wholehole

Forgot to mention the "Story" quests have been pretty cool. They're the blue exclamation points that pop up on the map from time to time. They're just little self-contained narratives from the weird and wonderful locals on the island, not really relevant to anything but they net you some cash and XP. Also been enjoying the racing leagues scattered about as well. Although it's not so much racing as it is a time trial, and not so much a league as it's just you competing.

Ugh. It looks bloody fantastic from what little the trailer showed us but ffs, if it's MGS5 why can't they just come out and say "Here's MGS5!". There's no need at all for the obfuscation.

Bought the Goatee edition on Steam with the intention of playing through it again for the DLC. That was over a month ago and I think I've played all of about 30 mins It's on my (ever expanding) list of games I need to finish so I hope to get around to after Far Cry 3/Hitman Absolution/Halo 4/BLOPS2/Primordia/Lego LotR/Mark of the Ninja/Sleepy Dogs... You get the idea

I enjoyed the Sam Jackson skits with him in the games, some of those were quite funny. The specially made shorts for the Character of the Year award were pretty cool as well. I especially laughed at the Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed ones (assassin Turkey ftw!). It was okay with some good exclusives (Dark Souls 2? OMGOMGOMG) but it all felt a bit forced and fake with everyone gushing about how much they love videogames constantly.

It wasn't tracking Far Cry 3 o the PC for a while either. Had to add in a bunch of hours manually when it finally updated.

I love Titan Quest so much. Still have the original steelbook I bought on release. Diablo and greek mythology

Once you open up the Death from Above and chain/dagger/grenade kills there's so many more options to take out the pirates. I cleared a whole encampment by luring them all closer together then stabbing the first guy, chaining onto the second, using his knife to kill the next nearest sap, then sprinting to the next guy, stabbing him and pulling the pin on his grenade and kicking him towards the last dude. Only lasted about 10 seconds total, but damn was it awesome. I find I'm going balls to the wall for the main missions with a Shredder/Ripper combo, then stealthing all the outposts. I never mind if it descends into an all-out gunfight though, and I never object to them calling in reinforcements

I think this could be part of the problem, same as with the Wii. I'm just waiting for the next Zelda/Mario/Metroid/F-Zero whatever to come out before I go out and buy one. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case for a good deal of other gamers also. There will be games I want to play on it, but I doubt very much anything will be announced that will make me want to buy one unless it's part of those series. I also found it quite scary looking at the retail games for the Wii U and noticing the prices were around £44.99 and that was in a supermarket. It got me to thinking about the prices of software for the next generation of consoles. We're likely to be looking at a £54.99 - £59.99 MRRP across the board. Neither MS or Sony are making any effort at all to discount digital retail for some reason, with Sony even hitting the £49.99 mark for some of it titles. How are the Wi U's E-Shop prices in comparison to the retail games?

I have the special edition pre-ordered with ShopTo so I'm very interested to see how this plays.

This had flown completely under my radar until a mate mentioned it, and based off of my experience with Far Cry 2 I replied "Meh". How very wrong I was. I'm almost done with all the crafting, bar a few of the unique animals I need from the Hunter Challenges. The Sharks weren't too bad. It's the Crocs you need to watch, those things are fucking quiet. I shat myself when one grabbed me and dragged me into the water the other night. I've cleared all the radio towers from the first island. I'm currently working my way through the enemy outposts, switching between 'Sneaky Bastard' and 'Walking Apocalypse'. It's so much fun finding different ways of taking out the bad guys. Strapping some C4 to a Quad Bike, ghosting it into the camp then blowing it up and running in after it all guns blazing is a personal favourite. I haven't really done much in the story, probably around 25% of the missions according to the progress chart. There's just too much other stuff to do and get caught up in. I haven't seen the 360 version yet, but the PC version looks out of this world. The Far Cry games have always pushed the boat out in terms of fidelity, but this pushes it out and then fires a flaming arrow into it's hull because a brand new Sunseeker yacht has just moored up on the dock. Such an amazing game.

If the PC is an option, I would definitely recommend getting it for that format instead. I played over 120 hours on the 360 and bought the PC version a few weeks back. It's like a brand new game. Downloaded a bunch of visual mods from the Steam Workshops (high-res textures, better lighting, better object meshes, improved weather etc) and the difference is incredible.

I enquired in my local GAME and they said only 4 people turned up for the midnight launch and they still had pre-orders waiting to be collected. The response in general seems altogether lukewarm. There doesn't seem to be any real buzz surrounding the console as there has been with previous launches. I really do like the design of the Gamepad. I had some concerns about how comfortable it would be to hold for extended periods of time but it's actually extremely comfortable. The screen is surprisingly responsive considering it's resistive, whether using a fat finger or the stylus. Hopefully it'll fair better once it comes down in price a bit and there's some more games out for it that aren't ports of existing titles.

I think Dangerman has hit the nail on the head with the DirectX stuff. Something like Far Cry 3 has an option to switch between DX9 and DX11. Opting for (or being forced to use) DX9 fully disables the options for MSAA and SSAO. It doesn't affect it too much in reality but to get the absolute most out of the game you would need a DX11 compatible card.

Played some of the single-player and alot of the multiplayer round a friends house on Friday night. Thoughts on the single player: I really want to play this on my own, with headphones and the lights off. It's a very, very dark game with buckets of atmosphere and a heavy focus on resource management. You're constantly on the back foot, never safe and always looking over your shoulder. Thoughts on the multiplayer: The standard mode has players killing Zombies using pro-controllers and one using the Gamepad as the "King of the Zombies". The gamepad shows a top down view of the map in which you can spawn various types of Zombies tapping on the screen. Each type of Zombie costs resource points which slowly refill over the course of the match. You can level up which then lets you select a different type of Zombie to your ranks (Explosive, sprinter, armoured etc). It gets pretty hectic after a while and once they start throwing in the explosive and armoured Zombies, it's only a matter of time before you go down. There's also a CTF mode which could be quite good, but you'd need a full compliment of players to make it fun. One problem that arose time and again was the pad and the fact the right analogue stick and buttons are swapped. I suppose it's something you could get used to but still, some kind of universal pad standard wouldn't go amiss. Another thing we needed to get used to was that this isn't L4D. It's a much slower game. You can't just run around swinging you melee weapon wildly and emptying clips into the Zombie hordes. You need to be much more deliberate and precise with your actions. It's by far the best showcase of what can be done with the Gamepad (at least for our demographic) although I don't think I'd buy a WiiU just to play this. If I ever do pick one up in the future it'll be at the top of the list to play.

May stump up the cash, but meh. What I'd really like are the two story based DLCs coming next year.

Happened twice to me, didn't realise it was a Windows 8 thing as it happened in two different places. According to the devs it's caused by the amount of sounds being played when a glass pane is smashed. Level 10 seems to be the place where most people are seeing the issue though. They say the level can be skipped by editing the saves.dat file and changing the 0 that corresponds to level 10 to a 1 (marking it as complete). Not ideal but I may do it anyway. Apparently the boss at the end of level 10 is a complete cunt so it may actually be worth doing.

You mean you didn't choose Nintendo presents: New Style Boutique? Can't even give it away

Lovely art. The image of the tank and soldiers reminds me a bit of Ghost in the Shell mashed up with Lost Planet. The image of the city with the... whatever it is above it, is just awesome. Will be keeping an eye out for more on this.

LOL Meant to look for that after I heard them talking about it. Didn't realise the suit's powers went that far.

Just had a look Nag and that makes total sense. Didn't even realise, it's been a while since the issue she briefly showed up in.

I always find the info points funny in these bullshots. USB Ports! Disk drive! Power button! Looks nice though, I wouldn't say no to that design.

Cracked on and finished this over the weekend. Incredible story but playing each episode back to back can be a bit harrowing at times Loved the game overall but felt they copped out a bit towards the end. I watched an alternate end sequence on YouTube and found it wasn't very different at all. Was also a bit disappointed how a couple of characters ducked out, never to be seen again. Season 2 can't come soon enough!

Awesome. Been waiting for a cheap PC copy to show up so I can try some of the mods etc. Cheers Ed.

Went to crack on with his last night but found it wouldn't load, apparently an issue which can occur if you have an Xbox 360 controller attached. After fixing that problem (by just dropping a dll file into the game's folder) I find that my save file isn't registering Checked the forums and Telltale aren't exactly forthcoming with helpful fixes despite the growing number of posts stating this problem. In the end I started a new game from episode 3 and it seems that there's only a couple of small choices that are different from what I chose so I'll just have to let it go and carry on from there instead.

Isn't Nintendo Land in the box? Or is that just the deluxe version? I'm still very tempted but it's probably just... oooh shiny! A friend has one pre-ordered so I'll have access to one anyway, but I don't want to be playing it and end up wanting one then not be able to get hold of one for a while. To be fair though, it's only really ZombiU and Scribblenauts (this is coming out on the PC anyway) I'm interested in so I guess it can wait a while.