The update has new configurations of items.

So if the orginal randomisation base was 100x100 I don't want to know what it is now. Because that's probably the time in seconds I'll lose to it. 

and I always take the mystery pills.

Definitely so much luck involved in how difficult your game ends up... I've had some crazy fortunate draws - maxing out damage and speed by the 2nd level, or getting the cat head that gives you 9 lives. I balance that out by not knowing what the fuck i'm doing though - i didn't understand the room where you exchange HP for items for a while, and ended up with one heart (one!) but 9 lives in the bank. How useful.

Only fought mom once so far, and lost with her at 5% health or something. Stupid mom. 

I thought it was great, until I realised I was stripping myself of health for picking it up - it makes peeps and that big pile of meat boss very difficult.

Peeps is the most annoying though.

And cupids arrow has to be the best upgrade, especially against the worm boss.

What's your new email, your uni one is down - congratulations in order :) ? 

I don't think I ever got Cupid's Arrow! What does that do?

Haha, well it's a over a year since I graduated, so maybe keep the cork in the champagne for now! A back-dated thank-you for the congratulations though!

Email is now:
jonmiles1 AT gmail.com 

It makes you fall in love. It is a most wondrous precious feeling that makes you feel alive. Every living day will be a blessing. Warm sunshine in the early morning will be but a imitation of her glistening hair. A tweeting nightingale just outside your window will remind you of her luscious voice. Her eyes like twinkling stars, her sunspots like the milkyway in the beautiful dark night sky in the desert. You will feel like you could lift the whole earth with your massive raging boner. 

Pretty hard indeed. I've yet to figure out what the items do and how to switch them (no rtfm). Seems like a fun game, but then again, could've been cheaper.

Anyone played Trauma? 

Does the game save the progress after completing each level (basement, caves...) or not at all? 

thanks Spirit, that clears everything up!

negke: If it goes in your inventory then it has some always-on effect, some affect stats, one poisons enemies that touch you, and at least a couple summon little flying dudes that shoot things for you. If it's in the action slot then you have to press space, but it's usually easy to see what that does. Tarot cards are mysterious and you have to remember what they do, pills are always random. No RTFM required, I think you're supposed to not know what the fuck is going on most of the time. 

not at all. If you die at a high level the best recourse I've found has been to cry myself to sleep. 

But how to switch the items in the action slot if you have more than one? 

The action item can only be swapped by finding a new one on the floor, there's no inventory management. 

Hierophant - 2 blue hearts
Hermit - warp to shop
Death - kill everything or do damage to bosses
Devil - power up shot damage for single room
Moon - teleport to the hidden room in the dungeon
Magician - Make shots homing for one room
Lovers - 2 red hearts
Fool - random teleport
Tower - spam bombs (that explode) everywhere in the room
Judgement - spawn a key, bomb and a heart
Temperance - Spawn a blood bank (hearts for cash)
Chariot - teleport...
Wheel of fortune - spawn a gambling machine
Hanged man - fly for one room
Strength - +1 heart, bump stats

I'm missing a load that I can't remember.

Also, bomb the machines - makes them drop a random amount of stuff.

For the little kid who wants money, you should always pay up, since he tends to give you stuff that'd be very expensive otherwise like the compass and map.

If an item's price in the shop is red then thats a special low price.

Cupid's arrow goes through enemies to hit those behind.

To kill mom I think the best strategy is stay next to the door and fire sideways, moving when the foot comes down.

If you kill a boss without taking damage then a devil room will open, where you can trade heart containers for very strong powerups. It is possible to kill yourself by trading in all your hearts.

Every dungeon has a single hidden room which is accessed by bombs, usually. It tends to contain cash.

Arcades are great, but only waste your health or cash if you've got a surplus. The best is just to bomb all three machines (including the guy) and collect all the stuff that's dropped. 

Is off -

the chariot gives you unicorn ramming power.

The fool returns you to the start room.

Not getting hit by a boss doesn't open the door to the devil's room - not sure what is the mechanic there. 

I played the original 1999 Unreal Tournament plenty, although only ever against bots, and enjoyed it a lot. The weapons were all very fun, levels looked great. However lacking a proper single player mode I skipped it's sequels UT2003 and UT2004, before returning to UT3 released in 2007.

UT3 was advertised as having a proper single player mode, much more than it's predecessors. Unfortunately the single player mode is really just a series of bot matches; covering typical deathmatch, Capture The Flag and Warfare gameplay modes.

I played on the lower difficulty levels to avoid much replay. This made the deathmatches laughably easy - even the 1 on 1 final battle I won 20-4 on my first play through. But it's the deathmatches I enjoy most, and often it's team-based 4 on 4, for instance. However I was playing on lower difficulties, so they should have been fairly easy.

The Capture The Flag levels were quite often easy, but there were a few where vehicles are involved that were a bit of a challenge, and then one huge levels in particular (Sandstorm) that was extremely difficult. But overall the CTF levels aren't very exciting. I find myself just running like hell in most of them, trying to avoid detection. Only twice in the entire game did a team-mate manage to capture a flag. They're completely useless. In most cases I was better off continuing to the enemies' zone and just stand around waiting for my team-mate to inevitably drop the flag so I could take over the run.

But it's the Warfare levels that throw the game completely out of balance. In these levels you have stations that you take control of in order, until you get to the enemies main station and destroy it. The opposing side is trying to do the same to you. Some of these levels were very easy, completing them in just a couple of minutes. But then there were others that were really, really difficult. It seemed to depend too much on whether or not your team-mates were being imbeciles. The Torlan Warfare level, which was number 15 out of 41, for me, was by far the hardest level in the entire game. My team-mates just seemed to dick around and do nothing. Even when taking over all stations, I couldn't even GET to the final station to even attempt to destroy it, while my team-mates were plonking around at the start still. A bonus card (which do a few things like reducing the opponents enemy count) was a necessity on this one. Then on the other hand you get to the penultimate level, Warfare again, and it's done in under five minutes.

So what I'm getting at is that the levels are wildly out of balance, with some that are too easy and the odd one that's too hard for where it's placed in the list. And that's all this game really is - a list of levels one after another, some of which are poorly repeated. There's a story going on about some war and the character you're playing wants revenge on the cliche hot chick who nearly killed him. But the story is a boring and didn't enhance the experience much at all.

The weapons are all the standard Unreal ones; all very fun to use.

UT3 uses, obviously, Unreal Engine 3. It looks great as expected with some awesome looking backgrounds and setpieces. There's a tonne of variety in the different settings including temples, space stations, market gardens and many outdoors levels. I guess it's hard base a proper single player game around so many different settings, but I really wish more developers would put this much variety and fantastic looking environments into their games. Either that or perhaps Epic should make a proper, non-console biased, single player game like the original Unreal.

That being said, the looks are fairly identical to Gears Of War. The character models might as well have been pulled directly from GOW, while the textures and environments all have that similar muddy colour palette and blurry post processing effects. If you didn't really like the looks of GOW, you better skip UT3.

The final hurdle in UT3 to mention, from a single player perspective, is that the game isn't very long. Assuming almost every level you complete successfully on your first try, you'll be through it in five hours.

I'm going to judge this as a single player experience, as I don't play online, and as such because it's all bot play it does probably warrant replays so you can get a better look at some of the levels. However, it is JUST bot play, which gets repetitive fast. On top of that some of the levels (CTF and Warfare) I didn't enjoy that much. In fact I cringed every time a Warfare level came up. UT3 might look fantastic, but it's not a proper single player experience, so not really recommended. 

Do you guys know of any good single player mods out there? There's a fkn shitload of mods, so I guess i'll go through them to figure out what is fun for single player, even if it's against bots. 

the best reviews these days? 

To replace my crappy list of Binding items and their effects:

http://ninjanerdstech.com/2011/09/the-binding-of-isaac-items-list/ 

I've just noclipped/flown through all the non-campaign levels and Titan Pack levels, and realised just how good UT3 looks. In fact, I'll go so far as to say it's the best looking game ever made up until November 2007 (excusing Bioshock and COD4 as I'm yet to play them).

It's quite disappointing that a game that looks this good was wasted on multiplayer only with no proper single player. 

imo UT3 uses too much post processing to add colour leading to everything looking washed out. You turn the PP down and it looks very gray.

Skies are jaw drawing though. :E 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQxI2mRIooY&feature=youtu.be 

looks cool 

so what do you think about 'amnesia - the dark descent' i started to play it in may and still couldn't finish