Sheikah

Since you loved Fallout you should love this. Fallout 3 essentially used a lot of Oblivion's mechanics so this should be a delight for you. I also love the fantasy setting and the beautiful environments, they're much nicer to walk through than a world hit by a nuclear apocalypse. The quests are also done much better here, although first person melee combat can be a bit awkward at times. I really like how the perk system takes a leaf from FFX's sphere grid. A welcome addition.

I'm hearing a lot people calling the PC version a bad port of the console versions. I think this is mainly to do with controls/menu navigation if anything.

Wahey, good to see ShopTo deliver again. Just peering over the cloth map while the thing updates and installs. Surprised V2.0 already!

You can skip to the boss in the painted world very quickly. As long as you can kill the dragon outside (easy enough with crystal ring shield) you can walk up to its dead legs and do a jump attack (push forward the left stick and press R2 at the same time). This reaninates the legs and allows you to basically walk on past and drop down straight to the boss!

AC is brilliant, shame on you ReZ.

I was more or less referring to Aimless's detailed account of all character motivations and traits, some of which were quite contrived (Charlie is very underdeveloped as a character, for instance, that we know very little about). And also the idea that the main focus of the story are at most, a few lines of the script. I'll tell you why Nate goes on to the 'treasure', it's because it wouldn't be much of a game if he didn't see it to the end. I like the set pieces in the game, and ultimately we wouldn't have seen them if the story didn't go the way it did. The story is there to enable the set pieces and luscious settings. I wouldn't consider the characters to be the focus of the story.

Clearly then, a two word subtitle makes 99% of the game's focus completely redundant. Thanks for clearing that up. I'll be off, going to play Final Fantasy which is apparently the last one. Y'know, because of the title.

Aside from the assumptions you're making about why the characters do what, and what drives them, most things in your post (such as him not really being Drake's descendent) are given such little focus in the game and are so quickly uttered that it's madness to suggest that is what the real story is about. Had they devoted more time to character development we might actually know more about characters like Charlie other than that they're claustrophobic. Which is why I think you're quite wrong to make such bold conclusions. Yes, we know they broke up, and then got back together, and yes it probably was to do with adventuring. But the rarity of such nuggets of information in the game makes it difficult to say at the heart of the plot is the character profiles. Just not given enough attention to be the main focus as far as I'm concerned. One thing that came to mind about your conclusions was your opinion about Sully being only in it for the money. If this was true, he wouldn't have saved Nate as a kid while he was being chased by the organisation. Sully was clearly hired by them, thus doing that would clearly have cost him. It also seems unlikely he'd make himself public enemy number one on top of losing that job purely to train up a kid in the hope they find treasure one day! Also factor in after being rescued at the end he continues on to fight. Clearly there's no money in it at that stage, so it's obviously friendship.

Yes there was more to the plot that closely mirrored UC2, gave pretty good examples a few posts back. Crystal Skull was arse water.

I think you'd have to interpret very deeply to come to the conclusion that a light hearted cliched story full of one liners and near misses was a plot about the psychology of the characters. I'm not saying UC needs a great story to work even though UC3's story was unimaginative. Just that the story part of UC games is hardly brilliant. Cube, Uncharted 2 to 3 were considerably more conserved than Indy films I'd say. But that's not to say it's justified anyway; the Indy franchise hardly stood the test of time by keeping its formula, just look at Crystal Skull.

Strongly disagree, they could have used a simple plot generator to change the specifics of UC2 to make UC3, which I think was quite lazy. The story works for the kind of game it is but it was by no means amazing like one or two stated.

Lightning is currently the best damage dealing weapon type, the giant BS can do that modification by default. As for getting the witch to spawn, there seems to be the belief that you need an upgraded pyro glove to make her spawn. Maybe needs NG+? As for where to go next, the places that get unlocked after the lordvessel are left of where you start from where you warp to Anor Londo (Duke's archives), Tomb of Giants (follows on from Catacombs) and the demon ruins after Queelag's domain.

I will make the point that even if the precise details are different the format of the story is very, very similar.

Obviously unconfirmed but fairly sensible to conclude. An overhead view dictates the function of the items and dungeon design. If the next Zelda games are to be closer to console titles than handhelds I should think one of the necessary requirements will be no top down view.

Loved Oblivon (fully completed it on PS3 and 360, oddly). But god damn, why is every game I want coming all at once? It's making it hard to feel really geared for every game. Preordered this at ShopTo so most likely I'll have it on Friday. The thing I love about Elder Scrolls is the depth in the history of the world and the script. So easy to get lost in their games.

Just completed it on Crushing, very easy I felt. Picked up all the treasures too, at some point I might bother with the lesser trophies. It surprised me how conserved the format (and even the direction of the story) was to UC2. And was a bit disappointing too, if I'm honest.

There are 4 blacksmiths in the game, each handles different weapon upgrades (e.g. crystal, lightning, chaos). To do these upgrades you need to get the relevant ember and bring it to them. Every weapon can be upgraded to +5 using any blacksmith or even the upgrade box at bonfires. When you get to +5, however, you can send it to +6 only if you have the large ember and give it to Andre. You can only go from +5 to +6 using Andre the blacksmith, not at the bonfire. You do this by selecting "modify equipment" and going along to the tab that deals with +5 to +6 weapon ascension. After the weapon has become +6, you can continue to upgrade it to +10 using the bonfire or any blacksmith, using the reinforce weapon section (not the modify equipment). To recap, 'modify equipment' is to give a weapon a property, and the property you want will dictate which blacksmith you will need and which ember you will have had to give him. Modifying equipment (apart from catalyst weapons) always requires the weapon/shield to be at some whole number, either +5 or +10). A typical upgrade example: You want a Fire Uchigatana + 10. To do this, you can use the bonfire/any blacksmith to upgrade it to +5 (using Titanite Shards). You then visit Blacksmith Vamos in the catacombs who can modify it into a fire Uchigatana + 0 by default (he doesn't need an ember for this). You then require 13 green titanite shards to upgrade it to a +5 Fire Uchigatana. To then get this above +5 you need to find the large fire ember and give it to Vamos. Vamos can then modify the +5 Fire Uchigatana into a +6 Fire Uchigatana. You then can use the bonfire/any blacksmith to upgrade the weapon to Fire Uchigatana + 10. Note that going from +6 to +10 mostly requires Red Titanite Chunks, but the last upgrade from +9 to +10 requires a red titanite slab (rare). The last upgrade on any weapon/armour usually requires a slab of some sort. So yeah, specific blacksmiths and embers are required to modify a weapon, so that it can reach the next 'stage' if you like. But once it's reached that stage, you can further upgrade it at the bonfire or any blacksmith. This image helps in terms of telling you which blacksmith/ember you require for each type of weapon, as well as how many titanite ores and which types you need to max each weapon.

Np, You get the ability to teleport right after defeating the Anor Londo boss. It only lets you travel to certain bonfires though, Firelink is one, as well as most covenant situated bonfires. Good thing is that even though you can only travel to a selection of bonfires, you can travel from almost all of them.

Is that not what they've been doing already with the DS titles? I thought the next ones being full 3D meant a different direction being taken.

Very glad with the proper 3D title direction. Is it just me, or does anyone else find the current DS Zelda iterations a bit watered down and crap? I loved the old style of gameboy Zelda games, and I love the 3D Zelda style too. But the one's they've been making for handhelds recently are stuck somewhere between, feeling a bit like lite versions of each type and nothing really spectacular.

Yeah I did, it's ace. Manchester is a really good uni, great academic/social balance there.

Cool. Back in Sep 2005, I was in your boots. What are you studying? I did Cell Biology.

Are you at the main uni in Manchester? If so, good choice.

What I meant was that if a game developer introduces serial codes effectively it wouldn't matter how many consoles their game was on. They could keep the price of the game high, or at least higher than second hand trade ins.

Are the prices as good as say Amazon Marketplace prices? It would be nice if because every single sale went back to the actual game makers/distributors (under digital only) that they discounted even further, but I don't think they would.