It's not like everyone plays every single game so they're always up to date. Some people haven't played older games. So eat my ass! 

Beyond Good And Evil (Xbox)

Another 2003 game - oh noes! :P

Anyway, in case you haven't played it (and I would imagine most people here haven't) this is a fairly jolly Zelda-inspired romp in a Futurama-esque sci-fi cartoon world, where you play a female photographer/reporter who has to save the planet from evil aliens with the aid of various anthropomorphic animals, burly men in turtleneck sweaters and lisping holographic sidekicks.

The game's pretty easy - a simplistic stealth mechanic is used more often than combat, but it's kinda cool. Vehicles are rather groovy and integrate nicely with the rest of the game.
Missions mostly involve sneaking around various interior environments, navigating all sorts of cunning security mechanisms (with a fairly heavy emphasis on the laser-themed variety), and taking pictures of dodgy shenanigans without alerting the guards.

The game has high production values - Graphics and art style etc. are all rather tasty - music is good, voice acting is great.

I guess if you like the modern Zeldas, you might wanna check this game out, but it is a fairly short game and you might be surprised when it's over so quickly (like I was) 

Black (Xbox)

I bought the latest overhyped Xbox shooter yesterday, and I reached the final room in the game today.

Because the checkpoints are not hard saved to the console, it will take well over an hour to reach this point again from the beginning of the level should I want to switch the machine off and try again later. I've done this three times now, dying each time in the final room, and it's unlikely that I'll try again anytime soon.

It's basically a big fat gun-wank, where you shoot terrists in the face across a variety of generic urban locations, using realistic weapons etc.

The main gimmick is that there is a somewhat above average amount of destructable scenery in the game (but not quite as much as the marketing hype would have you believe)

I had some fun with this game. It looks really good (for Xbox lol) and I like shooting people, and there are a lot of opportunities to shoot people in this game so that was cool.

By far my biggest complaint is the distance between checkpoints, which is utterly retarded and unfair. You will typically have to plough through 30 minutes of gameplay before you reach the next checkpoint (which usually split the hour-long levels down the middle). As I previously mentioned, mid-level checkpoints are not hard saved if you turn off the machine, which only adds to the retardedness.

As long as you can avoid dying, this is a rather short game, clocking in at around 6-8 hours if you just want to blast through it without doing any of the secondary objectives. 

b 

Very immersive second word war 2 game, very impressive, very realistic, but too short IMHO (I finished it in normal in 20 hours...). Nevertheless, it was very very enjoyable.

The game is composed of 5 episode (Stalingrad, north Africa desert, France D-day, Belgium, and Germany). Each time you are either a russian soldier (was it a special vondur's request ?... 8D...), or british, or american... it depends on the episode, and in reality it doesn't matter at all, it is just the weapon type that changes.

You have to progress with your combat unit, and teamplay is very well executed: I save my friends' ass as often as they did it for me !

Well, it is really worth to play: I will try it as veteran soldier now... I guess it will be much much more difficult ;P

No I go back to mapping :P 

Quit wow recently, got really bored with doing the same old stuff and then discovered Anarchy Online which, if you don't upgrade to the expansions, is totally free (you get some ads but there implemented quite well). It's alot of fun and has a sci fi theme and if you can look past some of the graphics being naff then you will discover a great game, kinda like SWG was it was actually good. Also you can upgrade your free account to all addons for just $9.95 but then you incur monthly fees of around $10 

If you wanna try some MMORPG stuff you can check out Silkroad Online at
http://www.silkroadonline.net/.
Korean game (I think) which is all about the connection between Rome, the Islamic world and China, and combines/hybridizes all three into a single mythology. Free client and no monthly fees, I've read good things about it at www.mmorpg.com. Just in case anyone was interested in something like this. 

I fucking hate that game. My friend is glued to it. The reason I hate it is because of it's interface - it's overwhelming, but even worse is the control scheme is just plain wacked. Else I might've cared more to get through it a little. 

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)

After playing Ico, I had a feeling the team's follow-up game would be good, but I wasn't quite expecting something as transcendantly awe-inspiring as this. I'm just going to come out and say that playing Shadow of the Colossus was the most intense, enthralling, satisfying and emotional game experience I have ever had.

There simply is no other game like this.

I'm still staggered that there is so much to experience from such a relatively simple concept. The clarity of purpose is such that there is little more to the game than finding the next Colossus, working out how to get on it, clambering around it, and clinging on to its furry bits for dear life as it tries to stop you repeatedly stabbing it in its weak spots. But My God, the experience of it all...

There is no unnecessary cruft to to bog this simple concept down, the game is just that pure. As a result (but in no way to its detriment) it is not a particularly long game, taking me about 11 hours to beat it the first time. The game is essentially sixteen massive boss fights played in sequential order. It just happens that these are the most astonishing, immersive, tense, rewarding, and visually stunning boss fights ever made.

(On the subject of immersion, it's worth noting that to hang on to anything in this game, you have to simulate the act of "gripping" by holding the right trigger button; it's quite visceral to feel your finger aching and literally slipping off the trigger button in a particularly gruelling struggle just to stay in control as a Colossus whips you around hundreds of feet up in the air).

Like Ico, the world these beasts inhabit is beautifully realised, yet at the same time empty and desolate. It's just you and your horse for companionship.

The design, art direction, animation and music in this game are all mindblowingly good, and witnessing the awesome ending sequence makes the struggle of slaying the final Colossus more than worthwhile. And yes, I'm man enough to admit that I cried. 

I heard the controls and camera were a bit shit though (perhaps someone mentioned it here too). 

TES4: Oblivion was supposed to be released yesterday...

anyone able to pick that up yet? :x 

But American PCG gave it 95%. I'd like to get it, but I don't have a good enough computer, I don't have 3 years available to play it, and my attention span is sho 

i'm looking forward to playing it, too. haven't orded it yet, though. but i'm not sure if i should do it, either, since i know it will definately distract me from all duties and mapping in particular...

i recently finished morrowind. by and large, it wasn't as long as i expected and as everybody said. it all depended on how many side quests one was willing to take (i'd say i took some 60% and discovered more than half of the map). so i don't expect oblivion to be all that long. but still... 

nd my attention span is sho

So short you couldn't be bothered to finish the sentence? ;) 

I heard the controls and camera were a bit shit though

As someone who is usually very critical of these things, I had absolutely no problems with either of these aspects of the game. In fact, the control system struck me as being particularly intuitive and responsive. 

Congrats, you got the joke. 

there were a few problems with camera/controls, but 98% percent of the game is not affected by them. 

my preorder just shipped from play.com a few hours ago, woooooooooooo! So check it out tomorrow / friday if you get the chance! 

Mine also, due tommorrow. It will be most satisfying. 

thank you, zwiffle! 

I know when I usually review anything I resort to taking the piss but I thought a more reasoned 'first-impressions' was deserved.

Oblivion starts by letting you create your character. This is a game in itself. The face generation is powered by 'FaceGen' software that allows you to tweak almost any part of a 3d face model but the ability to import your own face from a few photos (as seen in FaceGen retail) was missing.

It would have been useful if Bethesda gave us some template faces as most of the randomly generated ones are just too ugly to use as a base. Also, would it have been hard to include more than say 8 hair-styles per race? Just 2 or 3 styles that didn't look totally stupid would have been a plus. I'd prefer it if my Spellsword didn't look like Fabio, thanks.

Three hours later and I've designed my character. Whoosh! I'm in a cell. Holy fuck, those cobblestones look amazing! My god. Those are the sexiest bricks I've ever seen. Sometimes the beauty of the Oblivion engine astounds you, and I spent a goot 20 minutes just looking around the tiny cell. Havok physics is here for the ride as I found out while throwing bones at some shackles hanging from the ceiling. This is a big improvement on Morrowind, where the lack of any believable physics distanced the player from the items in the world.

Fast forward a little, and the Emperor is breaking me out of jail. The game introduces you to combat by giving you a gentle battering as you try and escape, courtesy of goblins and other ruffians.

My verdict on combat so far? Improved greatly from Morrowind, but not perfect. You can block and charge opponents, but somehow it still seems a little detatched. Spellcasting is a lot simpler thanks to the extremely easy keyboard shortcut system, and Magicka regenerates pretty quickly. Morrowind had me playing a warrior character mainly because I couldn't be arsed to bother with spells, but in Oblivion they seem easy to use and pretty effective.

There are lots of nice new touches, and many things which correct problems with previous games. One example is lockpicking: in Morrowind you get out your lockpick and click a few times, or many times if it's you're a bad thief or it's a tough lock. Oblivion introduces a mini game where you have to push back the pins in the lock one by one, much like in the real world.

The most annoying thing in Morrowind was travel. The mission says 'go to this small village up north', but that could mean you have to take a transport to another city, on to another town, take a boat to village X and then get the mage's guild to teleport you there. Not fucking fun. In Oblivion, the fast travel option is back! Seen as far back as Arena, you just click the name of a town on your map and you go right there.

Also, you have a shiny compass that points you towards your next waypoint... useful, if like me, you wasted too much of your life in Morrowind trying to find some asshole in some guild in Vivec.

more likes/gripes:
The graphics in outdoor areas are spectacular at times. There's a town (maybe Chorral) where there's a big chapel, and all around it is long grass blowing in the wind, and trees with hanging branches. At the right time of day the sunlight is pink, and with the HDR enabled, everything glows. That was the most amazing in-game graphics I've seen, period.

The 3rd-person camera sucks. A lot. It bobs slowly about like the cameraman is standing up in a canoe. Bring back the Morrowind camera.

The guards can be ridiculous. I got chased down and thrown in jail for (accidentally) stealing a shitty wood cup worth less than one gold piece. Piss off, guys.

Horses, yay or neigh? Sorry. So sorry. Pretty useful for running about the wilderness, but not very well animated, and the control is a bit weird. Might just take getting useful though.

Voice-acting: it's just rubbish. A lot of the dialogue is pish too. It's clear the Bethesda team aren't very witty guys. Why not get Patrick Stewart in it for longer and give his character a bit more depth?

All in all, it's early days, but i can tell this is going to be extremely addictive gaming. It's got it's faults, and it crashes a bit, but all in all it seems to have improved on Morrowind in a big way. Graphically it's hard to fault Oblivion.

As your life in an Elder Scrolls game gets better, your real (social) life gets worse. Onward, towards Oblivion! 

The 3rd-person camera sucks. A lot. It bobs slowly about like the cameraman is standing up in a canoe. Bring back the Morrowind camera.

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=73

lol, i don't even have the game yet and i'm looking at mods... T_T

:P 

Totally agree with starbuck, although I find the lock picking was annoying but I soon got used to it. (possible spoiler maybe) Speak to someone in the Leyawiin mages guild about a shrine ( you must be lvl 10 to speak to shrine ), then may your lockpicking needs be forever fulfilled...

Ive got 49hrs played so far and have completed darkbrotherhood, thieves guild, fighting arena, some fighter guild missions and can enter the last part of the game but am holding back as im only level 15 atm and wasnt sure if the game ended if I completed it.

I highly recommend this game to everyone (I didnt particularly get hooked on morrowwind). Oh yea, i'm also a vampire!!

Is it me or is Martin, Sean Bean. 

also the game doesn't take 49 hrs and could be done alot quicker but Im loving faffing around the place, and at least 10hrs I was furiously masturbating over the graphics. 

ah sweet, cheers necros. I'll definitely use that. I played 3rd person most of the time in Morrowind, and I don't usually whine about camera controls or anything, but this is just... SO bad.

Gib, yeah it is Sean Bean :D
Oh and I've probably notched up at least 10 hours in that manner too.