miffy495

I have both and get much more use out of my 360, but that's mostly because I prefer the controller. Really, between the two there isn't THAT much difference. I enjoy LBP and Ratchet, but I also really like Forza and Fable, so the exclusives balance out. Honestly though, there are so few of them that it doesn't make that much of a difference. For me, it came down to controller preference. I also bought a few multiplatform games for my PS3, but that was during the month when my 360 was out being de-red-ringed.

I spent about half an hour with it this afternoon before work (I would be playing it now, but have an apartment viewing in the morning, so I need to sleep at some point) and quite enjoyed what I played. It's more Red Dead, but with the humour really bumped up and the game a lot more streamlined. It's essentially a darkly comic spin-off of the main game. I won't go into too much detail, since spoilers abound from the word "go," but characters are being brought back in interesting ways and I found myself snorting a few times at what was being said. Don't think of it so much as a Red Dead expansion as a Red Dead horror-comedy fanfic made into a really fun experience by Rockstar. Again, only played it for a half hour, so I'll hold off on further comment, but so far so good.

Yeah, I've spent a few evenings playing a bunch of NSMBW with a coworker, and the two of us had a fantastic time. She likes to brag about how great she is at Mario, so being able to throw her into a pit when she starts getting cocky is great, and the rest of the time the collisions just led to a bunch of laughing. That game will only ruin friendships if your friends have no sense of humour.

Oh, that's the DLC I have. It's a single-player expansion for the game. Not part of the story, but a side-thing. After finishing up the stuff in Mexico, John gets home and does some basic stuff. Then Blackwater becomes ground zero for a zombie uprising. Despite how sick of zombies I've gotten lately, the idea of a zombie western appealed to me, and the Giant Bomb quicklook made it look awesome. I picked it up, and am looking forward to playing it. The rest of the DLC has all been multiplayer stuff, and after a day playing the multiplayer with a few people right after the game came out, I'm not particularly interested in trying any more of it. As such, if you're looking for opinions on the other, non-single player DLC, you'll need to check somewhere else.

I played Dance Central and Deca Sports at PAX. Dance Central was a lot of fun and made me want a Kinect. Deca Sports was absolutely abysmal and made me hate myself, gaming, Microsoft, and anyone within about 50 meters of me. Let's call that an overall "wait and see" on Kinect.

Neither, the co-op is terrible in these games. The second player controls nothing but a pointer as they sweep it around the screen trying to pick up some star bits. The first player is Mario, jumping around being awesome. Bad balance there. Go with New Super Mario Bros Wii, as everyone is equal in that co-op mode, and it's a lot of fun on top of that.

Ah. Missed that. Very good then, sir. I have the DLC, but have yet to have the opportunity to fire it up. I will be doing so tomorrow night if all goes as planned, and will respond with thoughts when the time comes.

I'm with you, 'blix. I saw Scott Pilgrim on a bro-date with a buddy who was seeing it for the third time. It wasn't terrible, but it was thoroughly uninteresting. The only thing I liked about it was his roommate, and he was in the movie for little enough time that it didn't matter. I guess I forfeit my geek cred.

I think that the standard recommendation is 6-8 hours, depending on the person. If you need less or more, that's fine too. I happen to wake up naturally after about 6 and a half, while my girlfriend needs 9 or she's dead on her feet all day. Basically, sleep however much you feel like you need, and if your body starts hating you for sleeping that amount, adjust from there.

Happy birthday, sir!

Freedom Force is easily one of my favourite games of the past decade. It's funny, has a good amount of depth (especially with all the possible squads), and was accessible enough for someone who doesn't play a lot of strategy (me) to get his head around. Just an excellent game all around. Of course, you could probably play Puzzle Agent, Blackwell, Privates, or any other number of shorter games first if you really want to tear through your backlog. FF does take a while.

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Thunder, same question as for everyone. Did you FINISH finish the story, or did you stop ?

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Which is also interesting because NWN is fairly new (2002? 2003?) and this was on my laptop, which is running Windows 7, but due to having a dual core processor, is running the 32 bit version. Oh well. Not like it matters now anyway, the Gog one is ok by me.

Totally. I hope I didn't give the impression that I wouldn't love to see more writing of the nature that Lobotomy is describing. I just personally feel that it would be better suited to a features section than a reviews one. We could certainly do with more interesting post-mortems and analyses.

I somewhat agree, but wonder if it isn't equally important to have a review for someone who is unaware of the context. If it is likely that the person reviewing the game is inexperienced with the literary or otherwise influences that a game may have, I would argue it is equally if not more likely that the average person playing the game will be ignorant of this as well. If what you propose was adopted as the standard, I think that reviewers would be in great danger of constantly talking over the heads of their audience. While it is always a pleasure to see that a reviewer is well read and has a breadth of experience with games, the mass appeal is not something we can overlook so easily. Is Bioshock improved by a knowledge of political philosophy? Sure! Is it still a very good game without that? You bet! Do we need every single review of the game to explore the depths of its implications? Hell no! Do I need to have played SWAT 4 and Freedom Force to appreciate it? Don't even need to know they exist. History of your media of choice is of course important to know if you're going to be reviewing said media, but it should not be expected that every reviewer be well versed in what they are reviewing. I found it very refreshing, for example, to see Ryan Davis on Giant Bomb recently become enamoured with Civilization V while coming to the genre and series mostly cold. As someone who also has been vaguely aware of 4X games but never gotten into them, it has encouraged me that when I find the time I may really enjoy it. For a gamer who doesn't play that genre, it's nice to see a review by a person who is just like me in that respect. It's not like there's a lack of reviews by the strategy afficionados anyway for those that would like one, but don't discount the value of a review from an outsider's perspective.

Oh shit, Lobotomy just announced Left 4 Dead 3!

Actually, it just refused to boot, saying "This program is incompatible with this version of windows." Like, completely refused to do a thing. Compatibility mode was no help, and I couldn't be bothered to try anything extra.

Man, I just installed Diamond on my laptop about 2 weeks ago and discovered that it doesn't work with Windows 7. Gog's compatability is now my favorite thing. I will glady pay the $10 to not have to fuck around with that stuff!

I think he's asking if there's a Mac version. That, I'm not sure of.

Yup, it's on there too. I am a total whore for all things Nintendo. If you have a Virtual Console question, I will probably (sadly) know the answer.

Yeah, the thing about the levels is that they're only one screen. When the game opens up 20 levels at a time to you, and they're only a screen each, I don't see why you'd really need checkpoints. If you can't do one screen, go pick another and come back when you're cooled down a bit. If you can't do it at all, you only need 17 of the 20 to get to the boss anyway.

That postcard... It is the most beautiful thing...

It's on Virtual Console, so you most definitely can get it.