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Not got that far in The main game yet, it's pretty similar to previous games on ds/wii so far, it's good fun. But I'm crap so find it frustrating sometimes. Anyway mainly wanted to say how brilliant the challenge mode is, there's loads of stuff like time trials, finish sections without touching the floor, collect coins in a time limit, etc, all with gold/silver/bronze medals for doing well. I'm really enjoying doing these, only thing is a quicker restart would be good. Being able to play on the controller is pretty cool too.

I have very mixed feelings about this. I love the feeling of adventure, of not knowing what's down the road and if you'll be able survive. It's brilliant when you do overcome the odds and press on after a tough battle. The combat system is great with loads of customisation on offer, you're even encouraged to change class altogether. The Pawn system works really well, being able to hire and fire helpers and changing the composition of your group entirely as the situation demands. Despite all the good bits, the game so far has felt as though i'm playing the middle portion of an RPG where i'm clearing up fluff quests just to pad out the leveling process. There's been no gravitas or urgency to the quests so it's difficult to differentiate between the story and side quests. Things like not having fast travel I can understand why they left out even though it's annoying to have to walk to the same places over and over. I'm surprised more games don't use the MMO style flight paths to get around. You still get to where you're going quicker but you have to travel to a specific place, rather than just magically teleporting everywhere. It's a happy medium between the two. There's other things which are pretty minor and affect my enjoyment more than they probably should. For instance, why did they overlook mini-map markers for people who have something to say? It's incredibly frustrating having to run around looking for colored speech bubbles above NPCs heads. Likewise with the Pawns. As good as the system is it grates when in combat and you're unable to issue commands for something as simple as a weapon buff - the option just doesn't exist. Most of the time you just have to wait for them to apply the correct buff which is very frustrating against the larger enemies. For all it's issues, there are times when this incredible game shines through, and that's what makes it worth playing. I just wish it was more consistent.

Have you played Minecraft before? If it's a yes, you already know what it's about, probably best to click off the thread. If no, pull up a chair. Minecraft isn't for everyone. It's a very directionless game where outside the simple premise of building a house for yourself, you are free to do what you want. In the day time the game plays out as a building sim where you spend time harvesting blocks of various materials. You start off by punching them, but soon enough you are able to knock together a means which will allow you to make tools. Tools allow specific materials to be harvested faster, axes allow wood to be gathered faster, shovels allow dirt or gravels to be smashed u[p faster and so on. On top of that, each tool you make takes a durability hit each time you use it, although as you progress you can make better and better tools for harvesting materials that you couldn't previously. Of course, the more materials you have the more things you can make, and the more things you can make the more materials you can get. It's a vicious circle or harvesting and producing. At night you have one of three choices. You either hole up in the house or shack you managed to find or throw up before the sun went down and sleep the night off in a comfy bed, you curse yourself for over reaching yourself in building a house or you make equip yourself with the armours and weapons you made during the day time to try and endure the night. If you ended up doing the latter two options, you just entered the survival horror part of the game. They might be blocky sprites, but when you hear their howling or attack call it will make you panic. If you survive the night, it's back to the day time cycle. There are a lot of things to do, even outside of building massive houses and castles for you to live in. The beauty of this game is that you can play for one day cycle which is about 20 minutes from what I worked out, or you could play for hours upon hours. If I was to do some game algebra it would be Animal Crossing + Keftlings + Survival Horror + First Person Perspective + LEGO = Minecraft. It's something you should at least try the demo of and see whether you like it if you have not tried it already. You can have a good piss about before the demo ends and get an idea of what you are getting into. I personally didn't try the online part of the game, but I did grab about 40 minutes in splitscreen and it works really nice. The only think I do not like about it is that the menus have not really been optimised properly for a controller. The crafting part is fine, but just moving stuff about your inventory is a bit of a pain in the arse, I'm not sure how they could have handled it better, but I'm sure they could have done it somehow. It's made even more annoying by the fact that the hints and reminders are constantly pushing the inventory box to one side, it could have seriously done without that.

Diablo 3 had an open beta last weekend, a stress test for the servers, but there's was a decent amount of game to play through It's Diablo, point where you want to walk to, click on enemies to attack them, hit your hot keys when your specials are charged, pick up loot. I'm not sure why these games work, and I'm not sure why Diablo and Torchlight work better than Dungeon Siege. I only played as the barbarian, with these kind of games I tend to find I get swamped, so playing as the character best suited to close combat suits me, but he does seem a lot less interesting than some of the other characters. I will say, and I know it's very early in the game to make any sort of judgement (you play the first act), that it hasn't grabbed me as much as Torchlight did, but it's still enjoyable and hugely compulsive. It's quite easy too, apparently that's just how Diablo plays, and I certainly wouldn't want it to be too hard, but it was only on the boss fight that I had to use a health potion. The problems though, the game has to be connected to the net at all times. It doesn't matter if you're playing single player with no intention of ever taking it online, it needs to be connected to the net. And not just connected in a casual way, checking in every now and then, it seems to be virtually running the game from a server. What this means is that if the server is busy you get lag. Click on an enemy to attack and either you wont perform the action or you will and the enemy wont react for a second or so. You also get put back a few steps from time to time, like you've unsynched with the server and lose the last couple of seconds of play. There's also the obvious issue of this meaning you cant play the game if your net, or Blizzard's servers, go down. I think this is due to the auction house for loot that allows real world money purchases. I get that being offline runs the risk of people hacking the game and selling created weapons when they get online, but I'd happily take the option of never being allowed to sell stuff in exchange for being able to play offline. All this could change as it was a beta, and the lag might never be a problem again. Although I suspect the launch weekend could be a nightmare. Shame because the game itself is very good

seemingly the gaming press' favourite game ever, and it's actually not bad so far. As a highlight from the first 3 levels I've done, I jumped out of a plane and caught a girl, then as we were parachuting the plane tried to ram us, so I told her I was going to shoot the window, kill the pilot, kick the bad dude in the face, grab another parachute then jump back out of the plane and catch her again. Sure enough that's what happened and it was fucking awesome Beyond the set up things I'm less convinced. The gun play is fine, though it could do with more aim assist I think, and a melee attack button would be nice rather than having to switch out (which is admittedly just a button press). I've yet to do any real GTA stuff, a few minutes driving but that's about it, but I should be at that point now. One problem I have encountered, and I think this is down to A. Playing via OnLive and B. playing via OnLive wirelessly. The driving wasn't great. You aren't punished for killing people, or at least I haven't been, nor for accidents, but I found myself correcting a lot and having crashes caused by the AI drivers. But yeah, compared to the rest of the game it was very jerky (though it might also explain the feel of the shooting) I can see why people love it and I'll definitely be putting in a bit more time over the weekend

Its pretty tough. Same sort of progress as Demon Souls, so see that thread for the gist of this game. In case anybody plays this and is really stuck, i'll share what i know so far:

Mine turned up today I immediately turned the sleeve and it's lovely. Only two hours in (obviously barely anything) but I have to say it's better than I was expecting. The world is large but not bare. There is plenty to find and monsters to grind with. The voice acting is.. It's ok.. It's kinda nice to hear different british dialects at least. I imagine americans usually notice differences in most games with american actors too but as a brit you all sound the same There's an overwhelming amount of things to see, do and collect. I can imagine the side missions alone will take me to the Wii U launch. For someone not used to playing or liking this kind of rpg it can be dizzying but the ease of the fighting system keeps me happy to stroll along at my own amateurs pace.

This must be the hardest game to give impressions to. It's a sort of open world, crime investigation, almost survival horror that was made on the same budget as my woodwork project at school. It's kind of good. This game is ugly, I'll get that out of the way, but the game knows it and often plays that to its strength, the puppet-like animation makes the comedy moments genuinely funny. The weird, uncanny smile Agent York (the lead character) gives when he's trying to be sincere is proper lol worthy, especially when it's combined with that whistling tune which I'm sure will end up being very iconic in videogame music. But it's not all laughing at the technical incompetence of the game, because somehow, it does manage to be successfully creepy, and the mystery itself isn't massively tacky, the characters perhaps, but plot itself is compelling. For some reason there are zombies (I'm sure there is a reason) and that's all I've been shooting so far, it plays a lot like Resident Evil 4 but not as good. And the open world driving stuff? That's the only thing I have a problem with, it's slow, handles both sluggishly and erratically at the same time and you have this 16bit drone as an engine noise. Only the banter York has with Zach makes the trips worthwhile. What's Yorks favourite Tremors film? Play it and find out.

i wasn't sure if i should start a thread for this as i know illdog is waiting on it (anyone else?) and i don't want to put a downer on it before he tries it so i'll start off by saying i got the arcade version of this over a year ago, and absolutely loved it, thought it was the best thing ever it's great how you collect gems from enemies and can use these to go into a slowdown/bullet time mode to get out of tight spots - just like the first espgaluda. this is playing by mostly ignoring scoring. then i tried to get a hang of the scoring and it just hurts my brain and makes me not like it, i understand the basics behind it, but regarding knowing what mode to use at what time there's so many options it's hard to know what to do - but i really want to give it another go now the port is out - i'm going to be downloading a lot of replays and just try and pick up some good ideas. here are the basics of the system for the arcade and 360 modes i tried to explain on another site: "in normal mode shooting enemies gives you green gems, you need these to go into the first slowdown mode (i don't know what they're called - the one where you tap the button), in the first slowdown mode killing enemies gives you gold from their bullets (like in espgaluda 1), to go into the second slowdown mode (hold the button) you need both gold and green gems, in the second slowdown mode when you kill an enemy, it's bullets dissapear briefly then double and head towards you and give you a big score multiplier (or something like that) - this is where you get all the points, or not in my case. in both slowdown modes i think you automatically use some of your bomb/barrier instead of dying, and there's the over mode where the bullets go faster, which happens when you run out of gold/green gems in the slowdown modes." if you're going for survival you can just ignore the second slowdown mode, although it's a good idea to use it on some bosses for points to get the extends - like the last pattern of the level 2 boss - it doesn't make the bullets follow you on the bosses either. The port also has a load of other modes - black label, arrange, omake, and some novice modes. i tried most of them: Arrange has different colour bullets (blue and red) you can cancel by using shot/laser (little bit like ikaruga), i didn't fully understand what was going on but i really liked what i played of this mode Omake needs to be unlocked by finishing one of the other modes (by credit feeding in my case), this also has some bullet canceling but it's based on proximity, the bullets close to you turn red and when you swap between the normal and slowdown mode these disapear, they also disapear when you're in some sort of powered up mode - i think when you get full jems and gold and you shoot something? unclear. anyway i liked this mode too although again didn't fully understand it. black label i didn't really like but maybe that's because i understood it even less, in the normal mode - enemy bullets turn into gold when you kill the enemy they came from, and the slowdown modes seemed to make it harder rather than easier, and there was some sort of forcefield around your ship so you can push bullets that are really close to hitting you out of the way but this seems to run out - i really hadn't a clue what was going on in this mode i hope i've not got any modes mixed up as i just gave them all a full run through last night.

Finally Trine has come out on PSN, and rather than the £10 the devs hinted at way back when it's actually £16 (or £17 I forget), which is actually cheaper than Steam still but disappointing all the same. Obviously whether it's worth it depends on the content that's in there and how good it. Also I had £4 in my account still which softened the blow a bit. The game is really good, and shows it pretty quickly. You start off as the thief, who can grapple to certain items and fire arrows, which are a bit shit truth be told but I'm sure will prove useful later. Once you touch the magic stone with her you take control of the lecherous and lazy wizard. The wizard can use a pointer to grab things out of reach, such as platforms or blocks, and he can also create blocks which adds to the puzzle element. Then there's the knight who has a shield on the right stick and a sword on the shoulder or square. The presentation is a bit weird. Some parts of it seem a bit cheap and unfinished, things like the load screen and menus, but then the graphics and voice acting are brilliant. That said there's been a few other things, firstly the knight glitched along while i was walking backwards with my shield up, and secondly a large block i had to pull down got stuck on a wall and wouldnt fall, so i had to force my way through the obstacle. It's really good fun though, the combat isnt perfect, but it looks like you'll be able to use the scenery to help you. There's lots of collectable to find, and some levelling up, which isnt explained all that well yet. Hopefully it's a decent size though

Firstly, I cannot believe that there isn't a thread for this game. I know people bang on an on about this game, so I thought there would be one already. I think it is kind of weird that one of the FF haters is starting this topics as well, but there you go. Right, lets get some things laid out on the table. I hate JRPG's unless they are Pokémon, as that's the only one I have been able to understand the mechanics of how everything works because it is nice and simple to learn, and hard to master. I really hate how everyone goes on about how awesome this series is, all I see is turn based fantasy shite populated by people who have hair the size of a fridge freezer. I had very low expectations of this game, I was expecting to play ten minutes worth and call it a day. However, I was wrong. After persevering with the frankly crippled controls outside of battle, I find myself enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would. The backgrounds still look nice after all this time, and the music is really good so far. The FMV has also held up well for such an old game. the "in the field" graphics and animations are bloody horrible though, it is hard to tell what is happening sometimes as the polygons creating the characters wildly move around the screen. I'm also hating on the save locations, I really hate games like this that make you use save locations instead of letting you go into the menu and save. For all it's short comings, I am liking this game. It has impressed me more than I though was possible and I look forward to spending more time with it, if only to find out first hand what happens with the story. What are your thoughts on this game? Another thing as well please, can we keep this spoiler free? I know certain people die and that, but I don't know when or why, and I would like to find out for myself. Thanks.

I felt the urge to dig out my Game Boy Pocket earlier, not quite sure why. Once I had, I decided to start 6 Golden Coins. This is without doubt one of my favourite Game Boy games. The stages are laid out well in their themed areas, presentation is great, and the music. Oh, the music! The memories came flooding back. I'm going to play this through to the end, it shouldn't take long. My Game Boy Pocket still looks like new, too!

I bought this ages ago but have only just started playing it. It's a pretty good action RPG - my only memories of Wonderboy (bar Jack Black and KG) are from the simplistic original platformer and one on the Master System that I didn't like because it had stats and shit (like this, really). I think it might have been Dragon's Trap. Oh well, will have to hunt it down. Anyway this is a great little game, it's quite frustrating in places - as soon as you die you go straight back to the title screen, and saving costs you money so it can get quite tough. So far I'm enjoying it and it's something a bit different so I'd recommend it. Here's a bit of gameplay footage to watch.