A really good RTS at the moment. Hopefully without too many tech requirements.

Got DOW2 and can run that on min spec. 

...bought The Witcher instead. 

:o 

Age of Empires Online comes out on the 16th - free to play with some caveats. Micro transactions to unlock some restricted civ gear, certain gameplay modes, etc etc, but at least it's free to try out.

Age of Empires is one of the best RTS brands out there, btw. Not as pro-gamery as SC or SC2, but still a very solid RTS. 

got the EE version a week ago off GoG for 10$. 

I've heard StarCraft 2 is quite good...

Can run it on a cheap laptop on min settings with no problems. 

Finished it. Ending was pretty good especially since I managed to jump out of the penultimate "boss" "arena" and not fight any of the mercs.

Good game overall. Graphics setting atmosphere gameplay mechanics and all the extras all very good. Let down by being too repetitive, too long travelling across map, and too few friendly npcs outside towns. If it was tightened up it could have been a classic.

Next on the list: Dead Space 2, Crysis Warhead, Bulletstorm.

Next to buy: Crysis 2, Alice 2, Singularity. Maybe Bioshock 2 or AVP3. But then Rage will interfere with all of that. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCWycw6PFhw

Same feeling as being a Star Wars fan watching the prequels. Sometimes you wanna get up and scream, and you wanna curse and you want your entrance back, but you will still watch them. And you will grudgingly buy the special edition DVD set. That's how I felt playing this. 

whenever I try and get back into fc2, I take a mission and look at the map, see its on the other side of the fucking world and just quit :P

Which is a shame, because the shooting and stuff is really fun. 

I played the demo of the first one, and that was it :P

I always thought it was just an excuse for gamer pervs with watch some t&a, if I want to watch t&a I'll go to cardo's house. Only recently I've been getting into platformers/adventure games more (arkham asylum, darksiders, etc) so might look back at some TR games, anyone got recommendations for the best one of the series? 

Skip bulletstorm, it's complete shit. 

short breakdown:

TR1-TR4 are all good, but keyboard-only controls and really dated graphics. Challenge comes mainly from lining up for jumps on a block-based terrain and puzzles/traps.

TR: Legend was the relaunch by a different dev with WASD controls, nice looks, and sort of a James Bond movie feeling.

TR: Anniversary was a (very good IMO) remake of TR1. Pretty challenging platformer.

TR: Underworld is like a cross of the last 2.

I'd get any of the last three unless you're hardcore. Don't dismiss them as all tits, they're actually good games if you can get past that. 

Very glad the only series I'm condemned as a fanboy to buy are Doom and Quake. And they barely release any games so it's quite easy :p 

Started playing this cos my geek gamer girl told me to. She's too scared to play it herself.

Anyway. It's Doom3 bit with horrible control feel and perspective. Kinda. Okay the setting and the monsters and omg scariness are really well done. It's very stylish. But I wish more of the challenge came from errr scary monsters and less from wrestling with the annoying inconsistent and generally counterintuitive controls. Mandatory aim mode, no jump, no crouch, some things you can do in aim mode, some things you can't, non-bindable weapon switching blah blah. It's like they tried to make it scary by being a bugger to control, which they don't really need to as the rest of it works really well...

Up to Part 3 so far anyway... 

Really fond memories of the original, for me it did dark sci-fi way better than doom 3. I never really had any issues with the first one but I haven't played the 2nd yet, need to pick it up!

But im reserving all my gaming time for DX:HR (not long now!) my god that game looks fucking amazing! 

is a very good game imo. i was playing it every day for about 3 months. tho i haven't finished the single player campaign because most of time i just play 2x2 or 4x4 on battlenet. my only complaint is that battlenet is separated by regions and if you want to play in another region you have to buy a game (account) of that region. 

the alien levels are awesome. 

Get on #tf, plenty of us on there annoy the rest of the channel by wittering on about it all the time. 

http://www.superfriendshipclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=117 

Is my mouse not working or are you looking straight up?

Is sound broken or is it supposed to crack and pop?

ARE MY EYES BROKEN? Nah, just kidding. 

2 leaked

http://i.imgur.com/pDSSw.jpg
http://i56.tinypic.com/30k3r5g.jpg

Looks nice at least :) 

There's a bit more actually, like 5

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/jibpy/dota_2_screenshots_leaked/ 

Missed that one :)

Looks very tf2 in art style. Maybe they have even given each hero their own character traits like tf2, tf2 makes me laugh out loud most of the time when I die, I can imagine that is only a plus in a genre like moba where serious ragequits are the norm :P 

Very solid game. One of the brownest/greyest FPS I've ever played, but it's appropriate given the post-apocalyptic Russian snow scape/metro scape. Enough variety in game play so that it doesn't get boring, and some very intense scripted scenes and game play moments. It's not perfect by any means, but it's a very solid FPS with some genuinely tense moments, fairly compelling story and intriguing level design in most spots.

One negative is that it's frickin hard. I played normal, but ended up retrying many of the levels over and over because I just wasn't doing something right. Ammo is a premium in this game, I frequently found myself very low on ammo, sometimes resorting to melee when I had to. I'm not sure if that's really a negative, since it upped the tension a whole lot, which probably helped the atmosphere. Gas mask/filter management is something that also adds to the tension. Your mask can break on the surface or you can run out of filters, either one is deadly. Your flashlight loses juice the more you use it so you have to take the time to charge it in between, or even during fights.

Looking forward to Last Light now that I've played through Metro 2033. 

I've been putting off playing Rainbox Six: Vegas for quite a while. These sorts of realistic tactical shooters just don't win me over. They all feature the same weapons - basically a machine gun. The enemies are all the same with similar health levels and drop with a headshot. The levels are always realistic real life settings. Still, Vegas somehow has an aggregate score of 84% of Game Rankings, slightly below what is arguably 2006's action game of the year Gears of War. The latter deserved that title, Vegas doesn't.

I can't say much about the gameplay beyond what I said above. There are various weapons in this game; all act and feel exactly the same. Sure you can put on a silencer or change the rate of fire. Sure you can use a shotgun instead. But the most effective is rapid fire with a sniper scope. You have several different versions of the same gun in this game. They're supposed to be completely different guns, they look different and have specific names. I'm not a gun expert but they just didn't feel any different at all. You'll also never run out of ammo as every single enemy drops almost full ammo.

The enemies, like above, are all exactly the same. As you progress some of them have slightly more armour, but it didn't make much difference to the difficulty. The first level plays exactly the same as the last level. That's not to say that there aren't any challenging situations in this game. The enemies have pretty decent AI and use cover a lot, as well as flanking you. They also take you down fast, so if you walk out into the open and have missed an enemy, you'll likely die.

There were a few frustrating sections in fact, made frustrating because of no quicksave. Most of the game was fine but there were 4-5 times where I had to replay from a checkpoint at least a few times, which was very annoying. One scene in particular where your team mate hacks a computer while a dozen enemies attack from both directions. It took me 4-5 attempts ON GOD MODE to complete. It's the only time I needed god mode, so the rest of the game is balanced well enough. There is a lack of any kind of end battle though. You beat the main antagonist with ease then expect a helicopter fight (how original) only for everything to suddenly end with "to be continued".

There were some unique features in the game that I really liked. The ability to 'snake cam' under doors to see what's on the other side, then assign your team mates to throw a grenade in while you attack from another entrance. This was effective and fun! As was when you're blinded by a smoke grenade and have to revert to infrared. Your team mates are adequate and useful at times clearing rooms out and usually not getting in the way.

The plot is simple and boring; hunt down the terrorists who have attacked Las Vegas and finish them off at the Nevada Dam before they launch a bomb. I don't know who I was playing as or anything about my team mates. Then at the end one of my team mates turns out to be the bad guy. I'm assuming he was a team mate because he had on the same military clothing, but beyond that it could have been any random character. Story scores a C at best.