Marek

Played it yesterday. What an amazing experience. A couple of moments nearly moved me to tears. The key is playing it with a willing partner though. I completed an early area with someone who seemed to be just dicking around on their own, and it was terrible. But when I got paired up with someone who was playing it properly and who was actively communicating, it became totally amazing. It's interesting that they cited Campbell as an influence. My first thought when finishing the game was that it's a perfect minimalistic take on the hero's journey. It does feel like they were genuinely inspired by it in a meaningful way, not just in the default sense.

That was a great read!

This is very exciting news! I recently looked at SimCity 4 again (after not touching it for a few years) and briefly considered loading it up again with some new mods (though the modding system seemed pretty complicated so I backed out of that plan). I also looked at Cities XL to maybe scratch that city similation itch but decided it wasn't quite what I wanted, so it's great to hear a proper sequel is coming. The original SimCity was one of those first few games I got to run on my first PC. Not knowing a lot of English at that time I was really just clicking things and watching what happened rather than learning the game properly with a manual. Pretty quickly I knew how to plop some zones, though I didn't yet know how to set up any infrastructure. That was enough to spark my imagination though; I thought the game was totally amazing as this odd abstract thing, even though I was just looking at a landscape with some coloured boxes in it. Many days later, I accidentally connected my zones to a power station with a power line ... and ACTUAL HOUSES APPEARED. I had no idea this game was in any way capable of rendering REAL BUILDINGS in a LIVING BREATHING CITY. My jaw hit the floor. It was one of the major moments in my gaming life. This is not the reason I continued to enjoy SimCity, but I'll always remember that one awesome moment.

I really liked it. I didn't mind the lack of mechanics as I expected this going in, and the slow pace and lack of jump button encourages you to take in the surroundings and allows anticipation to build. It would have been terrible if you could have just bunny hopped to the next trigger point. Despite not having any real gameplay I think it's an experience that would only work in this form. I disagree that you can 'play it for free on YouTube'... I absolutely wouldn't have watched a video of this for 1.5 hours, but I enjoyed playing it. I guess this is one of those really marmitey games like Passage.

Once... I played Dance Central. There is no footage.

You know what, that's not even one of my best dances.

It was nice to meet you Patters. I didn't see this thread until now so I'm sorry I missed meeting anyone else! I should remember to check here next time. I loved the event and I think you're onto a great format Nach. Having multiple and varied activities overlapping creates a good atmosphere, and the talks were of high quality. While it was occasionally difficult to hear the speakers, it was really great to be able to sit in a lecture while also seeing a nerf gun squad running past in your periphery. I'll definitely go again if there'll be another edition.

Urghhgghhghgghghgh wow the quality of the old thumbcasts was truly horrendous. It's pretty embarassing.

I thought I'd make a thread for this as there isn't one yet. SEGA and Avalanche Studios (Just Cause) have announced Renegade Ops for XBLA/PSN/PC. It's a vehicular twin-stick shooter using the Just Cause 2 engine with gameplay inspired by classic games like Jackal, Cannon Fodder and Jungle Strike. Although I work at SEGA I can objectively say it'll be awesome. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-03-30-just-cause-dev-announces-renegade-ops http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/218659/renegade-ops-announced-gamepro-has-world-exclusive/

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-26-renegade-ops-pc-release-date-announced Oct 14.

I'm not sure which day exactly but it'll be released on Steam very soon. I wish I could say how it plays with mouse+keyboard but I've only played it with gamepad, sorry. I'm useless for information I guess.

It's out now on XBLA/PSN (PC download soon)

Just wanna draw attention to this post I just wrote for gameslol, since I think it's a pretty cool post about an obscure topic, and I'm interested in hearing of other examples: http://www.gameslol.com/2008/11/30/kinetic-typography-in-games/

Teaser trailer & info: http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/116/1165762p1.html

Haha oh geez, Friday might suck for me. I'll see if I can still make it though.

Sweet! I'll be there!

I've been out of PC gaming for 5 years and am planning to get back into it. I have no idea anymore what kind of specs will deliver what kind of performance, but I'm eying this configuration. How well will this run high-end 3D games (like recent/upcoming shooters) at native res? Is it fair to say that pretty much anything in this sort of range will run anything well at mid to high settings? - Intel® Pentium® Dual Core E5500(2.80GHz,800MHz,2MB) - 21.5-inch Full HD WLED Widescreen Monitor - Nvidia ® GeForce G310 512MB graphics card - 4096MB Dual Channel DDR3 [4x1024] Memory

Thanks for all the advice, guys. That's reassuring, though it's not so much the actual assembling that worries me, but selecting the right components. I'm having this whole choice paralysis thing, and I don't know which components are good or which ones work together well. Armchair General: I should probably send you a PM. Edit: looks like Dino PC can offer a config that's listed as "very good" in that chart if I swap out a NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 1GB with a ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB on their default system. That puts it at 440 quid - well within budget.

P.S. I want to get a mostly pre fab system. I feel like the days of building my own PC are over, for better or for worse...

Desktop. Budget around 500-800 quid I suppose (although I was including a 20" monitor in that budget). I could go higher but I don't really want to probably. What I was told a few days ago was "all the processors nowadays are uber fast anyway so that doesn't really matter - get a good video card and good memory".

BONUS CONTENT. James Spafford and myself got back into podcasting as well, so on top of this week's podcast with Chris/Jake/Nick/Steve, you can also listen to us. Our podcast was recorded live at the scene from Brick Lane at the Eurogamer Expo. Spaff incidentally was involved in organizing this expo, so we ended up recording part of the podcast back-stage while booths were being torn down. Expect some background noise. For the first part of the podcast I chat with Lawrence Bishop and Alex Ashby of Beatnik Games (also formerly of Idle Thumbs) about their game Plain Sight. I was still only just getting into the whole podcasting vibe so it might start off a little slowly, but I hope you stick around and listen to the rest of the segment. For the second part me and Spaff sat down with Bob Watson, now at Disney Interactive but also formerly of Idle Thumbs, and we talk about HAWX, Mirror's Edge, Far Cry 2, Machinarium, and other games. Also: a non-cameo by Nachimir. Hope you enjoy it! We might do more of these UK-based ones in the future. Direct MP3 download: http://www.idlethumbs.net/podcast_uk/idlethumbs_liveatbricklane.mp3 RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/idlethumbs-uk

You won't see your precious bag alive again!! HHAHAHAAH. Unless you send me... ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

Sorry I didn't make it. Drinks on the prior night had destroyed me.

Hey, nice! I'll see if I can come to this too

I was at a conference dinner with Mizuguchi a couple of years ago and he told me about his rough ideas for a Rez successor. At the time he thought Wii wouldn't be the right platform because he sees 'Rez 2' as being this really high def audiovisual experience, which the 360/PS3 fit more naturally. I don't think he hates the Wii or anything.