I'm running 64-bit Win7 on an Intel i5 2.66 with 8 gigs of ram and a geforce 9800. There are places it chugs slightly, but I haven't had any significant problems (other than two lock-ups and pretty common crashes on exit, which I get with Oblivion too).

Apparently there's one forest that's pretty bad, and most people have to turn off distant land while they're in there (no biggie, since you can't see it anyway).

Maybe just try turning down your settings and making sure shadows are simple/off, no self-shadow, all that good stuff? You really are missing out... :( 

yeah, i've since noticed there are additional settings only available in the launcher that don't appear in the game. so i've got it running a little better now but the game looks fairly shitty. it's still pretty decent-- this is oblivion after all, but yeah, i have no shadows on (except canopy shadows, because with that off, forests look retarded).

it's really a great TC. all the areas look great with hand placed stuff. you know those oblivion mods that modify boring areas and make them much fancier and unique, it feels like that for most of the areas in nehrim.

one of the things i've noticed though is that the TC hurts by not having some kind of ui system to show mob levels.
yeah, the first instinct is to cry out 'it's intrusive and unrealistic!' but think about it for a minute:
if you stumble onto a bear in the wilderness (heh.. yeah ok...) you'd be able to gauge it's relative strength by how large it is and how fast it seems to be moving.
in WoW, for example, most mobs of the same type all look the same. they might be slightly bigger or darker, but that's it. telling me 'this mob is level 15' gets around the graphical limitation to give me information i should be able to figure out.
but in oblivion, you have generic looking mobs of varying strengths with no way of knowing their power until you fight them. sure, you might learn 'diseased wolf' is weaker than 'rabid wolf' but the mob text only shows up when it's about 2 feet away from you.
as a sort of band-aid, they included this ranged spell that will pop up a little dialog box telling me the level and hp of the mob i hit. but it's a rather clunky mechanic to use.

but ok, i can understand that the oblivion engine has absolutely no way to display mob level in an easy way.

which i guess brings me to the actual thing i'd have prefered: simply marking down the level range of each zone on the map.
it'd look ugly, but it would have simplified things a lot more and let me plan out where i was going to go. for now, i have to stumble into a zone and only then read the zone text.
so far, i haven't found a map mod with visible level ranges so i'm still stumbling around. :P

but yeah, aside from those minor problems, the TC is still awesome. :) 

Flash adventure game, seems a bit like Samorost.
http://www.alchemiagame.com 

which i guess brings me to the actual thing i'd have prefered: simply marking down the level range of each zone on the map.

but...my immersion!!1!

(Yeah, agreed, that would probably work better than the semi-trial-and-error approach.) 

I am intrigued.

http://kotaku.com/5707505/i-would-play-this-game-simply-because-of-its-name 

StarCraft crossed with Halo
Seeing that Halo is shit, so is WarSoup. 

"we're going for a minimalist design approach" = we suck at design so our game will look shit.

i don't see anything in common with halo in that game (which is a good thing anyway since halo is rubbish), they're obviously just trying to get attention by making that claim. 

How does minimalism suck? 

Who said that?

I can read minds and Kona meant that they are going for a plain color minimal style because they are incapable of doing "better" textures.

The game looks pretty bad in every aspect though. Zwiffle, stop reading Kotaku already. 

Nah the concept looks cool. RTS + FPS is always an intriguing concept. 

Well they said it in their trailer.
Minimalism can be good in other media, such as graphic design or art. In games though, you'd have to have fantastic architecture to pull it off. Like Nunuk's Geometry Competition where you can only use 10 textures.

In the case of this game though, there was no architecture, just flat walls and some blocky terrain. I liked the GUI though. 

FPS + RTS can be awesome = BZ2

That looks like ass though. Sub-Minecraft GFX. 

I disagree, you could say Mirror's Edge and Portal go with a minimalist approach to environement art, and those are both great looking games.
Not every game has to be Gears of War. 

Doesn't look so great IMO. Very durgy colours. And flat lighting. 

Usually video games released to coincide with a movie release are very average. However in this case, Peter Jackson's King Kong from 2005 is a fairly good action game.

I say fairly good instead of great due to one major problem in the game - playing as Kong. While most reviewers liked that you could play as King Kong, I cringed everytime I was forced to attempt to control the beast. Playing from third person perspective, the controls for Kong are terrible. Especially in cramped quarters, the camera angle will suddenly jump from behind Kong to in front of him, meaning you have to press the backwards key instead of forwards. On top of this, fighting other giant beasts as Kong is nothing but a chore in mashing the keyboard as fast as you can hoping he'll actually do something. Then when he's grabbed a beast to perform his fatality, you've got to pound on the 'grab' key as fast as you can to kill it. Terrible.

Fortunately, playing as Kong only takes up about 20% of the game. The rest is played as Jack as he repeatedly tries to get his love interest back. But that's not perfect either because you only get one gun at a time and limited amounts of ammo. At times your forced to play with spears that you find. Sure it makes the gameplay frantic and intense, but I'd rather take a leisurely stroll through paradise and admire the scenery without having to spear giant dinosaurs.

The best thing about Peter Jackson's King Kong, and it's saving grace, is the level design. Although the engine looks slightly dated with pixelated 2D vegatation, the actual level design is great. Almost all of the game takes place on the island (apart from two awful city levels at the end) and there is enough variety in the texturing and scenery that it never gets old. The highlight for me was climbing up to the highest peak of the island, where Kong was sleeping. Atmospheric effects such as the lighting and fog look excellent and capture the creepy, mysterious fantasy island from the movie perfectly.

So while the gameplay was slightly held back with some annoying challenges, in particular playing as Kong, the atmosphere and design of the fantasy island made up for it for me.

Add cheats for unlimited ammo and a level skip for every Kong level, and this is a very good game. 

Maybe i'll take a break from action shooters and try a pretty adventure puzzle game.

Anyone played The Whispered World? Looks cute. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWfqNyfHUP4 

I had a blast playing as Kong.

Agree with the level design comments though, I remember it beign very good. 

reread my comments from before, I seemed to have the complete opposite take on controls and camera use :) 

Haha I know, I read your comments on it yesterday Nitin. Both IGN and Gamespot didn't seem to have too much of a problem either. One of them said the camera was a bit clunky, the other said they loved playing as Kong and wished there was more. Different strokes I guess... 

I played TWW. It's a nicely drawn adventure game. The English voice of the protagonist is a little annoying, though (compared to the German original). The puzzles are mostly fairly easy and the playing field limited (several levels so to speak), just like many modern adventures. There are some logic puzzles, too. Some of which I found to be quite annoying. I stopped playing when reaching a certain one where I had to rearrange a mosaic by moving the pieces around using the one free spot in-between in order to form a crest.

I'm surprised there aren't more comic-style adventures these days. They seem easy enough to make with the proper artists. MI3 was cool, too. I mean now that the initially interfering OMG 3D! era is over. 

but just got myself Witcher enhanced edition, Crysis, Crysis Warhead and Stalker - Shadow of Cehrnobyl for $AU30.

Bring on christmas holidays. 

Good move. Crysis and Warhead are GREAT games! Regardless of what anyone says, they are a real blast, certainly on the firstruns. STALKER SOC is great too, really gritty and atmospheric.

The witcher - well I didnt play that one (yet), so I cant comment, but I have heard some good comments from other people about it :) 

and worth your time. 'nuff said ;) 

It's an enjoyable game by and large, but I thought it also dragged on quite a bit at times. And I found its semi-linearity unncessary, maybe even a bit of an an immersion killer. You can't revisit previous regions (not an open world), and there are silly console-like barriers in the levels to make them feel larger, like small fences or rocks you can't jump over and are forced to run all the way around them. At what were they thinking when making that totally retarded mouseclick combat system? 

I never had a problem with it myself, at least, it sure feels more involved than simply mashing the attack key until an enemy is down. If you rush the next attack, you'll only break the combo and risk getting yourself hurt. And I liked that aspect since it works great with multiple opponents circled around you. It's not perfect, but it works for me.