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The more I think about this game the more I'm certain it's the best game of all time. Ocarina of Time is my favourite, but Far Cry 2 might be the true greatest. You know that "Citizen Kane moment" crap that everyone always brings up? Yeah, as much as I hate that stuff, I think this game was possibly it, and most people didn't like it because they weren't immediately handed an awesome gun, put on a linear path and told to blow stuff up all the time. Far Cry 2 found and exploited the interactive language better than any game ever, and I think it was something of a watershed moment.

I wish Idle Thumbs was still alive so we could hear them talk about him, the Ben Dudka/Citizen Killzone/A Letter to Edge stuff and The Fanboy's Lament are some of my favourite podcast material.

Oh man, Flytrap guy Actually, is that game still out on Live? Last time I looked it wasn't anywhere to be found. After all, I don't want to miss out on the greatest game of all time.

It's a shame everyone turned their noses up at Banjo, what a fucking fantastic game that is.

Oh, shit, I thought it did

I'm weird in that I liked Warrior Within and absolutely loved The Two Thrones. Didn't like Prince of Persia (2008), though.

Oh yeah, my multiplayer game of the year is Uncharted 2, amazingly. It allows the well-combined shooting and climbing systems to shine and produce incredible dynamism that, playing only the campaign, you'd never think was possible. For everyone else who meh'd at or disliked the single player, I'd seriously recommend taking it online. Why the hell was I reading this thread?

I thought the campaign was good, and there were some amazing moments, but it wasn't as smart, well-paced or relatively subtle as Call of Duty 4. It's almost entirely an entertainment game this time around, doing a Killzone or Uncharted and throwing a million things in your face a second. It's not as overblown or patronising as those two on a moment to moment basis, but I think the way they dealt with torture in this one was pretty symbolic of the change. It's something Soap employs in an almost casual manner, and when he was making those sparks with the rods beside the guy tied up in the chair, I swear he had a grin on his stupid face. That Rio level, actually, represented both the best and worst of Call of Duty to me. The best in that: a) the action was intense throughout, never got entirely stupid and allowed some form of dynamism in more open areas and I accidentally shot a civilian who got caught in the crossfire and fell prey to my all too eager trigger finger. Awesome, horrible emergent moment there. It represented the worst because: a) there was extreme bottle-necking and gating in places a seeming glorification of violence in a very deprived area c) poor handling of a sensitive issue d) those guys springing out of the windows - come on Infinity Ward.

So remember I got all that compressed air for my PC? Yeah, it didn't really work. Finally got in touch with those nice folk I know and they chucked in their spare 6600 card. Lo and behold it worked fine, so my 8800 GT is now consigned to the scrapheap. Until my shiny new Radeon HD 4870 arrives, they're letting me borrow their spare. I really wanted to play Far Cry 2 after nearly two months without it, so I turned everything down to Low and the resolution to 800x600 so it looks like a PS1 game. It still splutters along at a less than desirable framerate

I can vaguely remember some horrible zig-zag thing, but I don't know if I beat it or not, especially on the top tier. Might have to dig out the cartridge and play it on my DS

It's a shame that the most vocal gamers online are fucking idiots.

Wave Race was awesome! My sister got it with her Game Boy Pocket and I played the shit out of it. Huge learning curve, but once you get to grips with all of its bullshit it's an absolute blast. Probably the first game that had me chasing times.

I got it for $5, which translated to about £3.20. Been waiting for it to drop to about that but it never has, and based on the demo it was neat, but definitely not £15+ of neat.

I knew most episodes off by heart before the end, and I've kind of wasted my post-cast retro thumbs experience because I listened to them all so damned much while it was still on! FUCK YOU NIIIIIIICK! ROGUE WARRIOR SUCKS!

I stopped picking easy as well a few years ago and went for 2/3 and 3/4 instead, if you know what I mean. From my experience doing so is awesome, because I actually got better at games pretty quickly.

Jon Cole: Podcast Machine.

No point playing past that, the rest of the video game (sorry, I mean film) is even bull shittier.

1. Play some games. Already winning my resolutions.

He certainly seems to have more of an affection for the right, or at least more of an affection than you'd expect any reasonable person to have, and though he's far from Ron Paul, this pseudo-constitutionalism is evident in places. People forget that the actual written US constitution has meant very little for a very long time, and I can find it hard to take them seriously, even Carlin. It's so packed with ambiguities that it's difficult to even define what federalism is - back then it meant the opposite. Not to mention that nobody actually really intended to create such a strong central government. Hell, voters had no influence originally, and based on the constitution they still officially don't. Paranoia about checks and balances can be a misfire too, I'd argue that the legislative and judicial branches contradict each other more often than is practical, not to mention limiting the remit of the elected executive. It's the Supreme Court everyone should really worry about. Unelected, yet arguably the strongest and most straightforward lawmaker. Maybe I need to spend some time in the United States instead of just reading about it, but there seems to be some sort of affection for the constitution which I can't really understand. We don't have one in Britain, and I could never get to grips with the benefits of a single, supposedly unified document. Now we have a bloody Supreme Court, for some fucking unknown reason, and I hope we don't start to ape more aspects of the US system. It's almost completely broken (not that ours is perfect, my favoured system is a Soviet-led and authoritarian, though not at all totalitarian, one; we sacrifice an awful lot for a "democracy" in which a fickle ten per cent get to have their ill-informed say on two, perhaps three near-identical parties in order to decide the outcome). Carlin himself outlined that though the US trumpets democracy, they really only have the choice between a centre-right and slightly further-right party. For decades, very little has gotten done, and the system has been allowed to decay from within. I guess the weirdness of it all is what keeps me interested in US politics. As for podcasts, I've been listening to a lot of Brainy Gamer stuff. Again, I don't always necessarily agree with Michael Abbot (though I often do), his sincerity and passion continually draw me in. My favourite episodes by far are the solo ones - his excitement for what he likes about gaming is, for lack of a better word, really cute!

What I've bought so far (seven-and-a-half games for nine pounds!). Will more than likely cave in to Riddick before the sale's end, and there are more than a few others I've got my eye on. Oh, and I've had to start playing them on my netbook because my PC still isn't right. Torchlight's dedicated mode is choppy as fuck but works surprisingly well.

Yeah, from what I've gathered I suck at games way worse then Remo most of the time, but I did that level after a couple of goes. It was really short!

No, but I'm really looking forward to it. Got an extended demo from Nathan Vella at Edinburgh Interactive in August. He's such a cool guy, and Capy as a whole are awesome too, so all the signs are good.

Noby Noby Boy wasn't even nominated for that. That said, like I give a shit about these lists. Haven't kept track of them at all this year, whatever they pick is bound to be something I wasn't into.

I'm so starved of Thumbage I might die

I don't put any stock in replay value. Besides the fact it almost always means diminishing returns, the game as an experience, like the best films, needn't require multiple playthroughs to appreciate.