Thrik

After you complete the game you can replay it with the tranquilliser gun available throughout, which for me gave the game a whole new lease of life because while you can get through a lot of UC2 without alerting enemies, it can be ridiculously time-consuming and frustrating to do so due to the lack of an enemy cooldown mechanic like you might find in Metal Gear Solid. Having the transquiliser darts really nudges the game towards being a great stealth game rather than an OK one. UC3 kind of stepped back on the stealth mostly because it was more of a never-ending string of set pieces than UC2 was, with less big arenas full of enemies to tackle however you saw fit. And when it did include them, they were so huge (e.g. castle, pirate shipyard) that one alert would leave you fucked due to the enemies never truly cooling down. UC2 broke things up into smaller chunks so that you'd soon work your way past a mob of angry enemies.

Uncharted 3 was definitely a step back in that respect. You could get through almost all of Uncharted 2 stealthily, especially if you played the whole game with the tranquilliser darts. It's just not possible to do that in UC3, which combined with the inability to escape the 'alert mode' makes trying to play it stealthily really frustrating. It's delightful to see that UC4 is finally stepping forward with this aspect of the game properly. A big open question for me is whether or not this game will mostly take place in one location. I believe that a huge part of UC2 and UC3 being much better games than the original is that they felt like a true Indiana Jones globe-trotting adventure, whereas Uncharted 1 obviously just took place in a huge jungle environment and it all felt very monotonous after a while even if individual areas were beautifully rendered. Sure the gameplay was improved, but it wasn't that different. The real magic came from the variety of environments and insane shit that happened to them. If Naughty Dog follows its highly successful formula then I'd expect what we see in the gameplay footage thus far to just be from the game's prologue, with much different environments coming along later. Who knows, though.

Absolutely splendid. Some parts did look a bit sparse, but I think that was probably a combination of the video camera blowing the image and its details out, and there being that ever-amazing Nintendo Polish™ still to come.

Is it me or does the smoke coming out of those chimneys look a bit weird to the right of the ASS DUDE?

But what if you forget to add a game to the master list and can never be quite sure that your master list is truly complete. What if Twig. What if.

I'd probably end up spending more time organising games than actually playing them if I started, so I just roll a nice alphabetical list which I can't say is ever anything less than 100% efficient unless I somehow don't know what the game I want to play is called.

The rate of these god damn games is genuinely bewildering to me.

I think the original shot is great, in that it's meant to show you what following that ship would look like if you were in another ship trying to chase it. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if that is in fact exactly what happens in the actual film. It'd get pretty overwhelming if swathes of the film were filmed that way, but being a trailer it seems obvious that they'd go out of their way to include such money shots.

There were nunchakus at some point weren't there? Maybe it was some EU silliness.

Also from Stan's Previously Owned Lightsabres:

I just saw the light sabre as being from the same speciality vendor who stocks the one(s) Darth Maul used. The world is full of fancy ornamental swords so might as well treat the sabre the same way.

It's not the first I've heard of Rogue apparently being pretty good, and that it's to Assassin's Creed 4 what Brotherhood was to the magnificent Assassin's Creed 2. Shame it doesn't seem to have a current-gen version despite pretty much being an expansion to a game that does.

I think a good sign of how it's doing is that when clicking on the featured users on the home page of the whole site, they're posting things like 'Wow, I have eight new followers!'.

So... are those things actually in Far Cry 4 then? If so then it's great that I'll be able to put animals to sleep before putting them to rest. I'll feel far less evil.

You know what'd be nice? The ability to tranquilise animals and give them a peaceful death before horrifically ripping off their skin. Is this entirely obvious thing implemented?

Takes me right back to Assassin's Creed 1, and the almost universal disappointment in its gameplay yet absolute wonder at its visuals (funny to think how unimpressive it seems now).

Yeah the PS4's is a bit rough. I don't understand why it's so much worse than the PS3's comparatively infinite-seeming longevity, considering that I'm playing games where it does nothing that the PS3 controller didn't do — apart from the ostentatious light being emitted from it.

What, he's meant to be one?! He doesn't look anything like one, where's the beak-snout-thing? I always assumed he was a hedgehog. Stupid series.

My word this... thing... is cute.

The game looks absolutely terrific to me, but I skipped Far Cry 3 so I guess I'm missing out on this 'surprise' aspect of it that almost every single person reviewing Far Cry 4 seems to mention. I suppose that this could be a bit like watching Fringe without ever watching The X-Files, getting to appreciate the compounded achievements of both. It does seem distasteful to be going around slaughtering copious amounts of animals, but then you can go right ahead and do the same kind of thing to civilians in many games. The best example is probably Grand Theft Auto, which incentivises killing civilians by giving you small amounts of money for it, but simultaneously discourages it by introducing the risk that the police will come after you. It'll be nice if Far Cry 4 has a similar approach and allows nutters to go on risky rampages that attract attention from any enemies nearby if they wish, while also making the game fully playable without having to take animals down (unless they're being assholes). I'd certainly like to not be throwing grenades and fire bombs at poor grizzly bears that are just chilling in the woods.

Haha, yeah I was only kidding there. Although there was some sincerity too, in that after the fantastic but draining city-based gameplay of AC2 — and then in relatively quick succession Brotherhood and Revelations (both of which I gave up on after a little while because it was just too much of the same) — I still can't stomach the thought of another large romp of this kind that's primarily set within a city. Hopefully the sparser and more beautiful environments of AC4 will reinvigorate my interest in the series somewhat and I'll be ready for the more urban stuff, which I would hope has been improved gameplay-wise since the earlier games.

All this talk of Unity just makes me to get Ass Creed: Pirates! for the PS4. I've still not played it and the theme appeals to me a lot more than Unity's. The last one I totally got into was AC2, and Unity seems a bit overly similar. Renaissance Italy and France... what's the difference, right?!

:tup:

Dude they're big, fat pigtails. Sonic has the same thing going on but without the ties.