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As I said in the Heavy Rain thread I made (spoilers beware in that one), I got the good ending and it was exactly what I wanted. Thanks to my choices.

I also ended up going back and altering some things in another playthrough of Heavy Rain. The bad guy won that time, and I'm pretty close to seeing all the endings. Just a couple more alterations and I will have seen them all.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

Yep, finished up Heavy Rain and Mass Effect 2. Now I can get to some Bad Company (until Final Fantasy maybe).

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Well, I'm about an hour into Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and I'm kinda underwhelmed. It's fine; I'm enjoying myself, but it mostly just feels like a less-polished/less-thrilling version of Modern Warfare so far. I'm sure it'll pick up, though, and MW provides an absurd baseline to live up to. Reasonably fun so far.

Bad Company's single player does get it's behind handed to it by MW2, but multiplayer it's not even a contenst.

just got final fantasy 13 on ps3 this morning and loving it so far

Wow I'm really impressed with the jump in quality from gamefly since I started my membership there a couple months ago. The shipping time on games has gone down drastically, one of the biggest reasons for this is that they now send your next game once your local mail scans it - rather than when they actually receive it. The game availability as well has improved, I'm on a long streak of getting brand new games right as they come out.

The multiplayer for the original Bad Company was HORRIBLE.

Hopefully they improved.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

I traded in White Knight Chronicles and Tales of Vesperia which left FFXIII costing one whole pound.

About half an hour in and impressions are positive overall. It looks beautiful and battles are nicely paced and seem to be nicely evolved from FFXII in that there's more of a sense of 'turn taking'. Camera movement is a bit gloopy, though - smooth but nowhere near as fast as something like Uncharted (which is similarly graphically impressive and thus a burden on resources).

Once the story begins to unfold I'll have more of an opinion.

EDIT - I read quite often about how much games cost nowadays (ie: they're much too expensive) but remember back to my buying of Final Fantasy VII in 1997. It cost £49.99 whereas XIII seems to be working out at between £35 and £40.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Mass Effect



My video card went in my PC, putting WOW on hold for a bit. I grabbed Mass Effect in the bargain bin, which is turning out to be one of the best deals I have ever gotten. This is fast becoming one of my favorite games of all time. My GF has a paragon soldier career going, while I have a Renegade Infiltrator. I had forgotten how much fun BioWare RPGs can be...Engaging story, amazing music, and the combat is super fun. The only chink in the armor are the vehicle missions, which are still fun, but a bit frustrating at times.

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Wait til you get your hands on ME2, then. No vehicles!

I heard it's vastly different from the first in a lot of ways. Hopefully all for the better? I hope they didn't mess with the formula too much... My GF said you sent a message to her while she was playing or something? She was logged in on my account cause we started her career while I was logged on :-/. I never think to change that mode on the X-box when we go to play.

Heh, it's ok. It's a good job I didn't tell some off-colour jokes.

Yeah, ME2 is just a whole pile slicker. Texture pop-in, which gets annoying in ME1, is all but gone and combat is much more fulfilling. They've dumbed down levelling a bit, though, which isn't so cool, but the sequel is a marked improvement on an already great game.

Even MORE fulfilling combat? I love me some combat in ME! The soldier career seems all run-n0gun with assault rifles, while my renegade infiltrator and her squad have medium combat skill, but lots of tech and biotic skills. I love disabling and tossing bots around while surgically striking with pistols and sniper rifle.

I must also comment on just how much run the Renegade side of the game is. Find a poor scientist hiding in a shed, babbling about dark prophecy? Time to punch him out! Underworld boss causing a bit too much trouble in an area? Shoot him. Some ding bat reporter offers a few creds for some info? Pull out the pistol for an extra stack of cash at gun point. Really having a blast with it!

I did notice the texture pop in now and then, but it doesn't seem to bother me much.

Yep! If you're focussing on Soldier then getting into cover is an awful lot easier (a button press as opposed to running up to a wall and hoping) and weapons don't overheat any more - they use 'ammo' (which are clips designed to prevent overheating, to fit with the lore of the first game). Sniping's a lot more fun too.

As you say, the biotic abilities are really where the game excels and they're slicker too, as are (the still basic) squad commands. Importing your well-loved character from ME1 is also welcome, something Bioware are implementing in the new Dragon Age game next week apparently.

I got the feeling when playing ME2 that the 360 had been stretched to the limits of its capabilities without any framerate downsides.

My character is one black lipstick wearing, dark eye shadowed bitch. She's harsh, ruthless, and sometimes downright mean. Psyched I get to bring her along for the 2nd version.

Here's the big question. Should I just blow off Final Fantasy 13 completely at this point? I will be neck deep in ME games for a while, methinks...

Seeing as you'll probably want to play Mass Effect through again with a different character class as soon as you finish it, I'd probably hold off for a week or two.

FFXIII is luscious (I'm 2 hours in) but I doubt if it'll go down as one of the franchise's classic titles. From the reviews I've read there are no differences between the console versions other than the 360 one running at 576p as opposed to 720p (upscaling to 1080p and full 1080p for cutscenes) on the PS3 with the resulting slight drop in detail. I'd say they did that in order to cut down a bit on disc space rather than Xbox performance issues, but not being a fanboy I'm far too level-headed about such things.

Anyone else looking forward to the Dragon Age expansion, or are already playing it? I spent over 90 hours playing the first one, it was insane.

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The Freedom Roads

I picked this up yesterday for £5.99 and me and my son are both hooked, it is such an awesome game to play Has anyone played it and what do you think?

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~In the event of a Zombie Uprising, remember to sever the head or destroy the brain!~

Totally.

DA: Origins was my favourite rpg since Oblivion and I'm still putting hours into it in search of that elusive Platinum trophy. DA: Awakening is out next week, I think.



I spent half an hour each beating Flemeth and the dragon guarding the Urn of Sacred Ashes so imagine two of the buggers at once!

n3wt - I liked the first one on PS2 but haven't tried Mercs 2 yet. As you say, it seems really cheap everywhere now so I'll probably pick it up some day.

I like Oblivion a whole hell of a lot. A tremendous achievement in scope, beauty and development. A fun, sandbox game I could jump into at leisure whenever I felt like it. Alas, the open-ended nature of the game sometimes made the player feel adrift, and I never really felt engaged by the narrative - It seemed tacked on in many ways.

Mass Effect just hits all the buttons for me, and is the first game I have gotten up early on a weekend to play in ages. The characters and story are incredibly engaging. I just don't mind paying the cost of sacrificing the fully open world for a story driven gaming experience like this one.

As for replaying ME, I am already getting both the paragon soldier experience and the renegade infiltrator experience as LT and I play along together with our two careers. Still, I imagine you are probably right in that I will run through it again at some point as a third class with a different squad combo.

Looks like I am too late on FF 13... I had it pre-ordered and it shipped today. I will just store it until I get around to playing.