Irishjohn

It's stunning how well the game holds up. Actually, it pretty much broke all subsequent Mario Kart games for me. I thought Double Dash and the DS game were good, but nothing comes close to the SNES original.

I'm always terrible at this because my memory is worryingly prone to wiping every six months so that I have almost no recollection of when a video game I've already finished actually came out. Saying all that, I have three games I really want to mention: Borderlands Dragon Age Shadow Complex

I really want to get this game at some point but I am completely turned off by the difficulty. I've played a few difficult games on consoles but I don't fancy it on a portable system. Maybe I'm concerned I'll throw my DS out the window of a moving bus.

I don't know, isn't the fear of shitty wizardness part of the fun?

I get very slight laggy vibes in some of the cutscenes but otherwise it runs great. PS - I check into this thread occasionally but I don't want to spoil the game for myself. Everyone's been cool with spoiler tags, but I'm paranoid. I just need to say it: this game has completely surprised me. I got it on a whim having not been even remotely excited about it at all, and it has consumed my life. So yeah. I like this game.

I think this looks pretty rad.

I don't know... I liked the first one, despite the sheer awfulness of the last thirty minutes or so of the game! It couldn't wipe out all the free-running type fun. Thing is, I'm not really sure I WANT more Assassin's Creed. It was fun the first time, but that's it for me. For now at least!

Sweet! I'm also quite glad they had to call it TorchED in the end. I never really got into the PReditor.

I don't agree. Obviously when you cut 1,500 jobs you are doing it to save money, but that's the reason EA (and every other company in the free world) exists. I don't know the full details of the decisions involved, but it seems unlikely to me that the fat cats are sitting in a board room somewhere cigars aloft, cheering at all the millions they earned for themselves. The decision was part of a large internal reorganization, which may or may not prove to be the right thing to do.

I can see that; I love games with elaborate stories and settings too, although I rarely explore them as much as you probably do. I still love Torchlight though... it's so VISCERAL. Actually, I love the slow burn of this game, I haven't been able to just pick up a game, click my mouse for an hour, and not come back to it for a day or two, all while still really really enjoying the game, in a long time. I also like the gear. It's like I finally get all the purple set stuff that I never cared about in WOW. The MMO could be ridiculous. I hope it is.

I assumed as much, and also assumed you were equally upset by the jobs lost. That was just my reaction. Moelman, the first Mirror's Edge drives me a bit mad but I would have been intrigued to see what they could have improved for the sequel. Don't lose hope, I wouldn't be shocked if Mirrors Edge 2 emerged eventually. It seems fairly marketable to me.

I was completely stunned by this news. 1,500 jobs? That is absolutely terrifying. Yes, it sucks that original IPs are dropped, but it has to be bad news for games in general when one of the biggest names in the business is laying off that many people. I can't imagine that all of the people holding the creative positions among those 1,500 are going to find work in the industry any time soon.

I completely agree. In any case, the Giantbomb guys have a sense of fun about it and don't take themselves too seriously. I really don't like reading five page reviews of a game, or coverage that has an agenda regarding the whole "games as art" stuff.

It looks like it could be really cool. I always find it hard to trust cinematic trailers though... Will there be Mario Kart-like rubber band AI? Ha ha!

I'm giving the game some decent time finally, and I experienced the "death" system the other day... I didn't expect my buddy to actually hang around and fight with me. This struck me as supremely cool. However, I fulfilled my objective, jumped in a truck, and got the hell out of there. I have no idea if my buddy is even alive, or if she just magically disappeared into the ether of video games, and will be waiting for me when I go back to when I first met her.

It's a really good game, and it doesn't really have the Russian PC vibe. The one thing I will say is that the difficulty will result in you spending a lot of video game time on the game. I actually need to get back to it, because I got distracted by other games and I didn't have the time to spend four or five hours a day playing it to try and make up for my suckiness.

Damn you Bioware. I'm tapped out from all the intense video games, and now I want your video game. Damn you.

I don't think anyone will care. The PC market can be interesting in its sheer scale and lack of profile compared to the consoles. I think it's a good thing, at least there's somewhere for games to go without being censored. I never played the first Manhunt though, so I'm not tempted to pick up the sequel myself.

I suppose in theory you could go hog-wild on iTunes with the list above, but that's precious video game money!

I completely agree about Best Buy. It's such a pleasant experience to buy games in there. They did try and upsell me some kind of bullshit scratch insurance once, but otherwise it's great. I'm officially putting off Dragon Age for a while, but it seems to actually be good.

Sweet. I just bought a Level 1-10 scroll (I'm level 20) and everything scales. Wasn't super lucky with gear, but still cool.

Hey all, I know there are a lot of UK-based Thumbs so I wanted to see if anyone is playing Football Manager 2010. I did play a bit of last year's game though my glory days were definitely the CM 97-98 era. The reviews of FM 2010 seem good, but does anyone here have anything to say about it? I'm teetering on the brink of grabbing it but it's really going to take me away from other games for a while. For the record, I'm a Liverpool fan, so perhaps some fantasy escapism is just what I need right now.

Yeah, the whole game is a UI! The new game is apparently a big update in that department, using tabs and other trendy sounding navigation tools. I reinstalled last year's game, and yesterday spent about four hours in a Civilization-style haze. I'm not sure I can afford to get into the new game after all.

I must confess, I'm not a big fan of the mission completed screen. But then, I really don't care. I will never go back and replay a mission for a better score, ever! Still, it's no big deal for someone like me, who doesn't care, and it's welcomed by people who do care, so that's quite cool.

Runic are working on a patch apparently, and have thus delayed releasing the editor. I can run Torchlight on Windows 7 but there is a weird load time when I launch the game and there are some longer load times in other places. So hopefully you can play the game without any problems early next week. http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3001