The Videogames Tab

You're probably right. I think I've even still got the box, which is rare for me so I must have had my reservations even when unwrapping it.

In other news, my search for a comfortable PS3 controller has ended in the form of an ... ermmm ... Xbox 360 controller! A wired one with a cheap Chinese copy of the XCM Cross Fire attachment costing less combined than a new Dualshock 3.

It works surprisingly well, too. Missing the motion sensors but I care not a fig, no noticeable lag either and it even vibrates when it's supposed to.

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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

Blazing through Shenmue 2 ... not really.

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You mean you don't remember this in Freddy's Dead, Gol?




I'm pretty sure the Power Glove didn't make it to these shores.

Of all the remastered PS2 games arriving on the PS3, this pack has got me excited:



Another 2011 release looks excellent - Journey



It's from the Flower and flOw people.

Yeah, my brother adores Colossus and is flipping out at the prospect of both a pristine HD version, and whatever that dude who made it is putting out next.

Hah, no! They should run that as a double bill with the Fred Savage advert-flick

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

Yep, The Last Guardian is its name and it looks hugely interesting.

I've got the HD-ified God of War I & II and Prince of Persia Sands of Time games and the one thing that lets both titles down graphically is the quality of the cut scenes which are just upscaled standard def like you get with a DVD player connected via HDMI. I suppose it would be far too time consuming (and costly) to rework them because they'd probably have to start from scratch.

It'll be interesting to see what Team Ninja do with the cut scenes in the Ico/SotC release.

EDIT - According to Wikipedia, The Last Guardian is going to be known as 'Trico, the man-eating eagle' in Japan. Kinda literal, eh?

Are the God of War games known as 'Violent misanthrope rampages with massive blades'? Is Tomb Raider 'Girl with pixelated arse and conical bosoms jumps and shoots things while desecrating priceless antiques'?

We need to be told.

Game Informer is running a feature on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim this month, so many more details (and screens!) have been revealed:

The Story
Obviously, the game is set in Skyrim, the snowy home of the Nords, 200 years after the events of Oblivio. You play as the Dragonborn (a dragon hunter), mentored by the last living Blade member. There is a civil war going on after the death of the king, with a strong hint that two brothers will wage war and ultimately cause Alduin, a world-destroying dragon, to be awakened.

The Player
Third-person view has been improved. When creating your character, you will be able to edit the body as well as the face. Players (and NPCs) can now have beards. There are 10 races to choose from, but classes are no more: your class is determined by the skills you practice in the game. Players can also now sprint, which takes up stamina.

The Engine
The game runs on a brand new engine. Snow falls dynamically and scenery is more detailed (trees now have fixed branches and leaves). Wind is used to determine the flow of water and the direction in which tree leaves point and blow. Also, in-game shadows are dynamic.

Combat and Weapons
Bethesda is working hard to make sure every weapon type feels different when used. Also, you can now smith your own weapons out of red hot metal. There is a duel-wield option, in which you can wield any one-handed weapon (or shield) in your left or right hand, or assign magic skills to separate hands. So a warrior might use two swords or sword-shield combination, a mage might use one spell per hand, and a battle-mage might use one sword and keep one hand free for magic. Weapons will also have unique finishing moves.

Magic
There are now five magic schools: Destruction, Alteration, Conjuration, Restoration and Illusion. Mysticism has been removed. Enchanting is now a skill.

Levels and Skills
There will be 18 skills to choose from (three less than Oblivion). The skills will be tailored to you, so if you would like to be a powerful mage, you can develop skills relevant to that goal (though there is still room for those wishing to explore all skills). The game now has perks as well, similar to Fallout 3. You can choose a perk when you level up, and you can also choose to increase your health, magicka, or stamina at each level. Once you have reached level 50, it will be harder to level up and you won’t be able to select new perks.

Enemies and Wildlife
Ambient creatures will include zombies, skeletons, trolls, giants, ice wraiths, giant spiders, dragons, wolves, horses, elk, mammoth, and saber-toothed cats, among others.

Cities
There are five “massive” cities with more to do now in each city, such as cooking, farming, mining, woodcutting, and blacksmithing. Exactly how these will work, or how they benefit the player, is yet to be described. Other aspects seem more fluid. Killing a shop keeper, for instance, will not close it down for good; a relative may take over the shop. There is also speculation that cities will have to fend off occasional dragon attacks.

NPCs
Non-playable characters are more dynamic and interactive. When you talk to someone, the camera won’t simply zoom into their face; NPCS will continue moving around and doing things while engaged in conversation. Depending on where you drop something, NPCs may interact differently with it. For example, dropping a weapon might lead to a child trying to return it to you, or spark a fight between men who want to claim it. Oh, and if you didn’t catch that, there are now children. You can also duel NPCs in cities.

Quests
Quests will be more dynamic than ever and some quests will be randomly generated for you. For example, an NPC might ask you to find something, and the game will look at the nearby dungeons you’ve explored, automatically set the mission in a place you’ve never visited, and designate opponents that are appropriately matched to your strengths and weaknesses. Some quests will also be tailored to your preferences (magic, combat, etc).

NOTE: The following screens have been scanned from a magazine, hence the poor quality.

That reminds me I must 100% Oblivion before the new game (seeing as it'll probably take me months) comes out. I've done everything there is to do over various gamesaves on different platforms but never all on the one.

Bought a couple of games last week - Mafia II and Divinity II Dragon Knights.

Mafia II is as ultimately frustrating as the first game. The world is lovingly reproduced but there's just not enough to do in it outside of the story missions - if the GTA guys had been let loose with the raw material I'm sure it would have been a sure fire winner.

I played Divinity II for a few hours last year and sold it on. The game had potential but was so rough around the edges it became annoying - A typical European RPG, in other words, like Two Worlds, Risen, the Gothics etc that might be ok on PC but the studio obviously hasn't had the time and/or money to make the necessary alterations for console play.

I'd heard that the repackaged Divinity II was much better so I grabbed it (at a healthily reduced price, otherwise I'd probably not have bothered) and, boy, I'm glad I did.

Kudos to the studio for rebuilding the game practically from the ground up - It looks tons better (stunning in places), plays much more smoothly and has a 50+ hour expansion included along with the 50+ hour game. Divinity II DKS now shoots straight to the top of my European RPG (console) chart - OK, there's not a lot of competition but the game can now hold its head up alongside the big boys from Bethesda and Bioware.

It's not far off The Witcher in terms of badly voice-acted, dour, grimy goodness and it's probably no coincidence that The Witcher also received an almost rebuild (in the form of a huge free patch to those who already had the game and a new retail edition) after complaints about the performance of the original game.

Viva Europa!

Mass Effect without a doubt has the all time worst auto-saves of any game. And the elevators are stupid and the game is glitchy as hell, and the second one is worse.

I played Colossus twice (normal and hard), and then I went out and found a copy of Ico to play. Both of them are simply two of the greatest titles on the PS2. Hands down.

I'll be all over the combo pack, as I never cared for God of War.

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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

That's because you've got it set on Hyperbole. Go into Options and change it to Normal.

Aaaanyway. Can't sleep so decided to see if my first impressions of NFS Hot Pursuit were on the money - Yep, it's extremely disappointing. It looks lovely but drives like arse, a bit like the Alfa Romeo 8C, and to make matters worse was developed by Criterion, who do the Burnout games.

Burnout Paradise pees on NFS Hot Pursuit from a great height and it's, like, dead old and stuff.

I wish that EA would embrace once more what the Need For Speed games were best at: Camp, tongue-in-cheek Fast & Furious take off's.

EDIT - Ha! I stuck Hot Pursuit up on eBay and it sold within minutes. I put in a cheeky 'buy it now' a couple of quid less than I paid for it and some poor soul took the bait.

I must be such a numpty, but I could never figure out the difficulty setting on Colossus. That's to say, I'm pretty sure I was playing it on hard the 2nd time through, but the hint/HUD-free environment left me a bit confused, and the beasts didn't seem any harder, and none of the purported new weapons seemed to be turning up. So yeah... chances are I still had it on the initial difficulty

Ico was just a lovely bit of story/puzzle cohesion. Played it a year or so back and it definitely still stands up.

I am so very annoyed I don't have a Guardian-friendly PS3

I played a bit of Shadow of The Colossus again a few months ago and time hasn't been kind to the way PS2 games look on modern TVs. There's a 480p option but it's still awfully blocky so I'm really looking forward to the HD-ifying.

Old Xbox games, on the whole, look far better because almost all of them had at least 480p settings, some even outputting in 720p HD.

My two old last gen consoles only get wheeled out when I'm really bored now. Even though the 360 is backwards compatible with the majority of its predecessor's library the emulation isn't great in lots of games so there's only one solution when I fancy a quick KOTOR or Ninja Gaiden - The
Big Brick gets dusted off.

Sadly, it's not as blingtastic as my old Big Brick, where I admit to going a bit mad with the spray paint.



Must have been the fumes.

Of course, the PS3 doesn't have any backwards compatibility with the PS2 any more but Sony must be sniffing a nice little earner because of the warm receptions to the God Of War and Prince of Persia re-releases.

I want Xenosaga and I want Metal Gear Solid 3 and I want Final Fantasy X, and I bet Square are looking at the PS2 Final Fantasys because of how well they remixed the NES and SNES titles for the DS.

Incidentally, Square have just announced Final Fantasy XIII-2 for later on in the year. If it's more of the same beautiful but massively linear and thus dull experience I don't think I'll bite. I thought they were developing FFXIII Verses, a PS3 exclusive using the FFXIII engine but featuring a lot more action? Apparently it's still in production but not expected to land this year.

Seeing as FFXIII-2 is multi-platform. The 360 still shifts more units than the PS3. We are in TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMES. MOney talks etc etc etc.

My local Sainsburys is flogging FFXIII on both platforms for a tenner just 10 months after release. Just sayin', Square.

Aye. Seriously, push left stick up, spam X for auto attack, that's the game! Just go watch a let's play for the admittedly beautiful cut scenes but don't pay a dime for that garbage. Ugh.

On the bright side; Mass Effect 2 for the PS3 hits Europe tomorrow and I will be doing nuffin' else! Which class would you reccomend Tatty, I hear Soldiers are boring.

Finished New Vegas, clocking in at about 37 hours of playtime, which was a bit of a disappointment. I guess that's what you get when you pick the 'Sidebets' quest line and choose to ignore the majority of the families. I had a good time though but I was very forgiving. Buggy, glitchy, crashy, freezy, terrible NPC AI, companions that disappear but the fact that I couldn't stop playing until I beat it testifies to what a good game it is. I won't play it again though.

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The Freedom Roads

I'm slowly working my way through New Vegas (360, though I picked up a cheap PS3 copy, lord knows why, which I've barely touched) getting everyone onside before the final confrontation. As you say it's very good but buggy and I still prefer Fallout 3 overall.

Just.

I'd go with a Vanguard or Infiltrator for ME2. Soldiers are ok but you don't get the cool Biotic powers - Although sometimes you can end up spamming a certain power a bit too much.

Don't think the game's out in Britain/Ireland until Froday.

Really? In my opinion there's no contest. New Vegas is much more colorful instead of that murky brown that's freakin' everywhere in Fallout 3. Add to that the ability to actually aim down your gun(!), the weapon mods and the whole faction system makes for a clearly superior game, I think.

ME2 currently installing. 46... 47... 48...

The iron sight aiming is awful, though, and instead of brown, New Vegas is George Michael orange. I'll give you weapon mods and the factions, true.

I'll stick by my original thoughts on the game - side quests are much harder to find. I'm lv 20 and have had to work my arse off to get there - it's taken me away from the flow of the game but the game gets stupidly hard towards the end (for my lightly armoured spiv, anyway) so you need to grind to get the most out of it.

Bethesda/Obsidion could also have done much more to stop the game feeling like an expansion pack - a new Pip Boy design would have been nice, as would a different HUD. It's also a lot buggier on the 360 than F3 was and I've had to reload numerous times when quests just stopped working.

If you've only played F3 on the PS3 then I'm not surprised you like New Vegas more because the little bit I've tried on the Playstation was far less troublesome.

I've also spent sunk the vast majority of my gaming time into both 3 and New Vegas - at present have racked up roughly 60 hours on each, give or take (not including losing my first playthrough due to corrupt autosaving bastardry - how in the hell could I forget to manually save when playing a Fallout game...) and am trying to get 360 achievements. At present, I'm not sure which one I prefer out of 3 or Vegas. Not sure if I can really compare them.

Have you taken the Wild Wasteland perk in New Vegas?

It's a lot more subtle than I thought it would be, like what I spotted written on the wall near where you take the boat to see Deputy Ops Rawls Caesar for the first time.



Bloody Monty python fans get everywhere.