Dosed

Monster Hunter is becoming more and more tempting the more you guys talk about it. Is it really rubbish without multiplayer though? Or is it easy to get decent PUGs/find people on line who are eager to play? I´d hate to get so far into it only to discover that I need multiplayer to enjoy it any further. I´ve been playing Fantasy Life for a bit and it´s taken me 3 hours to get through the tutorial. I think that´s mainly related to the fact the language is set to Spanish, so I´m waiting for the actual game to begin before I cast my judgement. Tegan would you seriously advise against getting the lastest Pokemon games? Should I just hold out until Chhisristmaas?

I´ve started listening to Daft Souls so thanks to who ever recommended that little gem. I had seen it mentioned previously, but I didn´t drive straight in because the name put me off. I´m a big Souls fan, but not enough to listen to a full pod cast about it. So imagine my surprise when it´s 3-4 Brits talking about interesting video game stuff! I also didn´t initially get the phonetic joke that one of the hosts points out in an early episode due to my northern accent.

I got my 3DS! I´ve only got the Mario Jump Sim 2014 and I´m not entirely digging it so far so I´m gonna go and see if I can pick up Zelda vs. Link: A Crack in Time or the semi-latest pokemen tomorrow. I mock because I love.

That was kind of disturbing. I can´t wait until FOX gets a hold o´this one.

So I bit the bullet and bought a 3DS from Amazon. I´m living in Spain at the moment and was hoping to pick a cheaper one up from the UK and have it delivered here, however, no dice. There´s like a 40€ difference in price for some undiscernible reason. So I ended up buying a used black one for around £99 from Amazon.es. I also managed to get Super Mario Mega Land-World in 3D for the Nintendo 3DS World Entertainment System. I plan on definitely getting the latest pokemen, and eventually the Fire Emblem/Rune Factory games, but as of now I don´t want to spend too much money before I know whether or not I´ll actually enjoy the system. Oh and thanks for the info Tegan, and supporting cast, I really appreciate it. The 3DS is something I´ve always been interested in and I´ve never touched so there´s plenty of back catalogue for me to sink my teeth into. I´ll definitely look into Fantasy Life.

Hi all! I just moved country and I thought I'd leave the gaming bug behind in England, but nope, that ain't happening. I've decided to buy a 3DS and I was wondering what you guys would recommend. I've not owned a handheld since the GBA SP came out so I'm pretty behind. I'm definitely going to get the latest pokemanz, I quite fancy fire emblem and I might get the latest Zelda game. Is there anything you think is a MEGA MUST HAVE 4 ALL 3DS NUBBZ? Thanks for reading errybody.

¡Hola! Has anyone else read John Dies at the End? What did you guys think of it? Has anyone read any other of Wong's/Pargin's books? The book is written by an editor of Cracked.com (please keep reading), and while I grew out of visiting those kinds of websites when I was younger I found the book to be genuinely quite funny. It's essentially a buddy comedy about 2 losers that accidentally discover a drug which allows them to see hell creatures which secretly inhabit the world. I found the book to be quite unique in the way that it managed to genuinely creep me out with horrifying hell demons, and then a couple of pages later had me laughing at an exploding dog. The humour is very crass and crude but there's actually an interesting story going on with plenty of twists and turns. There were some moments that managed to seem out of place even in such an absurd book, and could often be a bit cringe inducing. I read up about the book afterwards (as I usually do) and found that it was originally released episodically online, and this probably helps to explain the last third or so of the novel coming out left field. Also Anyway! Discuss!

I got this the other day after a long battle with myself. I'd been debating whether to buy it or not because I've just started an incredibly intense month long course, and I thought it might distract me beyond belief. However, I've decided that I need games to unwind (and live), and relieve myself of the stress. Or that's how I convinced myself anyway. I've only been playing for a little while, somewhere between 2-3 hours of actually playing, and I'm enjoying it so far. I had to re-roll once because I picked two characters and none of them had a healing spell so I got smashed relentlessly. Does anyone else feel the game is pretty difficult in the initial stages? I re-rolled and picked a Wizard (obvz) and a Cleric (healadin lololol)and found my early adventures a tad easier. I played for a bit in the first town and tried venturing out but began to get frustrated when I couldn't win a fight without one character dying, and every fight was 7v2. I then found out you can recruit companions which made the whole thing far easier. I am struggling to confidently pick decent talents/skills/attributes/interests/children's names/wine preferences for my characters as there seems to be a good few ways to screw yourself over later on. Is anyone else reminded of Runescape when they play this? Or more likely the case that Runescape reminds people of old CRPGs. I had literally no interaction with any form of CRPGs up until this point, but I was always envious of people that grew up with Baldur's Gate and the likes. I always knew I'd like them, and if Divinity: Original Sin is anything like them then I know I've hypothetically-retrospectively imagined that I liked them too. I like that most of the introduction to the game is wandering around attempting to solve a murder in a quiet little town rather than just dumping you into a crap load of fights. Let's hope I continue to like it.

I have these left over from a recent Humble Bundle, and I'm not interested in any of them so they're up for grabs. Mechanic Escape Finding Teddy Ethan: Meteor Hunter Project Temporality Kill The Bad Guy Legends of Persia Same rules as Twig's post above. If I don't know ya, ya ain't gettin' nothin'. PM me and I'll give you an address you can send a vial of blood, 2 whole finger nails and half a foot to for confirmation of your forum identity.

Oh boy do they try to put you through the ringer on the stickers/gems/ore/wheat/belief collection on the mobile version. They all take forever to collect, with the exception of maybe belief. Wheat is 6 hours, ore is 18 hours and some buildings later on literally take 1 day and 13 hours to complete. I guess that's the nature of the beast, but I just changed the time on my phone and practically cheated. The cards almost become impossible to get because you need stickers and you can either get them by finding chests in the world or doing terrible, awful, terrible, terrible challenges where you guide a bunch of moronic followers through swamps to reach a temple. And if you think a touch screen think again. It's embarrassingly bad. Note: I have not yet deleted this game I piss and moan about so much.

Believe it or not I spend way too long agonising over a post based on its substance. So the idea of one of them being potentially dragged in here to be ripped to shreds is not too much fun.

Yeah, it's kind of weird to think of British culture as not having any sort of longing for the lifestyle of yesteryear. I mean people a generation before me mention how it was "safer" back then because you could leave your doors unlocked etc., but It's not like they want to be back in Dickensian London or Tudor England. I mean it's definitely a prevalent and influential presence in my/our culture, unless you're R.O.I Super, but they never really get lauded as being "better" or a "freer" lifestyle. Although, even if you are Northern Irish I'm sure you barely relate to Dickens etc. In English/British works they're always pointing out how backwards or dangerous a time to be a live whatever time period they happen to be covering, like This is England or Downtown Abbey in terms of gender/racial politics. Their seems to be a focus on how difficult the past was at different periods of history, I don't feel like there was a carefree period of British history where any piece of land was up for the taking. I guess that's because that never was actually the case, and America seems to be founded on that idea. edit: posted this before I'd seen gamesthatexist's post. That's kind of funny to think of them being Irish and me talking about how our cultures never seem to have a nostalgic quality. It's strange that they can replicate that nostalgic quality for a period in American history. I can't possibly imagine what period in history people would most like to go back to in Britain/the Republic of Ireland history. English history has always had this sickly and dirty feeling to it to me, so I doubt I'd go back to anywhere in the past given the option. I also realise how reductive it is to assume that the cowboy culture was and is such an influential force on every American alive today, and to suggest that English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish cultures aren't vastly different.

I just played Cowboy Living for 5 minutes, which I'm sure is all you need. Like gamesthatexist said I love the fact that the game almost pretends you're not there, like the player isn't the one controlling the game and that the narrator is just happy to exist without us. The minimal input in the game sort of reflects that because you're literally just holding the up key and moving the mouse around at your own leisure. Did anyone else have problems with moving the gun? Or is that the point? If so I thought it was pretty funny. It fits well with the idea the author is having enough fun without you, it's almost like he didn't want to give you full control of the gun because he wanted to play. The game struck me as pretty adorable and funny with stuff like the quest menu and sub-quest menu joke. If that is a joke. I'm not sure. Maybe I just suck at these sorts of games. Initially, I didn't even notice the gun was a moveable object because I thought it was part of the scenery or logo or something. Thematically it's interesting to me because being an Englishman born in the 90's I don't really have any sort of cultural attachment or interest in cowboys. I get the idea behind them, but there's not much in our culture (that I can think of) that reflects the old style of free living that cowboys seem to represent. I've been to a rodeo, and worked on a cattle ranch in Arizona for a month but this game seemed way too placid to illicit any sort of memories from my time there. The colours reminded me of Woody's Round-Up from Toy Story 2, cheerful but sort of faded and worn out. It really actually reminded me more of Modest Mouse's album The Lonesome Crowded West, especially the song (for obvious reasons), and while that song is aggressive, the character of Dan has a sort of wistfulness and regret for what's been lost to the growth of major cities etc., all the while ignoring (I realise that's the songwriter's intent) the fact that the very existence of America was prefaced by the genocide of an entire culture. While there's clearly no menace or malice in this game it's just interesting to me to look at two different perspectives of the cowboy lifestyle; the longing for a simpler time and the realisation of what that actually entailed for the original occupiers of the land. I guess that's far from what The catamites were thinking of when they made the game, but reading your guys' posts made feel pretty stupid so I just had to lean on my favourite band for support.

It might be a better idea to put your PSN name in the thread in the multiplayer sub-forum. That way you can arrange it with like minded people, instead of this thread being buried. Oh and welcome! And your user name definitely had the intended effect on me.

It looks incredibly bland and pretty low fidelity compared to what else is being offered. It's a shame 'coz the teasers were pretty exciting

The whole thing is pretty scary. It's amazing that the police are capable of swooping in and basically doing whatever the fuck they want over there. I don't think there's much that the common person can do to fight back against such well equipped departments, the only people that could stop them would be the government.. and why exactly would they wanna do that? I wonder if our (the UK) bobbies on the beat are given ex-military equipment?

So is what Bioware's "You Have Been Chosen" campaign thing has been about? Seems way less tonally sinister than I was lead to believe.

I just downloaded, from Warp Door, Remnants of a Beautiful Day by Soy Sauce. I'd definitely recommend it. It's pretty weird, but not the most bizarre thing I've ever played. But I'm just gonna spoiler myself a bit so I don't ruin anything for anyone. It'd be awesome if Clyde played this as something in his initial response to my first post rang true with my experience of this game. It only took me like 10 minutes to kind of play it...

I dropped Giant Bomb out of my rotation a while a go and went all the way by unsubscribing since Dan joined the podcast recently. Vinny was always my favourite and since he left the podcast seems to be made up of snark and manbaby moments. The email thing with the poop in a swimming pool when Brad was hosting was just silly, it could have been funny if they didn't play it up so much but it just kept going on and on. Dan's shoebox story sort of appalled me, and the fact that he just uses/used paper plates for every meal is crazy to me. I don't think any of them are bad people, I just can't really empathise or understand them so I just decided I'd stop trudging through three hours and give the whole thing a miss.

The pathing is also pretty atrocious. I've been trying to reach a beacon of expansion (I think maybe the 4th one) and my guys can go all the way up the hill but struggle to go back down. Or they'll point to a place they can't reach, but refuse to the route that has been built for them and most of their fellow virtual villagers have already taken. It's getting beyond a joke now. But I still haven't deleted it.

Well I just tried Galah Galah for the first time. My thoughts are pretty unformed so I'll try to be as concise and clear as I can. In terms of aesthetics I thought it was quite interesting. I definitely don't believe that looks make a game, and that's a pretty obvious thing to say, but this game is so out there, in terms of appearance, that I thought it would be worth mentioning. I've certainly never played anything that looks anything like this. It made me feel quite uncomfortable, but I also think that was coupled with the sound design. There was a scream in the shmup section that spooked me something fierce. The sound in general was pretty uncaring about the player's comfort or enjoyment. It reminded me a bit of the sudden cuts in Don Hertzfeldt's animations with their sudden harsh sounds. The early sections had this pretty oppressive tone that I found interesting. It's something that always fascinates me, but at the same time makes me empathise with real life instances of oppression that it knocks me for six. I really liked the changing of character and scene without explanation. It kind of does away with the need for context and I found myself piecing together what the hell was going on. I didn't get very far in that respect. There were a few things I found a bit of a struggle. It literally took me 5 minutes to complete (once? In fact I don't know if it plays out differently if you choose different paths) so I feel like I can't judge it too harshly in certain areas. But I guess I'll give it a go. Games like this really do make me question "what is game?". There's no clear goal or reward apart from you finish the game and get to say "I finished it". it's clearly supposed to go against these rules of what a game is, but I'm not sure I enjoy it because of that. I don't need to be fed little shiny things to feel like I've "gotten" something from the game, but there's a few games I've played that do a similar thing and pull it off better. For example Thirty Flights of Loving doesn't give you a high score, but walking through the world is a joy and sections like the floating party reception are rewards in and of themselves. Maybe I do need a reward. Even if it is just aesthetic or audio. I'm not sure I was rewarded with anything for playing Galah Galah but I appreciated what it was trying to do. I'll try some more of these later, after I've done some more studying for my course.

I know this may be going against the entire point of this post, but do you think you could recommend a couple? I'd love to try some of these things out as I can't really afford to buy any new games for a while and I'd hate to be put off by picking a couple of unenjoyable games in a row. I've been playing a few beta type games recently like Tiny Wizard (not that it's particularly weird) and I played TRIHAYWBFRFYH a while a go, and really enjoyed the unusual experience. Is there any way you could give me a top 3 just to guide me in the right direction?

I've been playing Godus on my iPhone (along with a few other F2P games due to a lack of funds) recently and it's pretty lacklustre. I was enjoying it up until the point my builders suddenly needed wheat to make buildings. They hadn't required it up until this point, but all of a sudden they wouldn't build jack without it. It really slammed the brakes on when it came to progression and it's unfortunately became a game I just turn on to collect belief and wheat. It might as well be one of those virtual pet fish screen saver things from the 90's. I'm actually a pretty big fan of Molyneux's work in the past with stuff like both Black and Whites and the Fable series, but there's nothing here to indicate any semblance of uniqueness or innovation. Plus on the iPhone the sculpting is just god (teheLOL) awful and I just find my pecking indiscriminately at points on the landscape hoping the game will interpret my intentions correctly, which it does not.

Yeah, I bought it a while a go and I got through 5 or 6 levels and just became incredibly frustrated, and so just gave up on the whole thing. There's some stuff that really bugs me about it, mainly that spikes are an IIINSTA-KILL and that just instantly kills my enjoyment of the game. I understand that it's about the platforming challenge, but I never played the games that it's inspired by so I don't really have any sort of nostalgic ties to that genre. Not that I'm trying to Shovel Knight is attempting to rely on nostalgia alone. It's a really well presented game, the music is fantastic and it's quite an achievement to create what they've done with their self-imposed rules.

Videos of people I have convinced are just detached voices are weird. I know what they all look like, but it's weird to see them still.