Thrik

Awesome. Even better would be if you made the player widescreen though, seeing as YouTube is officially widescreen as fuck nowadays. I believe the dimensions would be 640x360.

I've never really done or thought about this, but I guess it's a good way of training yourself to make good strategic decisions if you play RTS games competitively (as pretty much any regular multiplayer gamer does). I personally prefer the thrill of the moment though — it sounds like the kind of thing that can ruin flow as much as quick save can sap all the tension out of an FPS.

Good to hear. Speaking of hand on the power cord, I absolutely shit myself the other day after doing a bit of hard drive replacement. I was happily browsing the web when 10 minutes later I heard the most horrible sound you could possibly imagine coming from a PC: an extremely loud grinding noise, almost like dragging plastic along concrete. Went into panic mode, immediately cut the power, and found that one of the PSU cables had found its way into my GeForce 8800GTX's fan. :tdown: :tdown: Fortunately no permanent damage was caused, and the fan still seems to be operating properly. But shit.

Hahaha, that is awesome. And yes, I fully endorse any Fable 3 as I loved the existing two.

The first episode didn't seem to be cut in any way. It was absolutely packed with swearing, and it ran for a constant 60 minutes without ads.

I think HL2 did a pretty good job when the city started fuckin' walking towards me.

Wikipedia FTW: It would appear Killzone 2 covers the counter-attack from the ISA a good while later, where they basically take the war to Helghan with the intention of taking out the military leaders and shit.

FX has started airing The Wire season one, and seeing as it's got quite the acclaim I figured I'd give it a go. I thoroughly enjoyed the first episode, but I'm just wondering: is it actually a 4:3 show, or has FX just cropped it? It doesn't bother me a great deal, but I figured I'd ask as sometimes certain channels on Sky do — albeit rarely — crop shows and even films for no apparent reason.

It doesn't look bad, but it seems pretty much like a half-assed mimic of games I've already played on the PS3 and 360.

Yeah, it's an interesting concept — I hope it turns into an interesting game. Looks like Jade being involved was just a false rumour though, and it seems that Darkworks is developing it rather than Ubisoft Montreal (which is just handling the Windows port).

http://www.ganggarrison.com/ Keep hitting the right arrow on the page to view the classes.

If you're limited then it's probably best to wait for the looming big hitters. Of course, no idea what you've played in the past — there might be several older/cheaper games you really should play. I saw a lot of people saying the Resident Evil 5 demo was pretty mediocre and controls like a dog, though. Bit annoying as I've been looking forward to that.

Hee man, the 8-bit version in GG2 reminded me of . I pretty much never hear those because it only plays on the main menu, which I always skip.

I had this same situation a few months ago, and decided that I'd go for the 60GB as not having a HDD does limit you in quite a few ways. Specifically, things that eat up HDD space are: Patches Expansion content (DLC) Demos Trailers Also, one thing you'll notice very quickly is that the 360 is loud — especially if you already own a PS3 like I did. Installing games to the HDD rather than running them from the disc is very desirable in my opinion. Why they couldn't have put a quieter disc drive in is beyond me, but they didn't. You can get some really good deals on the 60GB one though. In GAME I got the 60GB 360 with Far Cry 2, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Fable 2, and an extra controller all for £220. If you can get a bundle like that where it consists mostly of games you'd buy anyway, the added cost doesn't seem so bad at all.

What I love about that seventh proof is that presumably the people telling you to do it think it's way better than the fifth, was totally worth the time fucking around with, etc. I can relate to such behaviour.

I did quite enjoy it when I played it, but I believe my epic hard drive failure occurred sometime around then and I never got back into it. I think it was a bit of a weird one because it was basically two games in one, and I suspect a lot of people who bought it or were hyping it didn't really have much interest in the simulation side — they just wanted to make movies. Thinking back, the movie thing was pretty un-fun and I remember the simulation shit being more interesting. The interface pretty much blew me away as Dan mentioned above. It's strange that for all of Lionhead's mastery of in-game interfaces (eg: Black & White 2, The Movies, Fable 2), they're pretty poor at HUDs and menus (eg: Black & White 2, The Movies, Fable 2). They're always a bit fiddly, with my most recent memory being the pain of consuming multiple potions/food in Fable 2. What I'd really love to see is all the principles of The Movies' simulation side applied to a new Theme Park-esque game.

You genuinely think Black is better than Killzone 2?

I quite enjoyed the demo. I don't really empathise with the complaints about the floaty controls I've heard in various places, and I thoroughly enjoyed what little action there was. I think the demo is far too short to call any conclusions either way though, so I'm pretty much as oblivious as I was before of how good the overall game will be. All I know now is that the combat is solid, the cover system works well, and that it looks superb. I never try to put too much weight on single-player demos anyway, because it can be really difficult to gauge the quality of a game based on such a short segment. I mean, pretty much all the criticisms I've heard of Killzone 2 (cliched set-ups, action in a warehouse, etc) could be levelled at games like Half-Life 2 if you were to take an equally short segment of the game out of context. I seriously doubt the whole game will consist of the demo copy/pasted a thousand times, but I get the impression that's what people are expecting. Maybe I'm being too optimistic. One thing I did find is that the combat is much better if you use the Call of Duty-style scheme (Alternate 2 and enable hold zoom), which puts zoom on the left shoulder button. I much prefer aiming this way, much like you do in Call of Duty 4 & 5, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Uncharted where you move your aim into position while zoomed out, then zoom in to actually fire once you're in the right region. The aforementioned games pretty much force you into it though, whereas Killzone 2 gives you the option — I kind of think it'd have been a better design decision to softly force it in Killzone 2 too by taking away the crosshair when not zoomed out. Annoyingly the only control scheme with this set-up has 'use cover' on L2, which is a serious pain to use at the same time as you typically don't use L1 and L2 at the same time in any game ever and it's a bit awkard on the fingers. I would very much like fully configurable controls.

Metal Gear Solid 4 does this and it works extremely well, like pretty much all the mechanics in that game really.

This Giant Bomb article makes the multiplayer sound really good: http://www.giantbomb.com/killzone-2/61-20601/killzone-2-lets-talk-multiplayer/35-228952/#50

It certainly is: http://www.rarewitchproject.com/?action=downloads It'll need a bit of piecing together in a folder by the looks of it, but I'd get it now as it's supposedly not easy to extract and re-encode these (this site is dedicated to that kind of thing). And yeah, I agree that Banjo has wonderful music. I didn't realise there was a bloody night version of the BanjoLand music. Even more nostalgic magic!

I love this game. I'm playing it very steadily as it does become a bit samey if you spend hours on end playing it, but by taking it on an 'hour here and there' basis I'm really enjoying every moment I spend with the game. Being familiar with Rare's past definitely enhances your enjoyment, not least because so much classic music and whatnot is redone in full orchestral glory — and I think I've already mentioned the god damn splendour of Banjoland, with pieces of practically every level in the original two games. But it's generally just great playing on stuff like Nutty Acres and hearing that classic beach music weaving in and out of the music, chasing Gruntilda to the most elaborate edition of Teddy Bears Picnic ever, etc. It did take me a little while to get past the fact it's not the same Banjo experience we've always known, but I soon realised that there wasn't really that much more they could have done with the formula beyond making it prettier because its predecessors did such a fine job. The fact it's probably the best vehicle making simulator in any game ever is great in itself. At least, if you liked LEGO as a child.

Some shots of the Wii version can be had here: http://gamersyde.com/news_7455_en.html And the DS version here: http://www.computerandvideo games.com/article.php?id=206120 The Wii version looks pretty decent considering, so I'm looking forward to how the PS3/360 versions will look.

Concur++. I mean I wouldn't say I expected to hate it, but I did have my expectations quite solidly lowered after finding out it'd veered away from pure platforming — and also there's been a general bit of disdain towards Rare this generation I think, although every Rare 360 game I've actually played has been excellent. Fortunately the game is in fact great fun, and also dripping with nostalgia for those who enjoyed the Nintendo 64 Banjo games like me and you. The BanjoLand level and its music is just... man.