The Video Games Thread

[Roland Deschain]

Good to hear you trying it out again, Wolfenstein. If you would like to join a guild, add Meetal or Roweland as a friend, and i'll add you if we're online at the same time. I should be on tomorrow at some point, although not sure whether that'll be afternoon or evening. Or both, lol.

Did you also transfer to the red eclipse?

Yeah. My whole guild transferred there, or those who were still active. The nerfs on Shadow, et al, made a few unsubscribe.

[black bart]

I have been enjoying Lara Croft and The Guardian of Light on my Ipad...only £1.45!

[PKMKII]

GTA IV has been fun, but it's a pain in the ass keeping everyone in my contacts happy. It's like I can't so much as get from my safehouse to a quest start point without Roman or Jacob or Brucie or Packie or Kate bothering me to go on a date.

[Roland Deschain]

I'd be careful of Brucie. He has wandering hands.

[Roy Hunter]

Haven't played GTA4. In San Andreas, I eventually gave up and Googled "GTA SA How do you kill your girlfriends?"

[Almighty Doer of Stuff]

I got sick of playing Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon.

The first game was the best, by far. The second is annoying but passable, and the third is just annoying.

The first game was a platformer, and an EXCELLENT one at that. The only part that wasn't platformer-style were the "Flight" levels and those were fun too. The second and third are full of dumb characters and stupid minigames. Spyro 3 has at least two skateboard parks, with extremely limited tricks and nonsensical physics. If I want to play a skating game, I'll play Tony Hawk, thank you. If I want to play a rail shooter, I'll play a rail shooter, thanks. The platforming aspect of the second two games is lame, and that was what made the first game awesome. It's a real shame.

So I took it out of my PS1, and stuck in MediEvil, which I loved as a child, although I had only played the demo.

But that game sucks too. I don't know what I'm going to play now.

[black bart]

Haven't played GTA4. In San Andreas, I eventually gave up and Googled "GTA SA How do you kill your girlfriends?"

GTA 4 was a Masterpiece of a game though.

[Roy Hunter]

Haven't played GTA4. In San Andreas, I eventually gave up and Googled "GTA SA How do you kill your girlfriends?"

GTA 4 was a Masterpiece of a game though.

Well, if The Boy decides to leave his X-Box here when he goes to university, maybe I'll get to play it. Doubt it, though...

[black bart]

It's not seemly for guys of our age to be still playing computer games is it?

[Roland Deschain]

It's not seemly for guys of our age to be still playing computer games is it?

There's nothing wrong whatsoever with it, BB. It's only residual guilt you feel from the tabloid-led image of games "being for kids" (if they all are, then people have sick minds ). I'll continue playing them for as long as I am able to keep up, and even then i'll probably stick with older games when I can't keep up with the new ones. I'll never buy a Wii though.

Think of them as interactive movies. It's just another form of escapism.

[gronank]

Kerbal Space Program
You build rockets and you send them out in space and put them in orbits. I just need to get over the feeling of loosing kerbonauts on spacewalks. It is awful to see the halfwitted creatures drifting helplessly off in the vast emptiness of space. It is awesome to build rockets though.

[black bart]

It's not seemly for guys of our age to be still playing computer games is it?

There's nothing wrong whatsoever with it, BB. It's only residual guilt you feel from the tabloid-led image of games "being for kids" (if they all are, then people have sick minds ). I'll continue playing them for as long as I am able to keep up, and even then i'll probably stick with older games when I can't keep up with the new ones. I'll never buy a Wii though.

Think of them as interactive movies. It's just another form of escapism.

Thank you I feel better for that...I am pretty sad though...I am still trying to find the 24th Stone of Barenziah in Skyrim. Even my children think I'm sad!

[Rainswept]

Good to hear you trying it out again, Wolfenstein. If you would like to join a guild, add Meetal or Roweland as a friend, and i'll add you if we're online at the same time. I should be on tomorrow at some point, although not sure whether that'll be afternoon or evening. Or both, lol.

In GTA IV, I also loved the Rasta guy (been so long, I don't remember his name) who you could buy guns from. He was always there for me when I needed him. PK, when you get that far, go into a TW@ internet cafe and go to www.littlelacysurprisepageant.com.

I'm closing in on my 3rd 50 now on Prophesy of the 5 or something like that. Sniper, Scoundrel, and my Shadow is in his 40's on Voss.

I just sent him a present of a piece of legacy chest filled with black hole mods and augmented from my scoundrel.

[Roland Deschain]

Very nice sounding armour there, RS. How long did it take you to buy those Black Hole mods? I hear they're quite expensive. That's some serious time put into the game.

I've not logged in for a while now, and i've not played any games at all for over 2 weeks. I'm just going through one of those stages where I can't seem to find the will to play anything.

[PKMKII]

Finished GTA IV (by which I mean I beat the last mission, still have to get 100% completion).

What I liked: The car controls are just fantastic. Being able to handbrake drift curve is just tons of fun, and it makes doing the crazy stunts and crashes easier (my favorite car is the Sultan RS, total rally car fun). The copter controls are a bit more difficult than they were in San Andreas, but it's probably more realistic. I understand the lack of being able to fly planes, but I wish they kept the jet pack around.

Niko is the most well developed protagonist in the series thus far. The guy in GTA III literally had no personality; Tommy in Vice City was just a rather stereotypical mafioso; CJ in San Andreas had a more interesting angle, but it was still rather straightforward gangsta. Niko's got this serious, tortured soul going on. He's not killing out of bloodlust or machismo, it's the byproduct of the war, the only way he can live life now. His scene with Darko was downright powerful.

The radio was successful, although not without its problems. Their seemed to be too much repetition of styles across the channels: three talk radio, two rock, two reggae, three dance/r&b, two hip-hop. And a lot of them were set-up in the same manner as San Andreas (classic rock vs. alt rock, classic hip-hop versus modern). The new age channel was a complete wash. Still though, they had some really good stuff in there, Queen, Justice, Nitzer Ebb, Sisters of Mercy, Killing Joke. And the Russian channel was great.

What I didn't like: I get that the scale needed to be scaled down with the serious graphics update from San Andreas, but I still felt like it wasn't as epic as its predecessor. Like I was playing a "smaller" game, in that sense.

Okay, Liberty City is obviously modeled on New York City, it's supposed to feel like you're exploring the Big Apple. And it did a great job with that. However, (no offense to Bacon) it seemed that, with that in mind, it dedicated way too much space to the Hoboken/Newark Jersey area. I would have rather they didn't include it at all, and expanded out the Brooklyn/Queens island and Bronx island (especially the Bronx one, it was very undeveloped).

It's a bit buggy, or at least the PC version is. The final mission (if Niko doesn't take the deal) is impossible to finish unless you do some seriously odd things (I had to assign one core to the game, something I wasn't even aware you could do on a PC). And if you try to start a vigilante mission where the baddies spawn, it freezes up the game.