Metroid66

I'm a fan of open world games to be honest. If course the best ones are the ones where you can just wonder off and find a quest by chance or an interesting location to explore and plunder. It's an illusion that you're 'making your own adventure ' but certain games, like Oblivion, have a good go at trying to make that feel real. I hope Starfield has a go, but I'm not convinced it can, given what I've read about the way it sets out it's stall. I have to say that I'm less thrilled by Zelda this time around. I really did start to feel I was going thru the motions after about 40 hours. Still, it took 40 hours! I'm not sure I'll ever finish that one.

Finished Tess. Wasn't expecting that downbeat ending, and I don't think I've resented a character in a book more than Angel Clair. What an utter knob. But feck me, the lot of women in this country just a hundred odd years ago makes you shiver. Hardy even titled the second part of his book as 'The woman always pays.' Anyway, started the World according to Garp.

It appears these two have upgraded the procrastination perk.

Anyone remember that part in the Arkham asylum where you had to platform around a giant Scarecrow. I always remember that as a bit of a spectacular.

I'm re-playing psychonauts right now. Every level is pretty much noteworthy. I don't really remember names of levels, but I'd say the Zombie bit in Half-life 2; the bee level in mario galaxy, and that sniper level in MW1. Loads of great levels too in Zelda, metroid, ratchet even.

I didn't say it was the best. 2 is obviously the best. I just said this might be my favourite.

Closed this one out, and finally got to use my upgraded thruster ability, which was pretty much essential for the final rush down bosses. I'd say that was an epic experience, and possibly my favourite of the halo games - with the caveat that I came to these games with my XSX, so I have no real sense of how revelatory CE was back in the day. For me the gameplay here was top notch, and I felt I was always in complete control of the chief - running, grappling, punching, shooting, and then disappearing momentarily with my thruster cloak, which became my favourite move in the endgame when I got my hands on a gravity hammer. As for the story, well I sort of let this sci-fi hokum wash over me. There's bad guys and I'm here to bring the bad news. I know what the halos are, and what they were originally intended for, but the complexity of the extended narrative is lost on me, and I haven't the will to research and make sense of it - harbingers, arbiters, prophets etc - sod it. Give me a gun and point me in the right direction is all I need. So it took me a while to get into them, but now I have halo as a favoured franchise, and I'll be looking for series replay in a year or two no doubt. Perhaps a forum playthru......

As you can see I've been getting my money's worth from the open world in this game. Everything is upgraded. Mostly I'm swapping between the grappler and the drop shield (or the cheese machine, as I like to call it). Threat sensor is useful but I haven't had cause to use the thruster yet. I'm just in the main thrust of the campaign now I think, maybe until the end. I've exhausted the open world it seems to me, although there does seem to be a patch of real estate to the north east which hasn't opened yet. Possibly therein lies the endgame. We'll see.

It's definitely what I said because I went in after saving with the WiFi on, and played for ten minutes with it off. Then I turned the WiFi on and restarted and it loaded only the earlier online save, with no option to load the later offline one. I'll never accept that no manual save in any game is ever a good idea. There's too many thing that can go wrong. Anyway, I went back in and got to where I'd left off. 6 hours was a bit of an exaggeration it turned out. It was more like an hour and a quarter.😄 Well, I've got nothing else to play until Starfield comes out. And having watched some footage of the Bethesda game it seems to me that you could play it with a kind of Masterchief approach. So I'm basically in training.

Just a question for those more tech minded than me. My gaming set up is in aside extension on my house and if I want internet in there I use a WiFi extender. Often though I game offline. Is it possible that my offline save was overwritten by simply having the WiFi extender on when I loaded up my game yesterday?

I was far enough ahead to have only on upgrade left on the board, the last one for the pop up shield. Ridiculous really. Why do they not include manual saves? It makes no sense.

This stupid fucker has continued my game about 6 hours earlier than when I finished yesterday. There's no manual save that I can find and no way to resume from other checkpoints. I'm done. This happened at the start and I lost an hour or two, but ploughed on. I can't see a reason for it other than it's pulling randoms checkpoints from the cloud. Fuck it though. I was enjoying it, but the idea of losing this much progress again means I'm done.

I was going Mayer of Casterbridge next, but I'll hold off on that on this recommendation.

That sounds like something I could read. I enjoy popular science. Currently reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Classic English fiction isn't something I generally indulge in, but I have to admit I'm enjoying the pastoral flourishes and the innocence of the romance. I've booked myself into a manliness clinic for a week Friday.

I thought that 3 megabyte preload I did on it the day was a tad light.

The marines are a bit fragile though, aren't they. I rarely arrive at a location with a squad because they can't keep up (it's usually much faster to run/grapple to a location than drive), but when I free captive marines to help in a scrap they hardly ever survive. I remember when I first started my halo run that I myself was the main cause of marine depletion. It took me ages to figure out that friendly fire was a thing in this series😀. My technique in this campaign is to simply turn up at a mission point with whatever I've got on me and see how it plays out. I have the luxury of playing on normal, which is easily hard enough for an RPGer like me.

Been indulging myself in the open world aspect of this for most of my playtime. Many mini bosses have fallen and I've fully upgraded my shield and grappling hook with only one main campaign mission under my belt. A fully upgraded grappler makes mincemeat of the mountainous environment. It's almost like having a jet pack, only better because it's got some essential combat properties too. On the section of map I'm in now I think I've exhausted all side activities, so tomorrow I'll crack on with main thrust and see where it leads. I should add I'm enjoying this halo game very much.

I'm just going to go off games that seemed when I was playing them to be on another level. I might have cooled on them since but I certainly remember getting a feeling of magic when engaged with the following: Mario galaxy Final fantasy 12 Fallout 3 The last of us God of war 2 Re 4 Ocarina of time Oblivion Gears of war Deus ex human revolution Metroid prime GTA San Andreas

I don't mind not knowing the details. It's mainly still master chief trying to stop the total destruction of humanity. I didn't really know what I was doing in Gears either. At the same time I was able to explain Dune to my family who were watching it with me the other day completely mystified.

Started this earlier. It's been a year or 2 since I tackled the series and I didn't play 5 after everyone put me off it, so I had to get a recap off YouTube. Still non the wiser, but I remember it being that way when I was actually playing the feckers. So I actually played this a bit when it came out, but I was a bit burnt out playing 5 or 6 games in a short space of time so left off, not because I wasn't enjoying it, but more because I liked the idea of a sort of more RPG type halo and felt it would be better coming in fresh. So it's given me an excuse to sign up to game pass again (and preload Starfield, the effing main event!) Looking forward to not being able to drive that feckin warthog in a straight line again.

Finished AC Unity. Pretty decent romp through the streets of revolutionary Paris, and I don't think I've ever seen such crowded streets in a videogame, feckin' loads of Npc's, could hardly move for them. It was actually rather strange going back to one of these traditional AC games after playing the Rpgs, but it was decent in its own way, but pretty annoying too, it must be said. Several side quests glitches out on me, and Arno just wasn't good to control - far too sticky and unresponsive. Sometimes just moving in a straight seemed a far off dream as Argo clambered on to any sturdy protuberance and refused to climb up or jump off. To give the game it's due Paris was astonishing. I'd say it was pretty much the star of the game - detailed, crammed with life and huge. And stealthing and assassinating from the shadows was as satisfying as ever. Actual combat, though, sucked like a sonofabitch.

Great Evo I thought. Street fighter top six was probably the best I've seen in terms of close matches, with only Haitani failing to keep the pace with the other young bucks (and Tokido 😄). And I did stay up til 6am to see it, although I nodded of during the final reset. Didn't miss the win, though. Looks like there's something big around the corner, too - an invitational in Saudi with mad prize money. 32 top players are going for £400000 top prize with an other 600 thou shared out for runner's up. It's organised by Gamers 8, whoever they are. Looking forward to it.

i-ninja.

I thought you were going to hit it hard when Rashid came out?

I remember counting down the days until I could play Oblivion on the PS3. Then street fighter 5, like @Maryokutai. Except, unlike Oblivion which I have an ongoing build on even to this day (on XSX), that turned out to be a big pile of shite wrapped in a bag made of shite.