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Finished my 1st playthrough as a paragon Infiltrator (With my paragon Shepard from ME1) and now am about halfway through as a renegade Soldier (Now with my renegade Shepard from ME1). Given that I sunk about 60 hours into the game so far it goes without saying that I love it, but there are a few things that annoyed me: - The convict. I'm proudly in the "hate her" camp. To the game's credit they gave her a pretty good excuse to be the way she is, but still screw her. Even during my paragon playthrough if I ever got a prompt to press the left mouse to shoot her in the face with a shotgun during a conversation I would've done it in a heartbeat. - Hardly any character progression. One of my favorite things about RPGs is seeing just how much more powerful my character in the endgame is when compared to the weakling I started with. Whether its because there isn't much gear to find or because the powers don't really get that much more powerful at level 4 than they were at level 2, I honestly didn't feel that my Shepard got that much stronger as the game progressed (In fact I'd say he peaked during and then flatlined for the rest of the game). Particularly jarring after playing Dragon Age, where by the end of the game an army of white named darkspawns and ogres can be dispatched in seconds by your character alone. - The fact that you can't revisit mission maps. Missed - The minigames. I don't mind mining planets for resources, but the hacking, bypassing and that "shoot the pests in the Krogan base" minigames were pretty bad. - Limiting ammo and fuel. Having to run around looking for ammo after every fight and having to fly to fuel stations all the time gets old fast. Feels like they just added these to artificially stretch our play time. - No "hard" choices regarding your team mates. For me having to choose between saving Kaidan or Ashley in ME1 was one of the most memorable moments I've had in a game in the past 5 years (Even though I didn't like either of them), and while it's theoretically possible to lose anyone in ME2 I felt the game telegraphed pretty clearly what you had to do to keep everybody alive. - Facial scarring. Ok, if "renegade" doesn't necessarily mean "evil" (And it doesn't) why the hell am I expecting my renegade Shepard to grow horns at any minute? Somebody at Bioware played too much Fable. - Renegade choices. One thing I noticed in my renegade playthrough is that I rarely see anyone from ME1, and it's pretty obvious why since the renegade choices in both ME usually result in the death of whoever is in front of your character. Bioware needs to find a way to give renegade players more hooks from the previous games, even if it's something dumb like having the widow of a henchman you kicked through a window follow you around screaming through the citadel in ME3. - The final boss. Convincing Sauren to shoot himself in the face and then fighting his reanimated corpse? Cool. Still, major props to Bioware. The characters in ME2 are so much more interesting than anyone in the first game and the combat is way better too. In fact, while I wouldn't shed a tear if Liara, Kaidan, Ashley or Wrex didn't appear at all in ME3 I'll be mighty pissed if anyone in my current squad (Save for Jack) doesn't play a substantial role in the next game.

Tropico 3 for $ 13.60 The game didn't really grab me the way a good Sim City or a Civilization do, but for this price it might be worth even if all you end up doing is playing the sandbox mode a couple of times and uninstalling like I did.

So the PC beta won't be available at all to those who don't pre-order? Also, anybody knows if the PC version of Battlefield 1943 got canned?

The controls in the PC version are a pretty significant downgrade from the previous one. Guess that's the trade-off for getting the game at the same time as the 360 version. It's still very much playable and I'll stomach it since the rest of the game has been so good, but I'm starting to wish they patch 360 controller support soon. On the plus side, it runs way better than Dragon Age did on my modest PC and looks much better to boot.

Since 2010 started I finished Dragon Age, Assassin's Creed, Torchlight and Resident Evil 5. Not a bad start and I hope I manage to finish Mass Effect 2 before I get back to work next week. As for some quick thoughts on the finished games: Dragon Age: I don't really care much about fantasy settings but while the world itself didn't engage me the little details more than made up for it. The combat was also ridiculously satisfying and managed to find that sweet spot of being challenging without ever being frustrating. Assassin's Creed: I forced myself to finish it in preparation for the sequel. Pretty much agree with the general consensus that it's a good 2 hour game hidden under 10 hours of tedium. Torchlight: Never liked Diablo but rather liked Torchlight. Go figure. Resident Evil 5: I'm never playing a game designed for co-op alone ever again. But when Sheva wasn't dying I actually did enjoy the game a lot (Until it started throwing enemies with guns at me and forcing me to use one of the clunkiest cover systems I've ever seen).

I only have Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, Canabalt and Rolando 2 and they're all pretty good. Nothing "so awesome it'll knock your teeth out and make a tribal necklace with them - IGN.com" but considering I got them all for less then half the price of a budget DS or PSP game and they're perfect for short burst gaming I'm rather happy with my purchases.

Well, not everybody speaks English so it's understandable that some would prefer to play a localized version of a game. Personally I always went with the English version because it helps me improve my vocabulary (Not that I have much choice nowdays as most companies that released translated games here stopped doing that a while ago).

I got it during Steam's year end sale, but probably won't get around to playing it for a while (My backlog is so obscene right now I'd get arrested if I showed it in public). All the praise for its uniqueness stokes my curiosity, but all the complains about its ridiculous difficulty are discouraging me from installing.

Sounds like a great game and I generally love character action games (Or whatever the DMC/NG/GOW genre is called), but I just can't stomach the game's juvenile attempts at titillation. I have nothing against strippers, but everything about the character of Bayonetta grates me way too much. I think its cool that several of Kamiya's games have very peculiar wrappers around their (Generally) excellent gameplay - It's usually polarizing stuff, but I'd rather have that over generic designed by committee games even if it sometimes keeps me from enjoying a game.

I'm having a lot of fun with it. As a proud member of the People Who Got Pissed Off At The Rabbids Minigame Collection® I'm glad to see Ubisoft finally put the Rabbids where they belong: Inside my Wiimote, where I can torture the little buggers to my heart's content. Also, it's always a treat to find a genuinely funny game outside of the adventure genre.

For anyone who might be curious about this game but thinks it doesn't look like it's worth $ 20.00, Crayon Physics Deluxe is adopting the "name your price" model until Jan. 15: http://www.crayonphysics.com/

I certainly showed a lot more restrain this time than I did during the Thanksgiving sale.

It worked! Thanks once again to ThunderPeel2001 for this. And now for a little pay it forward: First person to quote this message gets a game of their choice from Steam's under $5.00 list.

Sent you a PM. Thanks a bunch! And thanks to you as well. It's the thought that counts.

I'm not 100% sure, but I read it worked before on some message board (And hey, why would anybody lie on the internet?). Plus I figure if I'm gonna risk it might as well be with a game that costs less than 10 bucks. For anyone willing to help me out - Worst case scenario is you get a free game gifted to you and a copy of GTA4 to send to somebody else if Steam doesn't let me receive it.

If you're interested in Machinarium, the developers are selling a bundle with it, plus Samorost2 and the soundtracks for both games for $9.95 here. The caveat is that the download links are only available for 15 days after purchase, but since the games have no DRM as long as you back the files up that shouldn't be a problem.

Got Tropico 3 and the Ben There Dan That and Time Gentlemen Please bundle. Don't expect to get any replies, but since it doesn't hurt to ask: Would anybody be willing to trade some games up? I want to buy GTA4, but since Rockstar games are only open for purchase if you live in North America or Europe I need to find someone from one of those areas to gift it for me. In exchange I could gift you another Steam game of similar value or just send you the cash through Paypal.

Gish By: Cryptic Sea Available: direct purchase from the website, Steam, etc. Synopsis: A physics based platformer developed by Edmund McMillen (Aether, Super Meat Boy) where you control a sentient ball of tar trying to save his kidnapped girlfriend. Besides gliding across the floor and jumping, you can also make yourself solid to break through obstacles, slippery to pass through tight spaces and sticky to cling to surfaces. More: http://www.chroniclogic.com/gish.htm More: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/gish/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary;read-review

It's funny how drastically my feelings for the series changed as the episodes progressed. I was overall pretty disappointed after playing the first chapter, hated the controls, thought they were trying way too hard to reuse puzzles from the previous games and couldn't stand the art style, but at each subsequent chapter I started warming up to the game more and more. By the end of the third episode I was completely hooked and counting the days for the next chapter to hit. I still hate the controls, but everything else rocked. The story even managed to surprise me on several occasions, and made me laugh far more than both seasons of Sam & Max combined.

My sister was obsessed with Mortimer and the Riddles of the Medallion (PC) and lightgun games like Shooting Gallery (Master System) and Duck Hunt (NES) when she was very young. But your best bet would be to buy a Wii. Mario Galaxy is a great 2 player game both because the graphics are very colorful and because it doesn't demand a lot of involvement from the second player. There are other games like Excitebots and Wii Sport Resort that are also very endearing and fairly laid back, plus with the Virtual Console you'll also have access to several kid-friendly retro games like Kirby's Dream Course, Pokemon Snap, Puyo Puyo and Yoshi's Story. And assuming you don't think they're too violent for your kids, side scrolling beat-em ups like Streets of Rage and Guardian Heroes are great due to their co-op focused gameplay. They used to be my favorite genre when I was young because I could play with my friends in a non-competitive environment.

Direct 2 Drive is selling Mass Effect for 5 bucks: http://www.direct2drive.com/holiday/ And Steam is selling Mirror's Edge for the same price: http://store.steampowered.com/app/17410/ I paid full price for both of those games and don't regret it at all (Though given the choice I admit I would rather have paid $10 for both instead of $100).

Too bad most studios don't bother making benchmark demos anymore. Granted even they aren't 100% reliable but still...

The old 2D Lucasarts adventure games all hold up pretty well. I actually ended up playing the remastered version of Secret of Monkey Island with the original graphics because for me they look much better than the updated ones (Which, now that I think about it, was a waste of money since I already had the original). Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island didn't age as gracefully, though. Another game that aged terribly was Under a Killing Moon. That was one of my absolute favorite games but when I reinstalled it early this year I was taken aback by how janky it feels nowdays...

The PC version is $ 9.99 on Steam today only, in case anyone is interested. This damn 5 day sale is gonna leave me homeless...