Nachimir

It did remind me a lot of Mass Effect, but I didn't particularly like the sequence. I thought the commandant was a poor and melodramatic bad guy.

I started out really badly tonight then had a definite Ballmer peak. I think the finest moment might have been as a passenger while Infovore was driving; we slid around a corner and... a rocket hit us in the windscreen. It was one of the best shots I've seen

Absolute N.O.N.C.E. S.E.N.S.E.

I'll be on in about 15 minutes

Censorship here? ********? Fucking hell Toblix utters truth

I'm cautiously optimistic, having watched Brass Eye again over Christmas. I thought the special was just as good as the rest of the series Nathan Barley meanders a little and , but it was fairly good.

Block something, anything out at a decent scale. Even just something to jump around on, then start tweaking, cleaning and revising it. That's not a very good way to do level design in general, but it sure gets you over the hump of having a scary blank space in front of you. Anything you imagine and think is awesome probably has you imagining some parts right down to tiny details; just block the entire thing out quickly like a sketch and that will always imply the/a next thing to work on.

Nintendo probably can't get a better version of the Wii out fast enough, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were first to announce for the next-next gen (urgh. Hate that term, and that it fled to "next gen games" from the mouths of people like Braben and Molyneux once all the consoles were out). All their major usuals for a platform are now out for it, and outside of that there's mainly shovelware. I don't think I know anyone with a Wii who doesn't just have it collecting dust, whether it's next to another console or not. It's at serious risk of being regarded as a fad, which in itself is a major problem for games: No use winning over a new, much bigger audience if there's nothing of substance (or at least significant novelty) at their level of comprehension. Also, Ninty have been dumping a lot of money into research. I doubt this was all for the DSi and motion plus

Infovore makes FC2 sound fascinating to me. I kind of want to go back to it and ignore the side missions altogether instead of what I did with it before, but the "to play" pile is already far too big.

Yeah, I thought that about the skis too, and wondered if they use cheap crappy ones. Nonetheless, wingsuit: fucking want! Dorky looks or not

I spent more time on the PS3 in December thank to Little Big Planet and Wipeout HD. I'm also eying up Echochrome, Pixeljunk Eden, and The Last Guy. Nothing on 360 looks that interesting to me. Sony are unfortunately really badly positioned for the next year. Without massive sales it's going to be difficult to push through hardware revisions and price drops, which they're already a year behind Microsoft on. There's every chance that recession will fuck things up even more for them. As someone pointed out to me recently, you can now buy a Blu-ray player and a 360 for less than the price of a PS3 ¬¬ wrt longer console cycles, I recall Sony execs saying the PS3 might potentially have a 10 year cycle. Given that the RSX chip seems to be a massive bottleneck that means it never really exceeds the 360 graphically, I find it doubtful, though it could still be the case as a legacy system (i.e. the PS2 for the past few years). It's a great pity, since the CPU is so beefy.

I played The Lost Chapters, which may have given me a rosier view of the original. I've found the two very similar, though Fable 2 isn't so awe inspiring, since the aesthetic was new to me when I played the first one. I really liked that they reused parts of the original soundtrack. Melee doesn't feel that different, and context sensitive one button actions aren't as bad as I thought they'd be. The magic system seemed very odd at first (Stack five spells at five different power levels, charging progresses through them, letting go casts), but once used to it, found it okay. I like how they've implemented ranged combat, so that with higher targeting abilities you can get headshots, crotch shots, or shoot weapons out of hands, but using the button, trigger and stick to do it costs time, so you can't just headshot a large pack of enemies before some of them reach you. Gameplay I found very close to Fable, though I was playing that on PC so am not the best person to compare. I thought what they did in F2 was well implemented on a 360 pad. I liked the story in this one more too, it's darker, more dramatic, and I found the characters more rounded and likable. Theresa, voiced by Zoe Wanamaker, irked me a lot less than the guildmaster did in Fable.

Anyone thinking, do it! If you got rid of GTA IV already, go get a second hand copy. Multiplayer with fellow thumbs on xbox live is excellent, mainly because it involves being in a car full of people, all screaming as you jump it off the freeway, or "Reverse REVERSE REVERSE!" as a rocket zooms towards the windscreen, or "OH MY GOD TOBLIX HAS A CAR!" just after he's run them over. He ran someone over using a helicopter in the same game

I'm okay with Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Thursdays I can just about do, but most likely infrequently and I'd end up joining late.

Haha, yes! I liked that a lot, and in a similar vein there's some pretty nice narrative level design near the end of the game. I'm surprised I find so much to gripe about when talking about this, because I liked the game and it had a pretty decent ending even if it does feel rushed. I also really liked the dog. All its dumbness was completely excusable to me because it's not meant to be a person, and I think having it serve similar functions to what would otherwise be HUD is a good piece of design.

Yeah, I enjoyed it. Edit: oops, missed the new page. Meant to follow Thunder's post about it not being as bad as it sounds. One thing I found with both this and the first one was that they both feel a bit bleak toward the end of the game. You're becoming incredibly powerful and rich, running out of missions and the NPCs are bascially pestering you to stop dicking around and just go and do the final quest already. I did like the Glaswegian gargoyles that mock you.

The entire timing mechanic of all those social/job mini games was just wank. It's like something cribbed from a casual games portal. The first time I was posing for the sculptor it really annoyed me by implying I could let go when it turned green, then telling me by the universal language of punitive failure that even when its green, it's not okay to let go until a voice sample tells you to

Okay, fuck building income to slowly acquire businesses. I saw a sale and a shortage of arms at the same time and made, 300K in about 20 minutes buying and selling master weapons, bought the rest of the shops in Bowerstone then the houses and Oakvale from the income. I'm just at the spire and getting nearly 10K a pop from them 700K in bank and no buildings left to buy, though I'm guessing the 5K I spent in Westcliff will also have an effect later on. I'm also now well armed enough that having a massive income is kind of meaningless I'm liking F2 so far, even though it is indeed a remake of Fable. The dog works well; I feel empathy for it, whereas if it were a human character with the same AI I'd be screaming "Come on dumbass! Oh, now you need healing you stupid fuckwit." and generally raging at it.

Quote of the day: "Go chop your own fucking wood Molyneux!". I've now bought enough businesses to no longer need to work, unless I'm 10K shy of something I want, in which case the lvl 5 beer pulling game is a fairly easy way of monging my way to success. But Jesus Christ, I've not played anything like these minigames since owning an Amstrad CPC-464. I keep expecting a badly animated, pixelated Bully to pop up in the bottom right corner. What next? Feats of athleticism minigames where you have to alternately hammer two buttons on the controller? Lionhead: Try redesigning all of Fable 2 so that, like your minigames, it never, ever requires (or allows) more than one button press every five seconds. See how much fucking fun it is. They should have made them into little rhythm games. Doing percussion for a lute hero type game would have made blacksmithing into something brilliant rather than infuriatingly boring.

Yes. Get a stereo next to your TV, and play disgustingly happy music all the way through, like , or this, or , or this. Or this. I guarantee you'll feel amazingly disconnected from the horror on screen.

I bought my step brother a tiny remote controlled helicopter and it accidentally my dad's TV. Luckily he was planning to get a new one in the sales anyway so doesn't care.

Get well soon Spaff and Yufster. On balance, 2008 has sucked balls and I'm sorry to hear about this.

Posting the EG photos on flickr prompted me to post a glut of things I meant to upload but never did. These four made me laugh: The Dr. Horrible Boots advantage card my friend Ross registered, not expecting to get it: Guernsey Gache: *snigger* "Please do not Joyride". The Scouts round here are fuckers for getting it to the top then burning it. "Sorry I'm B.A.D.", seen on the front of a bus the last time I was in Brighton.

Certainly. I'm rammed all day tomorrow, but have plenty of room for monging and playing Plain Sight from Christmas Eve on.