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One of my favorite games of all time.

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Picked up Demon's Souls today - the ltd edition was the same price as the regular and it comes with a strategy guide, a bonus because it's supposed to be fiendishly difficult.

Picked up and sold Alpha Protocol within a matter of days - Such a good idea but so woefully executed. Ugly, glitchy and not much fun, I expected better from Obsidian (KOTOR2 and the upcoming Fallout New Vegas for Bethesda) and something along the lines of a modern Deus Ex. Nope. It's just a poor Splinter Cell rip-off with a similar conversation tree and levelling system to Mass Effect.

Finally, if I trade in my 360 Pro with wireless adapter I can get the new 360 S for just £80. To put that in perspective, I've been thinking of getting a 250GB hard drive for the existing 360 and that costs ... around £80. Hmmm.

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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

Demon's Souls, then.

Keeping in mind that this is only after half an hour's play it's one of the most atmospheric and unique games I've experienced in a long time - notice I didn't say 'good' yet, hopefully that'll come after a few more hours.

It's effing brutal, though. It doesn't matter where you die on a level (and you die loads) you still get transported back to the beginning of it to try again. It kinda fits with the whole nihilistic nature of the world. /me trying to be positive



The online aspect is very clever - You can leave notes for other players to warn them or guide them past enemies and traps, clicking bloodstains handily shows you how other players met their doom and you can invade another player's game to beat seven shades of brown stuff out of him (and they to you) if you so wish, or co-op against big baddies.

So far, Demon's Souls reminds me of Shadow of The Colossus and Ico, particularly in the art direction - it's made by the same people who did Okami on the PS2. There's not much hand-holding at the beginning (just a basic 'this button does that' tutorial level/prologue which is more than SoTC got, I suppose) and you're off slaying demons.

Effing brutal ones.

Now, if you're one of the few brave (and old) souls who has Final Fantasy VII for PC, and I think I do somewhere, this will be of interest.

I'd read about various graphics patches coming out over the past few years but there now seems to be an all-in-one installer - Link

Vidi:

&feature=PlayList&p=8CD0A7B50B8F1569&playnext_from=PL&index=0

Finally got everything set up and I must say Crysis is only half brilliant. The graphics, physics are probably the best out there right now. But it doesn't do well to make you feel empowered. Your guns take up to 10 shots to bring someone down, you're suit powers are very limited, and the A.I. see's me before I see them. It's challenging ....

League of Legends is an entirely different game now though, crisp gaphics and 60 fps

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Tried it and things are a heck of a lot better than the video - Framerates are massively improved and, thanks to modern PCs, possibly even faster than the vanilla game. Dunno what resolution the Youtube clip was running at but I'm on 1680x1050 (with 4:3 forced in the config file) and it's a degree more detailed too.

A lot of things look a bit out of place such as the new detailed character polygons against the old blocky backgrounds but battles have been totally revamped visually and the whole thing now runs on Vista and Win7 perfectly.

EDIT - Oh yeah, the soundtrack is also totally re-recorded.

Now, if they could do the same thing for Final Fantasy VIII I'd be a happy man.

Well, enough time has gone by for Bethesda to generate some patches and a few expansions for Fallout 3, so it was time for me to buy the game, finally.



This was a holiday weekend, so I had some family obligations (they have a pool), but I was able to fire it up late Saturday night with my surround headphones on after my GF crashed for the night.

I must say at first blush I was a tad let down by the graphics. I came out of Vault 101 at night, and I found the black/gray palette of the world to be a bit flat. I wandered around exploring for a while, cause I wasn't about to go where the game was telling me to. Once the lights came up in the day, the graphics and world opened up, I was able to see the level of detail and expansive nature of the environment. I guess i was expecting to be bowled over like I was when i emerged from the prison that first time in Oblivion. I did enjoy how your character starts to come together as she grows up, though. Cool angle, there.

At some point during this first night of stumbling around, I noticed I was feeling a bit unsettled. The sound design in the game is really something else. Well done, on that aspect.

The sun finally crawled up and shops started opening up. The game really is quite like Oblivion in some ways. Anyway, I loaded up on a few missions and set off into the world. At first, I found VATS to be a distraction, but I have since grown to like it quite a bit. It makes battles fun and cinematic and the system seems to keep battles from becoming strafe-based kiting all the time, ala Oblivion.

Some missions and enemies are cake while others in the same area are ridiculous powerhouses. I followed one particular mission out to a small settlement that is infested by giant fire ants. Once I got down into the ant lair in an attempt to finish the mission, the enemies ramped up to almost impossible, so I had to bail on the mission set and find something else to do until I got stronger. I went back to the main quest-line, during which the enemies are much easier to deal with.

By the by - I got the GotY version that came with quite a few expansions.

Overall, a fun and engaging game that hasn't reached the heights of Obilvion for me...yet.

If you're anything like me then it'll never hit the heights of Oblivion.

Not saying it's a bad game though, it's great. I'm on another playthrough myself actually, just to hoover up any remaining achievements - The Super Mutant Behemoths, all the bobbleheads and the Lvl awards for neutral karma, stuff like that.

Funny you should mention the graphics - lumpy character models aside they definitely have their moments but they're certainly not stellar. I think part of the problem is that it's based on quite an old engine now (Morrowind is pushing 10) and part that a nuclear wasteland is exactly that - a wasteland. There's nowhere the same sense of wonder as you get in Oblivion travelling from one end of the map to the other.

That said, I think it's a fantastic re-imagining of the Fallout world. The VATS system is the perfect solution to the turn-based combat of the original two games and the PC version has tons of cool mods - nothing like as many as Oblivion but more than enough to extend the game's life.

You're just in time for Fallout: New Vegas, too.

Yeah, I am still extremely green, and have yet to see any bobbleheads or even know they exist! You get bobbleheads? cool.

Fought one behemoth already. Launched a lil mini nuke at him in front of the radio station. That rocked.

One thing my GF said: The GotY version sort of hits you in the face with a ton of content right off the bat. She came out of Vault 101 and was sort of confuzzled by all the radio signals/side quests that kept popping up. The main story focus is sort of broken up by that stuff from the perspective of a new player.

Not sure what order to do stuff in - we are sort of letting the difficulty of the missions determine our path at this point. I am already over at Dupont Circle and I am still just level 4! Oops!

Aye, I suppose it's just the way the game handles the DLC that you're pounded over the head with messages once you've left the vault on a new playthough. I wouldn't try any of them until you're at least lvl 10, though, and Broken Steel only kicks in when you've finished the main storyline so the messages are kinda misleading.

It was the same in Oblivion with the smaller add-ons but not the big ones like Shivering Isles and Knights of The Nine, I suppose.

You missed your first bobblehead, because it's in Vault 101 (they raise your stats so are handy to collect) but there's an easy one in Megaton in a house near the entrance. I'm saying no more.

Did you do the main Megaton quest? It's handy if you want a place to stay permanently, no matter how the quest turns out.

Hmmm The main Megaton quest...unsure which that is. I try to do pretty much everything I can if the difficulty allows. I have been focusing on the main story that follows the Dad, but have also done the water pipe quest, part of Those!, until I got stuck, and I am a few quests into the Survival Manual side mission (I think I am disarming mines now). I skipped the Mr. Burke quest cause I have been running + Karma so far. I have not done a ton of content so far, as I mostly just wander about and get into trouble and lose all my ammo. I've spent quite a bit of time playing, but not in the most efficient manner, I would think. I think I have progressed too far in the Dad storyline for my level (just level 4 so far), as I seem to be about halfway through the main storyline already, according to some guides. That seems wrong to me... I think I may have missed whole chunks of content or something?

The thing with these games that kind of gets me is the character progression. Once again (as with Oblivion), I feel like I should start over and make my character differently (I like to sneak, my GF hates that style), but that would be a pain in the ass to have to do all the **** I have already done over again. I guess I will plod along with my suboptimal skill-set until I get stuck.

The levelling's a lot more traditional but, yeah, most people will start over again after a few hours once they've got a feel for things, no shame in that. Thankfully, Bethesda seemed to listen to the Oblivion players who told others to place a save just before they leave the tutorial dungeon so they don't have to trudge through it again - a save should have miraculously appeared at the Vault 101 door.

The main Megaton quest involves the bomb in the centre of town - Talk to either the sheriff or the bloke sitting in the corner of Moriarty's Bar for the 'good' and 'evil' paths. You can leave it alone with no penalty but you're depriving yourself of a house which will be very handy for storing junk, healing and even decorating with a huge blow-up replica of a couple going at it. If you so desire.

One more thing - If your explosives skill isn't up to the task (or any task), neck a Mentats.

Yeah, I haven't been running explosives up at all - but I have plenty of Dune Candy.

I am on that quest (the good karmic version) but was waiting to get my explosives up a bit before trying it. I do need a decent place to heal, as that has been giving me trouble as of late.

After I got booted out of the radio station out the back door, stranding me in Dupont Circle last night, I fast traveled back to Megaton to sell stuff etc. I think I will finish up some of the side content near megaton before heading back to DuPont.

Got GTA 4 on steam for 5 bucks yesterday, even though this comp is at least 10 times more powerfull than a 360, this port just doesn't run that well. With most settings on medium, I still pop in and out of 28-45 fps. GTA has always been way better on the PC though and even this bad port handles better than the console version.

Turning on God Mode and infinite ammo for Crysis, maybe now I can beat it on easy ....

Did you like Fallout 3, Meatster?

I love it, even though it's the glitchiest game I ever played on the 360.

What sort of glitches? I have some texture pop-in here and there, but that's about it so far.

Been too bummed about losing my 70+ hour saved game of Just Cause 2 (serves me right for not backing it up) to play much in the way of games lately. Started Super Mario Galaxy 2 and it's quite fun so far. Will probably pick it up again in a couple of weeks.

I bought Sniper: Ghost Warrior the other day, which I'd been looking forward to for months, and was pretty frustrated with it almost right away. Definitely looks about 3 years behind the times, though I really only got it because I love sniping and wanted a solid game dedicated to it. Naturally, one of the very first missions has me, after some stealth action, running across some base. Maybe it can be done stealth-like, but I'm not sure how. Very annoying. I'll pick it up again soon, but I was pretty stunned at how annoying it was to come up against something like that so early. It's not even remotely clear how you're meant to move across the base; I tried slow and steady, and kept getting shot by people I couldn't see no matter where I looked. Then I tried just sprinting, and didn't fare much better. It's bizarre.

I'm probably being obtuse...or maybe I'm just spoiled by far, far more intuitive games than this one.

Meh. Anyway, I'll probably pop Just Cause 2 in just to play out the storyline and do random stunts, but there's no way I'm going for completion after sinking all that time into it. What a shame.

Sorry to hear that. I tend to shelf a game if I wither lose a ton of progress or if I put it down for too long. Have you tried the Fallout games at all? So far, good stuff!

F**kin' A!

Steam, that lovely program, apparently was syncing my saved games up with their cloud, so when I loaded Just Cause 2 today just to mess around (with a scowl on my face the whole time), all my saved games where there! Fan-freaking-tastic.

My brother put it pretty well:

ME: "My 78-hour saved game was recovered!"
HIM (straight face): "Awesome! You totally didn't waste all that time now!"



I have not; it's the third one, yeah? And it's a few years old, yeah? It looks pretty good, and I do like playing good games that are a year or two old with all the settings cranked. I guess you'd recommend it then?