Trip Hazard

Finished Risen. Was just relieved to get it over with by the end. I quite enjoyed the first half of the game, slowly levelling up, feeling myself improve at the combat, encountering new enemies quite regularly. But, the latter half is one big cave, basically, with a load of shitty (easy, but shitty) puzzles in it. By this point, you've seen everything, and you've mastered the combat, so the game throws insta-kill deathtraps at you and you never encounter enemies solo, but in a group. You always have to get enemies stacked up in a line if there is more than one, or else you get juggled and there's nothing you can do. I was like when I started the game but at the end I was like :/

Local co-op? I'm sold.

Does everyone try to go through the boss door at the apex of a jump when playing Megaman?

I dropped Gothic 3, because, although I patched it with some heavy-duty, years-in-the-making community patch, it was still very slow to play, had framerate issues, and the combat was...broken. That's the only word that really fits. I mean, I tried for 5 or 6 hours, and there are some positive aspects, but it is outweighed by the negative. Lovely music, actually. That's a big plus. So, I picked up Risen, which I'd read has a smaller world (not really a problem for me as G3's was SO big) and improved combat. I still struggle when facing multiple enemies, but now I can't just retreat to a big rock where they can't follow and plink arrows at them, which was my only recourse in G3. Now it's a case of keeping everyone to one side of me, and trying to find a chokepoint to use to my advantage. Don't get me wrong, it's still janky as all get-out, but it's better. The world looks nice too, and is just a good place to while away the hours. This is not to say I've just been wandering; I have fought a lot and made some improvements to my character, and feel like I've progressed more than I managed to in G3, although it's still quite slow going. I'm enjoying myself, and get a cosy, warm feeling when I think that I've got 25 more hours of it to play.

Locamalito is one of my favourite indie developers, and I think every game he has worked on has been released for free. They are all worth playing, but I think Viriax is my favourite one. You pilot a cute little virus and navigate though the human body (think innerspace) with the aim of infecting every part of it. Every time you jump or attack, you burn up energy, but it can be refilled by collecting blood cells. Levels are randomised, but you always ascend and you always fight the boss at Lvl. 80.

Have watched the kickstarter video a few times now. I was really impressed by some of the animations, like reloading the revolver and opening the drawers, and by the music (tho I gather that was in the original game?) I really want to donate but KS won't let me for some reason. I'm sure they'll have no problem hitting their goal without my money but still, slightly irked

A few people on my twitter feed have been singing the praises of Velocity 2X these past couple of days, and judging by some videos it looks like something I'd really enjoy...if only I had a playstation ;_; One thing which didn't look good was in some of the vertically scrolling levels where the player had to put a kind of teleport marker down, complete one path of the level, then warp back and do a different path. It looked like it slowed things down a little too much, but perhaps the person playing just wasn't so great at using that function yet.

What was your first favourite zone? The Gutter is ace, I had fun there.

Cheers for the advice everyone. Bit surprised and disappointed that I can't get SNES games on there, would've thought the 3DS is more than capable enough :/

Quitting Metro 2033 at Chapter 4 because it's an area with a *lot* of different light sources, which makes my FPS go all to shit, and I'll be damned if I'm going to shoot them out to make things run smoothly.

Already found some great stuff via Every Noise. Got this playing right now http://grooveshark.com/s/Now+Ends+The+Beginning/4xT9Cy?src=5 Edit: It's The Advisory Circle

Quoting myself here to call myself an IDIOT for ever doubting that this game was and remains really great. Curse the embittered cynic within me!

Yeah, let's do it! I've got a few thumbs on my friends list, but they are all BASTARDS because they don't play the same multiplayer games as I do. I'd be up for TF2. Guild Wars 2, Counter Strike. L4D2, whatevs.

Well done! They (the ruin sentinels) pulped me many times before I finally beat them. Excellent boss battle

Thinking about getting a 2DS for my step-daughter, because it's absurdly cheap, and I want to play Super Mario 3D Land (my girlfriend asks if I'm really buying it for myself. No comment.) Got a few questions though, which have probably been answered in this thread already but it is a really long thread. 1) Can I download and play SNES titles from the nintendo eshop? 2) Does the mono speaker sound okay? If I plug earphones in, could I get stereo sound, or is that unpossible. Bit of a noob question, sorry 3) Is it really tough to break? Step-daughter is fairly careful but I don't trust her not to stand on it at some point Thank you!

These first three Culture books are all I've been reading for the past few months. Consider was by far the weakest, and I actually had to force myself to finish it.

It was that vague sense of things feeling slightly off which caused a lot of frustration to me in the early game, resulting in lots of easily-avoidable deaths. When my adaptability was at 20, I was totally comfortable with it.

Awesome. Killing time reading about music, bouncing from genre to genre, artist to artist and tracing links and influences is my favourite thing.

Showing off my ignorance of all things modern and "trendy" here (do people still say trendy?), but is this the PS4 pad? My friend has a PS4 but he only has Knack for it, which is Kack

navigating the menus in dark souls with that d-pad...ugh. Two years on, I still wake up in a cold sweat.

Uh, yeah, Dark Valley Edit: Scoured Yantar, and the underground lab there. Mainly I perched atop high places, where snorks could not tread. The lab itself was arresting, and I don't mean to do it a disservice by keeping this brief, but I am quite drunk. Snorks are unpleasant, but I found it quite easy to bait their leap attack into or against an obstacle, leaving me free for to pump a few rounds into them as they scurried away in embarrassment. I'm heading to the Brain Scorcher now, which sounds ominous. Disappointingly, I am now the #1 stalker in all of the zone; an accolade I don't feel that I've earned, or will be able to exploit. ...I feel I may be drawing close to the end of SoC, but it has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience and drawn me in more than any game since Dark Souls. When I'm done writing my crappy fan-fiction, I'll post it here for you all to laugh at

HG101 put up what I thought was a pretty interesting article about the STALKER series, which is here I'm still playing this loads, and have probably another 5 hours or so under my belt since the last update. I sided with Duty in the army warehouses and helped them attack Freedom. Nothing against Freedom - I'd say that on balance, I prefer it to bondage - I just happened to talk to Duty first and didn't even realise there would be an option to pick sides. Anyway, the Freedom base was trashed and all the soldiers put to flight or put to the sword. I got a *lot* of great loot from here, including a G36 rifle which has not left my side since. Oddly, after I'd done this part I started to feel like things were going a bit too fast: too many new guns, too many decisions to make, too many odd new artifacts which were absolutely everywhere. I got anxious about everything and ended up spending lots of time around the bar doing sidequests. I decided eventually that I had mucked about long enough, and went to the Dark Forest. I loved this whole area, creeping up on the base in the dead of night, killing snipers by timing my shots with thunder booming in the distance (I don't think it helped but it felt good) and then going underground going underground, with a weapon which was seizing up far too regularly and ammo supplies creeping ever downwards towards zero. As had happened with Agroprom, I crept around, keeping to the shadows and peeking around every corner, avoiding roving electrical anomalies and hovering ghost-boxes...which probably sounds silly but was actually really scary. Purely by accident I found that my bullets seemed to impact the anomalies, and that they were shitty restless poltergeists with nothing better to do than maim me with junk. I killed them all, presumably for the second time. Then there was a fire-breathing super-geist, and I expended my last ammo on that. And then the fucking army showed up, and I ranawayveryfast, tail tucked resolutely between my legs. Looking forward to fighting some of these in Yantar

It was me that said to put points into Adaptability. I stuck with 20 on my first build, which was a build much like yours, and I really did notice a difference when I was trying to dodge attacks. I don't know precisely how it works (Bjorn will be along in a moment to explain it all in excruciating detail ) but I think I gained more i-frames, and it felt more like rolling in DaS. Freja was my biggest disappointment, I think. I was expecting something really cool, and for the game to throw a curveball at us, but nope: big spider boss. Wandering magus & congregation is really easy with a hard hitting melee build, and not really deserving to be called a boss. I'm at home today, if you want to co-op with me some more. Although, I've just realised, you'll once again be out of level range! Waaah! Edit: And there is no boss in DaS2 which was as momentous and also fun and also challenging as O&S.

Just a quick update, if anyone is interested. On my phone so gritting my teeth in anguish. Agroprom had me on tenterhooks. I'v never been so scared playing an FPS. Got the documents in a not-very-stealthy way. Good thing the gunplay is (mostly) extremely satisfying. Made it to the bar and sold some things. I am quite the hoarder, it seems. Is it safe to stash things here, or will it be half-inched? Now, many options are open to me. I seem to have aligned myself with Duty, who may be the baddies but I don't think this game really deals in moral absolutes. Have been going to bed much too late and have skipped two meals so far

Just got my highest score in months on what I *thought* was the daily challenge. Fuuuuucccckkkkkk