deanb

But if you expected nothing from the game then you'd more than likely not buy it. You wouldn't buy it if you didn't at the very least expect it to be decent.

Yeah I pretty much hate it too. I hate it mostly because it has so much fucking potential, but MS are afraid it might end up too good n eclipse 360. Which is like WHAT? Might end up 'too successful'? Anyway I wrote more on the subject here http://pressxordie.com/2010/12/05/games-for-windows-a-work-in-progress/

@yante: I'll shift this to Off-Topic but if you want you could make a more gamer orientated repeat of this topic in GGC. Just if the topic moves then becomes 90% about game platforms then it'd mean moving it again, it can live fine as two threads.

Ahh Eddie Izzard. You guys see him in the Day of the Triffids remake last year? He's quite the good bad guy. Another one I'm a fan of (though not massively, he does sometimes has his misses) is Dara O'Brien Some of you will of seen him on Kotaku recently with his MGS bit. Apart from VG games (which he's only recently begun injecting into his routines) he also puts his degree in Theoretical Physics to good use. As seen in the above video. (and in his many appearances on QI)

Yeah but with FF it's been for the most part a gentle change, you still had like 80% of the team going into the millennium. But now it's changed so drastically and long term folks dropping off here n there. I don't think his rules expect people to be working at the same company for 25 years

Yeah Balthier was meant to be the main dude, cos most the FF team that started making these games in their 20's are now in their 40s/50s n appreciate that kind of character. Till the realised the market is teens so they made the main character Vaan.Thankfully he was easy enough to ignore as Slithy said. FFXII I'm unsure should even go here, it's weird because while it appears the general sentiment was it was a bad game, it's one of the highest rated and everywhere you bring the game up you get fans popping out the woodwork in droves, more so than many of the other FF games too. I think folks just disliked the change to the real time battles, but in retrospect have realised it was pulled off pretty niftily. You didn't get a Game Over if one of your characters died at least

Well you guys also call the period just past 'the fall' n 'the holidy'. Whereas we call it 'christmas time' n 'winter'. Oh yeah one I've picked up on from my TV acquiring: Season = Series. So in march Series 6 of Doctor Who starts. But for you guys Season 2 of V starts. Which completely confused my mum when I refereed to a new season of whatever, which thankfully she never picked up on cos I just corrected with Series n they sound similar enough.

Which avatar? Mordin or Vivi. Cos Vivi Engy would be pretty epic, but I'd guess due to the body proportions Mordin would be much easier to fit in place.

Yante... you want this 'general game chat' or off-topic?

Yeah Yante AC2 is on the list with a jump of 78 to a 90 (then to 91 in Brotherhood) AC3 should prove his theory right or wrong specifically for rule number 3 since Patrice has now left for greener pastures. The two year rule I think is one of the more important. 2 years is a good time to make a game in. 1 year could end up too short, you push out so many and it can start to become stale. There's only 2 football games and billions of footy fans, but for FPS games you've got something like 15 or so high profile FPS games out next year, some of them really spicing up the formula, so a yearly deal is going to start to wear thin. And of course if you wait too long, it builds such unimaginable levels of hype. GT5, FFXIII, DNF n Ep3 all have this. Actually for most of the series the FF games fit pretty close to all of these. Recently the rules the series has adhered to has started to drop like flies, and thus the ratings to the point where XIV happened.

Black Widow: Agent of SHIELD, working semi-undercover for Tony Stark to review his suitability for the avengers initiative. Certainly not in for just a short 5 minutes. Then there's the several Nick Fury cameos where he's brought in for semi-flimsy reasons. The agent dude pops up a couple of times, iirc Tony Starks dad is retconned in as a founder of SHIELD too. As for the 'easter egg'? This is an easter egg: The 'Oh hey pass me that shield over will you "oh hey you're not meant to have this shield" 'easter egg' in 2 would be akin to in Star Trek having Simon Pegg go "OH LOOK AN ASTROMECH DROID FLOATING ACROSS OUR WINDOW!" As for it not changing the movie? Favreau hasn't exactly being quiet on how pissed he was with Marvel jamming in the Avengers stuff. He's having to balance the main story of Iron Man 2 while wedging in the Avengers stuff. For example the whole "eurgh I'm dying...oh hey SHIELD have a magical injection and a box full of stuff that'll let me make a brand new element with a machine resting on top of Capitan Americas shield" could of been ripped out without losing anything to the plot or character development. Black Widow too, since she never really provides any romantic competition for pepper potts (the two getting on quite well) and is pretty much just there for a scene where she n Favreau beat up some security guards. All you needed was Tony Stark having a bit of a breakdown, getting drunk, fighting rhodes. Giving Pepper control of the company while becoming distanced with her. Then his heart to heart with his dads film reel. And all alongside this Sam Rockwell n Mickey Rourke getting chance to spread their legs some more since all the advertising has been removed from the plot. Then after the credits have some dudes find a hammer in a desert. Done.

nope

Metroid Prime something or Other M edit: actually I'm thinking this is an older PC/Xbox game. You've got the in-helmet HUD, but it's not quite the same.

I was wondering RE. But I've only ever played like the first 8 seconds of the first (I carried on dying, the controls were weird and we had no instruction manual), and watched a fair bit of the 5th. And most of the movies.

Well it's unified under Kim Jong Ils little tyke. So it's possibly heading that way. It feels a bit late n all since James Bond already covered the whole "Oh it's not the cold war anymore, what evils can we use that aren't China (cos let's not piss them off) and aren't Russia since we're pals now". Obviously COD n MOH have the Middle-Eastern market cornered, with a touch of Cold War Russia. Also this game isn't going to review too well. It kinda relies on the shock n empathy of America being attacked n invaded by Korea. There's only one game buying nation that gives a fuck about that. The rest? It's a bit meh.

Any fans here? Especially ones looking forward to the sequel? Personally I really liked the game. Felt it was pretty polished, love the moving around (though going back n realising you have to work a fair bit to get the ziplines n gliding stings) The options were very black n white, but one of the first games where I felt being bad was good. Also it wasn't just a change to the ending but gives you nearly a completely different playstyle too. Other games with a morality system how you play the game is largely going to remain the same, but with Infamous it changes between the good defensive styles, to a very offensive playstyle that requires you to be killing the enemy ASAP n taking as few hits as possible (whereas Good almost encourages it), Very much a game that knows most folks don't play evil til the second go around. I'm hoping some kind of save moves on, though there's been very little word on stuff like that. So don't know if I'll start the game all glowing blue or red with black tints in my skin. I won't mind too much but it'd be a nice touch. Also hope that the addition of new powers means we won't have to relearn all the other stuff. btw any owners of this game: Play the evil mode some point before Infamous 2. You'll love it.

Pigglets Big Game Tiggers Honey Hunt Winnie the Pooh's Rumbly Tumbly Adventure edit: or this I guess btw Jack you're off by a sequel. Time to update Wikipedias list of games with Winnie the Pooh in.

I've not followed this game much, but pretty much any chance I would be interested in it has been completely obliterated by the 'oh look North Korea n South Korea are having a skirmish, time to plug HomeFront'*, 'North Korea are mentioned in the Wikileaks, time to plug Homefront' 'homefront will make Americans angry'. I just kind of dislike the manufactured controversy of recent FPS games (of which one also had invasion of US), and it kinda says something about a game when the developers can't strike up enough controversy themselves to have news outlets eating out of thier hand for the free advertising, but the news outlets themselves need to stir up some controversy. And while it's not like the HomeFront devs asked for this kind of courage, they can't exactly be surprised. *btw that had to have been one of the more tasteless VG stories of the year

So at the moment I have completed all the levels of 'Poached Eggs' (the first part) and all the levels of The Big Setup(4th) Meaning I'm on 5-11 of the second 'act' Mighty Hoax, and 6-15 of Danger Above (act 3). Danger Above is pretty fucking hard.

My main recurring dream is a nice n simple one of falling in a black chasm until I hit the bottom. Wherein I wake the fuck up and feel like I just smacked into the bottom of a chasm. I'm amazed that I have still yet to wake up screaming, but that'd probably because I'm still in whatever the fuck it is where you're paralysed during sleep. Which really helps with the whole illusion that all my bones and my entire body is now broken n crippled, my body has gone into shock and is sending no signals whatsover. All I know is that my eyes are still apparently working. It's a horrible feeling. One of my more weirder dreams was I was at the annual steam fair at my grandmas village, and out of one of the chimneys on the steam engines a giant butterfly came out. A VAMPIRE BUTTEFLY!!!. This things like about 3foot high n however long in the wingspan. Huge. Anyway it starts going around n using it's proboscis to suck the life out of people, just quickly unfurling it and jabbing people in the neck. So I do what any kid does when faced with a giant blood drinking butterfly and run for my life. I end up at my grans neighbours house (somehow. Oh btw I've never been there) n end up hiding in the study, up against the bottom of the window, and...the butterfly flies past. I am shitting myself, I'm a small kid with no idea how to defeat a butterfly. So yeah I end up waking up. Butterflies still in my head somewhere, waiting n stalking me. Also I've not had a dream, that I remember, for must be over a year now which is pretty weird. Or I guess nothing notable at least.

This probably belongs here: http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/xbox-360/2008/11/01/fable-2-non-gamer-review/1 I should point out that the only reason the 'non-gamer' played it was because it was thrust upon her by her brother as part of his work. Which means while the non-gamer may enjoy it they're: 1. A fucking non-gamer, i.e they don't actively go out n buy n play games. It's like making an anti-virus suite for Mac owners. 2. About the only way the non-gamer will end up with this game is if a gamer sits them in-front of it. Very few gamers would want to inflict that on friends n relatives. There is a market for this game full of peopel who would probably very much enjoy this sort of thing. The problem is there's pretty much abso-fucking-lutely no way to get that market to play this game without delving a copy of Fable and an xbox to their door and say 'play this game or you will die in 7 days'. So about the only audience the series can reach are regular Joe gamer. And, especially the vets, this is a game that doesn't massively appeal and would be like sitting Stephen Hawking down to watch an episode of HOW2. Why do that when you have 100 odd research papers sitting in your pigeon hole that would provide something much closer to your kind of level.

http://gamrfeed.vgch...-a-good-sequel/ Decent article that breaks down it's reasoning. For those who can't be bothered to read the full thing the rules he came up with for making a good sequel (not necessarily for a financially better, just higher reviews) are: 1) Don't spend too much time on development. 2) Change your engine every so often, and if you can, use one that you've developed yourself. 3) Try to keep the team the same, especially if the original was good. 4) Don't get rid of the parts of the original that people loved. 5) Don't try to evolve too much and forget what made the original great. 6) Improve everything, because one bad aspect can bring the whole game crashing down. So, do you agree with these rules, would you add or amend any? Also any other sequels you think fit the bill quite well? p.s it'd be best if Yante, Chew and probs a couple others don't read the article.

So Win is playing Uncharted 2 at the moment and is near the end which reminds me: While I have high hopes for Uncharted 3. I hope to fuck that the storyline isn't: Drake is on the hunt for some mystical hidden treasure lost when some explorer disappeared a few years with no record. It turns out this big break treasure that will have Drake living in palaces n rolling about in money with enough spare to save albion, isn't this great treasure. It is an ancient world destroying EVIL!!. The whole reason this lost treasure is lost is to keep it hidden and the world safe from it's dangers. Protecting this treasure (of sorts) are the local population, which the EVIL of the artefact have mutated into inhuman beings of great strength and resilience. The finer parts of the plots are all very awesome and varied enough, but the plot at large remained the same between the two games, and it would be a tad nice to have something new.

Fatal Fury 2