My girlfriend bought me a PSP as a combined birthday/christmas present

she's a keeper. 

See you in.. several years! ^_________^ 

While I realize there was a community release of updated graphics packs, I'm not particularily interested right now. I'm gonna play through it like it was meant to be. 

So I read PCGamer's article about Age of Empires 3, and as an avid RTS-whore and general Ensemble fan I must say I peed on myself. That game looks incredible. Simply incredible. The graphics look great, simply incredible. They've incorporated the HaVoK physics engine in the game so when something blows up people get thrown into the sky with super neat but pointless physics. And the online looks great from what little they released. SPOOGE. 

Combat sucked a bit--or at least sucked a bit until I got the (spoiler) last sword and then started seriously wh00ping up on the sand baddies.

Puzzles were usually fairly nice and interesting. But I hated the bit where it was teaching you to jump from wall to wall to wall, though. It might've been nice of them to tell me not to press the jump button more than once for each wall or else he was just going to smash his face on it and fall to his death.

Graphics were absolutely lavish, though. There are some really cool vistas in there.

And re: final boss, he did get harder between the first and second iterations, if you didn't notice. But considering how much I hated the combat, and how little the game trained you with it, I think it was appropriate to have a weaker boss at the end. 

Still got Far Cry to play, but that might have to wait a bit.

Recently bought:

Vampire: The Pimperade: Hoe-lines - couldn't argue for a tenner. The more I read the booklet, the cooler it sounds. Haven't had a good FPRPG s3x0ring since Deus Ex.

The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Xbox Mediocrity - looks good, reviews good. FPS business innit.

Painkiller: Battle Out Of More Irrelevant And Unthemed Hordes Of Nonsense - Vondur said it's "funneh". I must obey. Hail Comrades! 

Than:
If you like arcady racing games (and puzzle games for that matter), I really suggest checking out Trackmania. You can also make your own tracks, so that's another bonus. I think I've pimped the game here before, but *shrug*
Demo:
http://www.noos.fr/animation/trackmania/TrackManiaDemoInternet_Setup.exe

Phait:
Did you get the expansions as well, or just the base game? I highly recommend getting the expansions if you don't have them. If nothing else, they make the journal a hell of a lot more friendly to use (entries organized by quest rather than just by time--there's nothing like searching through 300 pages of journal thinking "Now where the hell was that guy who wanted this ring...?"
Let me know if you want some recommendations on mods at some point. There are nice graphics upgrades available and also gameplay tweaks that add quite a bit. IMO, I'd go ahead and add a few things now that really improve some aspects without really changing the game much...this site:
http://www.hiredgoons.net/MWFiles/
has some excellent things, especially if you're going to play a character who messes about with thiefly skills at all.

Shambler:
Make sure to get the patch for VtM:B. It fixes a few game-breaking bits of ugliness. Of course, you'll still have various non-game-breaking bits of ugliness that add the occasional taste of piss to an otherwise outstanding RPG concoction. Go Troika/Activision. 

The standard version. There was a version with the expansion pack, but I was short money. 

It's certainly quite fun and playable without the two expansions. There are many plug-ins that won't function with the stand-alone version, just fyi.

I just suggest writing down important quest-related info if you don't feel like paging back through the journal. (Also, sometimes sufficient info just isn't recorded in the journal. I have a few quests that I will never finish unless I consult a walkthrough, since I have no idea where the guy is that I need to report back to.) 

Nearly bought a DS today just for this game. I actually paid for one, but then realised (or was informed) that I didn't have any money and the cash machines aren't operating in Japan until 4th January. I ended up taking it back.

Still... I'm going to get a DS just for this game - I played it in a store for five minutes and NEED to play it now :)

pjw: I've been meaning to try trackmania for a while now. I'll probably try it at work soonish. 

Cheers man will get on the patch case. 

Here are some brief impressions of the DS. I haven't played much of anything except warioware yet, although I did buy another game with the DS (Band Brothers) which I was shit and, and I didn't like anyway and sold today.

I'll start off with the bad things I've noticed so far. First, the cheap looking silver coating is pretty scratch prone. I had the DS in my bag for a couple of hours of walking around and when I retrieved it from the gloomy depths, there were lots of little white scratches where the silver paint had come off. Crap.

The standard d^pad and buttons are tiny and I'm not looking forward to any game that requires heavy use of them. Aside from my complete lack of coordination, the small buttons were the main reason I was so bad a Band Brothers.

The touch screen is quite impressive. It seems fairly precise when used with the stylus, and has performed near flawlessly with Warioware (which uses the touch screen and mic only for input.) Band brothers didn't exactly make good use of the touch screen, which was another reason I decided to ditch it.

Warioware is absolutely awesome, I can't imagine a better suited game to the DS. The game is basically a series of minigames, which require the player to perform simple tasks. Each game lasts around 5 seconds before the player is whisked onto the next screen. If a task is failed, the player loses a chance.

The games use the stylus input really well, and are pretty instinctive, so you normally know what is required instantly. For example, the game might be putting coins into a wallet by dragging them with the stylus, cutting vegetables by slicing them as they fly across the screen, performing a circular motion on the screen to turn a crank or inflating balloons by blowing onto the microphone.

Although Warioware's USP is the use of touch screen, it makes good use of the dual screens of the DS, giving hints and info in the top screen, whilst the frantic action of the game is displayed below.

Warioware is a great game for killing time, and although you are bound to see the same minigame many times, the brevity of each task means that it is not easy to tire of them (unless you play the infinite stage challenge, which repeats the same stage over and over, increasing the difficulty each time.)

The graphics are simple and functional, but have a lot of character. The presentation is generally ace, and is bound to make you smile. 

Makes me want to get a DS, but no cash...
I'll buy one when they get photoshop running on it. =D 

Wario ware was great fun on the gba and I can imagine that the touch screen and microphone only makes it more interesting.

You haven't been able to try pictochat with anyone? 

That Trackmania game is complete and under horse shit. That's not remotely fun in anyway shape or form. I've played better racing arcade games on my PocketPC. That is complete ass and I fucking what my time back from you for trying that shit. 

. 

a) Learn that peoples' tastes differ; I liked the game quite a bit and even made a bunch of tracks for it.
-or-
b) what my time <--Learn to spell when pissed off and/or smoking the crack pipe.
-or-
c) Lick a dogs asshole until it bleeds.

I offer these options with all the kindness of my heart. I hope they help. 

The asshole belongs to a dog, making the correct noun usage: dog's. Not dogs.

Insult properly plz kthx moran. 

plz
kthx

neither are words. don't use aolspeak when correcting someone's grammar. and moron is spelt like this, you moron.

now everyone quit fighting and discuss other games. 

in like a year when the redesign the case to look sexy, like the PSP. In the meantime, i have lots of SP games to play. 

http://www.rhee.net/LDLD/morans.gif 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life

The "game" is actually a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, needing no input from human players. It runs on a grid of squares ("cells") which stretches to infinity in all directions. Each cell has eight "neighbours", which are the cells adjacent to it, including diagonally. Each cell can be in one of two states: it is either "alive" or "dead". (The terms "on" and "off" are also used.) The state of the grid evolves in discrete time steps. The states of all of the cells at one time are taken into account to calculate the states of the cells one time step later. All of the cells are then updated simultaneously.

The transitions depend only on the number of live neighbours:
A dead cell with exactly 3 live neighbours becomes alive (or is "born").
A live cell with 2 or 3 live neighbours stays alive; otherwise it dies (from "loneliness" or "overcrowding").


been faszinated by this since we had to program it for uni.:) 

My vote! 

Scampie; go lick a cellular automaton's asshole until it bleeds.

One of the things I did when teaching myself some programming was a quick'n'dirty version of Conway's Game. It was more than a little creepy seeing little blobs of pixels doing things that I really hadn't told them to... 

now everyone quit fighting and discuss other games.

Yeah, that post was a bit out of character for me; I was a bit stunned that someone would be cranky about such a thing.

Black Dog: I didn't even think about your nick; you must be embarrassed. Next time I'll suggest a moose, or manatee, or some other animal that starts with "M" so as not to include you in the proceedings. Sorry man. :(

*shifts gears*

I'm continuing to play through HL2 and am fairly near the end. Does anyone else feel that this game is more difficult (on Normal skill) than many other shooters? Seems like I am having to work a bit harder than normal. Note that's not a complaint; I'm enjoying the game a great deal.