Finished Dark Messiah. Was good. Fairly long and substantial. Would have happily played more of it, got into the style of the game. The semi-RPG elements were pretty effective, I tended partway between jack of all trades and a swordsman, I definitely could have original chosen to go in different directions. Some great settings and fantasy styles too, and good gameplay. A bit clunky in feel sometimes, and some random slow downs, but otherwise a fantasy thumbs up. 

Hmm, they totally cripple any physics worth mentioning so all that is left is aim.
But even then, the constant spawning while player reloads/turns his back is sure to unnerve even the most patient players.

I guess they just design these games w�th the concept in mind that players save every 30 seconds so it seems to be no problem. Pffft. 

Sweet jesus lord on multiple vibrating sticks!

This is the most fun I have had online in a LONG time! You can level up your character and unlock all sorts of things for each of the weapons such as grips (reduce recoil), and various laser sights, scopes and silencers. You can also select 3 "perks" for each loadout you create, these are little tweaks you can make to your character to make it a little better, these are as simple as faster reloads and faster weapon firing, through to dropping a live grenade when you die (hehe) and extra bullet penetration through walls.

Ahh yes, bullet penetration, this game does it perfectly! Firing through thin objects with a beefy gun will actually hit people behind thin walls and obstacles, you can tell your hitting someone because you get that funny "dink" sound, this is so much fun!

Blah that was fairly incoherent, but I can't be arsed to re-type it when I can be back in the game. I am level 32 now (55 is the max) and have more unlocks to chase! 

Yeah, as much as I hate to admit it (so bored of realistic war games), Call of Duty 4 is a really good game, the solo is really well made and fun, and the multiplayer is great action, nothing like CounterStrike etc... So much that I'm lvl 55 twice (at home and at work). =)

In the end though, after playing it for 2 months, we've gone back to TF2 at work, and that remains the best multiplayer FPS of the moment for me. =) 

He loves teh latex! 

I tried COD4 MP and it was ass :(

Mind you, I'm sure the actual GAME is good, but it felt like shit to play. There was an INSANE amount of view bob with ridiculously exaggerated animation of the player arms and stuff. The weapons fire just didn't feel right either... and everything looked the same (same colours everywhere on the environment and players), I couldn't see shit.

I guess I'm just too picky and have played Quake based stuff too much - nothing else ever feels as solid or as nice as that.

I haven't actually tried the single player yet, but I will eventually (it's on my list). I'm sure I'll like it, I loved the original COD single player (and, incidentally, thought the multiplayer was ass... :) 

I bought it based on the demo. Maybe next on the agenda to play. Yeah it feels like ass but it has bags of style. 

I think the movement and feel of the game is spot on and really solid, everything has a real weight and I like that. Each to his own I guess :)

I also enjoyed cod2 multiplayer, but only in team deathmatch (which incidentally, is all I play in cod4 really) so maybe that helps here too. 

Another thing I love about the multiplayer is that they really nailed the epic combat feeling, which is a lot easier to get in the single player portion as you can author it to be that way. The multiplayer levels always feel like this gigantic carnival of death and destruction and I sometimes just stand back and watch the scenes unfold like I was watching some in-game scripted scene.

Fear my airstrikes. 

I liked the fact you can talk to opponents on XBox Live. I had some guy called Psycho Smurf laughing at me every time I died...

1 on 1 is a bit dull tho. Still, one map is a town setting with a machinegun nest. Its quite good for 1 on 1 cause you can see the direction of the opponent on the radar, then go and beast them! I play like I was playing Quake though - run and gun! Doesnt always work though...

Singleplayer is really cool - like the scripted sequences, but it feels on a rail! 

and its really good and underrated (demo is not much and most of the bugs are already patched)

Feels like the right blend of Diablo and fps.
Combat gameplay is somewhat like painkiller but with more tactical abilities and more fun beacause of the monsters variety and the whole motivation of levelling up, completing the quests and the loot! Ofcourse Im playing as a marksman in FPS mode 

It was enjoyable for a while, but got old really fast. Very limited amount of content in the game (and it just wasn't quite fun enough to consider re-playing many times over like Diablo...)

Some things were done exceptionally well, and some stuff was very amateurish. It's feels as if they had a bunch of veterans/pros and some absolute n00bs as well (which is probably exactly the case with their team make-up).

Such a big disappointment... I was really hoping for a Diablo replacement, but they just didn't quite nail it. 

when you 'level' up your character, is it only for that game or all games you join? 

Its saves your character info/unlocks/level etc with your character profile. 

It doesn't really give you a huge advantage over others though, just a wider range of options/weapons to chose from. I had no problem being the guy with the highest score on servers filled with lvl 55s, while I was still under lvl 10 (I'd already been playing it for a while at work obviously).
The achievements and all are quite fun to do really.

Hellgate London, yeah I'm somewhere between Speeds and Fribs on it. I think it got alot more bashing than it deserved, it's not a bad game, but it's definately not the succesor to Diablo. I'll probably get a one month subscription for it in a few months, to try out the new content. 

mostly cool and fun, a couple annoying or dumb.

http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2007/09/2.html 

http://www.addictinggames.com/theworldshardestgame.html 

is 4,95$ on STEAM right now. 

Got back into playing this almost a year after I slacked off it.

As before it is a Marmite game i.e. love it or hate it. I'm quite like Marmite in an indifferent sort of way, but I think I love Gothic 3.

Yes it's still buggy, slow loading, sometimes slow running, and the combat is a button mashing mess.

BUT the world is as capivating a portrayal of a fantasy world I've seen in any game. The sense of "being there" in a fairly classic fantasy setting is particularly appealing to me. The details that go into this - and pretty good graphics - it really does come across as a genuine world. The houses you can go in and see everything that seems natural to live in. The people with their lives and homes. I'm in the desert at the moment and the atmosphere is as strong as ever. The Hashashin crack me up with their greed and pompous malice, calling you "Son of ill-judgement" or "Father of patience" or similar all the time.

Plus in the grand RPG tradition there is a hell of a lot to do. I've focused on combat and exploration and haven't really scratched the surface of thieving... or magic... or smithing... or alchemy... or exploring the political factions of the back story...

Ummm yeah rambling a bit. It's satisfying my fantasy needs once more, anyway. 

And I'm in the desert too. Clearing the temples - such pitoresque, cunningly contstructed and neatly lit interiors. :P

Patch 1.6 (including all community patches) has been released few weeks ago btw. Probably not usuable for you though (savegame incompatibility or whatever). 

did they fix much? cause out of the box it was unplayable with zero balance. great let down for me :( and the horizon clipping on the medium shader setting... such a mess instead of a good RPG it should`v been 

I have...

Earnt the trust of the Mora Sul Hashishin, and opened that temple there (I have a tendency, so far, to support the Orcs, thus was helping them mostly, although when I tried to deliver the keys to the Orc leader, it would only let me fight him for his key).

Liberated Braga in favour of the Nomads

Liberated Ben Erai in favour of the Nomads

Done as much as I can in Lago and left it alone for the time being (this is an example of how vibey the game is - a little coastal village full of stoners, it just cracked me up).

Tried to get in to Ishatar and been unable to.

Explored a lot of random shit but no other towns.

I'm uneasy about the Hashishin - they amuse me quite a lot but basically they are greedy, grasping, amoral, slave-trading scum with no higher principles other than looking after themselves. Hence why I've helped the nomads. On the other hand, I'm tending to support the Orcs who are allied to the Hashishin so I don't want to cause too much trouble there...


(Speeds: I dunno what's been fixed, combat balance is okay even tho melee combat is a bit gash. Horizon clipping is a bit b0rky but to be honest given how lush the detailing is I can put up with that) 

I mean WTF, is this shit fixed? (set to highest qulity everything except DoF, geforce 7600)
http://www.speeds.quaddicted.com/gothic3-coast-3.jpg 

Well I dont know about Gothic 3, but since I finished Slave, I've been bashing on with Crysis.

~O~M~G~

I understand why some people say the gameplay is a bit borked, its annoying when you die-die-die, and it says

"the difficulty settings can be altered from the main menu"

but the graphics are so fucking sexy I just cant believe it!! Im running on XP32, with the Vista-very-high hack, in 1280x1024 (on a 15" cr8, which is just about the highest pixel density you can get I think), with AA off.
Cryengine 2 would make one hell of an Oblivion style game! The bit inside the mountain, the bit with the snow, the mental detail of the earth stuff is just incredible.

Someone should make a fantasy crysis mod? 

I never saw that in the first place, although I've had occasional glitches with terrain going. (Make that very occasional). Whether it's fixed or not I dunno, but I didn't have that problem.