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Half Life 2 > Crysis

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I've only ever played the demo, but heard pretty good things about Crysis, once you stop politically educating North Koreans and get on to the aliens and destructible environments. Liked the suit set up and the stealthery.

That said HL2 has been giving my heartrate a workout with its zombie-town-of-the-headcrabs heebeegeebies. I'm not normally a big horror-game fan but I have to say it was definitely effective. No matter how much I tried to conserve my ammo I ended up down to my crowbar, and at one point a radiator, on a few occasions. Then add in those rooftop geiger-cat beasties, which caused me to plummet gracelessly off a rooftop at one point, and then stuck with me as I somehow ricocheted my way to the final section, and it was pretty intense.

Dear lord tho the endless tortured wailings and weepings of the crab-captured is a pretty horrendous backdrop to an evenings' chilling out. Makes you feel ok about putting them out of their misery (but who ever worried about nixing zombies in the first place? )

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

You make a good point tbh. What forum is that?

Anyway..

...I've heard Crysis is probably the nicest looking game ever, but the gameplay os somewhat lacking, though I also heard warhead ( I think it's warhead) Is meant to be much better.

Though I'd love to try it, this PC can't even play Morrowind, so the chances of playing Crysis is non-existent.

If I told you the name of the forum I'd have to shoot you. And I don't like shooting people, so much so that I hardly ever do it.

Morrowind, funnily enough, was the game (along with Neverwinter Nights) that first made me upgrade my PC instead of just buying a more powerful one. An Nvidia G-force 4 series, if I remember correctly. Phones are more powerful these days.

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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

Well, it's here. It's shiny and black (kinda like a gimp suit) and has those awful touch sensitive buttons, which I'd forgotten about and the PS3 quietly dumped when they launched the Slim. The main selling point to me is the 250GB drive which means I'm gonna be doing a lot less swapping around and re-downloading DLC.

The licence transfer bobbins was 50% fine - The licences themselves turned up on the new 360 instantly but then I went, as instructed, and queued up all my DLC and Arcade stuff online to be downloaded. Went to the download window on the 360 itself and everything was pending with a little warning sign saying that the content was registered to another console. Hmmm.

The downloads worked fine (and the ones I tried, played, thank god) when I did the queueing from the console myself. Go figure.

EDIT - Finally worked it out. I needed to start the download queue manually from the dashboard.

Wow the 360 is quiet - similar to the PS3 at idle. With a disc spinning it's a bit more noticeable but doesn't sound like a jet taking off any more, a bit like the faint hum from a fridge a couple of rooms away in fact, but still a bit noisier than a PS3 in the same situation. Quality-wise the thing's top notch - quite a bit of heat is being expelled from the big vent on the top (no more than a PS3 though) but that's what you want. Poor heat dissipation was one of the major flaws in the old 360.

One thing's bugging me (apart from the shiny plastic drawing more fingerprints than the cast of CSI on a training day) is that when the console's horizontal, the top isn't flat but resembles a very shallow 'V' and the vents go more than half way across the surface leaving no space for my surround system's central speaker which lived quite happily on the old Xbox.

Currently playing Super Mario World

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"Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously."

Im not sure who reccomended The Orange Box to me (im looking towards taci) but bravo sir whoever it was. I borrowed it off my brother-in-law and with in hours Id bought my own copy on shebay. Ive completed Portal and what a game that is on its own, I really want a portal gun and after playing it some cake. Im currently 6hrs into HL2 it is just phenominal best game I have ever played I love the crossbow its awesome for sniping.

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

I still need to finish Episode 2.

Dunno if it was me or not but I've seen both you and golg playing it recently and wondered where my copy went to! I must have traded it in a moment of weakness (and poverty) and really must remedy that soon. I'd played HL2 (I think it's the only FPS I genuinely love) to death on PC and never had much of an interest in Team Fortress so that was probably the reason I let it go.

Eejit.

EDIT - I bought Deathspank on XBL and it's good fun but that Monkey Island-style (unsurprising considering where it came from) humour grates on me a bit. Never subscribed to the view that those old Lucas Arts point-and-click games were the dog's danglers.

It's a bit repetitive too, but no more so than Diablo, the game it so obviously wants to be deep down.

Yeah I've been waving the flag for HL2 recently. On to Ep 1 now and enjoying the transition. Can see why people who waited a while might have been underwhelmed a bit at the lack of innovation, but they'd been spoilt it seems . The rehashing was a tad annoying at first but the little spins on the familiar add spice (zomcombines, converted roboball things, snipers on your side etc). I've been enjoying it as a continuation, and it's just great to be able to keep playing and feeling like part of an ongoing story (Altho lord knows I'm gonna need another gaming holiday after all this obsessing ).

Now that I'm thinking about the Xbox, one thing has consistently bugged me about the controller - the concave thumbsticks. I just don't find them precise enough, particularly compared to any Sony analogue controller I've owned and I worked out it's down to them not having convex tops to the sticks.

Y'see, when I'm pushing them towards their extremes I find myself putting more pressure on the sides of the tops of the sticks (if you're still with me ) rather than my thumb staying in the same place (the centre) all the time with a Dualshock 2 or 3.

The solution was simple. A quick trip to eBay led me to buy a couple of pairs of aftermarket 360 thumbsticks which ape the Playstation's. The result? Damn nearly perfect but hard to find - Sony sticks are 10 a penny but are slightly different in shape so these need to be custom made and I just noticed the guy I bought them from on eBay no longer stocks them.

Got a pair of these as well and, while not as good as the complete replacement stick (which involves taking apart your controller) they're pretty good, if a little garish. Very sticky.

The controller which comes with the new 360s has a slightly different, rougher texture to the sticks but I've not used it enough yet to see any improvement.

Im loving the whole game of HL2 it is definatly the best game ive played, ive put allot more hours into other games but I havent enjoyed them half as much as this I havent played any games today been to the park etc but hopfully get some HL2 in later

I'm trying to get Earth Defence Force 2017. I heard it's not that good in single player, but co-op is meant to be amazing. I can't find it anywhere as it's out of stock, and where it is in stock it's rather pricey due to it being out of print

Didn't have batteries in my camera when I posted about the controller mod:



I think it makes a serious difference (the black d-pad was included with the sticks but sadly that doesn't make a serious difference to the floaty crap it already is) but maybe I've just got funny-shaped hands.

just saying ...

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Man, I can't wait to play HL2. I'm still trying to finish the first one, still in ON THE RAILS level. Yes, I'm that delayed.

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I need money !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Final Fantasy XIV Beta impressions so far:

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag

Incomprehension

More lag

More incomprehension - It's as user-unfriendly as WoW is the opposite. Much the same as my brief dalliance with FFXI, then.

It looks really pretty but the friggin' awful lag (it's a Beta, but still...) makes it seem like I'm trying to run Crysis on my 10 year old laptop.



If you blink slowly and move your head towards the screen you'll get similar framerates to my 4870.