DanJW

The other thing is with any Double Fine game called Brütal Legend, you know that the sound of the ümlaut will be caused by the presence of a tongue firmly in a cheek.

I was thinking that too brkl. Hmm, "Arson" would be a pretty cool name for a game...

Hahah the Railfan review/sketch was great. What movie was that, Highlander 2? Also I laughed all the way through the Molyneaux remix.

Heheh, I had a similar experience. Another little note, I really like the use of visual and sound effects in the game. Not just the night vision I mentioned earlier, but stuff like the visual noise from radiation and other emissions, the blurring effects and muffled sound following nearby explosions (gotta love when an enemy gets stunned by a nade and goes for a little wander across your gunsights - reminds me of Saving Private Ryan) and psychic attacks. It's all part of the atmosphere, but more than that it becomes part of the gameplay - the noise acts as a visual giger-counter, and you have to learn how to deal with the disorientation. For instance: Also the blowouts really were alarming, shame there weren't more of them.

And here it is. Basically, pre-order the Orange Box now and you ge to play the TF2 beta in a couple of weeks.

No, no spoilers. The review pretty much assumes that you know about Bioshock already.

It was pretty inevitable that I would get the make-me-rich ending, seeing as a decade or so of RPGs has taught me to load up with as many expensive items and weaponry as I can possibly carry, and then sell them off at a merchant - this being the only way to afford the decent stuff that you will need later. As it turned out this is absolutely not the case in STALKER, the shopkeepers being a much more minor feature and really there for flavour and emergency ammo replacement. You can find everything you need (including the best stuff) lying about and on corpses, really. This is fine by me but I wish I'd known sooner rather than trying to balance my load-bearing restrictions on a knife edge. I actually loaded up a save before Pripyat earlier and started backtracking. I'm going to thoroughly explore the Zone and see if there are any cool nooks and crannies that I missed. Then I might try pacifying Pripyat itself Get it ysbreker, you might just love it.

I played it a bit on PC, and it definitely feels made-for-console. It can be pretty fun, since there are not many westerns about in gaming at any one time (the last good one I played was Red Dead Revolver). Eventually though it got a bit boring, but who knows maybe it picks up again.

So it does! The Orange Box games are still on my list of cool, as is Assassin's Creed. Like Nick, Hellgate London and Quakewars have been downgraded to a "hmm?" for me, as have the various MMOs in development.

Ooh, it might be the Engineer character video!

2012? you gotta be fucking kidding me? It's bad enough that the most recent footage of Spore shows that the art design has been changed into something resembling pre-school television.

a) yes oh yes

Haha Consolvania has turned into Jam.

I just finished this (went back to it after completing Oblivion). I pretty much agree with everything Nachimir and Erkki said above. I'm not going to go over the endings again, except to say it was a lot more satisfying than most games these days. I got the "make me rich" ending and both the "secret" ones. I really liked the game, most notably during the middle. It was all a bit so-so up until the secret lab in the Dark Valley. That scared the shit out of me and I was impressed. All the underground labs are terrifying, each being slightly different. This makes it the scariest game I've played since System Shock 2. The realistic weapon physics and combat added a lot to this. Oh, and also this game has the most terrifying night-vision mode I have ever seen in a game. Seriously, it's so convincing and also unnerving, right down to the whirring noise it makes, that most of the time I had to switch it off and use the torch instead, even though it gave away my position. Those are the parts where the game really shines, and when you're exploring mysterious, hazardous terrain. The NPC stuff bored me after a while - I totally skipped the whole Duty vs Freedom faction war thing and chose to remain neutral. Likewise I stopped taking random jobs. I did however enjoy searching out the secret stashes of the people whose dead bodies I searched. I realised afterwards that this little feature really meshed well with one of the messages of the game, that information is the most valuable resource. So yeah, the second act was brilliant. The third act did that thing which lots of FPS's seem to do and dumped all the eeriness and became a war game. From Pripyat onwards the game felt very different. Not bad - the realistic combat again gave it its own unique feel - but not the aspect of the game that I liked the most. But I kept going because by that point I desperately wanted to reach the monolith sarcophagus (which was fantastically done I must say) and discover its secrets. From what I hear the expansion/prequal, Clear Sky, is focussing on the faction war thing. If the reviews indicate that I can ignore that and go hunting more scary stuff as well then I'll probably pick it up. All in all, a very different FPS game to most, and well deserving of praise despite it's flaws.

You do know that they have genetically engineered cats that don't contain allegens right? Which means you can eat as many as you like.

I can't find it. Only a retraction message from Ziggy Springsteen

Strange, skimming the same article I think I'm on the right lines, in that "Net Neutrality" is a term for non-tiered internet. The Legislation that failed was legislation attempting to prevent tiered internet, the exact same thing that has just now been green-lit by the US Justice Department. To reiterate. Net Neutrality is opposed to tiered intenet services.

One of us is confused. I can't tell which one at the moment.

Eh? Isn't Net Neutrality all about avoiding two tiered internet? How can one take the other down with it? And what's this about it sinking. What? What? What? Who? When? What?

The Idle Thumbs Mission Statement Clause 5: be generic.

Vimes, the idea is that ISP's will provide fast "premium" service to certain sites ie ones that have paid them. everything else will be available but at a reduced bandwidth. This might be really bad for gaming, for instance. Only those servers that pay the ISPs will be accessible with a decent ping. Free MMOs may well become logistically impossible. My only hope is that some ISPs choose not to go with this system and as a result will be overwhelmingly popular and wipe the floor with the two tier bastards.

You're thinking of lycanthropy.

http://www.doublefine.com/news.php/site/woooo_new_game_is_announced_finally/ I played it, it was awsome. The dialogue is especially good.

World War Two FPS have reached a big plataux of Meh, we all know that. I quite enjoyed Call of Duty 3, having said that. Now we're getting all these alternate history games to try and make it more interesting. First we had Resistance: Fall of Manchester Cathedral, and soon we'll have Turning Point: Another Subtitle, which looks unintentionally hilarious. Wasn't there meant to be a WW1 game in development as well? Can't wait for the Battle of the Somme level

For UK readers, mono is glandular fever. I learnt something today! Now to confirm whether or not "pinkeye" is the same as conjunctivitis... edit: it is!