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Started playing Dragon Age: Inquisition after finishing Dragon Age 2 the other week. So far things seem promising, I've only just reached Skyhold, but I have already explored several regions and completed quite a few quests. The combat is quite different to the previous games and while I haven't mastered it yet I do prefer it (playing as warrior), the older combat style was a bit too 'point and click' for me, the new system flows much better as I like to play real time and not pause to give orders. With that said though it can be vary annoying with the camera at times during combat, if you are fighting in a forest sometimes the foliage of the trees will completely block your view, or if you are fighting on a steep hill it can become frustrating to move. Sometimes your companions will randomly run off to fight someone that you didn't want them to, but this I found was the same in the previous games as well, but all in all it's not bad.

As far as the rest of the game goes:
- The inventory/upgrade system was a bit confusing at first but I've figured it out now, I would prefer if weapon upgrades didn't take up inventory space, but now I have storage in Skyhold that will be less of an issue.
- The side quests could be better, they all seem to follow the formula of 'Go to area A' - 'Complete objective X' - 'Get reward Z', there's not a lot of variety or interactions in them and can be a bit repetitive, the main quests so far however are much better and is where the game shines the most.
- I am a bit of a completionist so having endless requisitions was a bit mean, they could at least tell you, but hey at least I don't have to worry about my power points and extra influence doesn't hurt.
- The game is clearly made for a controller and not a mouse + keyboard. If they enabled you to control the camera with your mouse the game would be sooooooo much better. hmm maybe there's a mod to fix that, I should look into it.
- Companions so far are good, there seems to be a good variety so that your decisions will gain the approval of some and disapproval of others. as for their personalities, I don't really care much for Iron Bull. Sera and Dorian I don't mind, although I wouldn't have them in my party all the time. Cole I've only just recruited so we'll see, and the rest are all good. One thing I didn't like about DA2 was how Bethany got locked out of your party mid game, annoying as I teched my Hawke and her to combo really well together, hopefully they don't do this in DA:I.
- The addition of the war table is great, gives the impression that the Inquisition is much more than just yourself and the 3 other party members you choose to bring along with you at that time.

So far I'm enjoying it, but it's early stages so we'll see how things pan out.

So I'm still addicted to Fallout 4.

I tried playing Bloodborne and left utterly confused. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but also not an idiot and quite like a game that doesn't guide you every step of the way, but I feel like I'm just doing something inherently wrong. I'm probably going to need to be a gimp & Google It.

Been playing a few games of Mass Effect 3 multiplayer again since an old friend has gone back to it. Still great fun. Still missile glitchers as well, the game's 5 years old ffs, move on Haven't played Andromeda yet, heard too many disappointing stories so shall wait until it goes super cheap and/or any fixes have made it better.

specdecible wrote:Started playing Dragon Age: Inquisition..

I like most of the DA:I team mates. Cole has some pretty cool story. Cullen too. Lelianna might vary depending on decisions in DA. I really liked Dorian's character once you get past his outer shell, but I didn't like Sera apart from her romance specific parts. Over 3 plays I never really used Iron Bull very much. Or Varric, though I still like Varric. DA2 and DA:I really nailed the character writing I think.

I liked the war table too. I know it's a fantasy videogame, but it was always a bit silly when it's basically 3 or 4 people changing an empire by murdering everything. This felt a bit more like you were a field general.

I really did enjoy the game and I spent time doing a lot of the extra bits and bobs. Hopefully it keeps you entertained.

medgar wrote:Been playing a few games of Mass Effect 3 multiplayer again since an old friend has gone back to it. Still great fun. Still missile glitchers as well, the game's 5 years old ffs, move on Haven't played Andromeda yet, heard too many disappointing stories so shall wait until it goes super cheap and/or any fixes have made it better.

Someone mentioned Mass Effect so I am contractually bound to comment. ME:A is getting better. They added a few bits to the MP, and might have done more since I last played it. I think they've ironed out most of the SP bugs and issues now too. However, I still think it's a bit of a boring game just to play. I'd far rather have a game of structured story missions than the free roam fetch quests they have. I've given my opinion on the game a few times, I might be a little harsh on it due to how excited I was for the game. But, having replayed ME3 after ME:A, I still think ME3 is easily the better game. And it has 100% more Garrus.



I was away for the weekend with my family (4 generations of the family actually). Bought my 3DS along for late nights. Bought a couple of original gameboy games - Mario Land 2 and Wario Land. Both I had played before, both I really like. The emulation is very, very good but not perfect to my recollection. It's really minor things like "random" brown pixels on a loading screen or an animation not looking right in very specific circumstances. Doubt they'd impact the enjoyment of anyone. Didn't last me very long. I 100%'d both games probably in 5 hours total. And a bit of that time was missing the last treasure in a Wario Land level that took me about 30 mins to find. Anyway, enjoyable enough and £3.59 is maybe a little more expensive than I'd like but I got my amusement and might replay them again someday. Still wish Super Mario World was available on the 3DS model I have, I'd gladly pay for that game again.

mac_d wrote:

specdecible wrote:Started playing Dragon Age: Inquisition..

I like most of the DA:I team mates. Cole has some pretty cool story. Cullen too. Lelianna might vary depending on decisions in DA. I really liked Dorian's character once you get past his outer shell, but I didn't like Sera apart from her romance specific parts. Over 3 plays I never really used Iron Bull very much. Or Varric, though I still like Varric. DA2 and DA:I really nailed the character writing I think.

I liked the war table too. I know it's a fantasy videogame, but it was always a bit silly when it's basically 3 or 4 people changing an empire by murdering everything. This felt a bit more like you were a field general.

I really did enjoy the game and I spent time doing a lot of the extra bits and bobs. Hopefully it keeps you entertained.

Don't worry, I didn't decapitate Lelianna in my DA:O play through so there's no continuity issues, she seems a lot 'darker' now though... maybe she's bitter my Warden chose Morigan over her. As far as the actual companions go, my favourites are Cassandra, Solas and Varric, not sure how trying to romance Cassandra as an 'Athiest' warrior will go but we'll find out.

Dead Island bundle is on sale for £10 on xbox live atm. Includes the rereleases on the original and Riptide and a retro side scrolling beat em up that I'd not seen before.

I loved the original and I've put in 4 hours already on it again. I'll be playing this for a while I think

Been going a bit crazy with the game buying again. Bought Volume, which is basically pretty much exactly the same as Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions in its gameplay style. It's pretty fun (and was like £3 on the PSN store).
Also finally got around to properly playing TWD: A New Frontier. It's standard Telltale Games fair, although it doesn't feel as strong as the first two seasons.
Picked up another game in the Steam sale, called Absolute Drift (it's available on PS4 as well). It's a minimalist drifting game, that feels a lot like Motorstorm RC, but with drifting. It's stupidly hard to be good at it as well. Absolute joy to play though.

huggybear wrote: Also finally got around to properly playing TWD: A New Frontier. It's standard Telltale Games fair, although it doesn't feel as strong as the first two seasons.

Damn, I liked S1 and Michonne but I absolutely loved S2(loved Tales from the Borderlands and Batman too). I'd hoped they'd have kept the level up. I love a Telltale game, but I've been holding off as I like to run through the whole thing in a short time or else I tend to forget the little details of the story.

I picked up F1 2016 for Xbone last week or thereabouts. I got into the Codemasters games when they came out (wow - pretty close to 10 years ago) but after about 2012 I stopped playing them - partly as I had a wheel for the 360 but not for the Xbone. I must say, I really enjoy this game. I think it could do with more difficulty settings as hard is a little too easy at circuits I don't suck on, but the difficulty one up from that is damn near impossible for me to do anything. I still suck horrendously at Monaco and Baku but I'm pretty good at Singapore which seems weird to me. I like the addition of active things to do in practice and the resource points. I also realise this is probably the most redundant review ever, as I'd guess any of you guys who were likley to play and F1 game probably have done so.

mac_d wrote:

huggybear wrote: Also finally got around to properly playing TWD: A New Frontier. It's standard Telltale Games fair, although it doesn't feel as strong as the first two seasons.

Damn, I liked S1 and Michonne but I absolutely loved S2(loved Tales from the Borderlands and Batman too). I'd hoped they'd have kept the level up. I love a Telltale game, but I've been holding off as I like to run through the whole thing in a short time or else I tend to forget the little details of the story.

I have played a bit more of this, and it seems to just be the first episode that is a bit off. Second episode is great (so far), although the addition of flashbacks is still a bit annoying.

Played splatoon 2 demo this wkd on nintendo switch. I was pleasantly surprised by this game. Its a 3rd person cartoon shooter where you splatter/ shoot ink (paint) to cover as much of the environment as possible. It was pretty fun and alot of strategy comes into play depending on your load out. Turf war was the only game mode available in the demo but from what i gather its not a shooter that rewards you for kills, you are rewarded for controlling the environment with your teams colors.

Punch Club is good, but grindy.

Hollow Knight is a good Mvania title.

/Still loving F1 2016. The only thing kinda annoying is that for my skill level Hard is a little too easy but the one up from it leaves me no where. I'm in the Manor and I've pretty much won the championship with races to spare. I wanted a more realistic experience with building up the car or moving to a bigger team. Anyway, this got me thinking and I have a question for those of you that play racing games (which I'm guessing will be most of you).

When you play a racing game, do you play like a slow build up and more realistically (So the Manors I'd be looking for low points finishes) or do you set it so you can get wins in any car?

mac_d wrote:/Still loving F1 2016. The only thing kinda annoying is that for my skill level Hard is a little too easy but the one up from it leaves me no where. I'm in the Manor and I've pretty much won the championship with races to spare. I wanted a more realistic experience with building up the car or moving to a bigger team. Anyway, this got me thinking and I have a question for those of you that play racing games (which I'm guessing will be most of you).

When you play a racing game, do you play like a slow build up and more realistically (So the Manors I'd be looking for low points finishes) or do you set it so you can get wins in any car?

I set it to be fairly realistic, for F1 2016 I've been trying to push myself up to Ultimate difficulty.

I played season 1 in a Manor on Expert which was my max difficulty on F1 2015, then I moved to McLaren for season 2 and turned the difficulty up to Legend. Now I'm in my 3rd season and I'm trying to go for the title with McLaren on Ultimate. Want to finish the season before I get 2017 and I'm only at Sochi so I've got to pull my finger out a bit lol.

Honestly for the difficulty thing I'd say just turn it up, you will struggle at first but stick with it and you will find that the AI will drag you up to their level after a few weekends (races mainly as you can compare yourself to the AI and learn what you should be doing). It's worked for me.

My 8 year old daughter gave me a £10 Game voucher for my birthday. So we went to Game and she decided that I should buy a Skylanders game with it. She's now been happily playing Skylanders Imaginators for 2 days!!

(this maybe should've gone in the awesomeness thread for cute things things kids do, but it is game related!)

minchy wrote:My 8 year old daughter gave me a £10 Game voucher for my birthday. So we went to Game and she decided that I should buy a Skylanders game with it. She's now been happily playing Skylanders Imaginators for 2 days!!

(this maybe should've gone in the awesomeness thread for cute things things kids do, but it is game related!)

and that's how it's done.

Speaking of F1 2016 does anyone else find that the AI are stupidly fast in practice and to a lesser extent qualifying?

I'm rarely in the top 15 during practice 1 and 2, then I always seem to fail the qualifying simulation in P3 or just scrape it. Then in qualifying I generally just about get into Q3, if I'm within a couple of tenths of my teammate I consider it a good result, but come the race I'm miles quicker than my teammate and a challenger for the win or the podium at least.

I can't work out if it's just me taking until the race to get dialled into the track, or whether I'm quicker when following another car (something I've found to be the case when karting IRL) or whether it is the game being inconsistent.

Black_Flag_11 wrote:Speaking of F1 2016 does anyone else find that the AI are stupidly fast in practice and to a lesser extent qualifying?

I'm rarely in the top 15 during practice 1 and 2, then I always seem to fail the qualifying simulation in P3 or just scrape it. Then in qualifying I generally just about get into Q3, if I'm within a couple of tenths of my teammate I consider it a good result, but come the race I'm miles quicker than my teammate and a challenger for the win or the podium at least.

I can't work out if it's just me taking until the race to get dialled into the track, or whether I'm quicker when following another car (something I've found to be the case when karting IRL) or whether it is the game being inconsistent.

I remember in F1 2011 AI times in practice and qualifying were not what they were actually doing on the circuit but an automated number. I imagine they haven't actually changed that system (I haven't bought any of the other F1 games), it would explain why you cruise away from the AI when you are actually racing against them when their times are not made up. From memory I believe they use that automated number system because when you fast forward through a session having real time numbers can no longer be calculated correctly and causes all kinds of other issues.

While I always have reservations about buying each iteration of sports games, from what I've seen of F1 2017, I rather like the look. From what I was able to see from youtube - one of the channels I subscribe to (TiamatMarduk) got access for a few hours to it, I must say I like what they are doing. Firstly, my biggest criticism of F1 Codemasters recently has been the difficulties. It seems they've replaces the 6 or 7 settings with a slider from 0 to 110 (or so). The AI looked pretty punchy in their moves. The R&D aspects look more complex and fleshed out. Looking after car and engine components seems to play a bigger part now too. Also the classic cars play a bit more of a part. Invitation events in career but also a but of little side races (kinda like maybe 2012? One game had a scenario mode that was actually really cool). Interestingly, the race of this type I saw was on the Short Suzuka circuit. I would really like it if for non-season races you could chose these circuits. I also really, really want the ability to race backwards on the circuits.

Not a day one purchase for me. I only recently got 2016 and that'll tide me over until the price drops to a point where it's enough value for me. However, I do like it when they make enough additions to sports games to really feel like different games. I buy Madden every year and some years it mostly feels like I'm paying £40 to have the rosters and player rankings update.



Another game I've been playing on Steam is Ashes of the Singularity. Somewhat accidentally, I've ended up as a big supporter of Stardock entertainment. Sins of a Solar Empire is a great game, especially with some of the brilliant mods people have made for it (there are Star Trek, Star Wars, Warhamer 40k mods with all new ships and technologies or instance). I enjoyed Offworld Trading Company a lot too. Ashes is still supported really nicely and they have added more content and tweaks to the game in the last week or so. I'll be checking those changes out at the weekend. It's a little simple in some ways - the original base game was much more guilty of this. However, I'm really starting to like Stardock for their support of their games. Sins got a huge update that took it from using a maximum 2 Gig or Ram to 4 gig making it much more playable at end game when you probably have a huge military fleet and a lot of economic ships. And part of the updates for Ashes seems to be to make modding easier, which really is nice given just how good some mods for the other Stardock games have been. I've enjoyed those 3 games a lot before I even really put together they were all the same company. If you like real time strategy games, maybe check them out.

And speaking of RTS, I still can't get Red Alert 2 to run. I tried getting it to work on my laptop, which now runs Linux Ubuntu using some software that allows linux to emulate Windows graphics (fyi - thank goodness for the folk who put their time into these things and make them readily available). I was tempted to try and use Mandriva (if that's still the thing to use) to run a Windows XP VM, but I read that VMs don't do direct X or something that means I can't run it that way. I really do fancy fighting some mind controlled killer squids using my sonar weapon equipped trained dolphins!

I just got F1 2017 this past weekend. It's insane, the settings, the constant tinkering WHILE RACING with fuel, diffuser, race updates from your pit crew, etc. In fact, I dare say its overwhelming, in a good way. It takes concentration, and since I don't have a wheel, it isn't as easy as you'd think on a the standard controller. The rate of tire wear is tricky, too. I raced one of the events at Monza and the tires went off so fast I was having a hard time---missing braking points, turn in points, and then inadvertently cutting the track at Ascari as a result, and after three times, Bam! Time Penalty. This really kept ticking me off. Fun, though. Getting the braking right after making a DRS run on someone wasn't easy, and I had extremely low downforce settings so it exacerbated it even more.

I've got to find some guys at my very amateur level. Racing against good players I can't imagine keeping them in sight. The last F1 game I had was F1 2013. I kind of lost interest after the change to the current engines. Now? Stunned. The details that correspond to the reality of today's grand prix cars is impressive.

I've got to find time to practice!

Cold Gin wrote:I just got F1 2017 this past weekend. It's insane, the settings, the constant tinkering WHILE RACING with fuel, diffuser, race updates from your pit crew, etc. In fact, I dare say its overwhelming, in a good way. It takes concentration, and since I don't have a wheel, it isn't as easy as you'd think on a the standard controller. The rate of tire wear is tricky, too. I raced one of the events at Monza and the tires went off so fast I was having a hard time---missing braking points, turn in points, and then inadvertently cutting the track at Ascari as a result, and after three times, Bam! Time Penalty. This really kept ticking me off. Fun, though. Getting the braking right after making a DRS run on someone wasn't easy, and I had extremely low downforce settings so it exacerbated it even more.

I've got to find some guys at my very amateur level. Racing against good players I can't imagine keeping them in sight. The last F1 game I had was F1 2013. I kind of lost interest after the change to the current engines. Now? Stunned. The details that correspond to the reality of today's grand prix cars is impressive.

I've got to find time to practice!

yep, fully agree. Really liking it so far myself too.

My 2 issues with the game though are the annoying, unskippable conversation scenes with your agent or engineer in career mode. I'm only onto the 4th race in my career so don't know how often it happens? I can see why they'd include it, to give a more 'immersive' career experience, but I never like games that add bits to them that you can't do anything in and don't directly affect the game play (I get the whole show what you can do to impress other teams etc, but the way they used to do it through emails was just fine for me). Which brings me onto my second complaint, the awful drawing of humans! Seriously, after all this time, you'd think that codemasters would be able to get a decent person drawn! It's almost laughable and on par with ps2 or even slightly less polygony N64 facial textures. If they do want to include cutscenes with humans, the least they could do is make them look semi decent.

That being said, the racing itself is great. I haven't played an f1 game since 2013 now so not too sure when they added curtain features, but I love the practice sessions having specific tests to complete. I used to just skip them as there was nothing to do that couldn't be done during quali, but this makes them so much fun now. It almost reminds me of the challenge mode they had in 2009 on the Wii that I really enjoyed and they got rid of for the next few years I played.

My main problem with the game at the moment is getting used to the engine sounds. I like to play racing games with manual gears and I'm finding it really hard to get gear changes right when accelerating as the engine tone doesn't change too much with the lower revs of these cars and the indicator on the steering wheel goes up so fast that I constantly miss upshifts by half a second or so and have really poor acceleration. On the plus side of things I can downshift well

F1 2017 has a glitch whereby if you are McHonda in career mode, engine power upgrades will not actually apply to your car.

I played last night, without most of the aids, and Good God do I suck, I need practice. In prior iterations it didn't take me long to get up to speed, find the right braking points, etc. I was all over Australia last night. I'll just have to reign it back in, and start there. I know most of all these tracks by memory and by watching F1 for so long now, but boy it hasn't translated in this game very much.

I did an old race at SPA with cars from the 91 era, and that was a blast. Not quite as fast, not nearly the downforce. Taking the fast corners in that car took a combo of letting off, throttle control, and hitting the apex was great fun. It just goes to show in general, less downforce on a car makes it more fun to drive. It may make it slower, but I find the challenge more satisfying then just being flat through nearly everything. Wheel to wheel with the computer is fun too, these jokers defend their line and pull over quite a bit, pretty aggressive for AI. I hate not being able to have a rearview look by just pressing a button, though. More realistic, I guess, but I have no idea who's behind me---close or far, and the tiny mirrors on the car I don't bother to look at, the driving is hard enough as it is.

I am going to stay offline for a while, I'm nowhere near good enough to race with anyone, and even then, avoiding collisions isn't easy, especially with my tendency to try and brake later than everyone which causes them too.

Cold Gin wrote: I am going to stay offline for a while, I'm nowhere near good enough to race with anyone, and even then, avoiding collisions isn't easy, especially with my tendency to try and brake later than everyone which causes them too.

I played online with some of the folks from this forum a few years ago (F1 2010 or 2011 I think). I wiped 2 people out going up Eau Rouge and got really worried everyone would think I was a dick trying to crash people out rather than just sucking at the game. Thought I'd get better then try again, but never did try online again.

For those with the games, can I easily set up races in whatever cars I want around the shortened circuits that appear? I saw a guy do a career mode invitational event round Suzuka but a short version of the circuit. But it was a race where it was different cars from different years and so the slowest got a headstart and you have to catch them. I basically want that circuit, but whereby I can set the lap number and have it just as a regular race in the 2017 cars. Hope that was clear!

mac_d wrote:

Cold Gin wrote: I am going to stay offline for a while, I'm nowhere near good enough to race with anyone, and even then, avoiding collisions isn't easy, especially with my tendency to try and brake later than everyone which causes them too.

I played online with some of the folks from this forum a few years ago (F1 2010 or 2011 I think). I wiped 2 people out going up Eau Rouge and got really worried everyone would think I was a dick trying to crash people out rather than just sucking at the game. Thought I'd get better then try again, but never did try online again.

For those with the games, can I easily set up races in whatever cars I want around the shortened circuits that appear? I saw a guy do a career mode invitational event round Suzuka but a short version of the circuit. But it was a race where it was different cars from different years and so the slowest got a headstart and you have to catch them. I basically want that circuit, but whereby I can set the lap number and have it just as a regular race in the 2017 cars. Hope that was clear!

Yep pretty sure it just shows on the list of tracks when you set up a quick race for yourself.

When going through the list of tracks it should just say "Malaysia - Japan - Japan Short".

Played more F1 2017 last night, and left a lot of the aids on. Just decided to take the medicine and as I improve, remove them. Playing without TC on the normal game pad is a nightmare, and I think, impossible.

Baku is a great deal of fun, but missing the braking points is so punishing. I really love that track from a video game standpoint. Mexico is fun too, the esses in the back are great when you nail them. It's hard to do lap after lap.

This game is a blast, and the details are impressive. I loved doing a warm up lap!!!! It's more fun after a few beers too.

I've been doing my career mode with 100% race length, because consistency is key to being fast, and I really struggle once the tyres start to go off. Got to Canada, running second in a Toro Rosso (there was a crash at the beginning), 15 laps to go when my car broke down. I haven't played it since because I was heartbroken.
Also, if you have the console version, there is a pc app you can get that allows you to stream telemetry data in realtime, and see where you are losing time. Works on the pc version too, but it requires some tweaking to get it to work.

Horizon Zero Dawn is quite possibly one of the most beautiful games that I have ever played and it has a truly engaging story line to boot. Well worth investing in.

thingy003 wrote:Horizon Zero Dawn is quite possibly one of the most beautiful games that I have ever played and it has a truly engaging story line to boot. Well worth investing in.

I still have it unsealed (still trying to complete all the Fallout 4 DLCs). I'm torn between whether to blast Fallout and start on it soon, or make Horizon my "off work for 2 weeks" game over Christmas.

I bought the most recent Resident Evil yesterday too, which gives me a current backlog of 4 unopened games.

Bought the new Madden. The story mode addition is a bit of a weird one. Suppose it makes this slightly more of a new game than the £50 roster update that it can often seem like. Also had a fair few glitches of having my QB get stuck on a RB or lineman before the play so you can't do anything but take a timeout or the delay of game penalty. Also, it took less than 2 months to go from "I'm definitely not buying this" to having it. Not my shortest streak (think the most recent Deus Ex had me go through that journey in hours). I find it interesting that I seem to have gotten much worse at the game. I used to smash All Madden difficulty but that difficulty butchered me into a 1-15 first season. Glass half full, my play in the game has always been overly simple as I have about 6 - 10 plays that probably cover 95% of my snaps. Re-learning the game on All Pro and actually getting better rather than just doing what works over and over is probably a good thing.

Oh, and the soundtrack sucks. Feels like it's all rap and pop type stuff. I miss when they had a bit of rock music and some country star singing about how his wife left him and his truck got a flat tire.


Also picked up a game called SPACECOM on Steam. The game is stupidly basic. I'd have thought this was the first alpha release if I didn't know otherwise. The gameplay is so simple it feels like a mobile phone game. There are no tool tips or explanations for what anything actually does - you can work them out from context for the most part but no tool tips or tutorial popups? The map selection is limited. The game doesn't have any fancy graphics or sounds. I paid £8 for this, and I am very much considering trying to get a refund because there is about £1 worth of game here. Had decent/medicore reviews but this would get a much lower score from me, except Steam won't let me on to post a warning on the review page. Most games I generally feel I've gotten my money's worth from.

Ennis wrote:

thingy003 wrote:Horizon Zero Dawn is quite possibly one of the most beautiful games that I have ever played and it has a truly engaging story line to boot. Well worth investing in.

I still have it unsealed (still trying to complete all the Fallout 4 DLCs). I'm torn between whether to blast Fallout and start on it soon, or make Horizon my "off work for 2 weeks" game over Christmas.

I bought the most recent Resident Evil yesterday too, which gives me a current backlog of 4 unopened games.

I got a bit bored with Fallout 4 and stopped playing it just after the Far Harbour DLC was released. I was going to go back to it whilst I waited for the HZD DLC to drop but then I picked up FFXV nice and cheap and I doubt I am going to get the chance to play anything else now until they release the remake of FFVII as XV is taking every free minute that I have.

Life is Strange is £4 on Xbox Live this week. Fantastic game (though it's almost more of an interactive movie style than game style if you know what I mean). Great story telling. I already have the game but thought it was worthy of a mention.

Not played it but it's on my list. Games like Life is Strange are very much up my alley as well as any other adventure/point 'n' click game. I'm guessing Life is Strange plays quite similarly to The Walking Dead. Certainly engaging!

Speaking of Xbox & story based games if you haven't already download the free game with gold this month "Gone Home". Really good story telling and it uses the less is more philosophy to create a lot of tension. It's pretty short too, you'll finish it in a couple of hours of play time so you don't have to invest too much time and it's worth it.

mac_d wrote:

specdecible wrote:Started playing Dragon Age: Inquisition..

I like most of the DA:I team mates. Cole has some pretty cool story. Cullen too. Lelianna might vary depending on decisions in DA. I really liked Dorian's character once you get past his outer shell, but I didn't like Sera apart from her romance specific parts. Over 3 plays I never really used Iron Bull very much. Or Varric, though I still like Varric. DA2 and DA:I really nailed the character writing I think.

I liked the war table too. I know it's a fantasy videogame, but it was always a bit silly when it's basically 3 or 4 people changing an empire by murdering everything. This felt a bit more like you were a field general.

I really did enjoy the game and I spent time doing a lot of the extra bits and bobs. Hopefully it keeps you entertained.

medgar wrote:Been playing a few games of Mass Effect 3 multiplayer again since an old friend has gone back to it. Still great fun. Still missile glitchers as well, the game's 5 years old ffs, move on Haven't played Andromeda yet, heard too many disappointing stories so shall wait until it goes super cheap and/or any fixes have made it better.

Someone mentioned Mass Effect so I am contractually bound to comment. ME:A is getting better. They added a few bits to the MP, and might have done more since I last played it. I think they've ironed out most of the SP bugs and issues now too. However, I still think it's a bit of a boring game just to play. I'd far rather have a game of structured story missions than the free roam fetch quests they have. I've given my opinion on the game a few times, I might be a little harsh on it due to how excited I was for the game. But, having replayed ME3 after ME:A, I still think ME3 is easily the better game. And it has 100% more Garrus.



I was away for the weekend with my family (4 generations of the family actually). Bought my 3DS along for late nights. Bought a couple of original gameboy games - Mario Land 2 and Wario Land. Both I had played before, both I really like. The emulation is very, very good but not perfect to my recollection. It's really minor things like "random" brown pixels on a loading screen or an animation not looking right in very specific circumstances. Doubt they'd impact the enjoyment of anyone. Didn't last me very long. I 100%'d both games probably in 5 hours total. And a bit of that time was missing the last treasure in a Wario Land level that took me about 30 mins to find. Anyway, enjoyable enough and £3.59 is maybe a little more expensive than I'd like but I got my amusement and might replay them again someday. Still wish Super Mario World was available on the 3DS model I have, I'd gladly pay for that game again.

I just completed MEA, I quite liked it, yes there were a few too many fetch quests but I think that's a problem with most RPGs now.

Going to try doing the multiplayer soon, haven't touched it heard its a bit easier to playbon gold and stuff? Do you have a ps4 maybe we can play together finally lol?

I've barely posted anything here since I stopped playing me3.... Which was awesome and had a multiplayer system that I didn't think I'd ever get hooked onto... Until it was all I played.... Even if it was bronze lol

Some pretty disturbing gaming news doing the rounds. Activision have had a patent approved for a matchmaking system that pushes micro transactions.

It would do this by monitoring a players habits first and identifying what kind of player they are. The common example I’ve seen in articles is a player that likes to use sniper rifles. The game would then match them against highly skilled snipers who have access to top tier guns. The player would then keep getting killed by these good players with a top gun and be encouraged to purchase it via micro transactions.

Then once a player has purchased the gun the engine could match them against lower skill players or maps which favour the gun in order to make the player feel good about the purchase.

Some pretty shady stuff. I don’t mind micro transactions for cosmetic things like skins for guns/outfits etc. but influencing the players experience by making it harder or easier for them deliberately in a way designed to push micro transactions on a game they’ve already paid £50 for (or more if they’ve bought the untra mega super duper deluxe edition) is just awful.

Black_Flag_11 wrote:Some pretty disturbing gaming news doing the rounds. Activision have had a patent approved for a matchmaking system that pushes micro transactions.

It would do this by monitoring a players habits first and identifying what kind of player they are. The common example I’ve seen in articles is a player that likes to use sniper rifles. The game would then match them against highly skilled snipers who have access to top tier guns. The player would then keep getting killed by these good players with a top gun and be encouraged to purchase it via micro transactions.

Then once a player has purchased the gun the engine could match them against lower skill players or maps which favour the gun in order to make the player feel good about the purchase.

Some pretty shady stuff. I don’t mind micro transactions for cosmetic things like skins for guns/outfits etc. but influencing the players experience by making it harder or easier for them deliberately in a way designed to push micro transactions on a game they’ve already paid £50 for (or more if they’ve bought the untra mega super duper deluxe edition) is just awful.

I agree with this... I do worry about getting left behind sometimes, its partly the reason I went with a PS4 over and Xbox One. Sony still seem intent on producing some amazing, single-player games.

There is far too much of a multiplayer & micro-transaction component out there. As you said, for cosmetic stuff who cares? But when it starts influencing the whole experience its abysmal. Even the horrible tiers of buying a game frustrates me, with certain weapons/exclusives tucked away for people who buy the Limited Edition, or the Release Day Limited Edition, or the Pre-Order Super VIP Limited Edition Platinum Edition..

eads up because, again, a game I enjoyed it on Games with Gold on XBL. Tales from the Borderlands, which we discussed a wee while ago is free to download. It's Telltale's style of mostly being an interactive movie but it has the crass, juvenile humour of Borderlands (mileage may vary on if that's a positive or a negative) and tells a great story overall. It's only about 7-10 hours for the whole experience.

f1madman wrote:
I just completed MEA, I quite liked it, yes there were a few too many fetch quests but I think that's a problem with most RPGs now.

Going to try doing the multiplayer soon, haven't touched it heard its a bit easier to playbon gold and stuff? Do you have a ps4 maybe we can play together finally lol?

I've barely posted anything here since I stopped playing me3.... Which was awesome and had a multiplayer system that I didn't think I'd ever get hooked onto... Until it was all I played.... Even if it was bronze lol

I liked the MEA MP for doing somethings right. Shorter games, especially on Bronze. 7 waves is far more manageable and the right length for the intro difficulty. I'm not a huge fan of characters which may just mean that I liked the broken-ly good characters in ME3 MP (Geth Trooper especially was a wrecking machine). I find it very hard to find enemies sometimes. I think I preferred the less mobile set up from ME3 and especially the lack of vertical-ity on ME3 was good for me.

I'm on Xbone, so we can't play together.




Anyway, blame f1madman but I'm off to play ME3 if I can find my disks (my EA Access expired and disk-less ME trilogy was actually useful).

Wanted to play something different for a change and had a sudden urge to play the original Turok games. Was about to plug in the old N64 but just checked steam quickly and both 1 and 2 are on there. I had many hours of classic entertainment last night. No matter what anyone thinks, I still believe that Turok 2 is one of the best made single player FPS's of all time.

minchy wrote:Wanted to play something different for a change and had a sudden urge to play the original Turok games. Was about to plug in the old N64 but just checked steam quickly and both 1 and 2 are on there. I had many hours of classic entertainment last night. No matter what anyone thinks, I still believe that Turok 2 is one of the best made single player FPS's of all time.

GREAT GAME! Turok 2 was brilliant, a much more refined game than Turok, which I also liked a lot. I'd be curious to see the game in action (I say that, then remember we live in a time when I can type some words and see gameplay of it) how it compares. Roughly what I expected. Turok and, to a lesser extent, Turok 2's biggest issue was with the fogging to cover for how little of the game they could render. This no longer seems to be an issue, which I guess shouldn't shock anyone. I mean, this is a game that ran on 4 or 8 MB of RAM and I'm sure the cart size was like 8 or 16MB. That's just odd sounding these days. Thought T2 told a good story, had large levels with enough hidden stuff to amuse, had a decent difficulty too. And it had some absolutely brilliant weaponry. I still think the Fusion Canon from Turok (which basically launched a nuclear explosion) is my favourite, though the Cerebral Bore is noteworthy (and, excellent attention to detail, can't target enemies with small brains).

The big cheat from Turok, NTHGTHDGDCRTDTRK has been stuck in my mind probably since summer of 1997. Kinda want to stick on my N64 emulator and play this.



I have a riddle for you. Who is a sucker for sales, telltale games and has nothing to do this weekend? It's me! Not a great riddle, I admit.

I picked up Walking Dead S3, Guardians of the Galaxy and, not Telltale but similar, Life is Strange. Given the Telltale games generally last about 6-10 hours, I'll probably smash through at least one of them. Life is Strange, I forget if I've ever sung it's praises on here, was incredible. A really enjoyable story and experience with some cool mechanics. I really need to replay that at some point but not sure I can be bothered before I start the new one. One thing that annoys me, I can buy the whole game for some of these titles, but some of them haven't had all the releases. For these especially, I;d rather just be able to binge through so I can remember all the little subtle things that have been put in.

Finally picked up a PS4 on the weekend. The first time I've owned a console in about 10 years. Purchased GT Sport, GTA V and Metal Gear Solid V (all games I enjoyed as a youngin').

First question: How long will it take until I'm not a bumbling fool when it comes to using the controller?