WTF

I don't get it HH, it's a steamworks title... so wouldn't it be better to buy it via some digital distro site. I know GMG had it for 15 and I'm sure they'll have it for that price soon enough. I mean I understand collecting games but boxes that have no value after you redeem the code? Unless you've bandwidth restrictions - it's 8.9GB and not the 11GB that steam says. As for Batman I bought the collector's ed for the PS3 back in October cause I got for about £30 and that's nice for a game plus batman figure and artbook and the batman figure looks nice in my living room (in his Gotham enclosure). I'll be buying the PC GoTY edition in the future at a steam sale . That way I'd have still paid under 40 for 2 copies of a game. @Ethan the demo was a bit shitty in terms of difficulty, there's a few things to note it's not the hardest of levels, there's stuff to collect that unlocks art and skills. Getting the 5 red stars in planet wisp is a pain. I'm definitely in no hurry to finish the game and want to finish S ranking each level step by step rather than just brush through the game and of course getting to a good spot on the online leaderboards XD. Oh and there's lives which means you might need to replay some levels just to get a lot of lives, maybe it's my ocd to make sure that I do have 10 lives to spare (in case some day I'm tired and/or my wife plays and loses a fair few lives)

I'm not sure if you bought Generations yet HH but if you are going to get it, get it on the PC. It's the only platform with 60fps and that actually does improve response rates. Also I don't really find any issue with this game mostly because playing a good sonic game requires you to put your brain to the side and work primarily on muscle reflexes. It's the whole zen thing. As a matter of fact when i do play Sonic games the plot meh who cares, the level design and multiple pathways don't really look at it. All I focus on is get max rings and get to the end faster and improve times. It's really not a heady experience, it's more in the classic vein where you just immerse yourself into a goal. But at the same time are able to pull out of that world. Can't really explain it but you overthink a sonic game and you have the internet you'll end up with a legion of sonic weirdos. Here's a clue go to deviantart put your first name followed by the hedgehog. 90% of the most common names are not safe unfortunately. Sonic fans are weird but the game is enjoyable and honestly I think generations while not perfect is pretty good. Thing is they hit the peak with Sonic 3 and Knuckles it's harder to hit that twice. Colours was okay. Generations is pretty good if you turn omochao off and seriously turn omochao off it just is an annoying little thing that won't shut up with 'hints'.

560Ti is good but first of all check your PSU, since you're not going for the 500s you should probably have enough juice for a single card setup. People often forget to tell that you do need to check your PSU before getting a new card as if it's just about even you'll find more noise, the system just shutting down from overheating and the like. The 460 needs about 500W minimum, I'd recommend 550-700W. If you don't have enough power your card normally doesn't get you the best performance. While I would have recommended the 6950 for a tiny bit over that price range the thing is lately more ATI cards do experience stuttering in games and it's mostly card specific. Primarily because ATI makes some really shit drivers too. The 460 is still pretty decent low-midrange to be honest. @Spork what's the make of your 560Ti, for that card I'd recommend the MSI series primarily because it brings in extra cooling and is actually a very quiet little card so long as you've managed to avoid leaving your cabinet dusty. The thing about gfx cards today is there are sufficient differences in framerate performance depending on manufacturer to manufacturer. it may seem small at times but it's there. It wasn't always like this, they were much more negligible in the past.

@FLD Grant Morrison can write Supes well, I mean take a look at All Star Superman, probably the least boring Superman has ever been to be honest. edited to add that he's on action comics right now with rags morales whose Nightwing run was pretty nice.

Should get mine tomorrow, though that's only good enough for a preload till Friday 00:00. Steam does cancel out the ability to enjoy games a tiny bit early.

Plus is worth it for the discounts. I managed to get RE4 HD for £6 (it was meant to be 7.99 but they goofed andd put it up for 12 which with the discount was there for the plus members for 6 - that was lower than what I paid for the wii version which I thought I got for cheap at 14). At times you get full games for free that don't expire. For instance they gave everyone plants vs zombies for free and stacking was free to keep permanently on release as well. The US one is particularly beneficial if you've got unlimted bandwidth as you have a lot more full game trials so you can download them and see if you like it or not before buying them. I renewed this year and I know I've saved more than what I paid for in subscription purely through purchases and permanent freebies. However people do whine when they don't get enough content every month. Sometimes valid, sometimes not. I don't really think the 3 month membership is great because they do have a few lean months a year and if you're unfortunate you can get stuck in one of those.

yeah Anno 2070, skyrim, zelda, assassin's creed, saints row the third (my wife wants the ps3 version so that's what I'm getting since she'll be playing it more than me), tales of the abyss 3d (we get it this month in PAL), tekken hybrid, ultimate mvc3. That's what I can think of. I'll get halo, kirby, dodonpachi, king of fighters xiii, etc when there's a price cut though i don't think there'll be one on kirby. I know I'll also get MGS HD next month (rather than wait till feb when it's loaded it's best to import it next month when there's no games and the new layton. November is a cruel, cruel month... as is february - most anticipated title for that month is kingdoms of amalur which actually is pretty good when I tried it at an event.

Ah Aluminum the great typo that became a word. It would have been much better if Sir Davy stuck with Alumium but no, he decided to call it aluminium which resulted in a telegraphic typo that was picked up by the papers and no one noticed it for years. Ah the days before quick means of mass communication. All the stupid news that used to exist because of errors like this on every continent still amuses me.

So current purchases include PC Humble Vox Bundle Sonic Generations There's 8 more left this month which I guess I'll post when it's in my hands.

I've known this for a fair bit now and it's also why you have several sellers on ebay from India who used to sell PC games at an alarmingly low price at times. I mean I got dead rising 2 for the PC on release for 5 quid and that was physical retail. It was only a matter of time before sellers from such nations decided to switch from having to mail to just sell codes through their localised networks from where budding young 'entrepreneurs' would sell to the local market. It's perfectly legal and a consequence of globalisation. I suppose it's not going to be a long lasting model though since there's far too much flux these days in the economy.

Forgetting localised bias and considering that a lot of spend time consuming media that isn't native to our nations not to mention many of us travel across the globe for work and other stuff; what words do you prefer pronounced in a dialect/version of English that isn't native to your nation. Yes, I know that English is native to England (where I am technically from, but I've travelled a lot and I prefer certain pronounciations to others simply because it is more aesthetically pleasing to my ears). I notice that speaking to some of my American colleagues we always find ourselves speaking about language despite knowing what the other means over the course of time and we all do prefer several pronounciations outside of our nativespeak.

Meh, I've been so busy with work and life and travelling that it seems like I only visit here to post my games purchases -.- But since there's a fair bit from September 19th, here goes PS3 Atelier Totori Team Ico Collection Child of Eden (I know I'd mentioned the above three but got them post that date) Dark Souls LE Batman Arkham City CE (I'm still annoyed that the game didn't have a blu-ray case but the batman goes nicely in my new shelf.) Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One Infamous 2 Festival of Blood Uncharted 3 SE (it's on its way for the 2nd) PC Humble Bundle and that indiewhatsits since my friend told me about it last night. Rage Anarchy Edition Space Marine (got it for £9) Might and Magic: Heroes VI (It's beautiful the CE and the box was like a board game) I know there's a bunch of downloadable games that I'll be redeeming soon... 360 Catan Wii - PSP Persona 2 CE There's about 8 games that's set for November and 10 I'm waiting on price drops for. In technically non-gaming news. I've got a new TV, new controllers, new hifi setup and a new projects.

El Shaddai Deus Ex HR Disgaea 4 Gears 3 Renegade Ops Dissidia Zelda: OoT 3D edit: HH I've had my copy since Saturday. I'll be up for co-op if you want I'm starting the game tonight.

@Saturnine Of course I love the whole Atelier aesthetic. European fairy tale artwork given a Japanese treatment. Visually it's nice. I couldn't finish Rorona cause I ran out of time thanks to other games. But I do believe i made the post on Rorona maybe? Don't remember. I am getting Totori since it's no longer just one HP bar for that game and will get Meryl whenever it comes out here (likely autumn 2012). Totori is preordered and we're getting it the same week as the US. Disgaea is still set for October and it's not an LE. I bought Arcana Hearts because I really like cheap LEs which is what it was. Got it for £12. The game is fun. @brain Yeah Persona 2: Eternal Punishment would be the one I liked better of the two but it's been so long. I don't own any of my old Persona titles pre PS2 era hence I'm rebuying them. I'm definitely getting the collector's ed for this one and I'd ordered it previously from VGP but cancelled since it didn't come with all the shit that PAL is getting which makes for a nice change. Ghostlight does that and they've got a nice version for TiTS as well both of which are still confirmed for q4. But yeah I really am looking forward to a new SMT game outside of the Persona series. I mean I know Strange Journey is SMT4 but I'd really like a proper SMT4 and a remake of Soul Hackers. As for El Shaddai yeah the thing I can say is keep playing and it gets enjoyable since you've bought it already. However there's the whole lack of time aspect. In a way I'm glad Resistance 3 wasn't that long but the game was actually enjoyable and much better than R2. Lots of homages but it gelled well. I can't say much about the MP but the SP was well done. Edit: I actually forgot to mention that I bought Sims 3(PC) for my wife (she wanted it after playing sims social) and bought runaway (the first game) and whispered world too. It's easier to forget digital purchases. edit2: Oh screw this I bought splatterhouse too since it was cheap as chips

You know what - that demo was fricking awful but the game. The game is just beautiful. The score is for lack of a better pun - heavenly. The game is 2D and 3D platforming primarily. If you die you can mash buttons to come back to life but the enemies get harder. Your armour breaks when you die and there's many check points when you fall down in some of the platforming levels but if you die there it's sort of reload from some checkpoint ages ago. The combat is quite intuitive and actually gets pretty deep as you progress. This game is for those of you who enjoy games like DMC. It's not quite God of War. However the weapons so far are pretty limited and I think it just stays with 3 weapons for the whole game. There's no levelling up. You need to block, time your attacks, etc standard DMC style stuff. The artistic merit is there but there's a lot of depth to the gameplay. The demo is on par with the demo for uncharted 1, if you played that demo you'd think the game was shit too. It's a game that begins a bit slow just to let you get used to the pace. Oh and so far it's almost impossible to win against the main bad guys who keep coming but at some point you will. It does require a certain amount of skill. There are so far no QTEs, the basic mob enemies are named a bit lame like EzekA SarB etc. The midbosses are fun, the platforming is engaging and the score is soothing though you do get some interesting tracks later such as and this is pretty much played during the load screens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIBpymWKKc Rent the game and decide for yourself. I'm pretty sure it's a limited run game anyway. The game only has two difficulties to start with, you unlock hard and the other one later if I recall correctly or maybe I just started with Normal. I'll definitely be replaying it. I only judge games by my playing choices and style and to me this is actually a good contender for game that's actually awesome that nobody played. FYI after having tried it while travelling earlier I totally forgot about it and my enthusiasm was quite low but playing the game again made me realise why I loved it. It is a fun game that's probably about 10-15 hours long for the first playthrough and there's an interesting story to boot. The track didn't embed so Anyway the composers were the ones who did the OST for RE:Outbreak and one was the guy for DMC1 and 2 and the other for DMC3 and 4. Plus a bunch of rockman games.

There's a lot of stuff this Month So I'm sort of doing it piecemeal so as not to be overwhelmed by all the shit I bought. 360: Gears of War 3: Limited Edition PC Borderlands GOTY (already had the PS3 vanilla version at launch but figured I should get this when it was on sale). Dead Island (Screw the haters, it's actually not that bad. Digital Purchase) Far Cry Complete Magicka DLC Still Life PS3 Disgaea 4 LE Resistance 3 Steelbook LE El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron (I'm having so much fricking fun with this game during my spare hours) Renegade Ops (Caved in and bought since I had 3 of the promotion and wouldn't mind a game for free, Realised this was fun too) God Of War Origins Collection (Bought digitally despite having the PSP games, which I'll be selling (not finished with GoS but that's digital. Thing is you can get a PSN of £35 for £25-29) Arcana Heart 3 LE Wii Nothing PSP Nothing cause I decided to wait for Ghostlight's special edition of Persona 2 DS Dragon Quest IX There's a few more things this month including the REs, SoTC and Ico, Totori etc. I'm waiting for Space Marine to come down in price before I get it.

uh. well some of them were cheap like dissidia and ea sports active were both around £7 each. I know I've got to watch this but gah when you have two gamers in the house things get expensive. It came to about £400-500 in total I think. The 3DS plus 2 games were my wife's idea of an impulse shopping though currently we're sharing it as there's not enough games to validate 2 machines. If not for that I'd have just overstepped my budget by about £70. Catherine was bought as a birthday gift for my wife so it doesn't really count (though the game is a bit too hard for her making me the one who plays it). Xenoblade was a gift. .... FUCK! Got into an extra spot of cash this month so this is what happens. I'm not even talking about the other expenses or the nights out we've had. Summer always leads to expenses just like Christmas and this on a year I didn't take a vacation. lol p.s upvoted you just for the reality check.

That's excellent dean. VC for the PS3 and VC3 for the PSP are the best games in the series. Honestly if you like Fire Emblem and to a lesser extent advance wars you should be at home with this game. Ok Time for a big purchase post covering the last 30 days roughly Nintendo 3DS SSF4 Ocarina of Time Xenoblade Chronicles 360 - PS3 Catherine: Love is Over edition (that's what I think it's called) Streetfighter 3: third strike online Bloodrayne Deathspank: The Baconing (I really need to know if renegade ops is any good before I buy it just to get the heist for free which I'd prefer on steam anyway) Stacking DLC 640GB HDD EA Sports Active 2 (for the wife) PC Cursed Mountain Bulletstorm (Origin had it for £9.99 one day) Dungeons of Dreadmore From Dust Bastion Getting Avadon today Icewind dale 2 Master of Orion 1-3 New Vegas Old World Blues DLC Morrowind GOTY (Mine's in another country at the moment) HIBundle 3 Jericho Runaway, A Road Adventure Europa Universalis 3: Divine Wind Deus Ex: Human Revolution Augmented Edition(Paid for should get it within 5 days) [Will see if I get the collector's ed, right now. Nope] PSP Dissidia Duodecim 012 September is going to be a big month as well. Edit: Crap I forgot about Heroes Chronicles, Heroes 2, Dark Reign amongst a few things I bought from GoG. Man I really want to live for a 1000 years and have extra time plus a cave and electricity and devices if I seek to finish everything. Also rebuying digital shit in a sense is nice so now I know I have them all installed on my drives.

I was pretty much with you Richard on a few points but there's a few points I'll be differing from clearly. 'smashing things' with or without consequences is not fun. Never fun when you know that everything was created somewhere and by someone's toil. There's nothing that's created for free. I don't think you can think that smashing something is fun unless you really let your baser instincts go which I'd hope most of us are a bit beyond. Besides inhibition, fear is also a reason for some. I'm sure there were people a bit put off by the crazy mob. (the rest of it is general stuff and not directed at you ). As for getting stuff for free, yes you're right but here's the thing. Mob mentality while it exists we've got controls to set us apart. Some people were caught in the moment but some people did instigate it as well. The entitlement issue stems from the responses of some kids like the ones who said hey we can drink Rose wine and everything. If those who are rich can, why can't we? If those in government can get away with expenses scandals, the bankers can get away with theft of a certain degree and so on. When people see that for the most part people can get away with stuff and consquences for those in higher positions aren't as bad they wonder if they can't as well. There's more than to it than entitlement though that could be there to some extent. The clear reason is that there's far too many reasons to pinpoint it on one specific reason. The biggest reason is that people believed they could get away with it. That they wouldn't get caught which is idiotic frankly when London is the most CCTVd city in the world. Consumerism is also at flaw here because people are made to covet things. Would people just try to get free stuff if they weren't so tempted with consumerism? The thing we must not do right now is to just say yeah it was one reason only and stick to that. What's needed to be done is to get them to understand what they're doing is wrong and for that every decent citizen needs to set an example of themselves and punishments must be meted out to those guilty. We should not give into excuses and say yeah it was this or that.

@Dean: It's not quite like what's mentioned in the article. You're right in that it sounds like a joke because people have misunderstood certain aspects of it. Basically social networks and BBM aren't banned but they'll be monitored and it's sort of similar to what happened on 7-7. Basically as of now rioters and suspects will be banned from social media and the like. Yanty one thing I'll say is do not read the comments at CiF because it's a cesspool but the article isn't quite far from the truth. You see we do have issues with entitlement and it's bleeding obvious today. A 19 year old university going daughter of a millionaire is one of those in court for looting, there's a social worker, a couple of 11 year olds. Different backgrounds, different cultures and communities. It is a little to do with consumerism. The other day a father was confused as to why his son was involved in it and enraged that his kid such a thing. I didn't get the time to watch the whole thing but it did seem like he wanted to set him straight. On the other end, things got calm in Brum, primarily because of Mr Jahan's appeal for peace and that of the elders as well. The Brasian community (mostly the Sikhs and Muslims) felt an overwhelming sense of loss over the three that died since they were guarding all the locations regardless of faith, culture, etc. It's been vaguely rumoured that it was perhaps the Afro-Carribean community but to be honest we don't know. All we've got is unclear eyewitness accounts at the moment. There's an article in the guardian that pretty much covers it --> http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/11/uk-riots-birmingham-muslim-sikhs The issue of entitlement here isn't even rich or poor. It's a flaw of consumerism as most of these people aren't all poor. There's the college student who stole a TV and was sentenced saying she just got in the flow. There's one who came out and admitted her guilt of theft and returned everything and thus got a pardon if I recall correctly (she wasn't identified or arrested prior to that). As for Mark Duggan it's going to be difficult to know the truth. Outside of the fact that there's evidence pointing to him being a drug dealer and that he possessed a gun we don't know if he's really incited anything. The taxi driver is too shocked to comment. Regardless of it all, last night was relatively quiet across the country and tonight we'll see what happens but the organised thugs know they can't hit the cities with ease at the moment and arrests are still being carried out.

Possession of firearms is illegal in the UK unless you have an SGC or FAC. As per earlier laws possession of even ammunition by former convicted criminals is also illegal. Replicas that resemble real guns are also a restricted trade item. You need special permits to own one. Civilians can't run around with firearms. We also have regulations on airguns due incidents which have affected businesses such as airsoft. Historically however we've always had fewer homicides thanks to guns even before regulation. We do have knife crime, but it's been lower in the past few years. In fact if you appear to be a minor when buying cutlery that looks like it could be a weapon they can ask you for id. Getting an SGC or FAC isn't easy. You need to first demonstrate you have good security on your property or business before they give you anything. Not to mention a lot of weapons are restricted so even with the certificates you can only get a limited number of weapons. Generally we take our anti-gun stance quite seriously here. In fact most of Europe does as well if I remember my laws well. There's precautions that we take when we handle replicas and stuff we usually sign on shoots.

As Dean says it's not Racism but Classism. Yes there have been race-riots in the past though. No denying that but that's of a different nature. There were issues of race brought up thanks to three youths killed in Brum by that car (Sad story) because the people in the vehicle were Black-British in a largely British-Asian community. However we'll find out what really happened there soon enough. You see FDS they are criminals as Dean said the primary aim here was to get free stuff. The cause and the start might have been different but there are criminal gangs involved in some of the events. Some were planning activities via Facebook, there was a kid who actually told people how to burn down the Miss Selfridges who's now arrested and his hearing was set for today. The people who've been captured come from a variety of backgrounds, circumstances and the like. One of the accused today (Although his charge has been reported to be of trespassing) is actually a 31 year old Primary School Teaching assistant. See the people here mostly wanted to get free stuff. That was the main aim. At what cost? As HH pointed those two kids talking about drinking Rose Wine and wanting stuff they perceived the rich to have do not really want to work for anything but just be handed stuff. There's flaws on every side here. The govts, the advertised lifestyle, the economic situation, the fact that people in power are seen to get away with stuff. They don't care about who's in power. They lack power and they want it. They lack things and they want it. It's to do with class, lack of opportunity, the unwillingness to work to get somewhere, crime and a number of things. Once some of them have been made examples of the non-crime side would sit out on this. Then we'll just have the gangs mostly. And as Richard points out the police are making arrests. Not to mention here in London the courts at Camberwell and Highbury have been up since yesterday passing sentences on what they could and moving the others to different courts. Mob mentality exists yes and there are kids who see the lawlessness and try to get in seeing their elders. But it's definitely gang-started and the fact that many witnesses have seen and have reported that there seem to be instructions, leader figures and some sort of organisation in the chaos suggests that crime is heavily involved in this.