Thrik

A lot of the art is certainly new. Going off memory, seven of the images were previously available (as well as these).

I've given it another hour of play tonight (mostly tutorials) and have continued to fall in love with the visuals, narration, music, etc. And the depth of the editing tools is extremely impressive; the only thing more impressive is that they've managed to keep it totally intuitive and easy to use. It's doing exceedingly well on MetaCritic, incidentally: http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ps3/littlebigplanet 10/10 from Edge? God, man. I think anyone who doesn't give this game a go is certifiably mental.

Yeah, I only played it for a little bit last night and didn't even touch the creative side, but the story mode alone is awesome and like the previews said can definitely stand up as a side-scrolling platform game in its own right. I was surprised at all the little minigame levels there are too. I'd imagine you could do nothing except play the stock levels and the better half of the user-created levels out there and still more than easily get your money's worth.

OK, give me a clue — how the hell?

Very impressed after playing the PS3 demo. I think this is the most comfortable first-person game I've played on a console yet, and it really does seem like they've managed to conquer the concept of translating the intricate player control of a third-person game into a first-person experience. This kind of feels like an FPS milestone to be honest. While the sheer flexibility of the player wouldn't fit into a lot of FPS games (I can't imagine a hulking great space marine moving around the world in such an gymnastic fashion), I can see a lot of the approaches in Mirror's Edge finding their ways into FPS games at large — even if it's just the basic stuff like sliding along the ground and vaulting over things. Also it'll be fucking amazing if DICE themselves do some of this in the inevitable Battlefield 3.

Definitely awesome, although it's hard to imagine what they can do to actually keep it interesting as an actual game rather than just something pretty/cool. I almost feel like I've seen all it has to offer simply by watching the trailer. For some reason this topic randomly reminded me of Metronome. Apparently could be coming around 2011? Jeeze.

Has something else happened or what?

wtf

People always like knowing what other people think about something, whether it's to reinforce their own feelings or to give them something to argue about. We wouldn't all be sat on forums, otherwise!

I enjoyed those trailers. It seems every single time I visit YouTube for any reason whatsoever, some ass comment gets on my nerves:

Two fuckin' expansion packs announced: http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/10/13/spore-expansion-confirmed-detailed I guess this gives some credence to the rumours that content was intentionally held back for selling afterwards, based on the immense popularity of The Sims' expansions.

I endorse the above list. MGS4 is definitely my game of the platform thus far, but I'm sure you were going to get that anyway.

Sure that's not your TV rather than the PS3? Frame stutter is generally something associated with LCD as plasma TVs, not players. I've never actually heard of a player causing anything like you describe, nor have I noticed it on my own PS3. In contrast, I've heard many reports of TVs dropping frames and having stuttering during smooth panning scenes. There's not really any reason why the PS3 wouldn't be able to chuck the data at the TV fast enough. It's HDMI, it has more than enough hardware to handle the task in every respect, and has a solid software back-end.

I have to say, it's really good at keeping you hooked. I've never seen myself as much of a 'keep trying until you do it' kind of player when it comes to arcade-like games such as this, but I've tried some of the races in WipEOut so many times it's beyond belief. One tip I learnt during my blood and sweat is that you should definitely experiment with the vehicles. I initially thought there wouldn't be much in them and just stuck with one I had at the beginning, but after examining the stats and choosing one more appropriate to my playing style I suddenly found myself smashing through first/second in some races I was stuck on rather than seventh/eighth.

I think the best example I've seen yet is Battlefield 2142's sound (eg: pane of glass between two players muffles the sound, but sound coming from other directions gets through as you'd expect), and even for that you need a fairly expensive X-Fi sound card. It does make a huge difference though, and while not even close to what's possible it does show what can be done today. The game is literally packed with quality sound engineering, largely because it was the de facto flagship game for the X-Fi cards.

Thank god for that!

He means the ones in the actual forums, not on the front page. At the moment they just take you into the thread rather than to the specific last post as they should.

WipEout HD starts on the lowest of four speed levels, the last of which is literally two or three times the speed of the first. WipEout always has been and still is the most mental racing game, to the point where I just can't play it on the fastest — it's too much. I believe you can skip to the highest levels (or any between) by using multiplayer or the quick race thing. As far as the game's appeal, what's not to get? It's classic WipEout: Insanely fast racing Mario Kart-esque weapons Great multiplayer For like £12 it delivers excellent value. If it's not your thing, I guess that's OK.

I got this a while ago, but I did enjoy it. The multiplayer is by far the highlight of the game, really well implemented and also gives you points for buying new stuff with just like the single-player campaign. I did hear the final game will have damage modelling of some kind, so I anticipate seeing whether or not they follow through on that. Still, it doesn't really detract from the actual point of the game; even without visible damage, you can still arsehole people by nudging them in the right way, etc.

The edit button should bring up an inline editor that lets you quickly change the post without leaving the page; you can see it on most vBulletin forums these days (such as this excellent one). However, it's never worked for me on Idle Thumbs and just seems to hang while processing the JavaScript — you have to click it again, which takes you to the regular edit screen.

I think John is a DICK.

He's not British.

Well, it's hardly surprising. It's the amazing editing tools that've caused so much stir. What I have seen about the actual platforming has been very positive, though. In fact, Edge said it's some of the most fun pure platforming we've had since 2D platforming's heyday, and that the pre-made levels that ship with the game's story mode could easily stand alone as a game release in themselves. I'm guessing there'll be a lot of trashy levels, but there'll also be some absolutely legendary level creators; playing their creations combined with dicking around on levels your friends/family have made will amount to plenty of fun I imagine. Have a look through the GameTrailers videos of LBP if you haven't already — some really interesting and varied gameplay is shown in them. I really like the boss video they have, with the Donkey Kong-esque flaming barrels and such.

I didn't think C&C3 relied too much on the tank rush mechanics, really. I thought it definitely went further than most C&C games in forcing you to adapt to enemy tactics quickly, making you rely on your own tactics rather than a great mass of tanks. I also noticed turtling was significantly harder in C&C3, meaning you have to commit more resources to actually fighting enemies off if you do want to sit there turtling -- just building a load of turrets and expecting them to ward off enemies endlessly will invariably fail. Lastly, resources were quite cleverly dotted around the map in such a way that you'd exhaust your closest tiberium stash quite quickly and have to make your harvesters go on long-range drives. Simply keeping this supply line going demanded quite a bit of attention and adaptation. I think if they continue down the course they lit with C&C3 they've got a good chance of producing something great. I'd say C&C3 set the bar very high when it comes to revamping the formula without losing what the series is famous for, and anyone who's waiting for RA3 hoping that'll be the game to do it ought to grab C&C3 first.

Pretty impressive: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd2fXaqtZMM The music is created by the objects sliding along, not a pre-recorded background track.