Ginko

I'd happily take either of those at this point. *9th :oops: General Krulak Number Syndrome strikes again :winkold:

Well hindsight is a wonderful thing. I don't think when Randy agreed to MON coming in that MON went up to him and told him that he was going to buy a lot of average players, put them on lengthy contracts with big wages... and then never play them. But anyway, I personally think Randy, the board and MON all have to take some of the blame. As a choice between Randy and Doug though? Randy any day of the week. He's done a lot for the club. Yes, the last two seasons have been atrocious and I think a lot of us are waiting for his next move which could make or break him, but the fact is, he put a lot of money into the club and let a proven Premier League manager of a high standard run the club without interfering. I remember lots of friends of mine who supported other clubs commenting how good an owner Randy was for not getting too involved. In hindsight, he should have kept a closer eye on things and no doubt people who work under him have to be blamed too for letting things get out of hand so we're in the situation we're in now. As is with a lot of arguments where there is rarely ever one person completely right and the other completely wrong, and in this situation there is no one person to blame for the state the club is in right now. However, as the man in charge, Randy has to take most responsibility. Still prefer him to Doug though personally.

Yeah I love the story too. I didn't play the original games but when I got into Fallout 3 I read up a lot about the older games and the history of the universe. I think the whole thing is fascinating. If I was surprised about people not liking Fallout 3 I'm even more surprised that you didn't like Portal 2 Risso. Was it just the second game you didn't like or both? Again, everyone is different of course, I just would have thought that with such well designed levels and some really funny dark humour thrown in and very memorable characters and great voice-acting that it would be hard for anyone not to find things that they liked about it. Just out of interest what was it that you didn't like?

I played the demo of Rage. It was okay, but didn't really do anything for me. I have yet to play Borderlands though, I've heard that's a good alternative.

I think that letter summed it up quite nicely and was well written. It'd be nice if someone at Villa could get that into the hands of a board member. It made a lot of very good points, particularly with the disrespect the club has shown the fans and the lack of communication. I can only hope this is so because something big is going on at VP, but that's just wishful thinking on my part.

The demo is out now if anyone didn't know already. If you did and have played it, what did you guys think? I thought it was quite cool. I've played a fair few games as the Adidas All-stars. The controls are good and the gameplay is a lot of fun. Thoughts?

Exactly, same with me. :shock: I'm stunned at the lack of love for Fallout 3! It won loads of G.O.T.Y awards. Oh well, different strokes and all that. Here's a theory. Maybe so many Villa fans seem to dislike Fallout 3 because the drab and dreary, apocalyptic Capital Wasteland reminds them too much of Birmingham :winkold: Seriously guys, get past Megaton then suffer through the mission where you have to kill a bunch of fire-breathing ants (it's a great mission and fun, just very hard with your limited resources) and I swear after that it's excellent. I can still remember the first time I heard a BOOM go off somewhere over the horizon. Naturally, I had to check it out. Imagine my surprise when I saw what was waiting for me at the picnic area at the top of that hill...

I can understand not wanting him as our Chairman anymore but do you really have to take it to such a personal level? There's no need to insult him, his family life or Americans in general just because you don't want him to own the club any more. Grow up.

Ah see, I'm completely the opposite. I couldn't get into Oblivion for love nor money. It just didn't do anything for me. I really disliked the Oblivion gate parts and I was never really comfortable with using melee weapons in a first-person perspective. When Skyrim came out, I was really concerned that it was going to be the same, and in a lot of ways it is but Skyrim definitely hooked me in in a way that Oblivion failed to. I'm not really sure why I enjoyed one and not the other but when I get some spare time, now that I have played and loved Skyrim I'm going to give Oblivion another chance. I probably didn't give it a fair whack. However, I absolutely loved Fallout 3. I think the start can put a lot of people off because certain things can be a bit difficult to get to grips with perhaps. Also, right at the beginning of the story I found it really quite difficult, particularly with the lack of ammo, I don't know if that was something that put you guys off it. In hindsight though, after persevering with the game, I love that about it. It would be incredibly difficult surviving in those circumstances. I remember having to constantly go back and forth between Megaton and surrounding places just picking up as much as I could carry and selling it just to pay for bullets. It gets easier though, and then that's when the best bits of the game come in. Like going around the museum, creeping around the corners just in case there's a Super Mutant nearby. I was a big fan of the story, the characters and the RPG elements of the game too. I loved post-apocalyptic Washington D.C and all the stuff there was to do there, it's up there with one of my favourite games of all time. The only other major game franchise I didn't like that immediately comes to mind is Mass Effect. I thought the story concept was really fascinating, and I like sci-fi and the whole backlog of historical events leading mankind up to advancing it's technologies and being involved with other alien species really interested me, but the gameplay just put me off. It seemed very cut and paste to me. Go to a world, drive to a building on the map, enter building, kill bad guys. It wasn't so bad, I enjoyed parts of it, but the controls felt very clunky. It didn't feel like I had to be particularly accurate when shooting the guns and I just felt like I was spraying bullets all over the place. I played the demo of Mass Effect 3 the other day though and the shooting and gameplay seemed a lot better though and I had a lot of fun with it. So now I'm kind of forcing my way through Mass Effect, then I'll give Mass Effect 2 a go and hope it's less like the first game and more like the third's demo.

Great song for a friday

Just dont bother with series 3 and 4. I'd pretty much leave it after season one if I were you. Season two was a huge let down and, as is said above, three and four aren't particularly good either. Shame because the first season was absolutely immense I thought. Watch Dexter and Breaking Bad instead if you haven't already. My two favourite TV shows and they're both bad ass

It's on IMDB's site. Can't see it on Apple movie trailers. That's the old one! How dare you tease me with the promise of a new Prometheus trailer?! You're a creative fellow, Gareth. If you can't wait for a new trailer, make one yourself!

Wow, first I've ever really seen people criticising Inception. I'm actually shocked, everyone I know who's seen it absolutely loved it, and I did too. It had the lot for me. I didn't know American Beauty was criticised either, that's one of my favourite movies of all time. What were the main criticisms of it?

I know what you mean. Stacking, Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango are all great games that I liked playing but they've not particular had a profound effect on me like other games have. I think like you say, a lot of it is to do with Schafer. He's highly respected, has a great sense of humour and quirkiness and most of all it seems like he genuinely cares and makes games for gamers and not profit. I think people really appreciate that and realise he's a gamer at heart. The new project he's started does look pretty cool. I never really got into point-and-click adventure games though.

Yeah, if it was the first time I'd played it then I wouldn't use a guide but since I've played it a fair few times over the years I've never once gone for a 100% playthrough.

Assuming I finish Catherine and Mass Effect, I'm totally starting a really detailed playthrough of FFVII this weekend. I can't wait. I'm going to follow a guide this time and get a lot of stuff I've missed on normal playthroughs. Can't wait!

Well like I said in my original post, you can get achievements/trophies for doing bad stuff. I know what you're saying, ultimately they leave the choice up to the player and that's fair enough. I just think if you're going to go to make a game where you can play as good or bad then the character should be conflicted between the two and not lean one way or the other. But yeah, it's just a game. I was just saying that this was what took me out of the immersion a little when playing it.

For me it probably represents the best buy for a tenner on Steam atm. All the positive hype was what brought me to it as well, as a relative latecomer, but at first I thought I'd been sold a pup. I didn't like the character design and the humour initially struck me as being tiresome childish wackiness. I stuck with it and became totally engrossed within the day. Now it's at a stage where, despite not completing it for a couple of years, memories of it keep popping back into my head, calling me to play again. Gameplay is fairly basic platforming-plus-special-abilities but it's the environments and ideas which make it a classic. It probably calls for a gamepad but I managed okay with a keyboard and mouse. I remember it being available for download on the Xbox Marketplace but I just read on Wiki that it was taken down. Hopefully they'll put it up again because I'd prefer to play a platformer on a console. If not though I'm sure it'll still be great on Steam. I've only ever played one Tim Schafer game, Stacking. It was good, quirky and clever and a bit different, but I got a little bored of it.

So cynical We'll see them earlier than we ever did when we were with Nike. Going back to that interview with the Head of Merchandising or whatever he was, he said that they'd be unveiling both kits around June didn't he? I'd be surprised if they didn't leak before then. Either way, much earlier than with Nike.

A lot of people think that Resident Evil 4 is the best of the series and I think it just got a HD overhaul so it might be worth checking that out. I can't imagine anyone ever exhausting zombie-related media though! It's one of the most over-populated themes of games, comics and movies and now it's branching into TV too. There was an article on why people love zombies so much that I read a little while ago that was pretty interesting.

Couldn't agree more, can't stand the bastards, completely take me out of being immersed in the experience and they're just boring. It's the only downside to Uncharted for me. An amazing series of games that I love, but those damn QTEs just keep popping up. So needless to say I shan't be getting Asura's Wrath, I played the demo and was bored out of my mind. I did think of playing it again just to count the amount of times the characters screamed as they unleashed an attack. Cliché, over the top garbage. KOA:Reckoning was a fun little demo though, if not a little overwhelming what with the constant loot drops. I can see why they did it in the demo since it's showing prospective players all the different kind of gear you can get but if the real game bombards you with new items every 30 seconds then it'd get a bit dull for me. It reminds me of Fable in the gameplay, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but there was never much to it for me. The combat system is no Demon's/Dark Souls, let's put it that way.

I loved Red Dead Redemption don't get me wrong, but with regards to the story and it's marriage to the gameplay, more specifically the moral system the game had, it didn't quite fit with me. If you played through like I did, being a good guy, then yeah the story was great. But since you had the choice to be immoral and achievements/trophies which rewarded you for being immoral, it just seemed a little out of place. I mean, for a guy who's effectively being forced to do things against his will since his family are at stake and the story goes to great lengths to portray this character as someone who has turned a new leaf and has it all to lose, it feels out of character to then go and get a ridiculously high bounty by shooting up a saloon full of innocent people. I know it's just a game at the end of the day but it took me out of the immersion somewhat. At least with the Grand Theft Auto series I'm generally playing a character who is at least conflicted between being good and being bad, but the way they showed Marston throughout the game just never really suggested he could be much of a bad guy, despite his past, and even then he would say how they still had a moral code despite breaking the law. Maybe I'm just over-analysing. It's still an absolutely amazing game.

I remember seeing the Sphere Grid on Final Fantasy X for the very first time and getting confused, but it really was very simple. FFX gave you the option of having a simplified version just in case too, but really it looked harder than it was and the other version gave you a lot more freedom. I played FFXIII when it first came out but I can't remember if the Crystarium had a similar feature, but it seemed quite simple to me since to begin with there aren't many branching paths you can go down.

Currently I'm switching my time between Catherine and Mass Effect. Catherine has multiple endings so I'm halfway through to getting all of those and I've nearly finished Mass Effect and then it's onto Mass Effect 2. It's one big game franchise I didn't get into for one reason or another. I must admit, I don't really like the gameplay of the first game too much, it's a little clunky, but I played the demo of Mass Effect 3 the other day and it was so much better, so hopefully Mass Effect 2 will be more like that. Before that I completed Skyward Sword and it is a really good game, although I prefered Twilight Princess. I love all the Zelda games though, I'm a huge fan and they're all great games. Someone mentioned Psychonauts and it's one game I've never gotten around to getting and I've heard nothing but great things about it. I'll have to get around to it sometime soon but I still have Skyrim and Deus Ex: Human Revolution half unfinished, and the MGS HD Collection still to play through and all this talk of FF7 in this thread and the Final Fantasy thread has made me want to do another walkthrough since it's been years. Then there's ME:3 and SSX out next month! So many games, so little time. Damn you social life.