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The Beginner's Guide is by the guy that did The Stanley Parable and it plays with the same ideas of deconstructing the traditional mechanics of gaming. It's all set against the backdrop of knowing someone through their games and seeing their struggles. The guy who wrote Stanley narrates his thoughts on his friend's games as you play through them, what he thinks they say about him. The games themselves aren't ever especially fun, we're talking the sort of things Jim Sterling would make videos about, but the experience as a whole is quite affecting towards the end. It gets a little heavy handed after that, but then, I'm not entirely sure it's about what I think it's about It's a very interesting thing, I'm not surprised it's not caught the attention the way Stanley Parable did, it's in utereo

Wow, this game is fantastic. The opening is brilliant. Essentially it is like Red Dead Redemption meets Earthbound or Zelda. I won't spoil the purpose of the story but you find it out soon enough in the game. Essentially you explore a Zelda-like overworld in a wild west setting. I've played it for an hour and picked up a fair few sidequests. And the game is seriously beautiful too, and the music is great. Yes, I see a lot of potential in this one...

I first heard of Read Only Memories two years ago when it was being kickstarted by a company called GaymerX. Initially I thought it would be some kind of very in your face LGBT game, but then after I watched a couple of videos I thought it looked really cool. Anyway it was released in October. I picked it up in the Steam winter sale and have played a couple of sessions of it. It's great. (I should say, I don't intend to flood the forum with threads for indie games but if I think a game is good enough to recommend, then I'll create a thread for it, unless other people object). A couple of immediate pluses, this game looks great and sounds great (not all indie games do...). It's an adventure game set in Neo San-Francisco in 2064, the gameplay, looks and music are very much in the vein of Policenauts (and I assume Snatcher, although I haven't played it). You do have an inventory and interact with objects in the environment but the bulk of the game has been dialogue. In terms of the LGBT aspect, I've already encountered a fairly diverse range of characters so I can see how that is going to be incorporated into the game, but it doesn't look to be a game "about" that subject. As you can see, it's very colourful. The characters that are speaking, in this case your AI companion Turing, change their expression while they speak. That seems to be his neutral face. Although it was developed in the US, the game does feel very Japanese.

I'd put the subtitle in but I'm on my phone and I don't know how to spell it. Never Alone is an action puzzle platformer, not entirely dissimilar from something like Limbo or Brothers. You control 2 characters, switching between the two, with one opening the way for the other (you can also play co-op). You play as a young girl who can pull objects and use her sling type weapon to smash things, and an Arctic fox, who can scamper up walls and communicate with spirits What makes Never Alone stand out is that it's made in conjunction with native Alaskans. The story is a traditional folk story and they pull in some art, which I wish they did more of. There's also unlockable videos that are pretty interesting. There's a few knocks against the game though. I really liked it, but there is the sense, especially early on, that this is 'this year's indie game', like it's another Limbo or something. It's a harsh criticism, but it's a shame it didn't find its identity earlier The platforming controls let me down right at the end of the game. Nothing too major but it was a shame to end the game on a down note Probably a bigger issue, although I'm not that arsed, is my game not saving. To their credit the devs have been emailing me trying to find the cause, so it's hard to be too annoyed with them (I got sent the game to review but I'm contacting them from a different email, so I'm just a normal customer to them). It's a bit worrying that they can't work out what's causing it. But I've finished the game now anyway Edited to include a video <iframe width="853" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/NXC9t9Hmr5g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Very, very pretty game. It's kind of a Stephen King-em-up, it's what I imagine Maine to look like. You play as a detective of sorts who's been contacted by Ethan Carter, a young boy, about something that's happening in the town. Ethan has gone missing and you're trying to find him. It starts slightly creepy, but pretty quickly there's a supernatural undertone to things. It faintly reminds me of the D games with what is happening to the characters. There was a moment that I found massively unsettling just because it was so out of place, but it comes back on itself to be whimsical. It's very odd, a mix of styles that maybe shouldn't be mixed. I'm liking it so far. I think it's going to take me longer than it should because you can miss things. While it's fairly linear it's a very wide straight line, there's stuff hidden (I found a handgrenade that's not been explained), so you worry you might miss things. Equally though you done have to solve anything, there's no barrier stopping you moving forward, and if there is its only a hint to stop, there's always another route around

I think some others have been playing this. Any thoughts. I think I quite like it so far but it doesn't feel as sturdy as Ridiculous Fishing or Luftrausers (other Vlambeer games) but I put that down to this being made in Game Maker. It feels like some production values are missing. But that's my only gripe, really. It's some good shooty fun with solid action and loads of Vlambeer screen shake. It's one of those games that has Rogue elements in it except this is a top down dual stick shooter. There are randomly generated levels though the themes are always the same and the same bosses always turn up. You have a bunch of characters to unlock that have different properties. It's a simple enough game. It is hard, though. I've got to the point where I can pretty confidently go through section 3 but I can't get past 4-1. I just get destroyed by the sentient crystals that fire lasers pretty rapidly. I tend to use the purple crystal dude who has more health and can throw up a brief reflective shield. I reckon he is a newb character but this game is pretty hard so I have no shame using him. I've been mostly playing it on the Vita, usually before work for 20 mins as it is pretty pick up and play. It's like Galak-Z in some ways except that is more complicated and does require longer sessions but I think they compliment each other well.

The PS4 version has just been updated and fixed. So if you were like me and stopped playing due to the horrendous screen tearing and gameplay freezing, it's ok to go back. I'm really enjoying it and it's a perfect relaxing game for just before going to sleep.

Surprised there was no thread for this already. A few people told me how good this was, so I was at a lose end tonight and decided to download it. It was a good decision. The Walking Dead is based on The Walking Dead comics and is a point and click adventure. However, it rips off a few things from other games and adds some new stuff on top. The stuff that's ripped off comes right out of Mass Effect and games of that ilk in where you have an either/or situation or conversation tree which effects what will happen further down the line. It's basically a branching story of which will evolve to your particular choices as you play. Replies to characters in game are mapped to a face button, and while some are timed in others where you are not in control of the situation, there are others that allow you to take your time and pick wisely what you want to say. The new thing that has been brought to the table is context sensitive combat. Now this sounds horrible, but they actually made it like an interactive qte, as in you actually have more control over what happens, but the effects of the qte are always the same, or at least I think they are. Outside of combat qtes, the left stick controls your character and the right stick controls the 4 points cursor, with each point signifying an action on the d-pad. These actions range from observing items, talking to people and interacting with stuff. It's a simple yet elegant set up. The whole shebang is wrapped up in some very nice celshaded graphics that harp back to the comic origins of the series. The way the story is acted out ranges from excellent to a bit choppy, but it's more of the excellent side than the crappy. The sound effects are quite good too, it looks as the whole package has had a lot of thought put into it. I particularly liked the attention to detail on one of the neon lights trying to hawk cola onto people, it's stuff like that that is prevalent here in the south of the USA. It's full of little design touches like this. Either they researched that sort of stuff or some people on the team have lived in the areas they have portrayed here in the game. Other than that, I can't really say much without spoiling the game or soiling the experience, as it's something you played maybe once or twice and then be done with. It's 400 points and is the first of five episodes that will be released. I have no idea when the new episodes will drop, but I'm looking forward to them The episode is quite short, I think I finished it in about 2 1/2 hours, although I think I missed a puzzle. I'm not sure though, it could have just been a dead end, I did look about to see if I could complete it but the game sort of pushed me right towards the end once I past a certain point. A nice touch is that right at the end it tells you what decisions other people made and how you aligned yourself within these decision. Maybe when/if the thread takes off we can talk about it all in spoilers, there's not much point me talking about it until a few other people have played and completed the game. Anyone else played it or interested in it? Click to get the demo Click to buy the game

Played 3 hours earlier today and I'm incredibly impressed with it, it's a shame it's only limited to two maps (Hoth and Sollust) and 2 game modes, but what is there is enough to give you a sense of the game for sure. On PC the game runs phenomenally well, a buttery smooth 60fps/native 1080p on Ultra for me, looks just like all the pre-release footage and gameplay suggested, maybe even better than I was expecting, servers have held up extremely well to me so far as well, only got kicked out of a game twice, once through fault of my own (router restarted to update firmware) and once due to the servers themselves, but apart from this, everything was buttery smooth I must say, phenomenal presentation from DICE, the menu's look incredibly chic and smooth (a small thing I know) and coupled with the server performance it couldn't really be better for a beta really, DICE have done a fantastic job. Mostly played Drop Zone and a couple of games of Walker Assault, enjoyed both, but out of the two game modes, I preferred Drop Zone to Walker Assault, DZ seemed much more CoD (which I prefer) and Walker Assault seemed much more Battlefield to me, which meant everything was incredibly chaotic, I didn't really have a clue what I was meant to be doing and I got killed every 3 seconds Was shit at DZ as well, but did manage to get a little better towards the end, and I was scoring points capturing pods anyway, will play some more Walker Assault tomorrow, but I wasn't a huge fan of it, pretty much everything I hate about Battlefield really, the experience was amazing though, seeing those AT-ATs and AT-STs walking around, pwning people, the Rebel base in Hoth, it was a Star Wars fans wet dream come true pretty much, I just have to try to get to grips with the Battlefield-esque gameplay in that mode otherwise I won't be playing it much in the full game.

This is out on pretty much everything right now, bar the 360 I think. It's a bit of a Rogue-like (or lite) 2D platformer so a bit like Spelunky. But also stealthy so a bit like Mark of the Ninja. You have 100 days to build up your abilities to pull off the final heist. Each heist makes a day tick down, each time you die another burglar takes their place and also takes a day off. When that burglar does, the abilities and money banked remains but money collected in the run gone wrong will get lost. It's good fun so far (I've got about 20 or 30 days in) but I've had some horrendous runs where I've fucked up badly about 10 times in a row so will probably start from scratch a few times before I see the 100th day. I was struggling at first until I watched this video with the developer: What I learned is that the basic hacking is the first thing you can afford, and you should buy that rather than try and save up for other things first. The money needed for most upgrades is obscene at first but you start off only able to rob from poor people and so the money you get out will be low to begin with. But on the other hand, security in the poor areas is quite basic so it's easier to rinse them out. Until the game recognises you're doing well and starts throwing more stuff your way, like mines, tougher enemies, etc. The best thing I learnt for myself when I was playing yesterday was to shut the doors rather than leave them open, so you can control where the enemies will go better. The art style is pretty great and the procedurally generated Victorian style names are superb.

I tend not to post about what I've been playing because I seem to be off on my todd with it, but Jotun is a game I'm surprised hasn't caught more attention. I guess it coming after The Banner Saga hasn't helped it, Jotun being a cartoon looking viking game. It's a different thing though, more like Bastion, an adventure game of sorts. It looks amazing though, it's hand drawn with very deliberate direction towards certain vista's and landmarks, often because they absolutely dwarf you. I'm not sure what I think of it though and I think the scale is part of the reason. The landscapes are so big that it makes you feel slow, and given that it doesn't exactly throw enemies at you it feels barren. I'm sure both of those things are deliberate, I'm just not sure it makes for the best game. The game is a bit vague too. Your dropped in to a land and trigger a hologram of sorts, it's only later you realise that was what you were supposed to do to open the gate. There's stuff hidden in the world, it's hard to know if you've missed something or not. Eventually you learn the structure, it's nothing radically different, and so long as you've picked up a rune, a power, and something that extends your life it's probably level complete. I'm sounding down on it, but I'm more undecided. I like the vagueness sometimes, it helps the ethereal feel they're going for. The pace emphasises the struggle of the world, you might fuck up a god, but it's going to be a fight

I suspect there's posts about Year Walk on the forum but there doesn't seem to be a thread. I've not quite finished it yet, looking at where I can potentially go there's not a lot left, not that it's impossible that a whole new area will open up, and there's still a box I have no idea what to do with. For those that haven't played it, it's basically a point and click, but one that fairly quickly becomes bleak as fuck. You're not quite just switching between locations, you have to walk along until you get to the path to the next area, which is occasionally used quite well, in quite an ominous way, but when you're stuck, lost, or have to do some leg work to solve a puzzle, it gets tedious. Which is where I'm at with it at the minute and why I'm writing this and not playing it. I've worked out what I need to do to solve a puzzle (in the graveyard for those that have played it) but it involves wandering around finding things that I've forgotten the location of, and I'll probably need to write the solutions down on something. So yeah, time for a coffee and a break before going and doing that. It's good though, I love a good off-key dark fairytale, and that's kind of what this is. It does seem odd that it started out life as a phone game still

So I've been playing the closed Beta now since yesterday, put about 5 hours into it and am going to give some brief impressions of my experience so far. This is probably the most impressed I've been in a Multiplayer game in a very long time, it feels very original compared to the likes of CoD and Battlefield and other militaristic shooters on the market today. Obviously some of the weapons you use have similarities with those series, but that's where the similarities end pretty much, everything has a realistic feel to it, like R6's of old, you can feel the weight of your gun/shield, how agile you are and feel the recoil of your weapon, also, once you get killed you're out of that round and that's that, unless somehow you manage to just get downed, then a team mate can revive you and you can continue on, it is extremely unforgiving compared with other shooters with instant respawn, and there's a definite challenge and learning curve there. You can see the Rainbow Six heritage has been kept intact, but what the Devs have done is create a fresher, authentic, modern PvP shooter that's fun, not too difficult to master, but still retains that challenge and depth that the original R6 shooters had, it may sound strange to say, but it feels a lot like the original Gears of War MP (before they ruined it) with the tight maps, one-shot permanent kills and prevalence of shotguns. There's 3 maps in the Beta: Concierge (set in a French embassy), Hereford (set in a disused SAS base in the UK) and House (set in a typical suburban American house) and two modes TDM (5 v 5 Diffuse/defend the Bomb, 5 v 5 capture/defend area) and Terrorist Hunt (5 v a 20 or so skilled AI opponents). What I've played most of is the TDM stuff, the 5 v 5 MP, which is what I think the 'meat' of the game is really, essentially attacking and defending a certain objective on the map, Orange v Blue team, the first to get to 3 wins, the defenders have to barricade the area by putting up reinforcements against plasterboard walls, planting booby traps, planting chicken wire to slow enemies down and to put up an endless supply of barricades. The attacking team have 20 seconds before they enter the match where they can scope out the level, try to find their opponents positions and try to find the bomb which they then have to diffuse. It can be incredibly tense, encounters have a lot of weight to them as neither person wants to die (as you have to sit out the rest of that round) and neither team wants to lose, it is incredibly tense at times. The game employs an almost one-shot kill policy, if you get shot 9 times out of 10 you'll die, it's incredibly brutal and unforgiving, the only ways to avoid this are by having a guy on your team that can supply with you with additional body armour so you can take more shots. You obviously still have certain rounds where you get overwhelmed and you all die in quick succession and the enemy gets the bomb easily, and those aren't as good, but you still feel that weightiness to the combat and weapons and the depth of the encounters, it's all about tactics and planning whether you succeed or fail and you feel that in the game. Next comes Terrorist Hunt, I've only played 2 games of this (more on that later...) but it was fun enough, essentially you enter one of the maps and have to hunt down and kill 20 AI opponents, the only games I managed to find were on the Normal difficulty, and it didn't seem particularly challenging, but it was fun, a kind of inverse Horde mode where you invade the AI I suppose, but I definitely didn't find it anywhere near as fun as the TDM Multiplayer modes mentioned above, that tension and depth just wasn't there, the stakes weren't as high as I felt as if you could just mess about a bit more killing enemies willy nilly. Another mention goes to the operators, there's no classes in R6S as such, instead you get a variety of 'characters' with different skills based on a range of real-life counter-terrorism units around the world, you've got GIGN from France, LA SWAT from the US, SAS from the UK, Spetznaz from Russia etc. and all these different CTU outfits have a range of attacking and defending characters for you to unlock. I've only tried Smoke and Sledge (SAS), Fuze (Spetznaz) and Rook (GIGN) but all of them feel different, have different abilities and different strengths and weaknesses, you unlock them by amassing R6S' equivalent of XP whilst playing through matches, 500 unlocks an Operator in my circumstances, although 1000 unlocks better ones I believe. So far my favourites are Smoke (Defender) and Sledge (attacker) as I love Smokes gas that incapacitates enemies and Sledge's sledgehammer for battering through walls, although Fuze's Riot Shield is incredibly handy. I've only played on 2 out of the 3 available maps (Concierge and Hereford) but they've both impressed me, the design is very strong and due to the random nature of where the objective is going to spawn it always manages to feel fresh (so far anyway). So that's all the positivity out the way, now time for the negatives. Ubisoft employs some kind of Matchmaking in the game, and it's a bit iffy to say the least, sometimes you'll be sat waiting to find a game for ages, and will need to go back to the main menu and search again, and again, and again, until you eventually find a game, this isn't exactly 'game-breaking' for me anyway, but is nevertheless annoying. My second gripe with the game is the over-powered nature of the Shields, they're just ridiculous, if you've got a shield you pretty much can't be hit at all, but can have your gun out at all times to shoot at your opponent, it's just crazy really, feels way to overpowered and I hope they balance this a bit better in the full retail release, because only managing to take out a shield guy by using charges or a grenade sucks. My third gripe is somewhat more serious, every time the game loaded me into a game which was set on the 'House' map, the symbols for the operators and guns wouldn't show for me to choose, the game would count down but still say 'loading...' under my name, whereas everyone else had 'loading complete' this wouldn't of been a big issue if I could've gone back using the start button and then gone back to the main menu to look for another game, but I couldn't do this, I had to Tab+Alt+Del or Alt+Tab my way out of the game, close it, then open it again to start looking for a game, every time I got put into a game on the House map it did this, incredibly odd and I seriously hope they fix this for the final game because this is definitely the most serious bug that's facing the Dev's. So, overall, I'm incredibly impressed by R6:Siege, I think it has the potential to be one of the best multiplayer shooters ever, but I just hope that the Devs are given enough time to iron out the bugs, because problems on launch could ruin its chances to shine.

This is the next game Mike Bithell made after Thomas Was Alone and if you've played that.....well, it's nothing like that. Although it does have Danny Wallace doing one of the voices. It's a more-or-less top-down stealth game that reminds me most of the Metal Gear Solid VR Missions. In fact, Kojima gets a thanks in the credits, along with a personal note to anyone who bought the game as it will help fund the next one, which is a nice touch to put on there. There's some pretty cool gadgets you can use to distract enemies or silently run on floors that will normally make noise but no guns. It's strictly all about the stealth and working out the puzzle of each room. There's a lot of levels but there's also a level editor, which is of no use to me, but the way levels are shared seems pretty intuitive and recommended ones should rise to the top easily so enough to keep me going.

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gJlPun8LQss?wmode=opaque" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><!-- <embed id="mymovie" width="640" height="360" flashvars='mapp=giant_bomb&autoPlay=true&config={"progressive_low":"http://media.giantbomb.com/video/tr_ridgeracer_031312_700.mp4","progressive_high":"http://media.giantbomb.com/video/tr_ridgeracer_031312_1500.mp4","progressive_hd":"http://media.giantbomb.com/video/tr_ridgeracer_031312_3500.mp4","playlist":[{"provider":"http","url":"http://media.giantbomb.com/video/tr_ridgeracer_031312_3500.mp4"}],"netConnectionUrl":"rtmp://video.giantbomb.com/cfx/st/","streaming_low":"mp4:video/tr_ridgeracer_031312_700","streaming_high":"mp4:video/tr_ridgeracer_031312_1500","streaming_hd":"mp4:video/tr_ridgeracer_031312_3500","adcall":"http://ocp.cbs.com/pacific/Request.jsp?/gan/giantbomb;xml=vast2;partner=giantbomb;brand=4;site=1018;format=MPEG4;ord=999999?","playerId":"fp_57022526","clip":{}}' wmode="opaque" allowscriptaccess="always" scale="noScale" salign="lt" allowFullScreen="true" quality="high" name="mymovie" style="" src="http://jason.dev.gamespot.com/giant/pharos.swf?ver=009_4" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"/></embed>It's not really like SMB in that it's more about exploring than jump puzzles but it controls the same. The Dark Souls comparisons are pretty valid though - it's a Rougelike so when you die, you're dead. You can unlock shortcuts but mostly you will get a couple of levels in and then die, back to the beginning.It's unforgiving but also fair, like Dark Souls. You have to take your time, don't rush, don't do stupid things and you will be fine.It feels pretty old school but them you can do modern things like steal from the shopkeeper rather than just buy his wares, but risk him coming after you.Also, don't hang around too long because if you do, a giant ghost will come chasing after you and is a one-hit kill. Those moments feel a lot like Dark Souls where you just shit yourself.It came out a few years ago for free on PC, so if you don't have an online 360 you can try out the original here - http://www.spelunkyworld.com/original.html

This only came to my attention a month ago at the most and I don't know how I missed it. I think I would have remembered it if I'd seen it before. So its another rogue-like, or rogue-light, or rogue-lite... rogue-zero? I dunno. Its one of those games with sort of permadeath and upgrades and randomly generated levels tied to a game that isn't an RPG. In this case its tied to an arcade style shooter, say Asteroids. But its not as simple as that, in fact it has tons of stuff in it to play with. There are different kinds of lasers; like spread shot, ones that bounce of walls, and typical stuff like that but they can be combo'd together for some different results. I'm just on my first run so I've not seen how deep that goes. There is a lot of movement options. You've got that skate-y movement which I always really like in games like this, and you also have this strafe that is quite hard for me to get my head around now. I tend to just strafe into rocks. There is also a 'duke' button. It basically functions as a dodge and gives you some invincibility frames, and that I find very useful. It's a good job that there are these evasive options as you don't get a whole lot of health, health pickups aren't common or cheap. Thankfully it does have a very Halo-like shield system. halo was apparently an inspiration for the game, generally, and it does come through. I can't put my finger on it but there is something in the flow of combat that is similar, at least in the moments when you decide to be brave. It's structured like a TV show in that you have five episodes in a series. A series acts like save point which you can carry on from. I've not died yet so I don't know first hand what happens when you die but from what I hear you do have to start from the beginning of a series if that happens, though there might be some kind of safety net. The structure is fitting since it's going for an anime thing, though it looks more Saturday Morning Cartoon Inspired By Anime. I can't help but think Ben 10 when I see it. I don't think it actually looks that great or has a nice style, but the game is fun to play. It does make me wonder who they're aiming for as it does feel like its shooting for a younger audience at times though it does play a pretty hard game of shoot'n'dodge like those 30-something console gamers like. Anyway, I've got a bit more to see. I've not even got to the bit where your spaceship turns onto a mech, yet. Yes, it has a mech in it.

It shows how much this zoomed past people, I tried looking for a thread on it and none found. Now it's free on PS+, anyone fancy trying to get the co-op working?

I got sent this to review last week. It's kind of in the same vein as Limbo, both in terms of looks, which are silhouetted, and that it's a puzzle platformer of sorts Feist uses physics for a lot of its puzzles, you might have to get a log swinging to stand on it to reach a jump, or get a boulder moving at speed. Love these bits of the game, a little finicky sometimes, but engaging enough What's different to Limbo is that there's combat, quite a lot of it. You can kill enemies by throwing enough things at them, it's easy to miss, doesn't look like it's doing a lot, but it will kill them, or by grabbing a fly from out of the air and using its stinger to fire needles out. The problem with Feist, and why it makes the combat an issue, is the weight and inertia of your character. It's fine on its own, you get a lot of control in the air, it gives the world a bit of grounding. However you'll often take a hit and be knocked in to another enemy, which will then get a hit on you, I've been thinking about it for a few days and I think it's that you get knocked too far when you do get hit, you're out of control for too long Enemies that fire projectiles are sniper accurate, lead their target (you) and won't stop firing at you even when you'd think you were miles out of reach. It makes it a frustrating game, particularly when you're also tasked with platforming or puzzle solving at the same time It means I don't know quite what I think of Feist, early on I loved it, then I hated the frustration of it. Going in, had I known what the game was, I think I might have been better prepared for that

Been playing this alot recently. Made me a custom character then set off to becomes the world numero uno, training hard to get my stats to a respectable level and winning tournaments here and there to boost my world ranking. The higher your ranking, the more lucrative the tournaments become. You know your getting somewhere when the Grand Slams start to open up, place well in these and you are invited to the King of Players tournament where you get a shot at the top seed, filthy Federer with his cheating tennis style. Training comes in the form of The Academy where your asked to do ridiculous things to boost your stats. You can also take part in a series of mini games that appear dotted around the world map, like knocking down skittles a la bowling to improve your serve, hitting down walls of oil drums to strengthen your groundstrokes. Its addictive stuff, a feint interest in tennis helps. Not one for the angry gamer tho, im currently nursing a nasty gash on one of my knuckles after punching my pad following an super fucking irritating loss to Fed-arse-rer, the cunt. He can return anything from anywhere whenever he wants and he does it perfectly. I nearly shit myself when i finally beat the bastard. Decent online aswell, played some random chimp and kicked his ass, looking forward to playing someone on here? Hendo?

So, I know this probably won't be a popular thread, but I started playing this on Saturday and thought I'd create this to jot my thoughts down. As a general rule with the LEGO games I try not to play too many too quickly, as I feel the repetitious copy n' paste nature of the games and the way they're designed would condemn me to tedium if I played some back to back, its been quite a while since I last played one actually, the last I played was the excellent LEGO Marvel Superheroes on my PS4 back in the Winter of 2013 when it had just come out, really enjoyed that, and the only previous LEGO game I'd played before that was the equally excellent LEGO City Undercover on the Wii U. I dabbled in LEGO Indiana Jones and LEGO Star Wars back in the day but never really enjoyed them until I played City Undercover on the Wii U, the humour, the city and the gameplay really clicked with me in that game and I ended up enjoying it FAR more than I ever imagined I would. Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent here, needless to say, LEGO Jurassic World is the first LEGO game I've played in quite a while, as a massive fan of the Jurassic Park franchise it always seemed like a no brainer to pick it up, I think the LEGO games resonate the most with you if you're a fan of the subject matter in the game so I thought it would probably be a reasonable assumption that I'd like this if I bought it, and....4 hours in, that assumption seems to be correct. In LJW you get the chance to play through all 4 films in the series, however, only JP and JW are unlocked from the start. Being the JP fan that I am, I wanted to start back with the original JW, after I was done with this I moved onto the slightly maligned 'The Lost World:Jurassic Park' which struggles to live upto the heights of its predecessor, but is still a pretty good film in its own right. I think for anyone that's a fan of the films, you'll love this game. From John Williams' spellbinding score to some of the original actors' voices being included in the game, everything feels like an authentic JP experience, just in LEGO. Whilst I've a relatively short history with the LEGO games I've noticed in the 4 hours I've spent with this that there doesn't seem to be too many puzzles anymore, in Indiana Jones, SW, LCU and LMS I would find myself getting stuck on the odd occasion, not knowing which gadget/ability I needed to use a specific point in a level, and where to use it, but everything seems really straightforward in this, they seem to have taken out any difficulty the puzzle-elements of the game had, the other new addition is playable Dinosaurs, and yes they're as cool as they sound! The playable characters definitely aren't as memorable as the ones in LMS though, that's for sure, I was struggling to remember who some of the peripheral characters you can play as in the game were, obviously the main characters through all 4 films are recognisable, but beyond this I had no recollection who some of them were, a far cry from the spades of recognisable characters in LMS. So, yeah, just wanted to give a few thoughts on my opening 4 hours with the game, don't expect anyone else picked this up, but its been pretty cool so far, a nice relaxed easy going game that should keep me occupied for a few days, but nothing more.

So, I finished it on Tuesday. Since the console versions are due out soon I'll try not to not post anything too specific. First off: it's more Costume Quest, so if you played the first one, you know what you're in for. It appears to carry on from immediately after the first one. The combat is still basically the same, but Double Fine have added some simple timing elements to attacks and blocks, hitting the button at the right time will increase the amount of damage you do, or reduce the damage you take. There's also a counter system, but it's quite specific and I think I only used it twice. Costumes now have strengths and weaknesses against different enemy types (I think there are 3 types). I don't think there's any transformation as good as the Unicorn from the first game, but I liked the Clown and Hotdog costumes. The Candy Corn costume is back, and I like the jokes they make with it. The Battle Stamps from the previous game are gone and have been replaced with cards. Instead of equipping each character with one stamp that has an effect of some kind, you have 3 cards in your hand which you choose to use during a character's turn instead of attacking or using your special. Once used, it can't be used again for a couple of fights so it pays to switch up what's in your hand between fights.

Well no-one else will so I'll start a topic. I'm very early on, done the mission for the doctor which turns a little "odd". I'm always running out of space in my wallet and my crafting pouch so I'm gonna have to take some time out of the main quest to make some bigger pouches. Having seen what the PC version looks like, the 360 version is definitely poorer visually but it's still passable.

I have been playing this for the last few days and it excellent. The levels are semi-open with different paths you can take and hidden areas with collectables. Strider also has multiple difficulty settings that adds replay value to the game. The visuals are great and Double Heilx also included scanlines which was a nice touch. The gameplay is flawless and just makes you feel like a badass. You can unlock new moves by defeating bosses. Double Helix did not stray too far for the original source material and the bosses from the original game are back and tweaked for the modern era of gaming. Out of all the games I own on Xbox One Strider will most likely be a permanent fixture on my HDD. This is how remakes should be done in my opinion. Too bad Double Heilx is now apart of Amazon, they would have been a great fit as an internal Capcom or Microsoft studio.

Anyone else been playing this? I was a massive fan of the first game, had an absolute ton of fun with it, incredibly addictive, visceral and with a bloody incredible soundtrack. The 2nd game I'm not having quite as much fun with...it seems a bit more stop-start than the first game where you could just get in the groove and be at it for hours, they've also tried to do a lot more story stuff in the 2nd one so there's a load of dialogue this time around, and loads of skippable cutscenes. The music is just as good as the first game, but the level design doesn't feel anywhere near as good to me, the first games levels just felt so tight and well designed around the games controls, but it feels in the HM2 that the levels have been chopped and changed to fit the narrative rather than the other way round, it is still decent though and after the initial hour and a half of frustration and bewilderment I am having a lot of fun with it now. I'm about 5 hours in, so probably not got too much longer to go, definitely feel the difficulty ramping up at the moment.

Looks amazing! I started off with my laptop plugged into the TV but it looks noticeably better on the laptop so am playing with that on a chair in front of me, using the pad. I did a benchmark test beforehand and medium is the best option for me. Still looks great although there have been a bit of screen-tearing and stuff. Anyway! I've arrived at Columbia and am really taking my time basking in everything around me. The main benefit of playing on a PC is that I'm taking screenshots like a motherfucker. Anyone who has me on Facebook, I've made an album with some of my favourite shots there. It's early days, but it has set up the reason for you being there and the mindset of the people of Columbia. Very reminiscent of the original Bioshock with your arrival, picking up cash, etc. Glorious.