SomTervo

What's the story with this? And is it any good? I know shit-all about it. I imagine they'll have tried to make some improvements, especially to missions, on the vanilla game. I quite enjoyed Watch_Dogs - but by god I do not regret selling it. @MetCav: Tomb Raider is really good, bar a mediocre story and especially terrible exposition. By halthway through it's incredible. Enjoy. Some day I'm going to get the PS4 remaster and platinum the fuck out of it. (It doesn't have multiplayer-only plats, though... does it? Does it?!)

Finally! Yessssss And Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

It's so win. Pretty snazzy that Mordor just added one, too. That'll potentially be better than TLoU's camera mode. Being emergent and open world and sandboxey and all.

I didn't even know that could happen, MH. I think Shadow of Mordor may be one of the first true, legit, genuine, full-blown sandbox videogames ever made. The "this is it" moment, the first proper realisation of open world and sandbox gameplay. It's felt for years like GTA, and most every other "sandbox" game has been getting more and more stale, because, frankly, it's not really a sandbox. Maybe once every 10-20 minutes a dynamic, random event will happen and even then it's over in an instant. You can spend ages running around waiting for cool random things to happen and they won't. Same goes for almost every sandbox game I've ever played. When you want stuff to happen, it doesn't. Even with really nice sandboxes like Far Cry 3. But in Mordor... It's like they've crafted fifteen different mechanics which are almost constantly emergent and interacting. They plop warring factions or little random events every hundred yards, so there's always something going on in the near distance. You can literally lose hours of your life just getting in constant scuffles and trying little strategies out with monsters and stuff. GTA would match this if they made police chases almost constant, added gang factions ala Saints Row and RPG systems to incentivise interaction with them. Basically, Mordor is showing every other sandbox game how it should be done. It's a masterpiece of sandbox design- although like every other open world game, it does hit terminal velocity after a bunch of hours and is left deflated and a little meaningless. Especially when you're so OP like by the end of Mordor.

As I said on the 'games bought' thread - is it hard to plat this on your first time play? I'd be keen to do that, like I did with Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Yep I'm free the whole time, about 6pmGMT till 11.20pm GMT or so on Tuesday the 21st. Foreigners, let us know what time in that bracket you can get online. I can also get one, potentially two other brit-friends online that day if we need it.

It's an okay price now, too. Not sure I'm sold on this yet. Atm it's like a bad mix between Alone in the Dark (the unbelievably flawed 2007-8 one) and Resident Evil 4. I think the main issue, however, was that I was playing it with two guests in the room. Atmosphere totally fucked. And guests here till Saturday, so I don't know if I'll get a chance to improve my experience till then. Oh and I got Alien: Isolation last week. I haven't been on a gaming binge like this in years. I'm not sure it's a good idea.

I pushed it to 9pm so that it would be easier for Americans to get on board. But I'd only really get two hours in there at that time. Is it possible to go from 7 or 8 GMT for peeps abroad?

Shit, it's possible to platinum on first time? I've got Shadow of Mordor, Alien: Isolation, and The Evil Within all at various stages of completion. I just need guests to get out of my fucking house so I can actually spend time on them.

There's only so much they can do, really. Devs can't change too much because reworking core aspects of the engine would affect physics, animations etc. thus intrinsically changing the game. Going pretty superficial is the only way they can do it, and graphics can only be upgraded so much. Naughty Dog had to do this with TLoU and they said it was an absolute nightmare.

Yesss Ohgod This means I have to get 5 Light levels in less than a week With barely any time Ohgod

Timing? I guess?

One of my friends was around the other day with one of the worst jokes I've ever heard. Came up with it himself. Was genuinely proud. Rhianna and Drake go to a really nice restaurant, a place famed for seafood. A waiter seats them and they and begin chatting about what they'll get. The maitre d' waits on them himself. They have a nice starter of mussels, but Rhianna decides she wants a proper full-bodied fish dish for a main. Together the pair order the most expensive thing on the menu. Twenty minutes later and the waiter brings out an utterly harrowed looking fish. It's paler than usual, with a frowning mouth and desolate eyes. "We're not eating this," says Drake, "Send it back, please." "Non, monsieur, you don't understand," says the maitre d', "he looks sad, but it has only made his flavour better." Begrudgingly, they dig in. Rhianna takes the top half, Drake the bottom. Rhianna eats her way into the fish, enjoying the flavour, then she reaches the center of its body. A tiny, glowing red heart is there, pulsating. "Drake!" She exclaims, "look!"

Man that reminds me, I took a whole bunch of photos on this when I was replaying it. Better get uploadin'. I became morbidly obsessed with detonating nailbombs when enemies are nearby and taking horrific images of their gibbed bodies flying about.

Lol oh yeah Nah that makes sense. Shotguns are a bit OP up close

... Did they just make shotguns work better at range?!

He was at the book festival in my home town in August. A rare appearance. Still need to find out what he was like from my couple off friends who managed to get tickets.

I'm seriously holding out hope that they'll add more unique events/raids, and fast. Otherwise this is potentially one of the greatest disappointments in gaming history- not for what it is, but what it could have been.

The frame rate in cutscenes is surreal. Like it manages 30-50 FPS in gorgeous looking gameplay.. Then lame pre rendered cutscenes drop to 20FPS? What?

True. Pure subjectivity. Though i'd say there's an argument that more risk is invoved in PC gaming simply because there are more factors involved. And tbh the only truly consistent console failures in history were X360 right? Anyone know where we can get raw data on global hardware failures for all consoles and all pcs? ... Nope? ... No i thought not. Le sigh.

Dat blog, man @hamsterman: they've mentioned that in the first 100 minutes or so there'll be a huge gamechanger in the Assassin's Creed lore (presumably a modern day twist), and that the modern sections will still very much be present. Not in what form, though.

Yeah I thought as much- and I acknowledged that in my post. I'm obviously a little out of touch with PC protocols nowadays, and I can imagine it's improved a shitton. Yeah the PlayGo thing is what makes it so quick, nice one on the info find. Indeed, a console hardware is essentially by-definition obsolete at point of purchase, but that doesn't mean devs won't improve massively at using the hardware and software on board, which we know they do. Imho it doesn't matter that much as long as there's some consistent improvement in game fidelity and scope over time, and it's functionally above 30fps/700p or whatever. Basically, I don't really care that it's a year out of date. That doesn't really matter to how good the games are. And the few hundred bob extra for a PC which will make up the difference isn't feasible for me atm (though it may be in the future.) In my big previous post I actually referred to the complicated stuff in PC gaming being tweaking your games. Well, not that it's complicated (because it's not), but that it's one of the platform's main big bothers. Eg my computer won't be able to run everything on high, so I'll have to make really irritating compromises that I'd rather not make. Compared to console where there are no graphical settings past purely aesthetic alterations, going to PC where you have 5 -10 settings which make pretty large differences, and you have to chop and choose between them to find a sweet spot... Yes there is software to help with this- but even with the software you may be left with one visual aspect looking amazing and one aspect looking poor. Which is a really irritating middle ground. On consoles the performance is built to a compromise, punching far above the consoles weight usually, which is made for you. No need to feel disatisfied with your choices, because the choices have been made. Edit: consoles are like buying a packaged holiday. Yes, you won't get the cheapest flight, or the best food, or the comfiest bed, or nicest surroundings- but for a cheaper all-in-once price you get to escape your mundane world and have fun with one stress-free, planning-free payment. PC is like tailoring a specific, lovely holiday to your exact tastes. You'll get a refined, probably better overall experience, with more freedom on a daily basis, but with the added stress of pulling together 3-4 different aspects of the trip simultaneously, and spending more time and potentially money getting each individual bit as good as possible. And yet, at the end of the day... A holiday is still just a holiday. (The area this analogy falls down in is that packaged holidays are usually more expensive than self-planned holidays... But let's ignore that for now!) I think these two posts begin to reveal the crux of the issue. Yes, PC gaming gives you more choice. But what do you get with choice? Risk. I've chosen to game on console up till now to mitigate the risk of a sub-par gaming experience on PC. The surefire way to mitigate the risk of having problems on PC is to throw more money and time at it. Nowadays probably not a huge amount more - as you've both noted they're more out-the-box-able and accomodating than ever before. But it's still more time/effort than is necessary to play a good videogame and enjoy it. If you go for PC and don't drop a lot of time making sure everything is going to work, then you run the horrible, depressing risk of things not working or your experience being sub par. I choose to game on console mainly because I've had emotionally draining and frankly upsetting experiences with PC, where my roullette roll with the risks of PC gaming turned up snake eyes (or just low numbers...), putting things in jeopardy and making the experience a very negative one. Consoles, despite their shortcomings and gradual move towards PC-like behaviour, remove 99% of the risk which you'd get going with PC. (Bear in mind the "100%" risk of using PC still isn't actually a large amount of risk. Consoles just negate most of it.)

Mon-Wed would be quite good for me too actually. But not for the next week. Week commencing 20 October would be good. Gf on lates again then. And obv we'd have to start VoG on a Tuesday, soooo Tuesday 21 October at 2100 GMT? Vaulting of Glassing?

It would have been amazing if they made male/female versions of Arno from the beginning, so we could choose our gender. Though I guess that doesn't fit with the whole historical canon thing. I seriously think the AC series would truly become a masterpiece if they went full blown RPG. Give us a blank slate character, give us character stats and story/dialogue choices (ie Templar or Assassin paths/missions), let us customize our look/gameplay, and remove the modern-day stuff. But I feel I've said all this before and I won't retread the ground.