Fierce_LiNk

Pissening. Hooooooow? How are they able to get so much air time? Also, this game + the new Chemical Brothers album on Spotify is just an instant win.

Ah, the Taekwondo explains it. I train at home usually, so it's probably just a case of improving my overhead pressing or finding an exercise like you mentioned earlier but one which can be done with just freeweights. Keep it up though, looking good.

Yeah, it's pretty cool that we're getting a game that focuses so much on a specific part of Britain. I'd love to play a few more games that are set in this part of the world rather than generic American big cities.

I think Everybody's Gone is out at the same time, brah. Huhuhu, too many fucking games. I've just realised that I have a £20 voucher for GAME thanks to an end of year gift from a pupil. Tempted to use that for some sort of big release...Fallout 4 maybe? Not sure what else I'm really desperate for.

I went shopping for shorts today and it was trickier than I expected. Large shorts were really tight around the quad region, so I ended up having to go xl. The downside of being a manlet and weight training is that clothes shopping becomes a bitch. I now need to find shirts that are wide around my back and shoulders but don't look too long. I spent most of my life hearing from women that trouser shopping was terrible because the cuts are straight and don't allow for curvy thighs and shit, yet I do see their point now. Clothes are designed for skinny people who don't even lift.

Looking awesome. How did you bring up your shoulders? Probably the body part I need to work on the most. (after calves)

Funny enough, I read about Brothers recently (awesome cider by the way) and remembered that you told me to get it. Will be looking into that. Hohokum is lovely, if abstract as fuck. If you imagine that Electroplankton had a bit of a point to it, it would closely resemble Hohokum. I liked it a lot. I imagine it's fun to play on an acid trip.

*£75 PSN credit bro-fist* *Eagerly scrolls through PSN store to look for bargains* I'll be buying Everybody's Gone To the Rapture on day one. Will be waiting for deals for FlOw, Flower and Contrast, too.

Thank you for that. I read @Happenstance's post below and thought that I'd try my luck anyway. I thought I'd take the piss a bit and order three. They went through but I didn't get any confirmation email about it being dispatched. Ah well, worth a try. About three days ago, I get an email from GAME saying that my items are on the way. They came yesterday. It's a bit lame actually, because each code was on a piece of that paper where you scratch the code off, but placed inside a blu-ray/Playstation case. Each case was sealed and each case came packaged inside a cardboard box. A bit of a waste of resources really for just three pieces of paper. I now have to figure out what I'll be doing with the cases. But, the fantastic news is that I now have £75 worth of credit for the PSN store!

That reincarnation part would actually be something that I'd want. Maybe not in this game, but maybe in something else in the future. Imagine that. You start off as a human and die in a battle, before being reincarnated as a spider who is trying to capture their prey. Maybe you get squashed and then come back as a fish being hunted by a shark, maybe even with humans as predators who try to capture you in their nets whilst hunting that shark. I'd play the shit out of that.

After checking with @Eenuh and after scouring the net and looking at pictorial evidence of my own lifts, I am most definitely squatting high bar. Before today, I assumed I was doing high bar but reading up made me know think I was doing low, but reading some more re-convinced me that it's high. Don't know why i doubted myself. I get Eenuh to form check me and take pictures so that I'm sure that the form is good on all lifts. Helped my deadlift immensely doing that and improved my squat form and depth, too.

I can go below parallel with high bar. :p Actually, looking at an image of something like this: I'm more high bar than low bar if going off that, except the bar is resting on the traps and not...lodged against my neck as it looks like it is on that.

I do low bar, so I'm usually dying in my quads afterwards. I had somebody in work yesterday notice that my legs were looking nice (wearing shorts) and trying on my shorts from last year, they are impossible to wear now as the quads are bigger. The only thing I'm concerned about with doing this sorta lifting program (focusing on the compounds) is that my calves are still a bit meh. But, I know that they're pretty much the hardest muscle to grow so I guess I just have to deal with it. Edit: Actually, the more images I look at, the more it looks more high bar than low bar. It's definitely not low bar in terms of bar placement.

I squatted 3x5 for 115.5kg and benched 80.5kg today for 2 sets of 5 and 1 of 4. I fucked up the last rep and hadn't set myself properly as tiredness kicked in, ergo I failed the last rep. I thought I had it, came pretty close. The first two sets for each exercise were pretty clean, but the final two reps for the squat and final two for the bench let me down a little. Still, new personal bests.

The balance is changing in a lot of cases because, I would argue, that actually the "experience" of the game is now becoming the most important thing. Take a game like Journey, for example. Games are now being seen as a form of art and are evolving into different things altogether. With a book, a story is just one part of it, because (and I'm sure many would argue) that character development plays almost a bigger part. My favourite book of all time (1984 - tied with Northern Lights) isn't my favourite because the story is special, but because of the downward spiral that the character Winston experiences throughout the book. "What makes a book a book?" is very similar to "what makes a game a game?" and I'm sure the answer to both isn't as clean cut as saying "story" and "gameplay." Videogames are becoming an art form in many different respects and they are changing. Electroplankton, Hohokum, Heavy Rain, Flower are just some examples that I can think of off the top of my head. As technology improves and as new creators enter the field, you'll see games changing in lots of interesting ways. I've already given you some of the games in which major outcomes can be altered through participation and I think we'll see more of this in the future, especially with hardware becoming better. It's not just about powerful graphics, but being able to do more complex things - especially in terms of how you deliver the story. Metroid Prime was very unique with how it delivered the backstory through the logs and somebody who gathered the logs would have ended up with a completely different understanding of the game compared to somebody who hadn't. To me, this is what makes fascinating and it gives it some form of purpose. Yes, it's entertainment, but it's also something you can participate in and you have some control over how it plays it. What I'm excited about is how that level of control is changing, especially with how your actions can actually affect things not only on a short-term level, but on a long-term level. Imagine if (Zelda again) Link walks into a specific area of Hyrule Field and kills all of the monsters there. What if the people then come back to that area and suddenly new sidequests pop up as a result of it? What if (this is getting really complex now) that on one playthrough, you leave that area alone, and so don't meet a certain character, but you meet that character on the second area and they help you at the end of the game in a boss fight?

I think I'm close to the end of this. I think it's a bit mixed, tbh. Definitely not a great game, but it's lived up to my expectations because I wasn't super hyped. Unless something superb happens, I think it's a 7.5/10. There's far, far, faaaar too much emphasis on the Batmobile in this game.

I'm pretty sure that the first half of that trailer is exactly the same as the God Save The Queen trailer for this game when it originally came out. I heard that this was coming out on other systems, but I'm disappointed that it pretty much looks to be a straightforward port with no improvements. It'll sell about two copies.

Reading this bold part makes you sound like a dinosaur. Can you influence the outcome of a book by just reading it? Nope. But, you can influence a game's story by playing it. The Walking Dead games for example have you doing this. You could end up with different experiences each time of playing it. With inFAMOUS, you even choose at regular points whether to be a bad guy or a hero. This is the type of thing I'd like to see expanded on in videogames, where your actions in the game actually affect the overall world and story that is contained within it. My favourite game of all time does this and I'm excited to see where the medium takes it from this point onwards. Stories in videogames are getting better, as is the quality of the character animation, voice acting and script work and this SHOULD continue to improve because it all adds up to the overall package of a game. I hate this outdated view that "it's all about the gameplay" "I love the gameplay and that's all that matters" because...it's bullshit, quite frankly. There is so much that makes a game a special "package" that to not acknowledge it is disrespectful to the artists and writers who poured their soul into it. Eternal Darkness. One of my favourite Nintendo games of all time has some of the best script-work in a videogame for that time, as well as outstanding voice acting and sound design. The fundamental gameplay underneath is great, but you couldn't just have the gameplay by itself because...you'd end up with nothing. Story-telling is now becoming an important part of gaming for a reason, because you can evoke feelings that you can't otherwise obtain from being a reader or a viewer; you are a participant. You are Link, you are Samus, etc. One of the key reasons I have fallen out of love with Nintendo is that they are becoming piss poor at telling stories. I fell in love with the story of Ocarina of Time and we/you are kidding yourself if you're telling me that you didn't fall in love with that game for a large part because of the set pieces, graphical finesse of the game at that time and the dialogue between the characters. Nintendo are missing a huge, huge trick by "overloading" everything into the gaming department because there's a large part of extra stuff that coexists with that to make the overall "package" special. Gaming needs to continue to evolve and Nintendo with it. We need each of the separate components to improve as technology and skill improve and we need more cohesion between each of these parts. What if a crucial piece of dialogue in a Zelda game, for example, caused Link to save a character's life? What if the entire ending of a game, thus the finale of the story be altered by doing different actions within a game?

I agree a lot with what you're saying. I think the rest of the gaming world has either caught up or overtaken Nintendo in many respects. I wasn't sold on the WiiU concept and, imo, we're still pretty much waiting for a game to actually make some decent use out of that damn, oversized, ugly controller. I hope to God that the NX isn't another one of these "concept" consoles, otherwise I'm out.

Haha, @Eenuh came thiiiiis close to picking up Osiris last month. I've wanted Limbo and Sound Shapes for aaaaages. Feelsgoodman.

My Witcher sense was tingling and I had to answer this immediately. U wot m8? Let me give you a brief overview of how the gameplay works. I'm going to take a relatively simple mission structure show you how it works. - You pass by a villager who tells you that they're worried that somebody they know has gone missing. They give you a rough area to search. This is all done with voice acting and it's own designated and unique cut scene. It's not a cookie cutter type of template. - You go to the area and you use your Witcher senses to look for clues. This is an important gameplay mechanic that you use very, very frequently throughout the game. You might have to follow some tracks that take you to a body. - You examine the body and identify what killed the person. Let's just say that, in this case, it's a night-wraith. Night-wraith's can't be viewed during the day, so you can either do some other shit and come back to it later, or you can meditate and fast-track-through-time to whenever you want (to the hour). - Here's a Night-wraith. You can choose to equip an oil to your blade to boost your power. I also sometimes use potions to boost my stats or even to give me certain powers, such as being able to see in the dark, or being able to increase my speed. Using cat to see in the dark is immense. - I use the magic power/glyph or Yrden to create a trap. Whenever the wraith comes into my circle, I can attack her and take off a shit load of damage. - There is also an upgrade system in place where you can determine what sort of "build" you want your character to become. I started off by upgrading my combat stats, but there are some awesome magic skills that you unlock. For example, using Quen means that you can summon a magic shield around you. Upgrading Yrden means you can increase it's distance and even take off damage when they're in your circle. Using Igni means that you can actually WIELD FIRE, like a human-flamethrower effect. - After you kill it however the fuck you like, you go back to the person who gave you the mission and collect the reward after giving them the news. This is also where you get another unique cut scene. In some missions, I could even choose to LIE to the person. I did this in one mission where a mother was looking for her son. He had been hanged for abandoning his squad, but I told her that he had died in battle, thus saving her heartache. What you do in these missions changes the outcome of the world. The battle system fucking rules. You can decapitate enemies, slice off limbs, use Axii (magic, again) to cause enemies to remain stunned or even to cause them to fight each other. You can use Aard to force enemies back. You can use explosive bolts to take off a shitload of damage. You can get better swords and armour and actually customise them to an extent by equipping them with runes to boost their stats. Ronnie, if you're going to come out with these points, at least understand what you're talking about beforehand. The Witcher 3 IS re-writing the template for how not only RPGS should be written, but pretty much every adventure game that will follow it...in every sense. Gameplay, visuals, overworld, writing, you name it.

I've just finished Journey for the first time. That was one of the most beautiful experiences from a visual and musical perspective that I've had. I can't fault the game at all, it was pretty much perfect with everything. It's short, but I think that makes it better. I can definitely see myself playing through it again. I love how the story is told to you, or rather you figure it out without ever hearing a voice-over or read a text. The usage of a random player as a companion is genius. The final five or ten minutes is breath-taking. I had to stop playing this game every few minutes to grab a quick screenshot, it's just so damn beautiful. This one was definitely worth the wait. Stunning on so many levels. I think the message behind the game (the story, I guess) is powerful and inspiring. I'm so glad that I finally got a chance to play this. Games of 2015 Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor - Finished and Platinumed Transistor - Finished The Walking Dead Season One - Finished and Platinumed inFAMOUS Second Son - good ending completed Watchdogs - started in 2014, finally finished main story The Walking Dead Season Two - Finished The Order 1886 - Finished BLOODBORNE - Finished Never Alone - Finished Hohokum - Finished The Witcher 3 - Story (and many other quests!) completed Journey - Finished

NX, eh? NX...Ennix...Enix...Square-Enix FFXV for Nintendo systems confirmed. Dragon Quest CONFIRMED NX is joint venture between Nintendo and Square-Enix.

That shot of Batman...hnnnngggg. I know the new look of LUTHORRRR has received a fair bit of criticism (most of it stemming from omg, but he haz hair), but I quite like it. I can see Eisenberg pulling this off.

I don't even remember that, didn't everyone just use the thread in Nintendo Gaming? Or was it General? I can't remember. This will be the first Dragon Quest game I play, so it better be good. I'm guessing this will be out in, what, 10 years then or something?