Ben X

So far this game has given me: tutorial; bit like the flashback in CoD:MW where you follow a dude around for a bit; bit like the stealthy sections in a Crytek game; corridor FPS bit. The tutorial failed to convey a lot of the mechanics to me, so I had to learn those myself in the game proper with a lot of save-scumming. The CoD-style following simulator bit was what it was. The stealthy bit - what I'd expected the meat of this game to be - was quite fun but rather unpolished, with enemies spawning out of nowhere and no real clue as to whether corpses will be noticed, how well hidden I am, bullshit super-sighted enemies. The corridor FPS bit is terrible - the shooting mechanics are awful, to the point where every gun except the pistol is useless, and you're not allowed your sniper rifle despite there being a turret guy who's seemingly unkillable and impossible to bypass and despite this being a SNIPER GAME. It looks very nice, but it's pretty unpolished and the 'story' is dull as dishwater but waffles on at you every five minutes about which soldier is going where. I'm going to have to check a walkthrough to see if I'm missing something on this corridor FPS otherwise it's going to be a very early rage-quit! I think the issue is that they're trying to make an action sniper game, which isn't really plausible. From the sounds of it, the more realistic sim Sniper Elite games are the way to go

Yeah, that's what I meant. Don't know how you'd do sniping in third person! Just get reeeeeeally close to their shoulder? Well, if GW turns out to be crappy I'll abandon it and return to Rapture. Either way, I'll put SEv2 on my list of good non-FPSes to play once I'm done with this damn list. (Although I may be so sick of first-person that I stringently avoid any games that include that mode in any way for a while!)

No. I've got v2 but it seems to be third-person with sniping so I kept it off this list.

Welp, the very next objective after I decided that was to harvest three Little Sisters in a row! More than a usual level and I was being forced to do it! Gah! So I pushed through that section and managed to complete the game without harvesting any more little sisters (except for a couple that I got by accidentally picking fights with Big Daddies - but I didn't bother with the Adam-harvesting sieges), despite the game warning me against it. There were a fair few weapons and plasmids that I never really bothered with either. I've finished now, and have very similar feelings to those I had at the end of the first game - that was all very cool, but I wish there'd been less of it. On the one hand, it was pretty sweet laying down a ton of sentry guns, then calling two sentry bots and my kickass Big Sister daughter into a massive fight, but on the other hand I've killed like a million of these guys already. And again, a lot of the plot passed me by. Overall a good game, though, but I think I'd have to rate the first one higher just for pure surprise value of the setting and a story that was tied in more closely. Even though the sequel does polish up a lot of the mechanics, it doesn't really introduce anything new or expand at all. I'm glad I've got at least one game to cleanse my palate before heading into Minerva's Den. Making Of RPS review Art Of... videos (this links to 1 of 5) Forum thread I already played Metro 2033. Here are my posts from the time: Oh well! Forum thread Onto Sniper: Ghost Warrior. I generally enjoy sniping in FPSes, so hopefully this'll be fun.

Keep us updated! I'm definitely curious as to how good those Masterclass things are, as I've seen them advertised for a while now. I'm guessing those watch recommendations are because those early films are credited with being the first to use certain editing techniques etc..?

I don't know if anyone will be able to teach you what kind of films you want to make... If you want to do a 'city symphony' film, I'd say the best thing to do is think of stuff you find interesting in the city, go out and film it, then try editing it to a piece of music. Do you have a message about the city or a particular element that you'd want to highlight? If so, use that to hone in on what would be good to shoot. Maybe spend a day walking round the city getting ideas. If you want to do narrative stuff, a good place to start is what resources you have - locations, actors, etc, then write something simple around that.

I'm about two thirds of the way through now, I think, and am starting to get bored. I've got about 200 Adam and nothing I'm interested in spending it on enough to justify having to get more, so I'm going to try and speed through the plot now rather than attacking any more Big Daddies or searching through every little corner. Follow that arrow!

I'm starting to go off those a little, actually. Perhaps it's because I did a ton of them in a row, then one of them culminated in a Big Sister fight. It just feels like 'Big Daddy fight -> mini-siege -> mini-siege -> Big Sister fight' is a bit much every time I want to get some Adam. They do at least put them next to cameras and oil slicks and what have you, which is helpful.

I think it does more than imply it! But yeah, looking at it again perhaps he means 'if you're enjoying BS2 you should play MD too as it is very good'. EDIT: anyway, here's a quite good video on the cleverness of the Fort Frolic area from the first Bioshock: EDIT 2: and here's a long interview with Ken Levine and Shawn Robertson hosted by Geoff Keighley. (My suggested feed is full of Bioshock now!) Biggest reveal: Ken Levine is the voice of the Circus Of Values machines!

I am aware of both of those things, but Kolzig said that I need to play it before I can talk about Bioshock 2.

http://www.cracked.com/article_24963_7-crazy-as-heck-star-trek-plots-we-narrowly-avoided.html The writing is very, um, Cracked, but some interesting discarded Trek plots here.

Can you explain why without spoilers? It is on my list, so I'll be playing it with a Sniper Elite break in between the two (assuming I can figure out how to run it in Steam).

I stalled at the refinery and played a load more BS2. Still enjoying it, mostly for the art design like the museum with all the tableaus. The mini siege sections while LSs raid corpses are pretty tense without being infuriating. And the brute splicers chucking props at you are cool. I am finding myself low on ammo a lot, though. I'd be up for L4D2, deffo.

No, there's no continuity (except perhaps some easter eggs), it's an anthology show. You may feel a bit of a change going back to seasons 1 and 2 as they were made by a different production company and so are pretty much exclusively British, but all the seasons are great. The San Junípero episode is generally seen as the only episode!

I can't stop playing Crysis 1 now! I thought I'd quit at the tank bit but I somehow breezed through it on medium this time whereas it was a real struggle on easy when I first played. I'm onto the refinery bit now, though, so I guess I'll be quitting pretty soon and back to Bioshock 2.

A robot continuously powered by their own tears or happiness would be a perpetual emotion machine.

That's a really good video (though as a BTTF fanboy I feel duty-bound to point out that this is the second video in which he mischaracterises George McFly's peeping as being portrayed as acceptable or normal). I'm glad I gave up on Big Bang Theory after the first 5 minutes because of bad jokes and creepy leads. These are good illustrative tools of how awful BBT is in those respects too:

Sounds good! Now, do you have any of those Max hats..?

Ooh, I also forgot a nice touch in Bioshock 2 is when you walk under some dripping water you can hear it tapping your metal helmet. I did some online multiplaying tonight! First we did Killing Floor which is a wave-attack co-op thing. It was okay. It was definitely fun chatting with @osmosisch and @Jutranjo (who needs to remember to post that Crysis vid if it's not the same one that was posted earlier here) while we played. It was not fun when some randoms showed up and started welding doors shut to make the game shitty for everyone, but hey at least as a tourist I got a little taste of toxic online gaming culture! We also played Mirage, which is a deathmatch game so I had no chance of enjoying it, just as I never enjoyed real-life competitive sports. It seems from everyone else's comments that it was not that good in general anyway. I might at some point go through the tutorials of TF2 and see if I fancy trying it, but I'd prefer to play a co-op campaign (like, say, play through HL2 with people or something). Maybe I'll look into that at the end of this too. Thanks everyone for all your help and companionship in the big scary world of online gaming!

I wish there was somewhere near me doing that. I've only ever tried VR out once for about five minutes on some pretty vanilla tech demos a few years ago.

Ahhh, this makes sense. They also have controller button prompts on all their menus which looks hella ugly.

Hmmm, yeah I guess 'left = shoot' in my head too, so it's probably best to keep them as is.

Huh, I hadn't fully clocked that. I think I was distracted by the fact that they bind your left hand to your right mouse button and vice versa. The obvious reaction is to rebind them, but I'm worried there's a good reason for having them this way that I can't think of!

Laaaacooooo! Well, I started Bioshock 2. It's obviously fairly familiar stuff, with a few new touches. The biggest difference is that I'm playing a Big Daddy. So no running, but more plasmid slots immediately open and a satisfyingly heavy melee swing. It's all very polished as usual (lots of cool underwater bits, including a glimpse of the sunken plane from the first game, and actual animated characters speaking on the televisions rather than the portrait cards which made the first game feel less real) and Rapture feels even more oppressive and broken down. Other little things - remote hacking, a new hacking mini-game (hit a key to stop a needle on the correct part of a scale) which so far I prefer but seems like it may leave less room for error once the difficulty goes up) and some proximity mine things. I'm enjoying it, but that 'not sure I can be bothered to search everything thoroughly' feeling has hit me already. Not the game's fault, I don't think, it's just that I'm playing it so soon after the first one.

Okay, yeah, the Section8 'campaign' is absolutely just a CTF match with bots, so I've given up on that and moved onto Bioshock 2. I've also kept Crysis installed because I'm having lots of fun bulling through it a bit at a time.