I was never really interested in H&D2 single player, although I did enjoy the demo of the first H&D, despite it's many bugs (and ladders that were more lethal than nazis with mp40s.)

H&D2 had no coop mode, wheras the original did. Sabre Squadron adds 9 new SP missions, although it now includes coop play for all the missions. This is the reason I've started playing it. It's absolutely brilliant. I've played the game in a squad of two and three, and every occasion has been a lot of fun. However, we have been using voice comms, and I doubt it would be so much fun if we had to use the keyboard to coordinate our strategies.

Also, as my workmate has pointed out to me on MANY occasions, the effort and research that must have gone into the art side of H&D2 is staggering. H&D2 really puts every other WW2 based FPS to shame. Everything seems to be immaculately researched, modelled and textured, and there is just so much variety in the game it makes you want to weep. The textures may not be particularly crisp, but frankly, when every building seems to have its own textures and mesh (no c&ping stuff all around the levels) I don't care.

The gameplay is great too, although I can't be bothered to write anymore, so I won't go into it.

Anyone else played H&D2? (Sabre Squadron in particular.) 

MekTek released MechPack2 for Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries already? I was awestruck, it's the best thing since sliced sex. The amount of new stuff will keep things interesting for a long time. 

I get a copy of 'sliced sex' ?

google shows up nothing. (nothing I want to see anyways) 

Phantom Brave (PS2). SRPG using 3d levels and 2d sprite characters. Been pretty cool so far, it's the 'kinda sequel' to Disgaea, same way Q2 was a sequel to Q1. If you're unfamilar with these types of games, basically you command a team against a team (or sometime multiple teams) of baddies and use attacks and special moves to defeat them. You create all but a few of your team's characters in tons of differant classes, many of which need to be unlocked by defeating that class type in battle. Getting stronger is standard RPG fare, level up after defeating enemies, and your weapons get more powers as you use them more. The game is great for people who like doing cool flashy attacks, doing tons of damage and leveling up like mad... I believe the game lets you level up to 999 and do tens of thousands of damage per attack... course, that's a ways into the game... I have 23 hours spent so far, and my main character is level 24 :D

The other game I just started playing last night (and have been playing all day today) is Neo Contra. This isn't a sideshooter like most of the previous Contras, but it's a top down shooter using the same '3 weapon switchable' scheme that Contra: Shattered Soldier used. Unlike that game, you can pick between differant sets of weapons and unlock more as you play. Play is great, tons of running and gunning and explosions and dodging tons of shots... been loving every second of it. You're ranked at the end of the level on how well you did and the rankings are what unlock stuff (like, the last 2 levels... need to get an A ranking average on the first 5 levels to open them up.) It's not so hard to get rank B-D, but Rank A pretty much means shooting damn near every baddie, and only dying a few times (instant hit deaths make this a challenge). The toughest rank is S, which means every baddie killed, and you get 1 or 2 deaths, depending on the level. I've so far beaten the first 5 levels with a rank of B... and even that was a challenge.
Beyond the gameplay, the cutscenes, some of the battle sequences, and alot of the bosses seem totally over the top and are at times kinda cheesy, or just plain 'wtf'. But the game seems to revel in it... Just the opening cutscene shows the two main heros blasting away millions of baddies, one the the heros holding his katana while riding on top of an airplane spitting an incoming missle in two and it flys directly into his blade... then shows the two running down a corridor, barely escaping a series of firey explosions behind them, jumping in the nic of time from it, falling down a huge shaft... at the bottom of the shaft, a missle shoots out and the guy with the katana has stuck his blade in and is holding onto the other guy as they rocket out and it explodes.

They are of course, fine.

A good example of a stange battling place? How about the beginning of Level 4? Where you are running on top of the blades of a helicopter, shooting down alien hornets. Also, the final boss of this area is a talking dog and you fight him while surfing on a torpedo. :D

I've laughed at all this silly and weird seqeunces and cheesy story/drama bits, but in a way, I think it was meant to be exactly like this, a completely non-realistic, over the top shooter that's just pure fun. 

yes I'd been oogling this title since the trailer was out 

. 

Just been playing it for the last 3 and a half hours, and I am impressed. Its great fun and fixes pretty much all the niggles I had about the 1st Halo. Recommended perchase.

+ Levels are much more detailed and varied.
+ More enemies and varieties of enemies.
+ Cool set pieces.
+ Lots of fun new guns (people who say battle rifle is poor just have no skillz)
+ (SPOILER!!!!!!!! DO NOT READ IF U HAVRNT PLAYED)





Variety of characters to play as in the SP campaign




END SPOILER! 

I've been playing the US Open Beta for a few days now and it's great fun. The character classes are pretty well balanced and there is no "best allaround character/race", which is a good thing. The game world is FUCKING HUGE, not Morrowind-huge, think Morrowind x 2 perhaps even more. I've been playing a lot during the past 3 or so days and I have a lvl 11 human paladin and I already got to defend a few human towns against the invasion of human controlled Horde characters.

http://img129.exs.cx/img129/8984/WoW-DNAUMOV-02.jpg 

DX2 - Invisible War. I like this game. It has a lot of depth and flexibility in how you solve problems. There are lots of interesting NPCs, most of whom keep you totally paranoid. I like the concept of parallel tasks that you can take on or ignore and for the most part in the order that you choose. I like the sombre mood and the occasional humorous treat. It's a good game. My biggest gripe are slow load times and an interface that hurts because they wanted something that fits PCs and consoles.

Painkiller. I'm only 4 levels in and this is a good leave-your-brain-in-New-Seattle-because-you-don't-need-it-here type of game that is good and mindless if devoid of immersion and the plot is thin enough to give you a paper cut. Okay, you need some brain for figuring out Boss puzzles. Is it me, or are secrets really hard to find (Monastery excluded)? In the Cathedral, I could see two but I suspect you need to do some serious trick jumping or fantastic feats that I'll never master. I like my secrets Quake flavour - accesible to the masses. Any general rules for PK secret hunting? I'm not looking for spoilers, just general advice and a sense of how fair they usually are. 

lets get a petition going. 

Dawn Of War obviously. The only game to be playing at the moment. Unless you like cartoons I guess.

Scraggy: Painkiller Secrets are utterly desperate, imagine they've been put together by a combination of Vondur and the 1337est of SDA speedrunners, then told by the game devs to "make them harder to find", and you have some idea... 

Some are just a matter of bothering to walk long distances though. There's a holy item hidden behind a hangar on the military base for instance, that there's just a matter of walking for 5 mins to find. But yeah, most of them are fucking impossible to find.

Other stuff been playing;
WoW beta. Gorgeous graphics in that one, and no gay space marines. Level 14 Hunter with a bear on test25, currently running around picking wood in the forest for some cheap slut that's going to make me some leather pants. Seksi.
I noticed the Link Of The Day on Blue's yesterday was some shitty flash recreation of Pang!. I'd reccomend you all to get mame and emulate some of the original Pang!, especially Super Pang! and Mighty Pang!. Jolly fucking good arcade fun.
Will be getting HL2 today, so hoorj! Some guys here are already playing it (was unlocked an hour ago) and just from seeing the first 5 mins I'm already giddy as hell.
To all you people who've got exams coming up: http://www.popcap.com/gamepopup.php?theGame=diamondmine

In other olds, Shambler is still a frumpy old git, and has the hots for the space marines even though he says he plays as orks. 

nwn currently
waiting for heletwo 

Less smoking crack up through your asshole, more making sense.

Even Jago admits WOW looks like shite (or words to that effect). 

supposedly in stores today (in the US.) But with HL2 and all... not sure when i'll actually play it. 

Metal Gear Solid 3 is out today too right? I've always liked the cinamatic approach those games have taken, even in 2 where many people were turned off. I approched it from the perspective of an interactive movie. This new one looks interesting, with some quality looking character designs. 

I never said that. I said that no MMORPG will rival the graphics of the greatest and latest in 3D shooters due to the size of the game world. That being said, WoW is the best looking MMORPG ever and I never stop to think: "gee, does this game look crappy".

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/screenshots/images/screenoftheday/ss0052.jpg
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/screenshots/images/screenoftheday/ss0065.jpg

How the fuck is that bad graphics? 

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/press_release.php?aid=4967 

That looks to be a good title. My nephew has already asked for it for Christmas. Of course, I'll completely take over his system for a few days as I don't have a Play Station. 

I guess the graphics are technically advanced, but the style is questionable imo. It's bright and vibrant, but very cartoony, maybe too much so. That turns me off from the game initially. 

:( 

Already wrote my positive experiances with my Nintendo DS and Mario 64 DS in the General Abuse thread, so I'll just be brief and say that I'm totally loving the DS and love having it to mess with while I do compiles at work.

In the last few days, I beat Metal Gear Solid 3 (PS2), and loved every second of it. A little more than 64800 seconds (18 hours and something mins) to be exact. I need to go back to the other games in the series to remember exactly what all the signifigance of the story is, but the story still felt meaningful on it's own and I loved some of the turns it took. The sneaking aspects of it are just as fun as they were in MGS2, but my fave areas of the game were the bosses. A few were kinda boring, Ocelot and sadly the Bee Boss, but were completely made up for by the awesome sniper battle with The End (took over an hour to kill him cuz you had to sneak up around him without him seeing you, shoot him, then track him) and some of the final battles which I won't spoil. I will say that the bit with The Sorrow was one of the high points for me. So, if any of you liked the previous games in the series, definatly go grab this. And if you like games with some good combat and sneaking puzzles, try it out.

Also been playing a bit of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2). What can I say, anouther awesome GTA game. Really enjoying the addition of the Bicycle and being able to change your appearance. Been fucking around and I'm still on the first island, but so far the missions have been a good mix and there are a few differant guys to get them from even at the beginning. I'll update with more about them as I go, but I will say that this game will be very enjoyable to anyone who liked the othe GTA games.

And finally, been playing Final Fantasy 1 through the Final Fantasy Origins collection (PS1). Old game, updated graphics (I think it's the engine from FF3/FF6j) with some cinimatics added too. Really been liking this as the last few times I've attempted FF1, I was either too young to really 'get' how to properly play an RPG, or just never got very far before moving onto newer games. Currently, my party is all lvl 14. I have Bal the Warrior, Metl the Theif, Biff the White Mage, and I, Scamp, am the almighty Black Mage. Got 10 hours into the game so far, and I'm just about to go into Terra Cave to restore the light to the Earth Crystal.

After FF1, I'll start on the other game on the disc, Final Fantasy 2, which is FF2 Japan, not FF2 US which was FF4 Japan. Peeked quickly at it and it looks interesting, can't wait to get to it! 

on being in your ff2 party 

I was thinking Myself, you, a female func_mapper or #terrafusionite, and someone else. 

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