twmac

I also agree with the Western roaming thing. I was thinking along the same lines as you guys and when I got to the side missions my mind made some frazzled connections Call of Juarez 2 = Call of Duty 2 So why not make Cry of Juarez = Far Cry 2 I would play the shit out of that game.

I'm actually pretty even on my backloggery, there are few them I'm feeling pretty guilty about, for example Sonic: Unleashed that I raved about then got about half way through and never picked up again

Obviously I wasn't entertained by the Beatles section. However, I'm just going to explain what I mean rather than be a douche. On other podcasts you have talked about games that I have very little interest in and or actively dislike but I have always felt that your discussions are balanced and interesting and I enjoy listening to you explain why you liked/loved a game for the qulaities it has and frequently it might change my mind about certain aspects of a title or if it doesn't it makes me appreciate why you like it. I didn't get that from your talks about the Beatles game, nor did I feel like you were coming at it from an angle other than 'everyone must like the Beatles, those that don't are musical n00bs and that is why this game is great' I also got the the feeling I was the annoying arsehole who would play all the songs you are sick of on all the other rock band games which probably didn't help endear me to the arguments. Still, really loved the podcast and really enjoyed the talks on all the other games. Not sold on Left 4 dead but it was really interesting to hear how they are improving it over the original.

Sounds like a good trade-off. My highest score is around 813000 I like the approach that I'm limited by time rather than lives.

People forget Z, the true innovator of RTSs. Dawn of War is creditted with trying something new but really that falls to a game that came out in the mid nineties that most people forgot to play. Norfolk n'Clue try it or its sequel Z:Steel Warriors (I think the sequel is actually more dated due to its early 3-D visuals) to see where CoH and its ilk must have taken nods from.

Skirting around the politics stuff (actually no, fuck it, I think that people should make a decision on how much of a dickhole they think Orson Scott Card is because if the peeps at Epic and Chair think he is good enough to sell the game on then they deserve to have people boycott the game because of he is such a supreme dickhole). It is great, I'm utterly hooked and I haven't played a better XLA game all year. Possibly Goatsey of the year...

Someone had to bring up Sonic: Unleashed I liked that game a lot, best 3-D Sonic game since Sonic Adventure 2. I suppose my mental age must be around the 7-10 year old mark then.

I finally bought it and don't have as many problems with the control system although I do find myself doing some weird switches between the stick and the D-pad. A guy at work has started putting custom sticks together and pay day is coming up so I've decided to get in on a proper peripheral. Right now my real struggle is to effectively pull off super moves with the charge characters. After unlocking Fei Long I had a blast with his ultras in the challenges.

Yeah sorry, my last statement wasn't fully fledged. The impression you gave me from the post is that you are like how I was with films. I love films and even though I was extremely biased and tried to convince people who seemed to know about films to try and buy old, good, Abel Ferrarra films and the like it was still easy for me to recommend kids films and well made romantic comedies because the state I felt I was in is that I wanted people to enjoy the medium no matter what their tastes were. The problem is that I think I was too intensely into gaming at the time to be able to stop myself from ranting and instead say "San Andreas is awesome if you like the previous instalments and expands on the amount to do etc" Chris, SSX is sweet. The point I was trying to make was how to this person SSX was awesome and they clearly didn't play a lot of games yet here I was a supposed gamer who hadn't even played the last one and as a result was probably missing out

Kroms and Miffy have kind of touched on what I ran out of time to write about. I also worked in an HMV at one point and was actually much better at recommending films than I was music or games. The reason being is that my tastes in music were pretty niche so as soon as anyone asked me whether the new semisonic or Linkin Park album was any good I'd have to fight back the urge to go 'No, but have you tried Merzbow?'. The same happened with being 'Hardcore' in terms of games (read: not interested in a lot of mainstream stuff), people would ask me about whether the new GTA game was any good (I think it was San Andreas) and I'd have to grit my teeth. It wasn't that the game was shit it was that I didn't like it and had strong opinions on it. The hardcore gamers of this world often go too far in the opposite direction in reaction to the casual gamers and as a result end up making things worse. I'm definitely no exception as people give me bewildered looks when I say that the only EA game I plan to buy is Brutal Legends and the last one I bought was Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath purely on the principle of being on the receiving end of their business policies and hating it. I usually get: "Well that's too bad SSX tricky is sweet."* *Someone said that to me 8 months ago, I can't even remember the last time an SSX game was released. In short I've never really gotten my knickers in a twist about ignorant 'casuals' or Clerks but have instead rejoiced when I meet people who know what they are talking about and by that I mea people who share similar attitudes towards games. Arrgh got to go to work.

For the first time I'm actually looking forward to this update. The last one never really gelled with me because the one thing that was trumpeted to have been improved (access to more stuff and easier navigation) never really worked for me. I'm hoping a little more implementation of media support happens too. I'm tired of having to switch between my laptop and my X360 depending on what I want to watch.

Brighton and Montreal have been surprisingly kind to me. The Clerks in, I think, GameStation in Brighton might all have been a bunch of Sony-loving, COD-playing youngsters but they were always nice about it and generally were able to talk about stuff that didn't involve those two things a lot. They didn't even laugh at me when I bought Frontlines: Fuel of war over Battlefield: Bad Company. In Montreal I've had some terrible service (EBgames and Game buzz) but that was more to do with the company's policies than the people who worked there. I was thoroughly shocked when I bought my copy of Sonic: Unleashed at HMVand the clerk told me that the last good sonic game was Sonic CD and SEGA had never gotten it right once they moved to 3-D. I could have proposed to her on the spot for that. Oh and Chris if you are decrying the purchase of second hand goods, I agree for the most part. Then again it is Burnout Paradise, if had been something else, a little more niche then I might have brought out some sanctimony.

I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum in regards to Kane & Lynch. I had very much respected IOI up until I had the misfortune of experiencing the developer's attitude first hand. Now I won't say that IOI was completely to blame for their reactions and I would like to think that they might have turned down some of their rudeness now that they have had a few flops on their hands but at the time they were amongst the most arrogant, pompous developers I've ever had to deal with. Then when Kane & Lynch came out I thought I'd at least give a try (I liked Freedom fighters so why not). It put a huge grin on my face after the demo. It was awful, the control system was terrible, the levels looked of original xbox quality and the story was looking predictably shit. I will concede that I saw potential in the characters but that was hardly a high point for me. In short, I'm glad IOI were amid this controversy and I hope that they learn from being massive douches and that whatever they make next shows all that was good and great about their other games. But until then IOI, fuck you.

Sorry wha? razorblade do you have a link to the forums. I'm not much fussed about getting the achievement but I'm just interested to see what I did 'wrong'.

Could we get a link to the Far Cry 2 blogs with the hardcore playthroughs.

Yeah, I totally understand. Things like the menu option saying 'Return to arcade' in the main menu instead of 'Return to game library' can fail a game (they've changed the option name again in the newest revision of the TCR doc, doh!). What I'm curious about is what combination of steps it was that caused this issue. I was using an Xbox LIVE enabled gamer profile but I was not connected to Xbox LIVE at the time. That can often be the cause of problems. As can playing with a completely offline gamer profile while the console is connected to an ethernet cable

Incidentally, speaking of atrocious content. Has anyone seen the Tales of Vesperia DLC? You can purchase level ups for your characters.

Lol. The other is a die hard SEGA fan so I don't have any worries with that. Seriously, the first episode is the perfect length and pitch, the visual and audio hints are perfectly placed so that you never really get properly stuck and frustrated. The voice acting is nigh spot on (although for some reason I always imagine the actor who played Gomez in the original Adams Family series doing the voice of Sam) and I really appreciated seeing the concept art (glad sybil deviated away from the original sketch). My only gripe is that the achievement for completing episode 1 didn't unlock when I finished epdisode 1 and being a long time compliance tester that would have been enough, in my eyes, to fail the game on submission.

Resurecting this thread because I just played the first episode of Sam and Max on X360. Rodkin and co. Good job! There are a couple of niggling bugs in the game with speach not being activated and some random other problems but the in general it was thoroughly entertaining. One of the girls I'm seeing, who isn't into games, got really into it and is actually tempted to play it. Looking forward to the rest of the episodes.

Hmmm: http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?p=3617716 And this is the first one about me: http://www.benchguys.org/forums/tags.php?tag=twmac+complains

Yeah I read the Eurogamer review, the writing style is all over the place but at least it was enthusiastic and the comments thread was generally very positive. Congrats!

Ah I love the way Idle thumbs forum threads go: Poster 1: I've made a statement Poster 2: I strongly disagee Poster 1: I'm flabbergasted that anyone could differ in oppinion! In my head: Okay the shit is going to hit the fan Poster 2: Well I do! Poster 1: ... Fair Enough Poster 3: Check this link. It is fucking genius and only loosely related to the original statement. And then all is well again.

Personally, even if they don't have members of the original team as part of your squad I would like to see cameos from all of the cast that changes depending on the choices you made from the first game's save, 'The Suffering' on the original Xbox and PS2 did this really effectively (the sequel was called 'The ties that bind') whereby depending on how good/evil you had been in the original affected how cutscenes played out in the sequel. So if, for example, some of your original party members didn't make it in the first the you don't see them in the second, or maybe if you became romantically involved with one of them you now find that you have married them or that something happened between the events of the two games that means that you have split up. It wouldn't take much to do if they are already planning not to include them as active party members and would add some real depth to the game. It is a shame that they just seem to have gone 'You won't meet these characters because during the first game they might have died'.

I must say that, although I don't play PC games, I was really tempted to get Cryostasis after the intriguing premise discussed in the podblast.

I was really excited about Prototype, it looked like a really cool Hulk: Ultimate Destruction spin. Then I played Red Faction and my desire to play another open world game waned. I mean, seriously, three games in the space of 4 weeks all with open world arenas? Only one of them is going to get my money. As a reaction to the FPS comment, yes, this would happen if three closely themed FPSs came out at the same time (timeshift got booted to the curb in favour of Bioshock)