for retail price when it came out just a few weeks after buying the standard addition at a discount. Definitely the kind of game play I like. 

it's supposed to be like this. it is. and that's a good thing even to me, the hater of such things ;).

seriously, you have to play on ps2 though - the controls on pc are shitty - because the game is designed to be played with two analog sticks. iirc it has EXTREME negative mouse acceleration on pc so you can't turn fast.

i guess you already found the button to swing the camera so it points in front of you? 

I have dual stick gamepad, it doesnt help much
- SH4 camera is awfull ~40% of the time.

necros: maybe try condemned criminal origins - mixes SH horror\dirt atmosphere with first person hth/shooter. better combat than SH, but not as creative design\plot wise.
Runs on FEAR engine and has much better location design than fear - so it looks quite nice ... but not enough open spaces
I suggest you get the demo first. 

yeah, the slow mouse speed is very irritating... it's like playing quake with 'sensitivity' set to '0.1' :P i ended up binding some keys to turn to supplement the mouse turning.

i guess the bad camera placement could be a way to add more suspense. but it just seems more annoying to me than suspensful.

one thing: i know there's a key to make the camera sort of pan around a bit but what button to swing the camera so it points in front of you? i don't remember seeing that on the config menu!

one thing i'm not really liking about SH3 so far is that each area is sort of self contained. you walk into an area, and monsters can move around there, but you walk into the next area, and even if it's just a little gate, they don't follow you there, so it really takes the edge off of some encounters because you know you can be safe just by going to a different section. i suppose this was a limitation of ps2 console or something. it's nice to be able to save anywhere though. a console port that got it right!

i will have to take a look at condemned. it's not exactly what i was looking for, although it does look interesting. thanks for the suggestion, speeds :) 

i don't know, it might be a combination of buttons? can't even remember what it was on ps2... 

WTF new games!

gears of war
zelda: twilight princess
final fantasy XII
guitar hero 2

BBQ 

A classmate picked that up last week. He wants to get me into it, too. I don't get it? 

A girl called me on the phone one time, and told me, "Come over, there's nobody home." I went over. There was nobody home. 

I haven't played the sequel, but the original is fun. Playing the toy guitar feels less contrived than hitting bongos, for some reason. Plus the music is stuff I mostly like (classic rock, metal, etc.) Instead of whatever you get in DDR or donkey konga. 

Watched a couple of workmates playing it at lunch, looks like fun and with some good songs.

Watching them belt out "Trogdor" was quite amusing. :) 

Metl go ban yourself ;).

On the other hand I've just ordered:

Guild Wars - Nightfall (so I can game with Fribbles and his wife lol)

Thief 3 - Whatever it's called (just because) 

...I've been playing the Gothic 3 Demo until my eyes bleed.

The bad:

Crashes every hour, very annoying if you haven't saved.

Chugs like a bastard when loading new areas (not enough hardware obviously).

GFX a bit patchy, for example some shadowing and textures in the distance are bollox.

Close combat fighting is quite annoying against some monsters.

The good:

Everything else??

This is really engrossing for a demo, I reckon there's probably a good 10 hours gameplay if you explore everywhere, do every quest, collect every item (and, errr, die as much as I do).

The world is standard fantasy stuff but it's done well, full of animals and monsters and people and mushrooms and plants and characterful details. Lots of nice GFX touches, in particular the day night cycle has some lovely lighting in the evening/night/morning, and the torchlit effect is cool. Monsters and characters are pretty well done too.

The whole social set-up is interesting, Orcs - mercenaries working in line with the Orcs - slaves under the Orcs - rebels resisting the Orcs - bandits raiding everyone - goblins and undead and god knows what else lurking on the fringes.

Lots of talking and quests and shit, and lots of free choice too. Go anywhere, do anything in any order. I've been playing nice but I'm sure you could get yourself in a whole lot of trouble killing everyone and everything in sight.

Talking of killing, combat is okay, but I still don't really get how it works. Hack and slash, you're supposed to be able to use direction keys + attacks for better fighting, but it doesn't seem to do anything spectacularly tactical...

Still, it's kept me gripped! 

heh, nice you mentioned it.
it likely is a proper demo (=more than 15 minutes of gameplay).
i'm going to post a detailed description of the full game as soon as i have finished it.
just let it be known that this game definately has its quirks and flaws (quite a few to be honest), but is still enjoyable for the most part and definately on par with oblivion. 

but my machine is pretty old these days, amd 2500, 1gig ram and only a fairly decent video card; ati x850.

there's some kind of bug that makes the screen flicker white unless i turn on post effects, which make the game run even slower, as well as frequent complete lockups (no crash to windows, completly freezing requiring a hard reboot).

also, it annoys me i can't choose what i want to pick up if there are multiple objects on a table. you just sort of keep clicking till you get what you want.

over all, i haven't really enjoyed the game much because of the poor performance issues. 

there should be patch to fix crashes and performance (hopefuly) I would wait till then.

and on the other subject: Krootox FTW! 

So, anyone played this yet? Is it the excuse I need to fork out for a 360? 

Very pretty, specular maps too intense, motion blur is cool, gameplay is nothing new but it's fun and polished, coop is awesome, Dom is a fucking idiot. 

From what I hear, if you have a HDTV, the answer to your question is YES. 

It was mentioned so I thought I'd throw in my two cents. I'm not really a fan of the whole party-game genre... it always seems a bit contrived to me, imagining people sitting around playing bongos to get points, pretending they're on quiz shows, dancing on mats. Seriously, karaoke on a playstation? That's pretty weak.

I think the problem is, when I actually want to party, I don't really want to be sitting around an x-box acting like a douche. I want to be acting like a douche in a public place, doing terrible things and risking arrest.

Also, I play quite a bit of guitar... what's the point of pretending to play a riff using a plastic controller when you could actually play it, given a few minutes practice?

So I had a, i guess, negative bias going into Guitar Hero. When my brother offered me the controller, I decided to give it a chance though, and uh, I was wrong. This game definitely deserves all the praise it gets... I've had trouble finding the time or the motivation to really get into a game lately, but you can pick up the controller anytime and try and improve a score. If you've got 2 guitars, the battles are awesome, and if not, just take turns.

If you play real guitar, it actually helps too... you can do hammer-ons and pull-offs and there's a whammy bar... it feels pretty natural, this is pretty much the only PS2 game I can beat my brother at. I can't wait to try the sequel, if it actually improves on the first I may actually buy a PS2 for myself just to play it.

Good set of songs too, it must be said. You'd expect to get a load of mtv rock shit, but you get some Stevie Ray Vaughn, Hendrix, Cream, Bowie, Blue Oyster Cult (Godzilla!), Ramones, the list goes on. Try it and you'll see. 

because it evoked images of all the DDR nuts I went to college with, but I got drunk at a cinco de mayo party one of the programmers here threw to break his new house in and discovered I kind of enjoyed it.

it's also really hard to play when you're sauced on tequila, but I still beat kungfusquirrel. :) 

Well I played plenty more of it, fuck you get value for money in this, I've now explored pretty much the whole coastal region and done everything except committing to helping either the Rebels or Orcs. I quite like the Orcs and the way they always call you MORON. There's so much to do and to explore for a demo, well impressive. Don't know if I could fit in a whole game of this....120 hours playtime or something *gulp*.

But it is tempting me...

there should be patch to fix crashes and performance (hopefuly) I would wait till then.

Deffo. I don't have problems with FPS, and even tried it on high settings and it's not bad, but loading chugs like a fat bitch on heat. I'd probably wait until firstly some patches, and secondly getting some more RAM at the very least. 

Jago: I don't own a HDTV, so I guess the question now becomes "is it worth me buying both a 360 and a HDTV to play Gears of War" o_O

Lunaran: rockage. Who's Dom, the player character? 

I;m guessing the domination game mode like in UT. 

I've only played a couple of times at starbreeze "Friday beer" but it does as a party game and if I got it at home I think I'd sit with it until I could play all the songs near flawlessly...

I hope there will be comes a wii version though as I don't have a ps2 and don't think I will get a ps3 or 360 in the foreseeable future. Another option is getting the game disc controller and ps2tousb adapter and use it on your PC with Frets on Fire but as that tends to bug out after a while it doesn't seem like a good idea at the moment anyway. 

...is whether to get Twilight Princess for the gamecube or for the wii. Assuming I will eventually buy a wii, I still want to get the one that's a better version of the game. The wii version is basically a port, and I'm assuming the entire game was designed for the gamecube controller, so I'm thinking it'll play better on the cube.