Playing the first Mass Effect through again. Going to replay the whole thing to brush up on some of the choices I made in the first game. I'd forgotten how good it was. The only thing is that since the second and third games were completely redesigned, I'm having trouble adapting to the older style.

I keep meaning to dig out Mass Effect, but since I wasn't a huge fan of the 2nd, apart from the final mission on the CB, and didn't buy the third, it's kind of hard to get into it.

It's a great game, but I'll never have an ending to the story

Still a better ending than they came up with

Broke records on both Mario Bros and Tetris tonight!


278251 points on Tetris at lvl 19 and Moscow took to the skies!

I think I'll fire up Xcom: Enemy Within tonight.

A little sci-fi turn-based-strategy action seems like fun...

Played my dad's copy.

It's lovely when an alien is right infront of you and you miss him while his friend about 5 miles away shots you through a wall KILLING YOUR MARINE INSTANTLY.

I bump up the difficulty and play it in ironman mode.

Things like that are truly painful.

But then you get it where it turns around and suddenly everyone in the squad is blasting aliens like they're the heroes from an action film.

Fantastic game.

We keep listening to the soundtrack...So I'm playing Oblivion again...

I'm also still playing Madden...So this ought to be interesting, from a time-management point of view... ...

Still cleaving my way through Brvely Default.

Damn good game.

I AM NOW PLAYING ACTION 52!!!

I had to use 14 q-tips to clean it first. It didn´t look so dirty but it sure was, but it works just fine. Well, as fine as this badly programmed piece of donkey doo can work

I have only tried the first nine games plus one more and I was happy to discover that the two games AVGN couldn´t get to work, work on my cart!!

2048 on my phone.

It's truly free and addicting, my toilet has become a gaming station.

ATTENTION, FORUMITES!

I have found a good game in Action 52! Its name; Streemerz

Well, as good as it can get I guess. But the controls were good, there were no bugs, no glitches and even though it only had four levels and upon reaching the end it cycled back to level 1, it was very much playable. It even had good music, nice colours and parts where you had to think a little in order to progress

Played another game last night that turned out to be good playable

The game is called Crybaby...

Like Streemerz it had good music and controls and when it came to level four or five it looped, though it wasn´t as fun.

Something funny happened last night with Action 52. As I tried to start the game up it didn´t go through the usual intro sequence and later to the menus. Instead it started up one of the games, Billy Bob, directly! Never had that happened before

51 games down! Only Cheetahmen left and I shall try it out tomorrow!

And now I´ve played Cheetahmen!!

It was fun to finally try it out for myself and I basically got as far as AVGN did in his video. I also found the 1UP in the hole and thanks to him I knew how to beat Rhinoman or Rocksteady or whatever..



"Dude, think about it. A giant cheetah jumping over Saddam Hussein... Whooa..!"



And this concludes my Action 52 playthrough

C-C-C-Combobreaker!

Couldn't resist

I'm still playing Bravely Default, having a blast.

And of course Oblivion is firmly wedged into my 360.

I'm thinking about firing up Etrian Odyssey 4 and Pokemon Y again.

But mostly I'm posting so that somebody besides 'Rocu will have posted on this page of the thread

Curses! I was trying to get this whole page to myself!

I started up Neverwinter Nights again and went back to the game I had been playing a few months ago. It is a lot easier to do that in linear games like this than open world ones like Bethesda's. So far it is has been fun.

Deus Ex!

Played some Action 52 today while having Fallout 3 going on my puter so I could listen to Three-dog

I've kicked Bravely Default to the kerb for a while. It's getting kind of annoying.

Running up against a lot of trash mobs, 3 or 4 enemies at once, and I can take them down in one turn if I want to. But then I end up running low on magic, compromising my party's ability to deal damage. On the other hand if I take them out slower the enemies are able to deal out disproportionately large quantities of damage.

So I can either burnout my offensive mage killing everything quick, or my defensive mage/cleric killing everything slow. Either way I'm likely to end up in piss-poor shape for the boss.


So I've decided to fire up Fire Emblem: Awakening instead. Because SRPG>JRPG.

Currently NOT playing, but am paying attention to: Guild Wars 2.

reason: the recent update has caused widespread chaos throughout the entire game and there is now an uproar in the forums of people who are badly affected by recent changes. Most of this comes from ArenaNet's decision to try their hand at their own Megaserver to directly compete with ESO. Didn't matter that their game was not at all designed with a megaserver in mind, or that when announced the players were extremely skeptical about it, they did it anyway.

And now we have this. Sure the maps are always full now, but that was only one issue that needed addressing. Other issues are not only not touched by the megaserver, but exacerbated by it, namely grouping up with non-random people is nigh-impossible now because you have no say in which map instance the algorithms decide to put you.

While it's just annoying here in North America, in Europe it's an outright disaster due to the number of different languages that are spoken. Apparently ArenaNet did not consider spoken language to be a major concern for grouping up with other people.

At this point I am in orbit, waiting for the mess to die down before I make the final "sink or swim" decision. This update is either going to revive the game or outright kill it (yep, it was that big) depending on how ArenaNet handles the fallout.

My personal opinion: ArenaNet opened Pandora's Box in their game with their megaserver and it is now causing severe damage to the communities as their ties are fast becoming blurred into nothingness (in an MMO, community matters big time). What they need to do right now while the damage is still fresh and easy to remove is two things:

1. Give an official statement on what is going on and what their plans are to fix the problems.

2. Pull the megaserver out of the game until they can get the glaring issues sorted and then SLOWLY reintroduce it, first as an opt-in only test release, and then once they are SURE it is in a good position, perform a game-wide release while giving the players the ability to opt out of the megaserver (in which case they are moved to a home map that is used only by people on the same server as them).

Taking a break from Oblivion for a wee while to finish off the playthrough of Assassin's Creed II that I'd started not that long ago...'Cause I want to... ...

Kiara - That´s always sad to hear when gaming companies do such things to their games, but it serves a good point as to why I´ve never jumped aboard the MMO/constant online game bandwagon. It´s just too bad that it still affects so many players who enjoy those games

McB - Have fun being away from Oblivion! We will await your return and in five days, at dawn, we´ll look to the east...!

Played through Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. At first I was really impressed. The first mission was a huge map with lots of possible outcomes and pathways through it. The controls were solid and it played like Splinter Cell on steroids. I was impressed. Then I completed the mission. I was waiting for the next level to load after the cutscene and that's when I became annoyed. Credits rolled.

There is only ONE MISSION AREA. You can replay it with different objectives and minor differences but in the end, it was about two hours to beat an entire game's story that takes place on one map. There are TWO cutscenes. The optional side missions just reload the same map with a different objective.

This is total crap and it's amazing that anyone thought that customers would be happy with a full game that is like an average demo. Rent for sure, it was entertaining and the gameplay was very good for a stealth/shooter but definitely don't waste your money buying it.

I have a demo of Quake 2 that is longer than that!! And that was a full game, not an expansion??

Krikey...

I was looking at buying Ground Zeroes, right up until I saw it was just a prologue to the next MGS gme.

IT's an unbelievably crappy move on their part to release it if you ask me. Charging for what is essentially a demo

Full game. Apparently I'm not the only one who was unpleasantly surprised. A google search starting with "wtf met" will recommend "wtf metal gear solid 5" as the top result.

Right, as CT said, demo length but sold as a full game.

I´m sensing another game crash...

I've been expecting one for the last six months.

Though I figure the new consoles will bring it about quicker...

Yeah. Can´t help but feeling all they do is speeding it up.

Thankfully my NES and PC games can withstand each and every game crash..!

I wish they would. Maybe then publishers would stop looking for games that race to the lowest common denominator.

Consider Dragon Age: Origins. Bioware spent years, literally years, building that game from the ground up, right down to an all new engine for it. And what were they calling it? "The spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate" And why? Because they thought it was what gamers wanted. And the sales figures for the game agreed.

Nobody around now who'd do that, not now EA bought out Bioware

Quality takes time to acquire. Rushed development = rushed games = rushed game crash

I don´t care. I have the games I want and can play them at any time Though it would be nice to have an inspired game society like when Wolf3D etc came out

It's not that their rushing games, it's that they're simply not looking to make a quality product anymore. They just want something good enough to keep people looking favourably at the franchise so the next game will sell well. That way they can bring out another game a year or so later.

Combine that with the rush to make the most generic game possible in an attempt to maximise sales figures, and the whole debacle's doomed. Throwing newer, more powerful consoles into the mix just increases the cost for the developers, which in turn increases the costs for publishers, and so requires greater numbers of sales for the same return on investment.

Accountants and big publishers like EA have destroyed the games industry

Played some Dominoes and Wolf3D on the oldest puter this morning

I'm having a bit of a love affair with my PS1 emulator at the moment.

I'm alternating between playing the original Resident Evil, which still scares me to this day! (memories of watching my Dad play it at a young age ), and Grandia, which was the first experience with an RPG I ever had.

Nostalgia, guys. Hard to beat

Recently I've been playing the rather short puzzlers Kairo and NaissanceE. I was attracted by the notion of pure exploration of abstract worlds without being stalked by monsters.

Kairo was the shorter, and more straightforward in terms of story. Unfortunately it also felt too damn fragmented with its portal gateways and sudden changes of lighting from one area to the next. Getting the secret ending was... cute, though.

NaissanceE on the other hand... far more oppressive, indifferent, cohesive, larger and, in some aspects, frustrating. If it wasn't for being built on the Unreal engine I'd have given up in sheer frustration at Breath Compression, the openly malevolent wind tunnel section. Also, the whole place proves to be disappointingly small, after the immense and promising vistas of Going Down. And I still don't know why Lucy was lost in the first place. Nor what she was lost in.

Played and beat Street Gangs on (for me) record time yesterday! Didn´t take much more than half an hour as opposed to a couple of hours with lots of grinding!

And today I played it through again but with the other character and with maxed out skills (except for Punch). Both ways were fun but it was indeed much easier with maxed out skills, naturally. Though the grinding is never that fun, ugh..

Still ACII, I'm afraid...With occasional forays into Minecraft...Awesome games, both...

Did Fallout 3 today and the loot was good!

Gears of War.

Picked up it and the second one for a whopping 99p each.

You'll probably find the Karen Traviss novels for the games in The Works for about the same price... ...They're excellent btw...I've read the first two...*Applauds Karen Traviss*...

Her writing's so much like Subrosa's I wasn't convinced when I first joined that SR wasn't KT in disguise... ...

Which goes to show that all of SubRosa's work should be put in a book and published...Right now... ...

Get on to it Thorny-Boy!!!!...

Actress/Bishop...

Heh, I've got enough books already. I checked them out for the Kindle, but they're like a a fiver apiece, more than a little overpriced for a ebook in my opinion.

It's a shame really, Karen Traviss was the one who wrote the Republic Commando series, and they were damn good books.

Anyway, I'm taking on the big baddie at the end of Gears of War, bloody things a major pain in the arse

I started playing Planetside 2 yesterday, and it is FLIPPING PURE. My computer runs it at medium really well, actually.

So this kid starts gay-bashing over the chat. I was all like "Awww shee gimme some popcorn this gon' be fuuuuuunn!"

And then I united with my fellow trolls and generally had a good larf at this kid's expense.

You better of picked Vanu.

Heh! NC all the way, beeatch! Although, I must admit, your Heavy Assaults and Magriders are proving quite a problem for my jump-jetting self.

NC?

Could it be any worse.

DID TB PUT YOU UP TO THIS?

Also I gotta start playing Planetside again, it's been a while.

You know full well TB plays TR...


Hours later: VANU IS HIGBY OP AS NANITES! THEY HAVE US ALMOST TO WARPGATE ON EVERY HIGBY CONTINENT!