Simon

I guess it's natural to be a bit resistant to something you really dig becoming popular, and everyone and their grandmother knowing about it. In the past I've had pangs of 'But it's my object of obsessive fandom!' over various things. But I talk to people about Psychonauts all the time, I really want the game to be recognised for its almost-certain excellence and fun. I just know a lot of gamers I know will love it for so many reasons, but they might not have come across it just yet. It's kind of like a favourite underground band, which we'll call The Xenophonic Headcrab Juicers. If only you like them, as your little secret, they'll probably become disheartened, broke and give up eventually, never to make their uniquely hypnotic badass grooves again. It's much better for The Xenophonic Headcrab Juicers to ascend into the stadium-filling, platinum-selling bloated rock gods you know they're capable of being. Share the love, go Double Fine!

When I was playing through the series a few years back I half-loved it as a classic adventure series (with that RPG twist) that had somehow passed me by, but at the same time I got frustrated by a lot of the typical Sierra player-unfriendliness. The games had moments of fun but plenty of moments of tedium also. I think they're worthwhile for fans of the genre but don't exactly stand up to scrutiny today as truly great games. My favourite was Quest For Glory II: Trial By Fire, but I couldn't get the fourth game to run, and people always say that's the best one.

I think each time I play Grim Fandango, I appreciate it more. I've maybe played it all the way through four times since 1998, but each time I found myself 'getting' the dialogue more, appreciating the music and voice acting more, adoring the story, characters and mythology more. It really is a downright amazing achievement, but when you have Tim Schafer writing it and heading a crew like that, I guess excellence is likely. Wow, just thinking about it makes me want to go and watch the cutscenes again.

I think some the magazines Tim mentions aren't around in 'old Blighty' (the UK). I had a look for XBOX Nation in Smiths yesterday and it was nowhere to be found. So I'd definitely be interested in the articles, especially the 'sexy' one about Double Fine from XBN.

If gaming has affected my health at all, it would be damage to my eyes. Maybe if someone invented a little desktop device to give you a blast of corrective laser eye surgery every time you shut your computer down. As for the 'FPGamerunner', I'm not sure handlebars are preferable to a mouse for aiming. Also, $1299 ("limited time only"!) is pretty steep when you can just go outside and run, for free. And with bonus fresh air.

Well they had horses in Daggerfall, the last Elder Scrolls RPG I played, but I guess those could have been done a lot better. 'Mounted combat' sounds new and fun. I remember once I got bored and hacked Daggerfall with 'Dforge', I could run around towns faster than any horse, so they became redundant. The hack allowed you to alter all your stats to ridiculously high numbers, but that had some odd effects. You could be haggling with a merchant and end up buying a cape for -452 gold.

Hmm. What was it you didn't like about it? It captures the classic Star Wars feel so well. And even if they don't like Star Wars films at all, a lot of people seem to latch onto the very solid RPG elements that are there and just really get engrossed in the story. There are a few flaws, but it's got to be one of the best RPGs of the past few years, surely? As for formats, I actually prefer playing it with a gamepad, but the Xbox version is annoyingly missing a few things. When KOTOR II drops, I'll be getting the PC version and using a pad.

Congratulations, your new 'rig' sounds awesome Chris. I think it's a reassuring sign of the integrity of Thumbs readers that this thread didn't turn into a hardware pissing match once you posted your new computer's specifications. At the end of the Summer, I finally gave in and took a new hardware plunge myself, for the first time ever. But I still probably need to upgrade my graphics card. Presumably a Radeon 7200 will not handle Half-Life 2. Is the Radeon 9600 still an AGP card? Actually I was considering leaving ATI if there was better value for money elsewhere. Any thoughts, anyone?

That game was crazy. I think it went by the longer title of Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2: Gas Pump Girls Meet the Pulsating Inconvenience from Planet X sometimes. I remember you could be Lydia, Zeke or Barth. There was some old film footage of a rocket taking off when you were Zeke and chatted up the girl at the gas station. I never understood that, playing when I was 6.

Wow. Thanks for bringing this thread back up, Johanna. I might never have discovered that Steve Purcell, one of my top five most favouritest cartoonists ever, had a hand in ToeJam & Earl otherwise. Don't know how that's passed me by for so long, considering I really like both Purcell and TJ&E. Back in the days of the Megadrive (Brit name for Genesis) me and my brother spent many hours co-opping this funkadelic piece of console history. It was awesome just for the jacuzzi island with the lemonade stand hidden across the sea on the first level. Jake's right that it's less fun single-player. It's not one I would tend to pick up when playing minus a player 2. I remember being disappointed that the sequel was a departure from the top-down exploration, and I didn't really give it much of a chance.

Yeah, good point. You should like PoP2. It had some pretty cool ideas to build on the original concept, new magical powers the Prince had. Some of the undead enemies later on become annoying but there's some quite clever little puzzles. It's surprising how much they got out of the same basic game just by adding these new magic mechanics. The original PoP will always be the real classic, but people seem to forget PoP2 altogether, and it had its moments. Great first level.

Personally I think KOTOR's voicework is good, but it doesn't spring to mind when I think of excellent game voice acting. There are even some badly-delivered lines in there, though with such masses of dialogue, you can't really demand perfection. The sound effects and music were brilliantly executed, but I was indifferent to the voices. Eventually, I was skipping over the lines once I'd read them.

AGP's days are probably numbered, but I'm going to give it until at least next Spring before I change motherboard again. There's no urgent call for an ultra-new video card just yet, and that's the only thing my current motherboard won't be able to take if the next-generation is not AGP. It's always dangerous to jump on new technology as it might not become the standard.

It's likely that the Xbox version will be the best, and the current plan is a simultaneous launch on everything. It seems like it will be a big marketing push and everyone in the world will know about it, which is just awesome.

I love the original trilogy in the form I first saw it on video in the mid-90s. There's new things about the Special Edition versions that make me cringe, that seem unnecessary, or that I feel don't fit at all with the style. They're still largely very enjoyable to watch, but it's a hard pill to swallow that it's not a 'director's cut' alternative I'm watching, it's the version that Lucas is replacing those original films with. I think an artist has a right to revise their work but actually erasing something of such cultural significance seems wrong to me. If I'm honest, this is definitely not enough to make me want to boycott the DVDs, but it has meant that I've not wanted to snap them up straightaway, like I did with the Indy box. I don't doubt that I'll get them eventually, if only for the features and commentaries, but it's a less exciting prospect than if they were what I see as the 'proper' versions.

Well spotted. Dr Loboto is played by the same actor who did Dr Fred, Red and Zed in Day Of The Tentacle - Nick Jameson. He was also Max in Sam & Max: Hit The Road, and Darrel and Mavis in Full Throttle. I only know all of this because Tim put it up on Double Fine Action News in June last year. My reaction to the trailer: wow. For a while I've been interested in Psychonauts and loved the art and screenshots that have trickled out of Double Fine, but I'm now seeing the look and gameplay come together with stuff like dialogue, voices, fluid animation, new bits of the interface etc. It's looking excellent, I really haven't been this excited about a game in a while.

Hopefully, in a year's time, the majority of PC games are going to finally be on DVD-ROMs (only). That seems likely. I'd be surprised if many people with the kind of processors and graphics cards required for brand new games haven't stuck a DVD drive in their computer yet. Also, they are pretty much standard with any new gaming machine you could buy now. Even I've put a DVD-RW drive in by now, and I tend to doggedly stick with my outdated hardware until it blows up or begs me to upgrade it. So: get with it, publishers!

Can't speak for The Sims 2 (though I'm sure it's an improvement in many ways), but I found The Sims fun for a few weeks, then eventually stopped playing. I didn't consciously decide I was bored of the game, or that it sucked, but I just didn't have the feeling of wanting to start it up. I guess I knew the game probably had a bit more to offer if you pushed your Sims in their careers, but it seemed pretty tedious to level them up in Fitness, Charisma or Creativity points by watching them use an object in the house over and over. That was possibly a factor in my loss of interest in it. My brother and especially my sister stayed with it and the expansion packs for months though. So whilst The Sims doesn't excite me a lot, I don't think it's everything that's wrong with video games, or even a bad game. It's just not the kind of strategy game that's going to keep me captivated.

I sometimes used my sister's Barbie dolls to go with my Action Man toys, they'd have to be rescued from Doctor X's hideout behind the Lego box or something like that. That's manly enough...right?

It's one of those games I had a whole lot of fun playing, but I'd be hard pushed to remember many different levels from it now, or the plot. I think it had one, and it was cool, because it allowed for lots of saber fighting with 'Remnant' evil Jedi dudes. Also, Luke was in it, and there was some training on Yavin. Oh yeah, and Cloud City too (the best bit of the game). As for comparisons to the original Jedi Knight - bizarrely, the second Dark Forces, making the game you're reviewing technically the third one of those - I think this one thoroughly trounces it in the execution of the saber fighting. That was a lot of fun, especially with cinematic slo-mo camera-circling enemy deaths (you can turn the frequency of these up and down, I favoured having them happen a lot because it made me feel like a badass). Sadly, they dropped the player's Dark/Light side choice, which is why nowadays when I hear the names LucasArts or Raven, I can only snicker at their sissiness.

I keep my games on D:\Games\, putting them all in C:\Program Files\ would definitely get way too messy. I only reformatted/put XP on this in August, and already that folder's full of crap I don't remember asking Windows to put there. Also I like to backup important stuff like 'My Documents' and those crucial Grim savegames regularly. I just hate losing the masses of stuff I've amassed and organised over the years.

Yeah, the point is you don't have to worry about keeping your system up to spec if it's a console. As long games are being released for your console, you can play them. The only update that I can think you'll ever need is a memory card for your savegames. With PC hardware, you can be wondering whether 'Minimum system requirements' are actually going to allow a playable fun experience. There have been several games in the past where I've just fallen within the 'minimum' and had un-fun jerky moments. Video card compatibility is also a minefield as far as I can tell. Many new games are shipped with unresolved issues with certain video cards, and updated drivers can make older games no longer work properly. Frankly, the hardware of PC gaming can be a real headache, and the world of consoles is a happier, more carefree place altogether. But I still hang in there with my PC and just hope it works with my new games when I get them home.

I love console gaming, but in the past, the vast majority of games that I've wanted to play have been on PC, so for that reason, I'd say I'm a PC boy at heart. But in recent years, more and more of the console releases have interested me, so I'm nearing a 50/50 situation now.

Memorable demos from the past: Doom - the first chapter of the full game was a blast and I think virtually everyone who owned a computer at that point played it to death. Grand Theft Auto - for a demo, I got amazing mileage out of it. Quake - I remember it chugging along on my 486, but still being quite fun. Sam & Max: Hit The Road - the rolling demo that came on the Day Of The Tentacle CD remains one of the coolest trailers for anything ever somehow. It just made you think that all that mattered in life was getting to play this game. The Curse Of Monkey Island - there was a movie then later a playable demo. Monkey Island with the music, voices, awesome art etc., and knowing there was a full game of it to come, was exciting. Grim Fandango - there was no way I wouldn't have got my hands on the game, but the demo tided me over nicely. It probably took playing the game itself for me to really 'get it' as a premise, but the puzzling and dialogue in the demo was reassuringly brilliant. Can't think of more but those are all top demos I vividly remember playing for the first time.

I think Quake II was an enjoyable shooter, and one of id's best. I tend to think they lead the charge with technology a lot, but don't necessarily make the truly awesome games with it. But I remember having fun with Quake II, so if they return to that type of game for the single-player, it could be a good thing. I like the quote "Instead of scaring you, we're going to deliver a fast-paced adrenalin rush of combat". At least this is going be essentially different from Doom 3 in gameplay and not just feel like a mod - even if it's basically still id recycling old games and not branching out. In conclusion, I am interested but not overly excited. Also I think the Quake IV info splurge is trying to divert attention from the imminent Half-Life 2, which is probably the standard this game will be compared to once it finally gets released.