twmac

You should be fine, every class can climb all over monsters it is just that as the Mage you really shouldn't as you are meant to be at the back. There is a hybrid class that is part warrior part healer (Mystic Knight?) that can cast a few spells and then lay down hurt. The magic users do go down quickly but if you are a damage type sorceror then just run with a mage as back up and two beefy dudes up front that pull aggro (there is Battle cry that the warrior can do and Shield Bash that the Fighter can do which will attract attention away from you). Sit down and chat to your pawn when you get to the capital and make sure that they know exactly what you want them to do (draw aggro, focus on the ranged and magic users, heal you etc). Their AI gets better the more they fight with you and other pawns. Another thing I would recommend is initially hiring (and paying for) pawns that are in the late teens early twenties, a lot of the Pawns that will come with you that early in the game might be free but will be completely rubbish. Another thing to look out for is that a lot of vocations (classes) will reach their cap by early twenties (at which point the game encourages you to change) so a lot of times you will find that there are some characters in their late twenties that are actually worse because they are still learning the new vocation they switched to. Also, if you find you dislike the vocation you have picked it costs nothing to switch back to your previous vocation.The hybrid vocations are really fascinating I have turned into a Magic Archer and she basically has these crazy lockon abilities that allow her to whittle at health bars from miles away and it means that my bruisers roll over the remainders. That is until you meet one of the crazy roaming monsters.

Oh sweet lord, after the weekend I just had I figured I would take it easy. Ended up playing Dragon's Dogma until 2 in the morning. It took me 4 hours to finish one quest last night. It involved travelling up into the mountains, past hordes of goblins, a few Cyclopses, a weird arachnid behemoth (that I just ran from), some Saurian creatures and a full on Dragon. The fort itself involved climbing all over the place trying to raise the portcullis while avoiding two turrets and some wandering beasts. After killing two more Cyclopses the army I was helping charged in and we fought our way to the top of the fort's central tower to fight another Cyclops and defeat a goblin chieftain. The two Pawns I had hired had done the quest before so they knew where to go and what to kill, an interesting twist that there were multiple ways into the tower and if I had rolled as a much shorter character it looks like I could have snuck in. Anyways this game keeps revealing new depths, it is fantastic.

Loving the exploration. The motivation for it is to find out what weird creature is next going to appear. It can be immensely intense and rewarding. As your pawns fight people they learn how best to kill stuff. My dude has already adpated his tactics to be more in line with his opponents, letting me drop Harpies before rushing in and hitting them. It is exciting stuff to walk into a new area and then wondering what boss creature is going to try and fuck you up.

Okay, so I started up the game and beat the tutorial section from the demo and got into the game as my new avatar. I then proceeded to fight a Dragon by climbing up its hind leg and poking it in the arse. Within 20 minutes I found myself setting fire to a Cyclops then climbing on him and stabbing him in the eye until he died. Awesome fun so far, will be linking to screen grabs as soon as I can, my female Strider called Dave will be killing fools left, right and centre.

Friend is already playing and loving it. Amazon have not shipped my copy yet and I am chomping at the bit. I know I am not going to be able to play it all weekend because I am away but I just really want to start playing it damnit.

Eurogamer's review is out and it is a hearty 7/10. However, Joystiq was less than enthusiastic. I didn't really like the review but it might be because I am so enthused about the release. Just 4 more days and I can be playing it.

There are a lot of complications that don't have as much to do with the publishers so much as the manufacturers too, or even just the platform requirements. I can't really go into too much depth on my opinions about this as I have varying feelings about on disc DLC (in the case of fighters, on disc DLC can facilitate online play between two players - one with DLC and the other 'without') and it would depend on the context. I also think that it is unrealistic to think that there is much difference between DLC that isn't on the disc. A lot of the time both products are in development at the same time with the production on the extra content staggered to give the developers more time to flesh out these features. I am against the principle of on-disc DLC but at the same time looking at it from a development perspective I am not sure I see ways round it. In the case of microsoft, releasing DLC means minimal costs, however DLC that changes major features (or that includes patches) will. At the same time for Sony, title updates are less costly but due to download costs being upon the publisher (they are charged for every gigabyte downloaded) then 'real' DLC can be a bitch.

Just pre-ordered the paperback. It is not due out until the 29th of May, hopefully that will give me time to read it before the bookcast. It is funny, I wasn't particularly keen on the cast, especially after seeing Chris link that horrifically written piece by Joel 'the snobbish troll' Epstein but I just recently decided to read Slaughterhouse 5 after remembering the podcast mention it. I am enjoying it so I decided to give it a whirl as I need to step outside of my comfort zone (that and I have read almost all the Bukowski novels, exhausted Easton Ellis, Copeland and Paliahnuk). If ever at a loss I would recommend 'Special' by Bella Bathurst,

I'm bummed that it is going to be a half season and then it looks like they are cancelling it. Parks and Recreation is probably the funniest America series I've watched in a long time.

It is hard to describe but I think it is the way they have designed the hit boxes that both games feel quite claustrophobic and have the feel of developers who don't really know how to design bullet hell shooters. In contrast Omega Five (V) is an experience that improves with familiarity to its awkwardness, Sine Mora doesn't.

Well with the recent announcement I am sure people care about 30 Rock and Community but the one that has me completely bummed is Parks and Recreation. http://blog.syracuse.com/entertainment/2012/05/30_rock_renewed_cancelled_community_parks_rec_office.html But hey, at least we have The Office, still running itself into the ground. Awesome.

Just finished it last night, superb game although the mechanics never quite gelled for me and the bosses were downright tedious. I had to knock the difficulty down for the final boss. Also, depending on your choices, the achievements have spoilers in the game. I am impressed by the sheer amount of content that gets locked off when you make certain choices it added a weight that I felt most games lack.

Asynchronous Multiplayer? http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-09-dragons-dogma-event-mode-detailed I don't even know how that is supposed to work.

Some shockingly handsome dudes on this forum, I would go so far as to say that this has the highest quota of eligible gents I've seen on an internet space.

The banner from my badger commander site is about 4 years old but is entirely representative of my gaming setup (only now it is in a smaller room with less apparent beer stains).

No, I've been using the practice mode to get used to 3 of the classes (the assassin chamaleon, the brute robot and the healer) so that I can be of use towards whatever tactics my teammates go for. The practice mode is good because you can still level up and unlock characters, abilities and levels On X360 there is a great 3 player splitscreen mode that is good, clean Co-op fun. Not sure how viable it will be against real people but having the healer, the frog dude (aka: heavy damage dealer) and the giant robot guy is a good combination. I am going to try the online in the next couple days and see what tactics are out there but mainly I want to see how people deal with the healer, he is a beast. I've never played a Lords management game before so I have no idea whether this is a good example or not but I recommend it as a game that I have played.

Put a ton more hours in and the Healer class is just ridiculous. If left alone he can steamroll through turrets like nobody's business. The assassin class is a hell of a lot of fun but you seem to need about three or 4 upgrades before he is really lethal (Cloak, heal while cloaked, damage to people's backs). The Mech guy is my favourite as he is a classic tank with his abilities meaning he can pretty much hold the line indefinitely. The Froggy G character is fun but too many of his attacks put him in harms way and the tornado attack he gets needs levelling up to a protective shield before his attacks become an effective combo. The Monkey is a bit disappointing (his mines seem pretty useless) and I think that the cowboy is an interesting class but poor as an introduction to the game as he seems to be mainly support. I was completely wrong about the healer guy though, he is ridiculously powerful once he is surrounded by the little robots/creepers.

Played this for about 3 hours last night and I really liked it. Only played against bots and I liked the slow trickle levelling. I am concerned though as I played with Lonestar first and found I just couldn't kill anyone but was reasonably good at destroying turrets then I changed to the big robot dude and went round destroying everything. Is there balancing issues or am I just rubbish with that character? My other concern is that the grading system seems to be around destroying stuff, I unlocked a healer but I imagine no one using him as they won't score a lot of points. On top of that the two classes I had unlocked abilities that allowed them to regenerate health. The art style is really nice, the opening is amazingly cheesy, the three hours I played of it were at 2AM when I should have been in bed so they are doing something right.

Don't play Sine Mora, it is pretty much rubbish. It makes the mistake that most western shooters make with poor feedback in terms of how to dodge enemies. The bosses don't have patterns, and too many unforseeable one-shot kills. I finished it and couldn't find enough in the combo system to be bothered to continue. It is no way near as good as Omega V that suffers from some of its problems but OV excels in some places and Sine Mora doesn't.

I would recommend starting easy. R-Type that has been remixed is a good place to start and I would recommend Trouble Witches Neo! and the Raiden Fighters Aces as other good spring boards after that. But yes, there is a lot of remembering patterns to be done.

Am about to finish Yakuza 2. Difficult game to grade, it is so slow and has some utterly stupid parts but the story steamrolls and is great at making you actually care about the bit players and even the 'villains'. If you have a copy and a PS2 or PS3 that can run it, there are a lot worse games out there.

But I wanted to see the end! Admittedly that is a bad example, I love me some bullet hell but I also like to finish the game and then delve into its particulars afterwards. Ikaruga just kicked my arse. I have repurchased the game on XLA, for what it is worth I am getting really, really good at the first level score attack.

I used to play everything for around 2-4 hours before deciding whether I was going to continue. As a result there are a lot of games I didn't finish as something new and interesting used to come along and I would play that instead. Of the games of that era that I feel like I made a legitimate decision to stop playing there would be Phantom Crash, Ikaruga and Spartan Total Warrior, of which all these ruined me on the final boss(es) and I never finished them. Nowadays I don't think I ever truly give up on a game (although Operation Darkness is probably the closest I am). That said, for XBLA and XBLIG stuff that I am not sure about I will play the demo and if there is nothing in there that sparks my interest I won't buy the full game. In fact, now that I have regular internet, I might start applying that logic to demos of full games. What I am trying to say is that usually once I have committed to buying a game I will eventually plan to finish it (my backloggery of 116 unfinished games says otherwise). Eternal Sonata is a tough one, the combat system doesn't even start to get interesting until later in the game, in fact this is what I said earlier. The second playthrough is when the game comes to life which is very cheeky if you ask me.

I think Firefly is deathly dull, neither funny nor well written. It plays out like a jokey version of Space Above and Beyond with the whole series having no real coherence. I never found the characters even remotely interesting (I'd rather have watched Star TRek: The Next Generation and I hate that show too) nor anything that happened appealing. It was like someone had taken Red Dwarf, sucked all the humour out of it and made it American. Oh wait, they did that with the American Red Dwarf as well.

Liked the first episode a lot. Appreciated the achievements not being based on specific choices as I find that it ruins the experience as you find yourself doing things you don't want to do. Story was excellent and there were only a few jarring moments (Herschel didn't feel quite right or in character with the man you first see in comics). I saved Doug (am part of the 28%) mainly for selfish reasons as I actually liked both of the people. By the way, not sure the place they are holed up in at the end of the episode is particularly easy to defend. When is the next episode out?