Thrik

Borneo is a pretty nice segment. Quite UC1-ish, yet also gives you a brief taste of the craziness in store going forward.

Haha! Awesome. s_JIKrjs5IY

I personally think UC2 is easier than UC1 a lot of the time because it doesn't spam you with enemies like the original did, and also you have much more options for taking them out. I guess it depends how much exactly you find UC1's difficult, but I personally found cranking it right up to hard provided me with the most fun UC2 experience (due to it making stealth a more enticing option, something that you'll very quickly find out is emphasised in UC2).

Reviews so far seem to indicate that it actually leaps considerably beyond UC2 with regards to combat and set pieces, which is something that kind of blows my mind because they were already at a level that takes the piss. If there's one thing to take from Naughty Dog it's that they learn. Clearly every last issue with UC1 was analysed and sorted out, and it sounds like the same has happened again. The final boss in UC2 was a widely criticised pain in the arse so I really doubt that'll happen again. Other than that nothing really bothered me in UC2 gameplay-wise. It was all extremely enjoyable to play, whereas the last boss had me shouting and swearing in a way I haven't done at a boss since Beyond Good and Evil's control-reversing clusterfuck.

The difference is quality between Uncharted 1 and 2 is quite remarkable. It goes from being a fairly lovable Beyond Good and Evil-esque little gem — which is exactly what it was before the popularity of UC2 I recall — to a game which is almost flawless in every regard, delivering a pitch-perfect action experience. So while UC1 is a great game and I thoroughly enjoyed its Indiana Jones-riffing plot from beginning to end (increasingly so as it continues), there are definitely design choices made that are borderline insane. Whereas in UC2 I actually got excited about every single battle because they were so finely crafted, in UC1 it was more of a "Oh for fucks sake..." reaction every time I saw a fresh band of pirates appear around every corner. The superior combat mechanics — including full-blown stealth options that let you play the whole game like Metal Gear Solid with alert modes and all — certainly make UC2's action more fun, but it's down to simple level design too I think. UC1 feels more like an experiment whereas UC2 is just plain fuckin' execution. Also UC1 lacks much in the way of awesome set pieces, whereas UC2 has them pouring out its arse. Fortunately UC2 is designed in such a way that you really don't need any knowledge of UC1 to understand the story, much like the Indy films. The only thing you'll benefit from is recognising a couple of characters, which is nice but not vital. So if UC1 is really fucking you off and you're not seeing the glow of the Uncharted series, just skip it and get UC2.

Aye, everything Battlelog-related was wiped AFAIK. You can find me under 'Thriky' if anyone wants to play on the PC, which I should be doing so regularly considering the literal hundreds of hours I've put into BF2 and BF2142. Edit: Just remade it using the same details as the Steam Community.

Haha. Dicks in multiplayer provide half the fun, anyone who doesn't immerse themselves in games with them is missing out! I remember when I was like 12 and playing the then-new Tribes 2 — which was in many ways Battlefield's closest predecessor, featuring a similar bland of ginormous maps, ground/land vehicles with appropriate weapons to combat each, strong infantry combat, a commander view, etc — and some guys were really getting on my nerves by being all buddy-buddy with each other and making it hard for anyone else to get vehicles, etc. So I did what any 12-year-old would do. I grabbed the only transport ship our team had, and waited for it to fill with five juggernauts (the heaviest class which moved incredibly slowly). I then headed for the enemy base at a huge height from the ground and then about halfway across the map turned outwards towards nowhere. Now, Tribes 2 had an interesting feature that Battlefield lacks: the maps are infinite, as in the terrain loops endlessly. So I was all "just going to flank them from behind guys" to the juggernauts as I took an insanely far-out route to get to behind the enemy base, with them regularly being all "wtf" and "bit ott dude". Then literally about 5 in-game kilometres away I politely parked the ship and detonated myself with a grenade. Man, what a dick I was. Good game, Tribes 2! ZlQ7xgAZWZE

As someone who's only ever played the multiplayer side of Battlefield (not that any in the central series ever had a single-player before), I'm absolutely loving this. It has taken everything I loved about the multiplayer in the previous games and expands upon it. There's absolutely nothing comparable IMO, and I don't consider it fair to compare something like Call of Duty's multiplayer to it due to them operating on two completely different levels so I'm not going to. Compared to its cousins like PlanetSide, Tribes 2, and of course its predecessors, though? Beats 'em all. One thing I am sad to see gone is the commander role, as in Battlefield 2 and 2142 you had a guy on each team who sat in an RTS-like view dropping supplies, sending squad orders out, using artillery, etc. With that said it doesn't seem to make much of a difference to the actual gameplay on the ground, beyond knowing you can no longer say "Oi, bombard that area" and have to rely on a buddy in a jet or something doing it instead. Chat is nicely integrated into the PC though so chances are it'll happen if you ask, and of course you can use the marker system to highlight a target to nearby team mates. The refined squad system does work well as it now forces everyone into squads, so you tend to have a number of self-organised groups going about the objectives rather than a sprawl of randomers like in the past games. Even though squads don't necessarily have leaders who know what they're doing, the simple fact they spawn together and can see each other highlighted seems to encourage better teamplay. It's a shame this forced squad approach has resulted in squads having a limit of two less players and it's trickier to join squads with friends, but it's a worthwhile compromise (and may very well be improved through patches). The maps themselves are absolutely incredible, featuring the most epic environments I can remember from past Battlefields and then going beyond that. Not only are they huge, open, and complex; but they also have some incredible special effects going on and feel extremely organic rather than totally static as in the past games. It really is a complete joy playing the game, totally unpredictable and you genuinely have to think hard about how you're going to approach an area rather than just running in and gunning unless you fancy a thousand deaths — this is so not a twitch shooter like Call of Duty. I'll tell you what, though. This game is fuckin' hard. I've been playing Battlefield games since I was like 10 in addition to countless other team multiplayer shooters, yet after about two hours of play I'd managed one kill. As you'd expect from any Battlefield game and indeed war itself you die fast, hard, and you often don't see it coming. Yet with thoughtful use of the environment (rather than charging through like it's a Quake DM arena) you can at the very least avoid dying so often, and over time you remember what kind of actions are going to result in fast deaths and start moving more like a real soldier. Then with a bit more time you figure out how to not get your head blown off while managing to take others down. Loving it! I advise those not looking for their next big multiplayer addiction not bother, though. Despite what the marketing would have you believe, just like its predecessors this is very much a game completely built around its multiplayer with an OK single-player diversion on the side.

While I'm not going to get into the platform superiority debate, just thought I'd throw in that I pre-ordered the PC version and it arrived today — on two DVDs just like the 360 version. Looks like the PS3 is the only one that comes entirely on a single (40GB) disc.

It's not the first time, I guess if such a high-profile release is going to be released pretty much fucked up they feel they have to make allowances. They don't want EA hating their asses by ruining their biggest launch of the year.

I think 'sub-optimal' is being a little generous.

Yeah it's surely something to do with texture maps that causes the difference in how the models appear. As I understand it the whole point of the HD (hard drive) pack is to install textures to your hard drive rather than stream them off the disc because they're too big; also the game comes on multiple discs for 360 yet the assets are shared between both. Models take up almost no room at all in comparison so why you'd have shitty ones without the HD pack is nonsensical. As interesting as it all is though, I just hope the game does a good job of telling people about the option to install the pack. The pack is mandatory on PS3; part of me thinks it'd have been wise to do the same with the 360.

Haha, it's crazy how much older lower-resolution textures make a game look — a much bigger factor than polies or anything else.

I don't like to exaggerate or stir hype, but I can honestly say Battlefield 2 and 2142 provided the best multiplayer I've ever experienced (and my experience is considerable). Anyone who enjoys team-orientated multiplayer would be nuts to not enjoy it and I personally got years out of the last games such was the their depth and scale, never mind weeks.

To be honest these boss battles sound like they might have been modelled on the Metal Gear Solid approach. In that series you obviously play stealthily 99.9% of the time, yet in the boss battles you're typically faced with an almighty mother fucker that onslaughts you with weapons beyond your wildest dreams — like, you know, a giant robot or something. The difference seeming to be that the boss battles in MGS are actually really fun, and also they put a lot of work in their narrative so you learn quite a lot about the bosses before, during, and after the battle. Actually they're very much the highlight of the game, which shows just how much the execution could have been done better here. At least it's possible to see what they were shooting for.

Hah, I didn't even know about the whole HD pack thing until seeing that. Quite an interesting trick, that — giving you higher-resolution textures if you install to the HD. Surprised more games haven't done the same thing by this point (bet they will now though). To be honest the 360 version looks fairly excellent to me. It looks at least as good as any comparable Call of Duty game from what I've seen (granted Battlefield looks much better in motion than in stills due to its grand scale, that goes for the older PC games too). Besides, comparing a maxed-out game which stresses the absolute shit out of cutting-edge PCs to the same game running on a console from the mid-2000s and expecting them to match up is kind of daft. DICE are technical wizards and the Bad Company games looked far from bad on the consoles, so I don't expect Battlefield 3 to suddenly start looking like ass.

Jesus Christ, you just reminded me about the truly horrific PC aeroplane controls in San Andreas. That shit nearly led to me having a nervous breakdown in my teens.

Similarly outrageous: Q7GVSx7yMaA The prospect of a Battlefield with a good single-player is kind of weird.

So I tried a 3DS for the first time yesterday and it turns out the 3D just doesn't work for me and my weak left eye. Stupid product!

Yeah, what makes it so sad is Fable 1 was (IMO) excellent. Very atmospheric and immersive game, and Fable 2 pretty much picked up where it left off and added the whole 'this is a shitload of years in the future so everything you knew has changed or disintegrated into ruins'. Felt epic, felt great. Brilliant sequel. Fable 3 just doesn't come close to hitting that. Not only is the amount of time between Fable 2 and Fable 3 rather short which in itself takes away from the grand scale of things, but also the world itself feels smaller and although areas from Fable 2 (and technically 1) reappear they're not that much different from their Fable 2 incarnations and it just feels kind of hollow. It sounds stupid but the first two games had a general feel that the third lacks. I can't quite put my finger on why but the original two had a dark and unique atmosphere that I couldn't get enough of, whereas I pretty much couldn't wait to get Fable 3 over and done with. Big shame. If you never played Fable 2 (very likely for those taking the PC route as it never came out for that platform) I recommend you fuck Fable 3 off and wait until you can play Fable 2 on the 360 instead. Hopefully Fable 3 hasn't tainted your perception too much.

Fable 3 was considerably inferior to both Fable 1 and Fable 2, no doubt. It's particularly bad coming from Fable 2 because most of what's good in Fable 3 (including many of the reused locations) was already done better in Fable 2, and for whatever reason they decided to dumb down almost every single mechanic in the game — gone were all the various buffs/upgrades and shit you could get for combat/weapons, the ability to choose what emotes you did to villlagers, and countless other things that made Fable 2 much more in the vein of the original and in all honesty perhaps quite a bit better. Big fail on Fable 3 IMO. I can't even say it's like an expansion pack for Fable 2 because it actually takes away a lot of its predecessors depth. It's like they essentially took Fable 2 and tried to make it more casual, an interesting omen of the looming Kinect Fable game.

From a discussion I saw elsewhere if they did release that texture pack you'd need an obscene amount of GPU RAM and such to make it anywhere near playable, so it's not something that's going to be particularly useful to 99% of people.

Well the main reason is probably the the rights to Psychonauts reverted to Double Fine just a few months ago, but of course that in itself means there could be more from the IP in the future.

That thread of comments on Mojo is pretty moot considering you can easily get a port of the patch for the regular retail release, and I'll be really surprised if Double Fine don't also stick a standalone version up on their newly revamped Psychonauts website at some point in the near future seeing as they took down the old patches too when they updated it which is kind of a pain seeing as they fixed some game-crippling issues. For the sake of principle though, I can agree with both sides. Supporting a company by buying their games more than once is a wonderful gesture, but if you're in a situation where you just don't have the disposable cash to throw at buying the same things multiple twice yet you invested in that company by buying it the first time around it's quite reasonable to feel a little uncared for. Considering a fan was able to port the Steam patch in as little as a day or so it clearly wasn't a big deal for Double Fine to do. I actually bought two retail copies of Psychonauts so I'd have to buy a third to enjoy this patch's small additions. I'm not in a Psychonauts mood though so it's not something that registers to me as a problem.

Just to clarify I wasn't aiming my comment at you or anyone else, but at myself: I was completely prepared to buy it and was very much hyped for it, but after those initial scathing articles I very nearly didn't bother. Then I saw that actually those perspectives are the minority and it'd have been fairly retarded of me to skip it based on them and have gone back to my original plan.