Harsin

Nah I think the nadir of Edge scores has to be Broken Sword 3's 9. The review itself was a more of a general call to arms for a pont n' click renaissance which I'd love to see. But still a 9 for Broken Sword 3, blimey!

Yes this thread should be 50 pages of 'ZOMG AWESOME!!!!!' and cat image macros like NeoGAF.

I liked it, but it was a lot more arcadey than I was expecting.

Nothing beats a bit of creativity. Bit like Hitman: Blood Money. There's a right way, a wrong way and numerous ways in between. You could run through the game shooting kneecaps, if you wished. Not advised, but nowt to stop you.

It's weird that the Hitman series, a game about an assassin is one of the few series out there that bucks the trend of combat above all else and is the closest we've had to a pure popular mainstream adventure game for a while. The great thing is that you can play it as shoot anything that moves and enjoy it on that level or you can revel in the puzzle aspects. Also, coming back to the quick-save issue that's been discussed, Blood Money introduced infinite quick saves on the easiest settings and I really appreciated that as it allowed you to experiment at will and try outlandish things, even if your only reward was a comedy death, you might otherwise have skipped for fear of losing half an hours play.

I'm hoping for some elements like that in Bioshock, I'm sure they've talked up being able to set off various groups in Rapture against each other in previews before now.

It was the New Years Eve masquerade ball when it all went tits up. I'm not the only one that got that, right?

At a guess it'll be more action based. Got to keep the masses happy.

If you listen to the audio it sounds as if it's

Atlas and pals

who gatecrashed the party.

I just want to track down whatever bastard killed that cat!

So what is the final pacing like? I think a lot of us are hoping for an atmospheric creepathon interspersed with moments of action, rather than Timesplitters underwater.

Bah! Not taking pre-orders on it anymore. So other than the tin, what's special about it? None of the sites selling it seem to actually mention this. Thought I'd read about a Big Daddy figure at one point.

Game/gameplay have the exclusive for the CE containing the Big Daddy figurine, also comes with a making of DVD and the soundtrack.

EDIT: This other special edition knocking around is more like the Dead Rising one in that it's just the game in a metal case I think.

Whan you ring MS they specifically ask you how many lights and what they're doing to rule out stuff like that so chinny reckon I say.

How to kill a 360

- turn it on

Are the Plasmids introduced differently in the full game? Just seems a bit bizarre the way your fella just happens upon a glowing syringe and decides to jam it in his arm for no apparent reason, even having Atlas explain over the radio what they are and why you really want to use them would be an improvement.

So how does Adam work? Plasmids are the initial glowing hypo that gives you a new power, Eve is basically ammo for your magic powers and comes in those blue hypos you loot. So what does Adam do? Does it just power up your powers and if so does that mean you're boned diffiulty wise if you don't fancy murdering Little Sisters?

I'm just hoping that Atlas turns out to be a nice Irish bloke with no skeletons in the closet, I'm a bit bored of the person you're after/communicating with throughout the game turning out to be a baddie 'twist'.

Would have been nice if your friendly neighbourhood Oirish stereotype could have given you a heads-up on the security system.

Also the dead big daddy in the corner totally escaped my attention the 1st time through because I had set off the camera and had the heli bots zooming about my head at the time.

What's stranger is that he has some cash on him, what he was planning on spending it on is anybody's guess.

Yay! Makes perfect sense.

Trading in my stuff tomorrow, perhaps. Buying a 360 on Thursday. Unless I get buggered for the trade-ins. Will Gamestation replace mine if it goes tits up or tell you to go to Microsoft?

Gamestation are very good at replacing without hassle in my experience, only advantage of sending back to MS is that you might get the second heatsink in the replacement, but then on the other hand you 'll have 25 days without a console instead of an afternoon...

How do plasmids work? Seems to me with the videos it's assinged to the left hand. I assume it's like an alternative fire situation where you use the left trigger.

Yeah you fire your Plasmids with the left trigger and fire your weapon with the right trigger and use the left and right bumpers accordingly to select them.

Wish they'd find a nicer slow-down effect than that horrible luminous orange, no graphical effect at all would be preferable to that, hope you can turn it off in the full release.

I think it's a fair comment about the combat, doesn't bother me particularly as I enjoyed it, but you can see why people tend to look down on games when even a game with higher than normal leanings like Bioshock still boils down to running round going 'pew pew' at baddies.

And I must admit that running around like a cross between Doom Guy and Harry Potter shooting a machine gun and fireballs felt a little low-rent after the opening. Still fun though.

The Dead Rising demo was one of my favourite games of 2006.

The full release was one of my least favourite games of 2006.

So how scary is it? I was fine with Condemned but with Silent Hill 2 I found I could only play in short bursts like a great big chicken.

.::: That's a glass half-empty way of thinking. If the quickest and easiest way of progression is the only goal, get an Action Replay. Alternatively seek out a vid of the ending on YouTube.

Alright then for another example of 'punishment' as opposed to challenge let's take something like GTA 3, do you like the system whereby you have to hare around the map to trigger various bits everytime you fail a mission just to get back to the start of it as opposed to a simple restart at the last checkpoint. The actual mission itself is the challenge, eveything else is basically commuting and surely nobody likes that.

Even if not full quick-saving, a suspend type one use save like you get on DS games. Whoopee visitors have just arrived unexpectedly, I can either lose 20 minutes progress or ask them to twiddle their tumbs while I traipse about looking for a save point.

I don't see the harm in loads of difficulty levels and don't know why more games don't have them. If people want to knock themselves out on Super Bastard Hard Mega difficulty what harm does it do if there's also a Super Ultra Easy* difficulty for the people not so good, at least that way both people buying the game will get full enjoyment. Sod what l33t tpes on US forums think.

*I seem to remember Spider-man on the PS1 had something like this so even little kids could enjoy the game.

What's punishing, though? Most genuinely difficult games (i.e.: shmups) are impeccably designed and, dare I say it, balanced.

So are the two Primes, and frankly there's been nothing to suggest that MP3 won't be a walk in the park!

Off the top of my head? Any game that makes you mindlessly trudge through a long time consuming section again and again just so you can reach the particularly difficult bit you're having trouble with, especially if they bung in some unskippable cut-scenes there while they're at it. That's the kind of 'punishment' I'm on about, which is still all too common in many games, nowt wrong with a game being difficult and challenging liking that's healthy.

Not saying MP was guilty of that since it's been years since I've played it mind and can't remember, so I apologise for taking this off-track.

Jesus.

There's a difference between challenging games and punishing games. And I stand by my comments for the latter.

.::: If you can't play the game, don't start crying. I can't see football being changed just because some people can't remember how offside works. Rules and challenges are what makes the game.

Alternatively: go play Kirby.

Nope if football were more like some of the ass-backwards games released it'd be more like everytime someone missed a goal the ref would reset the clock to start the 90 minutes again.