CandyBob

!!! I'll be bouncing off the ceiling by the time it turns up.

I got an email from them 2 days ago about dispatch but I'm not too hopeful of getting it anytime soon. When did yours go out?

So you can become a jack of all trades much like Oblivion then? Ok smart cheers.

Anyone got any thoughts on the Hunter or Magician as a starting class for someone new to the game. I mostly prefer playing magic or bow classes in RPG's and was wondering how either class would stand up. I'm generally pretty methodical and patient in my gaming if this makes any difference.

I'm 50-50 at the moment whether to carry on playing this mainly for similar reasons to yourself. I'm currently playing manager mode of which I can pretty much ignore all of the silly bugs. Things like commentary gaffs, transfer oddities etc are not really ruining the experience for me. The actual mechanics of how tackles and headers are being decided though is pretty much ruining the game. I knocked the difficulty down to Pro last night and it felt a bit like cheating. I was doing ok results wise on World Class but just couldn't face the unbalanced nature of the challenge system. When the computer wasn't performing super human physical feats my players would literally be barged 10-15 game feet away from the ball for no apparent reason. It gets especially silly when the AI have the ball in your box. The real pits was moving past a defender and being able to see the ball at my feet, only for it to disappear with no apparent effort on the defenders part and appear at his feet. No matter how I approach a tackle (or header for that matter) it seems to have little effect on the outcome. The referee's also just seem to turn a blind eye to whatever the AI is doing. Shame as I'm really enjoying it when it works fairly. Cheating AI has always been an issue in any football game I've played but its got silly in FIFA10.

Is the problem because of the type of game it is though? I wonder if people are just feeling very apathetic about their Wii in general. This game is aimed at the gamers and your average mum and dad won't give it a second look. I'm not saying this is justified by the way and of course the best way to shake off the apathy is to buy a good game for it but I'm not sure its just about the fact that its an onrails shooter.

Thats pretty sweeping to be fair. You could quite easily own a SNES or Megadrive and get by without platformers. You would of course miss out on some of the best games of the period but there were many shmups, fighters, racers, RPG's, puzzle and sports to get by on. Then you'd have your crossovers. I know a few gamers who keep their Megadrive's just for shmups.

I didn't say that they should. I just said I personally find them less so in comparison when someone stated this was why people like myself were not enjoying this gen as much as previous.

Erm. In that modern games don't require any more of the mental processes, development, awareness or problem solving of cognitive thought than games of any other period? I'm not quite sure what you are getting at.

But the continued popularity of retro gaming, music, films, fashion etc show that for a lot of people, this is the case. I listen to very little music from the last 5-10 years for example. I think its more about connection and little to do with how you develop as a person. Maybe for some its gaming that is not developing outside of bangs and whizz's. Age and experience doesn't neccasarily suggest that you will like contemporary over retro or that you will like contemporary at all. I simply don't connect with most modern music. From a gaming perspective I do still game on my PS3 and 360 but I will never go back to those games again as I do with games from my retro collection and 95% of the time when the game has ended there is a feeling of disappointment. Even a game such as Fallout 3, which I sank about 60hrs into, I haven't felt inclined to go back and do some of the DLC. Maybe its all just unexplainable.

Splosion man and Dead Samurai hark back to those older gaming processes and much better examples could be found in any retro collection. Its good to see these games, but playing lesser versions (imo) of 2D games is not why I bought into the current gen. Same could be said for Ninja Gaiden. I guess I should have said that the genres that have sprung up or have been mutated to fit 3D by the current gen leave me cold?

Must be. I'll adjust accordingly.

I can't see your point there. In fact I believe for me, modern games require less of these processes.

I was feeling apathetic with this gen pretty much as soon as it started. There have been some jewels (Fallout 3, SMG) but I'm finding it a real struggle. I think some of this is the current consoles struggling to move out of the PS2's shadow. With the PS2 you had such an amazing selection of games whatever the genre or whether you prefered 2D or 3D (as well as tons of tat of course). Also I think if you don't have much interest in having delayed, garbled conversations with people over an internet connection the attraction lessens even more. Games are also just different now. They are more about the story, realism and creating an atmosphere and less about being a game. I can't think of a game recently, that you would fit into the popular current gen genres and especially on the PS3 and 360, where my co-ordination and timing actually meant much at all and thats probably the big thing for me, games now don't feel like games. Interestingly my son has started playing Super Ghouls and Ghosts and Gradius and we had a chat about what he likes about them after he starting asking me about other similar games. The main point was that they required different things (skills) from him in comparison to stuff he plays on PS3 and 360. I probably sound like an old bugger stuck in the past but my gaming is backed up by what I say. 80-20 in favour of retro when there is a current gen game that grabs me to currently which is 100-0 in favour of retro when something doesn't. I will mostly always choose to play Prince of Persia over Assassins Creed, Dungeon Master over Oblivion or Super Mario World over Super Mario Galaxy. After the initial burst of fun I even went back to Super Punchout over the current Wii game. Its all horses for courses though.

Can only agree that it was a great issue. One of the best for some time. Loved the Wally and Hudson articles. Will echo that the mobile phone section does seem out of place and to large, same with the homebrew section. Would rather have more pages dedicated to the meat and potatos.

Equally the Wii does seem to get some odd criticism. The strangest being the trumpeting of a lack of hardcore games only for the release of one to be met with average sales. Maybe the point made in the sales thread is right and our tastes have changed regarding hardcore gaming. I consider Punchout to be as hardcore a gaming experience as InFamous or Gears of War but maybe thats because I grew up gaming in the 70's and 80's.

I've always fancied a playground that was designed just for Parkour shinnanigins without all the bullet bollocks. Some of my best times in InFamous were when I'd cleared an Island (which effectively clears out the enemies) and jumped around looking for hidden stuff.

Noted.

Would we include something like InFamous here? Parkour is effectively 3D platforming.

Then in somes ways we are similar. I have my Wii for Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart, Zelda and more recently Punchout because they are fucking awesome. I'm happy to wait until the next Galaxy or Kart and I'd never offload my Wii. As an old SNES head like youself I'm guessing, it hurts to see the amout of nonsense that is coming out on the console.

Shit thats blinkered. Its nothing like it. Outside the Wii charts is just more of the same. If you want a kart game, an RPG, a racing game where do you go? Come on, we'd probably all choose the same games. Much more so than if you were looking for an RPG on the SNES for example. It hurts me as much as it hurts you. I've loved some of the games on my Wii, but that doesn't change the fact that the few more prominent Nintendo games have done well but outside of that, its all about It's My Birthday.

Go as easy or hard as you like. Its no skin off my rosy nose. And I think its a relevant point when those platformer and kart games in the top ten are, as that other guys stated, proven Nintendo franchises and realistically the only one's in the genre that a lot of gamers would give two hoots about. If you want a Kart game, you buy Mario. Its Mario, of course its in the fucking top ten. Where else can you go?

And outside of the charts there are hundreds of thousands of films to choose from that all play on the same player.

The choice in these genre's though is very low. None of them are overflowing with quality games to play. In some cases the amount of software, let alone quality software, is limited. A glance along the shelves in HMV, Game etc is pretty sad viewing of product aimed at a very casual market.

Fallout 3 got so much right with the objects littered around the world. Entering a house and finding a childs toy on the floor, a skeleton in bed or some other item we all have in our homes created a great sense of the effects the destruction had on normal peoples lives. You could imagine that this building was actually a living breathing home. This was the effect it had on me anyway.