The Videogames Tab

Heh, I remember when there wasn't such a thing as a game save.

I think the first ones I remember were long strings of code which you could input and return to where you left off.

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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 3 first impressions:

The immediately good -

It's Mass Effect baby!

The immediately hmmmmmm -

The RPG-ness of it looks no less dumbed down than ME2's. Character progression is awfully linear and you've got no inventory. There's a bit of an improvement in that now your squad's alt outfit options carry differing stats but that's the only plus point I can see after a few hours play.

The face gen's worse than ME2's.

You've got a frigging space marine in your squad.

Bloom. Too. Much. Bloom. I'm gonna hit the config .ini file.

I wish I'd kept my old save file.

They put all the weapon mods etc. back in though - definitely more RPG action this time round!

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True, I'd forgotten about that.

I'm not really hating on the game, by the way - I loved ME2 but at the end of the day it was barely an RPG and had hoped for the intricacy (some might say faff but I'd say they need to play more CRPGs - being a pack mule is part of the fun ) of the first game allied to the polish and atmosphere of the second.

ME3 isn't the Gears-of-War-with-conversation-trees that I feared it might become but I'd a bit sad they didn't go further to appease the old-school Bioware fans. In terms of story I'm only a few hours in (level 6 or 7) so can't comment on that other than the 'building an army' thing is kinda cool and a natural progression from ME2's 'building a squad'.

I also miss Samara, but don't tell me if she makes an appearance!.



What an entrance.

My shep murdered Samara...

Ha! I'm guessing she got in the way of your Renegade-ness.

I like to think of her as a sexy, blue-skinned, female Wyatt Earp. Kinda like Aria with morals.

Did anyone know that you can now buy Final Fantasy VII for PC as a direct download from Square and it'll work on modern machinery? Nope, me neither - This one snuck well under my radar.

Worth a punt for Ł7.99, I think. Downloading it now.

I wonder if the mods for the disc-based PC version will work on it?

Link

Probably won't. I've had loads of people tell me to play FF7. I started with FF8 and loved it, 9 was crap, 10 was awesome, didn't play 11, 12 was quite good, and I got insta bored with 13.

I think I would have loved it had I played it back wwhen it was new but gaming has moved on.

What do you reckon? Worth a play?

Lisa wanted horror themed fun on Saturday, and I think we clocked about 12 hours on the system together.

Alan Wake - Finally finished this one up, and we both liked it quite a bit, weak ending and all.

Bioshock - This is one of the games we like to play together, and we know the first few levels REALLY well by now. Ran through the sections leading up to the first Big Daddy fight, beat him, and then the game glitched out and the little sister was gone. We left the area and came back, and of course both the Daddy and Sister were back, but none of our ammo was back, so we stopped playing. Then it was time for dinner, after which I played:

Fallout : New Vegas - Enjoying it so far!


RE: Bioshock - It really is game breaking and pretty disheartening when this happens. The game auto-saves all the time, so it is VERY easy, it seems, to have a Little sister glitch out and vanish, and the Big Daddy resurrects and at that point, with almost no ammo, you are definitely and most frustratingly stuck, having to roll back to much earlier save, which Lisa sees as a reason to stop playing the game. I have played through the game a few times, and this has happened on two different play-throughs. We don't have enough cash to buy ammo, and we used almost all of it fighting the big Daddy (and beating him) the first time. So, currently, the game is saved with us at 0 ammo on almost all weapons, 23 dollars, and when we try to leave to to go to the next area, we get a warning that we haven't collected enough Adam to proceed. The battle with the Big Daddy is hard enough, but to beat it and have the game give you a big F U, making you fight him a second time (with next to no ammo) is really lame.

That said, the game's theme is strong, and I love the play-spaces they created in the underwater city. Very memorable.

As with a lot of old stuff, if you've not played it in the past and have fond memories then it'll probably not be very satisfying. I first played FFVII when it was released (and still have the discs, along with most of the other FF games) so I'm the target market.

The game is actually looking a lot better than I expected - I'd read that it was the untouched 1997 game ported to a new engine which would support modern PCs so was prepared for a pixelated low-res mess, like a DOSbox port.

I was wrong - The models are the same as they always were but scaled to high resolution monitors so no jaggies at all on the characters. The battle scenes look especially crisp - Similar to an ePSXe emulated game with all the smoothing options turned to the max.

I'll run FRAPS and get some screenies.

If they do the same with FF VIII then I'll be in hog heaven.

EDIT - Here we go.

Damn...that's tempting....

Only thing I'll say is that a game like this really needs playing with a controller and you'll need a standard USB one - I couldn't get the 360 controller to work. I've got a PS2-to-usb adapter somewhere but no idea if it'll even work on Windows 7.

That'd be perfect.

I was underwhelmed by ME3. It was decent, definitely worth playing through, but I enjoyed ME2 more.

I absolutely love FF7. One of my top 5 favorite RPGs. Owned it on the PS, played it through numerous times. Maybe that's why I'm not too keen on owning it again. There are so many games yet to be played, and I'm contented with all the fond memories of it I have already.

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#31 on SC's Top 100 Mofos list!!

Oh, and I'm looking forward to Sleeping Dogs. Anybody who played it, is it more Saints Row or more GTA?

Sleeping Dogs is my game of the year so far.

I wrote about it a page or two back and it's nowhere near as bonkers as Saints Row. Think Yakuza crossed with GTA, Batman Arkham Asylum/City and Shenmue with a bit of Infernal Affairs thrown in.

It's not original but it's a heck of a lot of fun.

Currently Playing: Retro stuff.

Spent the past few days going backwards to some old classics.

PS2 Lego games (Star Wars 1 & 2 and Indiana Jones).
SNES Mario Kart, Jurassic Park, Starwing.
PS1 Wipeout, Tenchu Stealth Assassins, and have spent two days playing Theme Hospital.

Theme Hospital is seriously addictive! Managed to complete it, all you get at the end though is a black screen with the word "Fin"...
Glad I saved the level though before I agreed to finish, means I can go back and say "No" when it asks if I want to finish... I'm working on filling the entire hospital with stuff rather than ending with half a hospital full.

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Well, like the pets that Pavlov bloke had, as soon as Hearthfire hit XBL I bought it.

Plus points -

It's larger in scope than the Build Your Own Home (BYOH from now on, saves my arthritic fingers ) mod in that you can build in different locations. It looks like you can build in Holds where there isn't a house already available for sale, mine's in Falkreath.

It's not as mind-numbingly dull collecting the resources needed for your build as BYOH.

The adoption bit isn't *quite* as twee as I thought it would be. Yup, that's a plus.

Minus points:

It's broken. Well, mine is anyway - I can't move my spouse and sprog into the finished house as the dialogue isn't there. I can't even move them from one of my existing pre-Hearthfire houses to another and the dialogue was definitely there before I bought my plot of land.

The instructions given in the book you find at the land plot are far too vague and had me searching the internet to find out what the hell to do next.



If it's me that's doing something wrong with the spouse problem (I'd have paid good money to have the wife living somewhere else when I was married ) then Hearthfire is probably worth the 400 MS Points. You potentially get the most impressive looking house in the vanilla game and the adoption thing might be fun for refugees from The Sims. The only children I've seen in Skyrim are Nords - where are the Redguard, Breton, Bosmer etc kids?

What we can conclude from this is that, as well as having problems with stairs, The Dovahkiin is obviously sterile...

Well, I've now got the option to move the family to the new house - Apparently you need to build wardrobes and chests for the wife to agree to come. Aren't a few beds and a barrel or two enough?

Women...

Of course, I only figured this out after visiting the Beth forums and reading posts from other people about the spouse 'bug'. Thanks Bethesda!

I downloaded Hearthfire yesterday too, but unfortunately, the last time I saved I was stuck in the Soul Cairn. A couple hours later, I was back on my mortal stomping grounds, but by that time I was too sleepy to make any sense of the home building guide they provide for you. Sigh.

This thing better let me build an Iron Man-esque rotunda of armor suits.

Mine's turned into a right little brat. Wish I'd kept the receipt now.