SomTervo

Yeah, I agree with FDS (although could you spoilertag that, FDS? Didn't particularly enjoy glancing at your post before watching it and knowing what would happen anyway.) Though I was impressed by the atmosphere, looks really great. Also I don't like the look of the gunplay/ combat at all. They should have kept it slow and precise like Resi 4/5, this looks fast and imprecise. Why the fuck they would change the system for this game, I have no idea. They keep it slow when faster would be better, then speed it up when a slow pace looks most appropriate. Still, the whole thing with t-v zombies is great. I hope there are more prolonged bits of survival with them, like the gnarly survival bits in Resi 5 but slow and meandering.

What the hell are you all on about? The one that takes the stupid-name cake is: Bravely Default: Flying Fairy. I actually facepalm whenever I remember that. There's nearly an oxymoron right there in the title. Also El Shaddai is an awesome title, at least it feels like it has some non-arbitrary meaning to it.

Oh wanted to add, I played the whole thing, and played multiplayer, and the Arcade momdes (which are fucking fantastic btw, especially Score Attack) with Free Aim. And I've never had any problems. And I'm playing on a console. You just have to be really focused and precise. It's entirely possible, with Free Aim on, to shootdodge into bullet time and, with a pistol, tag 5 or 6 guys with headshots before you hit the ground. Not even kidding. Anyone who says that's impossible with console is just bullshitting. I'm on 360 and it's fucking epic.

This is the newest trailer right? Looks fucking good if you ask me. Also, IDK if you guys know this, but the gameplay is a mix between open world and linear (set of branches connecting hubs and open areas) with survival mechanics (eating, drinking, hunting, wound and health management, resource management, and exploration). Read that in an incredible Edge preview.

I really, really like the TVs in Max Payne 3, as much as in Max Payne 1 and 2, but... I fucking detest how they can't just be ambient. You HAVE to turn them on and watch them, and do nothing else. So much of MP3 seems to be about taking player control away in every instance except gunplay, which is just really disappointing. It's a good thing the gunplay is so fucking fantastic.

The story overall is pretty weak. Moments are strong (I thought chapters 7-11 or so were incredible specifically), but the opening and the ending is very weak. The gameplay is brilliant, I think a perfect evolution of Max Payne. And replaying it, there are some pretty strong Max Payney elements. It's definitely not up to MP1 or 2 standards, but hey. Also, massive spoiler, but:

Gah, that's unfair. It'll be well worth it when it comes, though, man. Incredibly nice game. Really captures something of reality in how it handles things (not that soaking up tens of bullets is realistic on normal difficulty.) The graphics/ animations are the best I've ever seen (in terms of both enmeshing together). Seems to be one of those games where dying is somehow actually fun. Had a couple of amazing moments last night. A standout was me on the last drops of health, making a shootdodge and capping three dudes, hitting the deck, and noticing a guy right next to me that I didn't see. The guy was still firing, his bullets creeping downards in super slomo trying to reach me where I was lying prone, but I just managed to whip around in time, firing a loud round that hit his gun out of his hand, and then popping a silent shot that went through his neck, which he grasped, and he staggered, and subsequently fell into harbour water, while the last of his bullets were still ripping through the floor right behind me. So great.

@FDS: My flatmate just pointed, both hands, at me and said 'YES.' when I mentioned that you described the show as Chauvinistic. He also says to throw in the word 'problematic'. So let's call the show 'problematically chauvinistic'. Imho, I don't think the show is too bad for that. History was chauvinistic, and that's what Martin took his cues and knowledge from. However, I think the direction is quite bad for it. Every episode directed by the series creators (specifically in the first season, it was awful) is gratuitously full of horrific things being done to women and women in positions of subjugation. I'm tempted actually just to read the Wikipages on the recent Ice and Fire books. I don't get much out of them past finding out what happens in the plot, and a Wiki is good enough for that. The writing certainly isn't very enjoyable for the most part. I started rereading The Hobbit recently... Christ what ever happened to prose like that.

So my copy arrived this morning, which was nice. A whole day before the ridiculous 'estimated arrival'. I played through the first part and half of the second. Pretty damn good stuff! It's definitely not MP1 or 2. Their incredible precision and formulaic rigidity is gone. This beast is weighty and imprecise and hefty and physical. Aiming feels really solid (with auto aim off), though it sometimes is hard to tell if your bullets are doing any damage to guys, not much feedback from that. Shootdodging is awesome, takes a little while getting used to him actually stepping into the shootdodge instead of MP1/2's ridiculous insta-jump move with no inertia or interruption. Actually laughed first time I leapt into a room at an odd angle, shooting at dudes, and bumped Max's head into an adjacent wall. Halfway through a badass slomo Hollywood move Max just grunted and fell to the floor in real time. The animations for getting up and moving etc. are just amazing. Some of the writing is actually pretty damn good. Real witty shit is thrown in there from time to time.But it doesn't get Max's timeless musings like it used to. He almost never is narrating it retrospectively like he did in the old games. The animations are unreal. Whipping an Uzi around and peppering a bad guy just looks like savage, brutal reality. The way bullets will clip the guys limbs and head and torso and he'll get pushed around with blood popping out. Just unreal. And a little touch I love: how, at the end of certain moments of gameplay, the cutscene pops right in seamlessly, so if you shoot a guy and a cutscene starts, the guy will still be stumbling or falling over (to death) while the cutscene gets going. Really makes it feel like the cutscene and the gameplay are one and the same thing: an element of a gameplay experience which not even Uncharted has achieved.

Yeah man, I feel your pain. My copy is estimated for arrival on Wednesday but I'm praying, fucking praying that it'll arrive tomorrow. Just finished a shitton of work this weekend. That's actually a really good point. It broke the immersion when one whipped out the revolver and had to awkwardly readjust the crosshair to even get a badguy's leg.

Yeah, against animals, I always found Dead Eye much more useful. Necessity, in most cases. They so damn fast.

That's true, it had moments of being very useful in GTAIV, and also GTAIV was fucking difficult because gun's bullets were about as effective as plastic BB's. So with manual aim your gun would just be spraying them ineffectively with air. This is really weird, and not to blow my own pipe, but it might just be me and my skillz, but even with manual aim, I found horseback shooting in RDR really fun with manual aim, and not too hard. You had to kinda really get with the momentum, and shoot while swinging the reticule alongside a guy. But man, it was satisfing. So looking forward to MP3. Hope to christ it comes tomorrow. I don't even have the money to buy it, and it not arriving is just rubbing salt in the badly-judged wound.

That's good. I watched a couple of moments of a walkthrough on YouTube because I'm fucking dying from my copy not having arrived yet; and the fucking aim-lock looks awful. It must have been on 'hard lock' in that video, but it looks like it'll just ruin gunplay: like it did for me in GTAIV and RDR. Once I turned auto-aim off in those games, I had a fucking whale of a time. The sense of achievement and appreciation once you down a bunch of guys without auto-aim is just so satisfying. I imagine MP3 will be no different. I dealt with it fine in 1 and 2: it'll be off in 3.

They're blatantly showing off these bits to try and catch people's attention. It is an open world game, for the most part. That said, if you're out of control to this extent in these sequences, that's really not cool. It's basically just a cutscene but in first person.

Did anyone play Volcano on Operation Flashpoint? The original war sim zombie mod. Day Z is basically Volcano but obviously updated and better. Do you get vehicles in Day Z? One of my best experiences in Volcano was me and four friends getting a convoy going; two people in a jeep in front, one person in a 10-ton truck (to carry supplies) and two more person in the back in a spare 10-ton truck (one driver and one passenger to sit in the back and watch for Z's following us). The issue was fuel. We could make it halfway across the island before running out, so we often had to go out the way to siphon fuel from gas stations. One time a member of our crew wandered away to look at a checkpoint station while we were filling up on gas... The Z's got him. Then we had a stand-off at the pumps, which only two of us survived. Someone threw a grenade at a truck with 5 Z's around it and it took him out. The remaining two of us made a getaway in the jeep, before it ran out of fuel on a motorway, and the Z's closed in. So amazing. And this was back in the mid-00s.

Um, I think they do, but it's a few pounds more. Is that definitely more money? I chose free shipping (and it was definitely counted as a pre-order from a week ago) and they still said that was the estimated window. Fingers crossed it's tomorrow.

That's true. I try to play this sort of thing (big singleplayer games) with really good headphones, so I hear everything; but if I have to use speakers and hearing is an issue, I turn subs on. Though it breaks the immersion a little for me, even if it's useful.

I heard from others that it's difficult. You don't get very much health do you? Do you feel it's something that you'll really get better at with practice? I pre-ordered my copy from amazon.co.uk, free postage, and it'll apparently arrive between the 21st and the 23rd. I think that's a little ridiculous. I'm pre-ordering it, and did so ages before release day, so I think it should arrive tomorrow, release day. I pre-ordered it for god's sake. Though, in retrospect, I think I've had this happen to me before, and it's arrived on release day or the day after. 21-23rd is a worst-case window. Hopefully it'll arrive tomorrow.

@FDS: I think if you're playing the full game, all the HUD elements will probably be pretty useful. Due to the game being an odd mix of item/resource management and action gameplay. Demon's Souls was about precision and reserved combat, with RPG bones, DD has weaker RPG bones and the combat about just getting in there, it's a hack 'n' slash. If you just get sucked into the plunge of the combat it's great. Not about precise tactics like DS, it's teamwork and damage dealing. Actually, I think the only HUD element that isn't required is the needless massive boxes for Pawn subtitles. Remove that and just listen to them. So much more immersive.

Not saying they're exclusive, bro. I like both too. But I do believe a good mix between both is the best of both worlds. Things like MGS are good examples of that, I feel. MGS4 is streamlined like shit but OH SO DEEP

What do people think of the casting/ adaptation of the characters from the books? I'm not really a fan of the books or the show. The books are awfully written though have a fair bit of worth in their stories, and the show is just mimicking this but with a significantly better narrative. What I'm hating on in the show is how there is an actual sympathetic component to Cersei. Joffrey is obviously a figure of pure hatred, like in the book; but I don't get that from Cersei in the show. In the book she is pure venom, but an absolute babe. In the show, she's not too bad, and is kiiind of a babe. Really, she should just be pure, malicious evil. It annoyed me a little that Stannis wasn't as cold as he comes across in the book, either. I loves him in the book, I does, for his amazing envious callousness, but in the show he comes across a little more warm hearted. The only characters I feel have translated perfectly are Ned, Tywin (maybe he's a little off, meant to be more of a badass in the books), Jaime (though he's meant to look a little more like a perfect knight in shining armour) and Tyrion, who's incredible. Arya's great as well actually. Jon Snow is really frustrating me. In the books he was great; a young guy learning the ropes and moving up in the world. In the show he's the most fucking earnest, sentimental fucker in the place. He's meant to be immature but trying hard, with good principles; in the show he's just kinda lame. My flatmate (who has only read part of the first book), an HBO connoisseur, literally hates Jon Snow, and can't stand the bits with him in.