Wrestlevania

Seeing as the movie/TV thread kicks arse (and, indeed, is still kicking it) I'd like to propose a musical accompaniment. So, I'll go first: currently I have UNKLE's War Stories in very heavy rotation. If you watched the new series of Top Gear on Sunday night, they used 3 tracks from that album for one segment alone. Little obvious electronica, plenty of grungy instrumentation and some great lyrics--it's fucking brilliant!

Who's up for some good ol' Sunday zombie-smashing this weekend?

Ah that's too bad. Looks like the original clan might still be active maybe, but obviously console focused. So I've updated the description of the new clan I made to be PC-centric; the platform split may help better with creating fire teams anyway.

I couldn't find the original Idle Thumbs clan via Bungie.net; don't know if the clan's gone or if Bungie's systems are being funky. So I took the liberty of creating a new Idle Thumbs Destiny clan, which now includes Battle.net, and has a tasteful puffin-esque banner even!

Post your Diablo III BattleTags and whack things into undeath with fellow Thumbs! I will post mine as soon as I've worked out where it is... Mine is Wrestlevania#2530

Currently about halfway through Gears of War 4 on PC. It's a surprisingly good conversion, with a ridiculous amount of graphics options. But even without spending hours fiddling with those, it's running extremely well on my i5-6300 + GTX 960 setup. More importantly, where I hated the original trilogy for being so achingly earnest and serious, the 4th game's cast are refreshingly light. They even knock on the fourth wall occasionally, delivering sarcastic retorts when you fluff a reload and jam their/your gun. The Coalition have evidently had a lot of fun with the script in other places too. The main protagonist and one of his sidekicks get into a debate about an in-game lift being “funicular” for example. As noted in one review I read, the early robot baddies are a bit charmless, and add no character to the trademark cover-shooter combat. However, when the organic enemies turn up a couple of hours in, the AI kicks into high gear (yes I know what I did), and all manner of smart, panic-inducing flanking manoeuvres and sneak attacks become the series norm again. I think the only thing that might make it even more enjoyable at this point would be co-op. But I'm finding it to be a lot of fun just playing solo.

Well, as I said earlier, this was with fairly new, low-level characters. So we'd only found the first couple of entrances around the early missions--we couldn't get further into the city as the further districts are too high. I think it's probably wise just to say that the Dark Zone isn't meant for early characters, even though you can still get in. It's intended as an end-game thing.

We did. Guess who was running laps between them..?

First visit to the Dark Zone last night with a friend with new low-level characters. Only to find some knobhead with high-level gear camping the main entrance, and one-shotting everyone who came through it. Even a group of six of us couldn't take him down. We've renamed it the Dick Zone, and I think I might be done with this game—it's clearly very broken.

Speaking of being an idiot; can someone explain how the stat adjustments work in the equipment screen? Because those green numbers you get when highlighting an unequipped piece of gear rarely seem to stick once you go ahead and equip it. And it's confusing the :poopemoji: out of me.

Honestly? I've rerolled my character every time a major update has come out (so about 3-4 times since the initial alpha release, I think), and yet it's just so consistently bland. After about 3hrs of continuous play, every time I feel mentally numb and that I'm having trouble recalling anything of what I'm supposed to be doing, except trudging from one marker to the next, hitting/shooting things that get in the way. The combat feels so stilted to me, particularly with a ranged character. Most of the time I'm shooting stuff offscreen, because you need that distance to either dodge incoming fire in time, or ensure melee enemies walk into enough damage to kill them before they get too close. I'm just failing, every time, to find much fun here. Despite how much I really want to like it.

Very much agree. One of my favourite incidental mechanics in the game is its holographic crime scene recreations. I'm finding being able to walk around these (often traumatic) ghosts of individual citizens' lives to be quite affecting, and spurs me on to find out what might have happened to them and others caught in that moment. Granted, there are a fair few Manly Man's Man archetypes littered throughout the story, doing their typical, tedious Manly Man posturing. But they're not the only properly-formed characters here, which is refreshing—not least for a shooter.

The Guardian has just published an interesting (early) review that sums up my feelings and experiences so far (my lack of excursions into the Dark Zone notwithstanding).

Sounds good! I'm on usually in the evenings, from about 8pm GMT. Will keep an eye out for you.

I still haven't risked the Dark Zone yet, definitely want to try that with a few Thumbs though. I'm also playing on PC, but am taking my time with it. Just hit level 13 after about 9hrs of play--am in no hurry to rush through to the end game.

I'm playing on PC and really enjoying it so far. Add me! n.b. I've just swept everyone I know on Steam into uPlay automagically, which is a smart feature (shocking for uPlay, I know).

Winky smilie fail

You mean your extravagant, jet-setting lifestyle? I may be around this evening for japes.

Following chunks' lead, is anyone interested in some online DS play? My Friend Codes are: 42 All-Time Classics (aka Clubhouse Games) 1074 6164 6395 Animal Crossing: Wild World 5197 7954 2160 [updated] Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin 0731 0113 5499 Mario Kart DS 2534 7096 6395

That dirt bike race looked great, the locked first-person perspective less so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF5Wazwb-zk So the beta sign up closes tomorrow(!) and there's also a very promising preview just out by the Guardian. Are no other Thumbs excited about this? I admit to having been left cold by many a big budget multi-man-shoot in recent years. But Titanfall seems to be at least hoping to push things a bit futher than the "respawn, run, die, repeat" doldrums of some modern competitive shooters. I particularly like the apparent gameplay callbacks to stuff like Quake III Arena's verticality and Tribes' fluidity and speed. I'm also hopeful that Respawn's dogmatic focus on balance and prolonging each "life" means you should feel like you're achieving something every play. I'm also really intrigued by this idea that there'll be plenty of AI soldiers running around on both teams, and that you can somehow "hack" them to make your only little squad that follows you around. I'm also also a shameless mech fanboy, and Titanfall's robots look like a lot of fun to play in a similar way to HAWKEN's.

My vote is for SOLDAT as I missed that last time. I haven't played it in years either, and want to see if it's still as chaotic and hilarious as it used to be!

Is this a new thing? Haven't played in months, but I'd be interested in giving it another go.

That's sad, hope she's too upset. See you when we see you!