Informative.

DOW2 - looks very good. Both the action and the cityscapes.

BUT, as always, RTSes seem to be so much about stressing around managing the entire bloody army and resource system, that all those great graphics tend to be pointlessly hard to appreciate. Spending 10 seconds admiring one combat basically means you've lost the mission because some of your fuckwits elsewhere have wandered off or a resource post has been captured and that's it. Okay the high quality scenery will be a good omnipresent ambience but I still think the graphics are a bit of a waste if you can't stop to appreciate them. 

I discovered these games accidentally and found them to be quite compelling for some reason. It's a series of four short and easy adventures created by Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw, centering about a family curse and ancient gods:

1) 5 Days a Stranger - http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/5days/
2) 7 Days a Skeptic - http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/7days/
3) Trilby's Notes - http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/notes/
4) 6 Days a Sacrifice - http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/6days/

First, second and fourth game have traditional p&c controls, third one requires commands to be typed in like the old FF/SQ games (sounds annoying, but one gets used to it quickly). The plot is interesting - nothing groundbreakingly new but I liked it, especially the way it's tied together and expanded throughout the games - and the there's plenty pixel gore.

If anyone's in the right mood and has some spare two hours for each game, I recommend giving them a try. Just make sure to play them in the intended order. 

 

I'll just buy it automatically.

I'm still playing through Soulstorm. 

Beautiful game except for
a) the music gets really braindamaging after 30 minutes of the same very short pattern
b) NO FUCKING SAVE OPTION. How long does it take to conquer the whole universe? 1-2 hours? 

was refering to the DNF video interview 

Got to agree with you there I think, I know what I used to do is record every good game I played and re-watch it later and get into all the good combats.

The same with CoH too.

Its a shame, but I cant really think of any good work arounds off-hand, you could slow the game down but then it would become boring, or you could make the graphics crap and everyone would moan :) 

Looks like a cheap Bioshock ripoff. And NecroVisioN (yes, it has a capital 'v' and 'n') looks like Wolfenstein set in World War 1. Same publisher for both (or developer, whatever.)

Still, can't judge until you play it. 

Playing Indigo Prophecy right now. Pretty good so far...couple of nice horror moments that actually made me jump. I'm not a huge fan of the quick time / Simon says bullshit but I can look past that as long as the game stays interesting. 

Nice little game, a collegue was playing some similar and shorter flash game a while back, can't find it anymore.
Spirit, nah it takes 30 minutes if you know what you're doing, this isn't the kind of game that requires saves in my opinion. 

finished it. Yes, it's short but I loved every bit of it.

In hindsight, probably still too many cutscenes but great freedom and varied gameplay. Loads of fun. 

Did you know there is a pause mode in CoH/DoW and you can still give orders during a pause? You can really play it like a turn-based game in sp and have all the time in the world to admire the looks

Multi is antoher thing ofcourse and I set all on low in CoH cause we played 2v2 or 3v3

I skipped the DoW Soulstorm, only tried the demo.
Emo/fetish eldars are pathetic 

And the sisters of battle just get the shit knocked out of them straight away.

To be honest I just went back to Chaos after getting nowhere with the new races. At least they make good target / chainaxe practice for my berserker's.

I've also played through with Necrons and Marines, now going with the emoeldars.

It was an overpriced purchase (50$ expansion pack? M-U-G tattooed on my forehead) since the aerial units are pretty lame and the interplanetary thing sounds good but in reality its the same as Dark Crusade.

All the same its a massive amount of content, to complete it with all nine races will take more time than I'm prepared to put into a game, these days.

Although I did get the Little Rocket Man achievement . . . 

The inofficial sequel is finally done: http://www.zak2.org

Haven't tried it yet but the screenshots look promising. 2GB - wtf. 

um ,what the hell is wrong with this game?

I know I successfully started it when I got my new 9800gtx to put all the settings on max but I've been trying to start it over the last day or so to play it and it just keeps crashing to the desktop before starting.

Some quick google searching shows it's a common problem, apparently the game doesnt like new drivr installation and updating of settings. WTF? surely that cant be true?

anyone else experience this? 

Can't help, I had no problems here. 

http://www.zak2.org/zak2/cms/front_content.php?idart=36&idcat=12

i love how everyone looks pretty normal, until you get down to the engine programmers :( 

did you patch it at all? or just play straight out of the box? 

that's the price you have to pay for intelligence, the big frontal lobes deform your head. 

I never saw or played the xbox version of this game so its been a real treat so far! :)

Just utter WOW basicly, im about 12 hours into the game and its just fantastic. It is very hard to spot any console origins so I guess it must be a very good port to the pc.

What you notice straight away is the excellent animation of every single character, and the fantastic facial/lip synching that goes on, it really does sell the illusion of reality. Next you notice the incredible depth and quality of the storytelling and dialogue, every single conversation is fully recorded audio with great voice actors, I can only guess at the amount of voice work contained in this game, it must take up over half of the dvd!

The graphics in general are fantastic also, I love the film effect that gets applied to everything, it adds so much detail to things. The only console throwback I can see is from the texture resolution which is fairly low in most areas, but the architecture and special effects more than make up for it, it looks beautiful :)

There is a ton of dialogue in this game, I would say its about 50/50 combat/roleplay at the moment, so if talking isn't your thing you may not like it, but the dialogue is so well written and interesting to take in that I really don't mind it at all. You can also sway the dialogue with your reputation and skill points, so for example you can bully a character if you have high skills in that area.

The combat is good but its definitely a worse off part of the game, its a fairly simple point and shoot affair and your squadmates special abilities dont really seem to do that much. I think I prefered the combat system from one of Biowares earlier games Knights of the old republic, it felt a lot more tactical and involving there.

Ok, gonna carry on playing now... addicted... 

I'd like to buy it, but can't get it online anywhere in France it seems, and I don't want to get it in French... =\ 

Yeah, that should be the first new game I test out with my 9800 GTX. Hopefully I'll be able to run it decently on my system, as the video card is the only thing on it that's younger than 3 years of age.

I also heard Assassin's Creed was bloody good. Might give that a spin too. 

OMG Fanboi'd 

a) the music gets really braindamaging after 30 minutes of the same very short pattern

click 'turn off the music' at the main menu?

b) NO FUCKING SAVE OPTION. How long does it take to conquer the whole universe? 1-2 hours?

A half hour? Do you want to save your game in Solitaire too? 

Not Solitaire. Maybe Hearts when I have possession of the Bitch and want to spring it on some one and not get caught with it in my hand. It would be edifying to always win in that situation,