to guards before initiating combat so that you can hear them swearing at you properly.