Videogames

[Jon AS]

Review scores are a joke. One really needs to know more details about a game before one can make a half-decent evaluation, and even then big names with a big marketing budget will usually get more praise than they deserve.

Regarding the DA spoiler question:

Fighting dragons isn't that hard. A healing mage and a fair amount of healing poultices are a good idea, as is the Force Field spell to protect any character that gets grabbed by the dragon. Apart from that it's really just hitting the thing until it drops. You can try some spells, like the hexes, on top of that but often enough high level enemies just shrug these off.

[Merentha]

The answer to pretty much any problem in Dragon Age was "more mages". Or a dualwield rogue, in a pinch. But generally, more mages. Especially in the case of Flemeth, since she can't fly. As long as there is someone in melee range, she'll almost never target your mages, which is nice, because between the hexes and sheer damage, they were often stealing aggro from Alistair.

[Jon AS]

The thing with mages is that their single target damage isn't all that impressive. Might even be worse than a good archer's. They are great at crowd control, but boss level enemies have resistances and outright immunities that push mages more into a supporting role against them.

[Muttering Bill]

I bet I'm worser than you. When I get God of War III I'm gonna be playing it on normal, and I'll still die A LOT. I watched my brother try to kill Hades on hard and it was a bastard of a boss battle for him, so it will be bloody impossible for me.

I dobut it. I'm much the same, in the "I used to think I was good before the internet" camp. But God of War 3 was really easy. Even on God mode there were only a couple of fights that were marginally challenging.

You handled Demon's Souls, right? You can't be all that bad. ;)

It's partly why I can't understand people owning multiple consoles. There just aren't enough hours in a day/week/year to get through all the good games on a single platform.

Every system has it's own great exclusives. And I hate missing the opportunity to play any of them just because I own the wrong console. It's just a matter of smart purchasing. Get the best each platform has to offer (depending on what you like, of course) and ignore all the rest. Demo's are very important when deciding what is worth playing. Renting helps too.

[The Anti-Targ]

You handled Demon's Souls, right? You can't be all that bad. ;)

Yeah, but a thief with some decent magic ability makes the game actually quite easy. 90% of the time you can range attack, and I used the walkthrough that came with the Black Phantom edition a wee bit for some boss battle tactics. Like taking out the Dirty Colossus with one hit of firestorm.

It's when you have to get up close and personal with cold, hard steel that Demon's Souls can be a punisher.

And I got my arse handed to me both time black phantom players invaded me. So I played purely in soul form for the rest of the game.

Oh there are games on Wii and 360 I'd really love to play. But honestly, for any console there really are only about 3 or 4 games at most that are in the "must play" category. In the case of Wii, it's pretty much only the Zelda games that get me wanting a Wii, in the case of 360 it's pretty much only Fable and to a lesser extent Alan Wake. It's not worth the price of admission just for those games, IMO. On PS3 my must play games are Valkyria Chronicles and Demon's Souls, the rest of the games I think are great aren't must play. I'd say a Wii or 360 owner shouldn't fork out the money just for those 2 games.

Perhaps when the next console generation starts and I can pick up a used Wii or 360 for almost nothing, then I might do that in rder to get me some Zelda and Fable love. I actually have somewhat of an irrational aversion to Nintendo gaming devices because I can't stand Mario.

[haLobEnder]

Still playing Dead Rising 2. Man, I forgot how tough those Psychopath battles are... I have three of them that I can choose from and all three are kicking my ass. Still, it's probably the most fun I've had playing a 360 game in quite some time... never a dull moment.

The biggest complaint I have about the game is that there's not enough time to take it at a leisurely pace. I'd like to take my time and explore different areas, but all I can think about is getting the next mission accomplished so I can save as many people as possible.

[Ardamin]

There have been a lot of hands on previews of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings coming out in the past few days, all dealing with the same subquest, but there is also info on graphics (looks great!), voice acting (much better than TW1!), combat (greatly improved!), sex (still there!), and so on. I'd say most of them are worth reading if you're interested in the game, but the best ones are up on Rock, Paper, Shotgun and PC Gamer. The others are: Joystiq, AusGamers, Raiding Party, and Gamespot.

Also, the Total War: Shogun 2 demo is out on Steam (and elsewhere, I'm sure). It's about 5.9 GB so it should hopefully be packed full of content.

[Muttering Bill]

Yeah, but a thief with some decent magic ability makes the game actually quite easy. 90% of the time you can range attack, and I used the walkthrough that came with the Black Phantom edition a wee bit for some boss battle tactics. Like taking out the Dirty Colossus with one hit of firestorm.

It's when you have to get up close and personal with cold, hard steel that Demon's Souls can be a punisher.

And I got my arse handed to me both time black phantom players invaded me. So I played purely in soul form for the rest of the game.

Oh, you used a mage and the strategy guide... Well that's different. I went Dex with both of my characters, and while I have all the spells, I don't have the stat's to use them effectively. But even so, they do make for some excellent cheap shots. I used the Wiki (which the guide was condensed from) mainly to look up equipment ugrade paths. Although I will confess to having had to look up a couple tips. How to beat Tower Knight. How to avoid the Garl Vinland fight on my first playthrough - I figured it was fair since I had to spend hours trudging through the Valley. And tactics for beating Maneater - none of which worked (I did glitch him on subsequent playthroughs, but I'd already done that with GV, I didn't want to be too cheap).

I've always done poorly against Black Phantoms too. I had to get the Friends Ring by beating the named NPC BP's. Took until my 4th playthough to get it too, since I already had Pure Black Character Tendency before I looked it up.

Oh there are games on Wii and 360 I'd really love to play. But honestly, for any console there really are only about 3 or 4 games at most that are in the "must play" category. In the case of Wii, it's pretty much only the Zelda games that get me wanting a Wii, in the case of 360 it's pretty much only Fable and to a lesser extent Alan Wake. It's not worth the price of admission just for those games, IMO. On PS3 my must play games are Valkyria Chronicles and Demon's Souls, the rest of the games I think are great aren't must play. I'd say a Wii or 360 owner shouldn't fork out the money just for those 2 games.

Well I had the 360 first - for Dead or Alive 4 and Ninja Gaiden 2. When I got the PS3 a year later, it was primarily for use as a Blu-Ray player (also because it was another game system, but that was a lesser factor). I didn't use it much until my 360 RROD'd. Between that and the release of Demon's Souls and Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, I started to appreciate the system more. Since then I have explored more of it's library, and ended up favoring it over the 360. But after all that, they've both got some great games that I wouldn't want to have missed - even if many of them weren't 'must plays.'

[Screaming Turkey Reborn]

Pokemon Black and White come out on the 10th of March here--fuck yeah!

:leaving:

Don't judge me.

[haLobEnder]

Just received Fable 3 from a game trade. I was disappointed with Fable 2 mainly due to its short length and buying into Molyneux's hype machine, but this time I've tempered myself accordingly.

It's fun, but you can tell it was originally meant for the Kinect. The last I heard Kinect support was scrapped at launch, but they were still planning on including it as a future update. Sadly, every news source seems to have forgotten about this as I can't find any recent information on a Kinect update whatsoever, even if it's just to say it's not happening afterall.

Kinect's quickly becoming the 32x of the Xbox 360... there's just nothing for it, not even Wii-grade shovelware. Really regretting my purchase.

[Eurytus]

Kinect's quickly becoming the 32x of the Xbox 360... there's just nothing for it, not even Wii-grade shovelware. Really regretting my purchase.

Not going to happen. The Kinect attach rate is frankly astonishing. They've sold some 8 million of them. For a peripheral that's almost as expensive as the console itself that is frankly astonishing.

I suspect that the success of it has caught Microsoft out and that there's simply a lack of games because they never anticipated having that many people to sell games to.

But with 8 million potential customers out there already there's no way that games won't get produced for it. And remember that producing a game that fully embraces Kinect is considerably more complex that producing a Wii or Move game. But some of the PC demos show what might be possible.

[Xanrn]

The Shogun 2 demo doesn't have much in the way of content.

a mini Tutorial Campaign where you can only fight 3 land battles and they are precontructed tutorial battles so have no relation to your stack contents. After that you have to auto-resolve all land/sea battles.

Then there is 1 historical battle.

[Kosciuszko]

Pokemon Black and White come out on the 10th of March here--fuck yeah!

:leaving:

Don't judge me.

No judging. I still play older pokemon games on my emulator and I may look into getting Black and White, just to see where the franchise has gone.

[Angeleyes]

I've been playing LoL with Inigma for awhile now, but had my first couple games with Poobah today and it was a ton of fun.

I just finished a pre made with Ini that was the most ridiculous game of my life. We were so far ahead of the other team by 10 minutes in, that I decided to build mobility, as Sion. Boots of Mobility. 3x Phantom Dancer. 1x Stark's Ferver, 1x Chainmail. I had 553 movement speed out of combat. 90% chance to crit, 1.993 atk speed. The best part? I wasn't that fed. Our GP had 2x Infinity Edge, 2x Phantom Dancer.

It was soo much fun running around the map with Udyr like

Crazy Screaming Hobos

honestly the most fun I have ever had in that game. TY Ini :thumbsup:

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

Your gp had two Infinity Edges and you were outplaying them?

Huh.

[Angeleyes]

Your gp had two Infinity Edges and you were outplaying them?

Huh.

Me and Ini were the only two level 30s. I believe GP was level 19 or 20. I believe is rationale was 'Well... I like crit and AD... may as well buy another one.' Like I said, most games that are that dominant the other team will surrender early. You very rarely get to see a 40 minutes game with like 53 kills to 30 or so. It was damned fun.

[Inigima]

I was Udyr and he was faster than me with Bear Stance and Ghost :(

[Jacen]

Do you ever ponder how much of your life has been spent playing videogames?

And do you consider that time well spent?

Is living vicariously through impossible digital other lives hiding from reality or is it instead a chance to experience things one would never get the chance to do in reality?

Is there gold hidden in the village? Is there silver? Gems? Is there food?

[Fez]

Just picked up Bulletstorm, seems like messy good fun. Also seems like its probably a short game, only took me about 90 minutes to beat Act I and I don't know how many Acts there are but I'd guess there's probably only 7 or 8 hours of gameplay in the campaign. I do like it though. There's probably been games that have had the kicking/leasing mechanic before but I haven't played them, so it all seems new and fresh to me.

[Wras]

Do you ever ponder how much of your life has been spent playing videogames?

And do you consider that time well spent?

Is living vicariously through impossible digital other lives hiding from reality or is it instead a chance to experience things one would never get the chance to do in reality?

Yes, yes, and it's really more about escapism and fun, to me.