Irishjohn

I really WANT to be Nintendo's bitch, but my Wii sits there getting less attention than it deserves while I play Borderlands and other fine 360 games for precious, precious points. It's ridiculous. I don't even have that many points. I DO like to buy DS games whenever I can, though.

Yup, it's enough to make me inch towards the PC version. Mods are an awesome thing, if the modders out there will be kind enough to get stuck in.

I second this. I was in Taiwan on research earlier in the year and I decided to download Half-Life 2 for the millionth time. It was significantly less than 14.5gb but it did take ages. Maybe if you're getting work done in the Starbucks it won't be too bad?

It all sounds like fun to me. I'm definitely going to fool around with the editor, though I also lack the expertise to do anything cool. Thing is, if the assets are there, it might be surprising how much you can do!

Yup, the cool thing about the relatively short play time is that I'll actually have time to roll a few characters and get stuck in. I love the "shared stash" idea, I'm already collecting stuff for my next character. Thing is, stats do skew items to one class or another, but not in any way you can't fix; I'm having a lot of fun messing around with character specs.

For "wizard", read "alchemist." Thing is, there will be a full on wizard class pretty soon thanks to the modding community, I should think. I'm looking forward to a whole bunch of class options.

Ditto. I had been a bit of a doubting Thomas regarding GTA games but San Andreas made me a believer.

I am in exactly your position, except I went ahead and got Torchlight. It's awesome.

Do all statues creep you out? Do the statues of your character in Fable 2 upset you? Otherwise, I am unfortunately also stumped. Did you check out the statue page at giantbomb?

I would agree that WOW is a decent example of a game that can be "hardcore" or "casual." I think a lot of it depends on the player. I just don't have the time to play games that I used to have, so to a certain extent, every game I play is "casual." Sorry, not really answering your question! I mostly spent the 1980s playing point and click adventure games.

That's cool man. I'm still not particularly interested in the game, but that's just because the concept doesn't appeal to me to begin with. It's good to hear the execution is so good, though.

See, if the guy could bring that idea into how the event works, he could have something going. He'd have to be good at managing a party though; nobody wants to injure themselves trying to dance to Daft Punk being brutally cut up by someone inadvisedly taking on hard mode.

Wow. This guy has nailed it. I would gladly pay twice that to watch a dude play a video game in my home. Seriously. No, really, I would. Utterly, utterly bizarre. I hope you enjoy DJ Hero. I must confess, I have little to no interest in that game, though that's in no small part due to the fact that I'm a bit worn out from rhythm games in general.

Yeah, Nick pooped on the game. His two big complaints seemed to be that the loot wasn't quite up to it, and that a couple of the bosses were too easy. Well, I've only beaten two bosses, but so far it's been a lot of fun. The loot isn't going to blow you away ign.com but it becomes a bit of a compulsion to keep picking stuff up and shooting things. I had been super excited, then lukewarm, and finally completely won over by this game. The big thing I would say is that the shooting action feels pretty good. It's true that the enemies more or less charge you constantly, but it makes for an exciting shooter.

Extremely cool. A little bit like Demon's Souls, this game has developed a groundswell of support out of apparently nowhere. I know Demon's Souls had an international fanbase and Torchlight has a lot of roots in Diablo, but still. Hyetal, the game is up for download in the US at apparently the same time as you mention.

That's good to hear, mate. It can be a bit tricky if they start swarming you, alright. Hope you keep having fun with the game. I know what you mean about class weapons, I'm playing Brick and putting all his talents in Tank but still using a sniper rifle as often as I can get away with!

You won't regret it! It's a great game.

I don't mean to act as salesman for this game, but it's available on Steam for five dollars until November 2nd. Easily worth picking up for that little.

Awesome. I remember this video clip from a few months ago. I love that they've made a full in-browser playable version, ludicrous flash load times included. I am actually "playing" this for the dialogue.

Yeah, the only time I've been using Wave and thinking "this actually might be an option" was in a work conversation. It has been an upgrade from IM when it comes to discussing work with people in different time zones.

I agree, Steam is lethal. I'm looking forward to messing around with the editor when it comes out next week. I've never done any modding at all, and so I'm sure it will remain something I do for fun on my own time for a bit of fun, but I've heard good things about the editor and the scale of the game perhaps providing a less difficult experience for beginners who want to fool around with maps and various things.

I'm not as far into it as some of the guys here, I'm around level 17 right now. I picked a Brawler and I'm loving it. I have hit a brick wall here and there but I've generally gotten around it. The big things I would say are to get a shield that regenerates your health as soon as you can, use grenades liberally (they tend to drop fairly regularly), and try and put yourself in a situation where you can back up and shoot skags/humans as they run at you without getting yourself in more trouble. Finally, I have been able to kind of grind a bit by using vehicles to blow the crap out of skags, rakk and humans with much less danger of dying.

I would agree with the Halo recommendations, Halo 2 got me back into shooters. Previous to that I hadn't played much since Doom and Terminator 2029! Think about story and setting, too. I liked both in the Halo universe, though some people find it goofy. I tend not to be hugely interested in FPS games with more "realistic" settings, like GRAW or Call of Duty. I'm sure there are plenty of people who skew completely the other way.

So I got it and I've been playing Hero 30. It's a really fun game, I was expecting to enjoy it and it's exceeding my expectations so that can't be bad!

I never played Fate, but I've heard it mentioned a lot in terms of the game's direction (and supposedly it is evidence that Torchlight will be authentically Diablo-esque). As for graphics, the specs are pretty low, so I'll be interested to see what it's like running. I love the look of the art design though.