Erkki

I just downloaded the Hitman: Blood Money demo and played for a few minutes -- too early to have a really valid opinion about it, but there were two things that sticked out: the intro movie had great music -- Ave Maria -- that fits 47's style, but at the same time the intro didn't really say anything (at all). Then the level started with a tutorial screen and the voice reading the text was totally out of style. It was this generic screencast "I'm going to teach you how to do this" voice. In any of the previous Hitman games, or at least the first two, everything fitted an overall style, even the tutorials (can't remember if all of them even had tutorials). That specific style was one of the strong points of the series. Now with this game, and I think already with the previous one, that seems to be detorted a bit. Or maybe it's just that there's no point to the series any more -- it should have ended with the second game. There are things that should turn into franchises and things that should not. For example Sam & Max vs. Grim Fandango. I think Hitman 2 was a much needed sequel because the first one was really flawed and while the second one fixed some of those flaws and was an awesome game; the third one had great missions, but ultimately felt like the same old. On the other hand, I used to feel differently about Hitman becoming a frachise some time ago, so maybe this is just my over the top reaction to that stupid tutorial voice.

If all that's true, I'm in! So it's really another case of the demo being not very representative...

I completed the demo mission now and I'm still kind of ambivalent about it. The whole level was practically a tutorial -- the game told me everything I needed to do. I sure hope this was meant as a tutorial and not all levels are like this. But on the whole it does seem a notch or two down from the quality of the previous games.

And don't forget the classic: Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers!

That video crashed my PC.

I think elmuerte meant that some producer may get the idea to do a show about choosing which poo is more awesome

I didn't watch it except that song after it won, but congrats! That's a first for Finland, isn't it? You've usually been last or so.

I haven't played games much for some time now so I started catching up: got Desperados 2, upgraded PC and got Oblivion. Then I remembered I had stopped playing FEAR due to a fucked up patch and the PC being slow, so now I'm playing all three. Mostly Oblivion. Today I also got me a PS2 again with Shadow of the Colossus and God of War. Both have been amazing so far, but God of War seems to get a lot harder suddenly when I reached Athens. Before that I didn't die once from enemy attacks, only from falling a couple of times. The horse (Argo was it?) in Shadow of Colossus is pretty cool. Those wooden ones in Oblivion are nothing compared to Argo. Well, The Elder Scrolls games always did feel kind of Don Quijote-ish. So far Oblivion is the one that has kept me up for a couple of nights. I haven't done a lot of quests yet, but that part of it seems promising , but there seems to be some lack of depth compared to Morrowind (I think this was also discussed in the Thumbs review and/or that long Oblivion thread). If the quests make up for it, I don't mind though. Seems to become more similar to Gothic, which I think is good.

I had the first one for a short while and then later borrowed one from a friend. The only games I played on it for more than a couple of hours on it were ICO, GTA San Andreas and Way of the Samurai. So I actually have a LOT of catching up to do there I haven't seen Katamari in local stores though.

I have to say, F.E.A.R. is fucking scary. I've never been so frightened to walk down a corridor in a game. There are times when I'm almost jumping at the sight of my own shadow.

Yeah, that's probably what I'm going to do. I'll probably play Oblivion mostly, then switch to something else for a while, and occasionally take down a colossus or two.

Just a wee little line: http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/video_player.php?user=CybertronR&id=diM2l2H65bsMuj4 http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/video_player.php?user=Adam_B&id=JHM1wzr85bsMujI http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/video_player.php?user=Adam_B&id=d300lzKq5bsMvjE

Yeah, and Wii will get you lots of chicks!

Same here, and the controls weren't that great either as I remember. I've tried to start playing it 2-3 times, but never even played more than an hour perhaps.

Awesome

I think this is a more general issue with Wii that you raised -- for example, would you need to learn actual ping-pong skills to do good spins in a ping pong game? If you would, I'm not sure it's such a bad thing -- obviously the games would be balanced so that anyone can complete them, but the term "easy to learn, hard to master" would obtain a new (long-lost?) meaning in the context of gaming. But would free-hand sword-fighting be any more difficult than with a regular control scheme? Well, it depends on how the enemies are done of course. But I don't really see how it would be more difficult than trying to communicate my thoughts about where to slash or thrust by translating them into presses of keys or buttons. I for one have trouble doing combos in any current games, I keep messing up even the simple ones...

One quite an old PC game, "Die by the Sword", kind of did this. There were various options for controlling the sword, one was with the mouse, I think, another was with the keypad. I bought it just recently, but didn't play much because the game kind of sucked or was too hard. But eventually, Wii will have to get at least one game that does this really well.

SpongeBob, not SpoonBob

Nintendo the winner is.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!

Awesome so far, except the guy controlling Link was a bit too stiff.

Also watching gamespot. I might actually start liking house...

I've heard a lot of good about some "recent" fantasy novels, haven't read many of them yet, but my own favourite has recently become Robin Hobb's "Farseer" series (Assassin's Apprentice etc.). I'd like to see games/movies based on that. I used to be a fan of LOTR about the time when there first started to be rumors about the movies, but I kind of lost interest even before the first movie was screened. I still liked the movies though.

When it comes to consoles I've only owned the PS2, which I had to sell. Now I'm definitely getting Wii, and I'm also thinking of buying a PS2 again, just cause there are so many great games on it that I still haven't played: Katamari, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus etc. Xbox (360) still doesn't have many interesting exclusive games as far as I'm concerned so I'll probably just keep upgrading my PC instead unless that changes.

Here's hoping the Houser brothers will announce that Grand Theft Horse game... For whatever platform. Of course that's just a dream of mine. I'd like to see a good horror game for Wii. I haven't played Cthulhu yet, but if it's anything like it was at first hyped, then a Wii version would probably make the sanity part of it almost physical, which would be interesting if not awesome.