Gwardinen

I was actually thinking of getting a cooperative Wii game for a female friend of mine who likes games but isn't too great with things with complex control systems. I had been intending to go with Kirby's Epic Yarn, but for some unknown reason it isn't out here until next year... so I'm currently pondering Super Mario Galaxy or the sequel to it. Does anyone have any opinions on whether one would be better than the other? I was also considering Scribblenauts or Super Scribblenauts for something a bit different, but she's dyslexic and not great with spelling and I'm wondering if it'd just irritate her.

Do minecarts work properly in multiplayer yet? That's really what I'm waiting for.

I just finished Fable 3, and while I loved the game in general I feel like I need to vent about the issues I had at the end. You're probably better off not reading this if you're not already past the revolution stage of the game. It's like Lionhead craves that imperfection inherent in every one of their games - I've pretty much loved them all and yet every one of them has really disappointed me in some way or another. It's just a shame that Fable 2 & 3 had to do it with generally unimportant crap like petty UI stuff or bugs or bad scripting or save functionality.

I'm right in thinking there's no co-op in this game? I was considering getting it for a group of a few of my friends to mess around with together a la Castle Crashers, but from what I've seen it doesn't look like there's any multiplayer.

Game Dev Story is an iPhone app (it may be on other mobile devices, but I don't know of any) by Kairosoft. It's a simulation of running a game development studio, in very broad and simply represented strokes. You hire coders, writers, designers (who are actually artists, it seems), producers, directors and sound engineers, train them and level them up and occasionally buy special items to provide boosts. The main activity is to create new games on various systems (which change throughout time to mimic actual video game history, from the Intendro IES to the Sonny PlayStatus, etc.) in genres and types that you discover, such as an Action RPG about Golf (I have actually made several of these). There are also ancillary actions such as going to the GameDex convention and advertising your games in various ways. As you might guess already, a great deal of the game is run through with game industry references, and the employee names tend to run along the just-about-parody line. Beyond that, though, the game is genuinely addictive and entertaining. I've spent several hours on it already, and I've only managed to create two Hall of Fame games - an Architectural Simulation and its sequel... obviously called SimCity. Has anyone else played this game and found it surprisingly fun, as I have?

Is that from a Zero Punctuation? I don't remember it.

That's absolutely fantastic. Has anyone actually played the game yet? I'm considering it but I never got particularly far in Fallout 3, so I don't know if it'd be worth it for me to play.

They get tired if you make them do one of the three main phase jobs too often. Generally it seems like you can get away with making them do the same one twice in a row, and then you need to either outsource it next time or give it to a less qualified team member. That said, sometimes the tradeoff with a less qualified one is worse than if you just overwork the qualified one. I think I might be hitting the point at which the game is becoming a little tedious, but it was definitely a good deal for the price. I've already put more time into it than exists in the Medal of Honor campaign.

I still haven't won the Grand Prize either, I haven't even gotten Runner Up. Though that said, nor have I "won" Worst Game. With the success of SimCity and SimCity 2 (I know it should be 2000, I had a brain fart) Girthy Games is definitely going well for me at the moment.

Best realisation reason.

I recently finished reading the comic series Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis, which is fantastic by the way. I heartily recommend it. A line that stuck out at me from one of the issues was this: "Silence, vermin! I am in command here! Who did you vote for, vermin woman? Did you vote? Can you read? Have you got thumbs? SHOW ME YOUR FUCKING THUMBS! This prompted me to wonder whether the rest of you have any good quotes or memories from other entertainment that has reminded you strongly of Idle Thumbs? I regularly have to say "the wizaaaard" in the voice when I see the word but I'm sure there must be other entertaining unintentional references out there.

It bugs me that I don't know how to jungle. It's just an entire sphere of the game that I simply don't understand and feel like I should.

I have that issue with Source games in general. They just don't work properly on this computer, regularly making corrupted purple textures pop up, random wall transparency and occasionally just full-screen crazy lightning disc texture malfunction. It sucks because I used to enjoy playing TF2, and I really want to play Portal 2... I might have to get it on the 360, which is just a terrible idea.

Apparently LoL won some kind of award so every champion is free to play this weekend and there's some bonus IP as well.

I think it probably is included because it's a trend more than for its design merits at the moment, but that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't good design. It's just that in a post Modern Warfare 2 games industry, it's hard to make a multiplayer mode that could support perks and customisable weapons/abilities and then not support them. I doubt the integration of all these customisation features previously associated primarily with RPGs into all games is going to stop or even slow down any time soon, but I'm not sure it's a bad thing either. Personally, I enjoy a limited ability to pick how my character works, as it allows me to tailor it to my playstyle to an extent. That said, I totally understand your issue with it, as it makes for a very unbalanced playing field - something like that would never fly in StarCraft, for example. The most obvious solution that occurs to me is to include game modes that give everyone nothing or everything, or allow a host of a non-ranked game to pick one or the other if they so choose. This would allow those who want an equal skill experience to get it, while still preserving progression for the core multiplayer. That said, the danger is that that will curtail the desire of the rest of the players to experience the progression for months after the game is released, severely cutting down on its longevity. I don't know what the reality of that situation would be for a Modern Warfare/Assassin's Creed.

Finally broke down and bought it for myself. Attempting to log in to the Idle Thumbs server now, be nice to me if you see me for I am all the noob. Edit: And naturally it isn't working. The connection is timing out both when trying the DNS way and the straight IP way. Is this an issue with the server or me?

Every time I start Minecraft it seems to build a world of tiny islands, I'm literally always on the coast and can see at least three other islands from where I am. Beginning to annoy me. I've also been trying out SMB's Realistic Textures pack, the "Browncraft: Brown & Bloom" texture pack and the Quandary 12 seasons texture pack with an automatic rotator of the seasons. I'm honestly not sure what to stick with. The annoying sameyness of the "random" world generator is making me very tempted to buy the game for myself and try out the Idle Thumbs server though.

A friend of mine got her daughter a space hopper that has a horse's head attached and the only thing I can think every time I see it is "horsebag". The laughing is becoming difficult to explain. Also whenever the word "wizard" comes up I sing it too.

Are most of you guys using custom texture packs? It seems like some of them really make the game look much better and also make it easier to distinguish between different kinds of blocks, etc. Does anyone have any recommendations for some texture packs to try?

I've now played the multiplayer beta a little... I have mixed feelings, but there's definitely interesting stuff there. As Speedy said, you rely a great deal on your compass, which sits at the bottom of the screen giving you an idea of the direction and proximity to your target, as well as whether they're above or below you. That and the picture of your target are what are meant to enable you to find and kill them. Sadly, the way this is handled often feels rather mechanical and it shatters my hopes for a lot of "frantically pretend to be an NPC" behaviour, but those expectations may have been unrealistic to begin with. Observing behaviour CAN be useful, it's surprising how easy it is to pick out a player in a crowd at times, particularly as about half of them just don't bother trying to blend in in the first place and regularly run up walls and the like. But a lot of the time someone will just sprint at you from behind before you can react based on their compass. On the other hand there are some genuinely great moments, mostly to do with your own pursuers. If you stand around near NPCs using the same model as you and a pursuer accidentally kills one of them they lose their contract and you're safe from that particular player until they get a contract to kill you again. You also get points for a "Lure" and it's one of the greatest feelings I've experienced in multiplayer to trick someone in this way. What's possibly even better is when you're running from a pursuer, turn a corner and get into a crowd and use the Disguise ability, if you have it equipped. This shifts what model you're currently using, and sometimes it screws your pursuer up visibly - watching them suddenly shudder to a halt and knowing that the player is thinking "crap, where the hell is he?" is fantastic. Unfortunately, the combination of the compass and being able to "lock" a character provided they're not out of sight for too long often makes this pointless - another example of how the mechanics sometimes get in the way of the concept, at least the concept I have in mind.

Do compass directions actually have meaning in Minecraft? I thought the compass you could build just pointed to the spawn point? Or is the spawn point universal, so we're calling that north? I honestly don't even know HOW to harvest, or what one would do with reeds. Someone was asking others to build stuff inside a city, right? I'm probably capable of doing that slowly and incompetently.

I'm quite intrigued by the multiplayer, and if the singleplayer improves at all on AC2 I'll undoubtedly enjoy it, as I liked that much more than the original. I've actually preordered the game from Play.com, and should hopefully be getting a beta code. I'm essentially going to use that as a demo and if I enjoy the multiplayer I'll keep the preorder, if not I'll cancel it.

Played a little bit of Minecraft on someone else's account today... made myself a nice little wooden shack and then vainly tried to climb up a mountainside to get coal. Took me about 15 minutes to mine 3-4 blocks of it... not a solid time investment. Came out of my shack the next morning and there was a horrible green monster bouncing around, which scared the shit out of me. Luckily I had made a stone sword during the night, so I bravely fought it off, at which time it exploded and killed me. Respawned, can't find my shack. It's snowing and I'm cold and alone. Can't decide if I love the game for that experience or hate it. If I was to sink the (comparatively vast amount of, when buying FOOD is an issue) money into getting the game, would I be able to jump straight into the Idle Thumbs server without really understanding the game? As I said my greatest accomplishments so far are making a tiny wooden shack and a stone sword that only served to get me killed.

That entire third game does sound truly epic. A lot of the time in Civ 5 so far I've enjoyed it more when things haven't been going truly my way. That's why at the moment I'm often starting without a defined victory condition in mind, I'm finding if I just sort of try to make a balanced empire and make decisions based on the needs of the moment it tends to play out in a less proscribed way... usually a less efficient way, but often also a more entertaining way.

That story scares the crap out of me because I'm trying for a cultural/diplomatic win at the moment with the Arabians. It's on an archipelagos map, so I think my chances of not being attacked constantly are better than usual. I actually tried for a cultural/diplomatic victory with the Egyptians in my last game, but England and Japan kept starting wars and eventually I ended up fighting back and not stopping out of sheer frustration with their bloody-minded ways. So once Nobunaga had convinced me to help him conquer England, I just rolled right into Japan as well. So there you have it, it is possible to accidentally score a domination victory.