Fierce_LiNk

Unfortunately, this. I enjoyed the Wii era and it fitted in nicely around my social life. I wouldn't say that I was gaming ALL of the time then, so to have the Wii there and to play the odd game was enough for me. I've got a bit more time now and I've got a hunger to play games. Unfortunately, I'm finding Nintendo's output to not have the same impact on me as it has done in the past. I want something with a bit more depth to it and Nintendo just aren't providing that for me, imo. I didn't like Mario Kart 8 as it feels really barebones in places, I didn't get on with Smash Bros because...I feel like I've already experienced it already. There's not enough there to bring me back or to keep my attention for a long amount of time. Splatoon would have been useful to me 18 months ago. But...and this is a big but...The Witcher 3 is here and it is EVERYTHING that I wanted in a game. That depth, storyline, characters, setting, atmosphere, world building, combat, adventuring that I wanted from, say Zelda, is all there. Splatoon may be a good game and maybe even a great one, but The Witcher is probably the best game I've ever played in my life. Once I've finished with The Witcher, I've got Batman to play this month. There's just too much other stuff to play. I don't feel as if Nintendo make the best games anymore and I'm finding that I'm actually looking at the complete package for a game and seeing that Nintendo actually come up short in a lot of areas. I don't think it's a change in taste because these are things that I've always looked for. Immersive settings, atmosphere, dialogue, characters, a strong soundtrack, gameplay that fits in with the world it aims to create...these all fit in with the past Nintendo games that I loved, such as Eternal Darkness, Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Nintendo may be good at mechanics, but they skimp out big time in other important areas these days. I honestly can't remember the last time I seriously enjoyed a Nintendo game for the story. I can't really say that I'm really missing Nintendo to be honest, because there are certain games that give me the same sorta feeling that previous Nintendo games used to give me. The Witcher gives me the same feeling as Ocarina and Majora. Hohokum is sorta like an Electroplankton with a point, which was a handheld game that I loved - that's saying a lot because I historically don't get along with handhelds. If things carry on the way they're going, I very much doubt I'll be picking up the next Nintendo system. I'd rather use that money to buy games on a system I already own, of which there are plenty of options and diversity.

I'm playing The Witcher 3 and Batman is also out this month and already preordered. I'm sorted for the next few months with these two alone.

Yeah, it is pretty sad. But, ExciteTruck was like...eight years ago now. F Zero was even longer than that and the truth is that I can't be arsed waiting around another ten years or so for the next big/different racer to come around. I need new stuff and I need it much sooner than that, rather than it just being wheeled out for a bit of fan service or something. Maybe I'd change my mind and get caught up in the hype if another ExciteTruck gets revealed, I'd love to. I played the shit out of that game and I was waiting for moar. All Nintendo had to do was release the next one and I'd have been on that. But noooooo.

Brah, I literally shit myself every time I play this game. You can get insaaaaaane deals now on both the One and PS4. Insaaaaaaane. There's more than enough quality out there for you to enjoy including this. I do not regret jumping into next gen one bit. I spent hours the other day just riding around looking at stuff. I've never played Skyrim, so can't compare. If you're going to go next gen, you may as well jump in. Also, Batman is out this month. Dunno how the fuck I'm going to play these two games.

Maybe a chance to play the lead in Braveheart: The Musical?

Why would anyone want to go to Scotland? :p

I'm sure Messi cries himself to sleep at night whilst cuddling his Ballon d'Ors/FIFA World Player of the Year, Champions League trophies, La Liga medals and his beautiful wife. Zidane never came to England and had a hugely successful career. Fat Ronaldo had an illustrious career and never played for an English club. Franz Beckenbauer and Marco Van Basten never played for English clubs. You don't need to prove that you can do it in England to be considered a great. Looking at the way Barcelona and Madrid (possibly Bayern Munich, too) are hoovering up talent, one could argue that it's more important for English players to go there than it is the other way around.

Yennefer is awesome. Has quite a nice name, too. No waiiiii, brah. Your eyes need fixing if you think she's anything less than perfection. Just met an awesome new character for the first time:

It's not all about England.

Wood berry my pen0r in Keira's anus. This game seems to have a policy of only creating attractive women.

Let's be fair, he starts off near the half way line. That's a long way to the goal and he has tons of players around him. The only way to bring him down if he's running at you is to foul him, which I think one or two even tried to do. Bilbao aren't a dogshit team either. Can't you just give him the credit for that? As for Forlan, he clearly had talent when he played for us (Scouse Slayer), it just didn't entirely work out for him. We knew he was a great player and it's clear to see that the talent was there to be unlocked.

I remember that second one. Think they were all AI players that got sent off, too? It was three players. Hahahaha, we played really, really well during that game.

Sickening goal. He can do anything.

I had my annual school camp-out Friday and yesterday and I remember that I actually received my PS4 when I got home from last year's camp-out. I've backtracked the dates and my memory isn't failing me at the age of 28! It's been a whole year since I've had my PS4. Feels simultaneously longer and shorter than that, but the dates don't lie. I was reaching a troublesome time with gaming. I was playing less and less on the WiiU and was confused about whether I should be gaming at all. I dug out the DreamCast and went through a phase of playing through that again. I really enjoyed it, but I wanted to move forwards, not to dig deeper into the past and look at systems with libraries of games that I already had some experience of. I wanted new experiences. It was either get a new system (money...), stick with what I have (WiiU, but I wasn't happy) or give up and do something else (spent more time with music). There were numerous deals for the PS4 and One and I ummed and ahhhhed over what to do. I'd never owned a PlayStation, so I went for that. The game that I wanted to try was The Last of Us, which became the game that swayed me over the PS4 rather than the One. I looked for deals and snapped one up from HotUKDeals for £299...a lot of money to me and it was very much an impulse buy. The first game that I bought for the system was Resogun. Didn't know anything about it, but loved it instantly. Fun, fast, furious, fucking difficult. A few days later, my copy of Tomb Raider arrived and this is where I properly fell in love with the system for the first time. I couldn't put this game down. I would come home from a long day at work and no matter what mood I was in, this HAD to be played. The hours would fly by and I was rather gutted to reach the end of the game, but thankful that I had experienced this adventure. WatchDogs and Assassin's Creed: Black Flag were next. I had @Sheikah pestering me to get AC, but I knew WatchDogs was something I just needed to play and I'm again thankful that I did. I'm not ashamed to say that I had playtimes of around 8 hours on this, daily. I couldn't put it down. There's something addictive about the game...I loved the hacking, I loved people randomly jumping into your game, I loved the storyline. Couldn't put the damn thing down. The Last of Us was the next game to make it's memorable mark. I knew absolutely nothing about the game, but it gripped me instantly. It sucked me in and it had me laughing, crying, frustrated and elated in all of the right places. I clapped at THAT final moment in the game and also gasped that they managed to end it on such a note. A very unique ending for a game and one hell of a soundtrack that is perhaps the best I have ever heard. I loved the characters and storytelling. I could really keep talking about this until the end of time, but for the sake of the length of this post, I won't. The next game I'm going to talk about is perhaps THE reason why I realised I had to move away from the WiiU and had to get a PS4...Alien: Isolation. In its reveal, I was dubious. We had been let down before with this franchise and I didn't fully believe we'd get what they promised. My curiosity started to rise with more previews and videos; it's starting to look quite good. Then, the hype reached critical point for me, so I had to calm myself before I bought the game. It well and truly delivered and is perhaps one of my favourite ever games. I spent 3 hours in one playthrough moving from locker to locker, trying to get away from the Alien (San Cristobal Medical Facility). The game ruined me in places and it taught me to be patient. At the end of it, I was feeling just as fragile as at the start, yet slightly more wiser and more able to survive more and more and die less and less. I was terrified to turn the damn game on at times as I knew what I was in for and that menu music continues to haunt me even now. FIFA15 has been a great experience, if only for the Pro Club nights which have been a great laugh. I'm terrible at it and I know that I'm very limited compared to a lot of other people on here, but it has been a really, really fun time for me. The league was great fun whilst it lasted and I think it's worth another shot at. I must get back on this, but the truth is that there's just too much other stuff to play and that is making it difficult for me to get back into it. Which leads me onto... Bloodborne. I was unsure about this game. Very unsure. So unsure that I only spent about £7 on it (we used @Eenuh's Sainsburys points to get the game) and I was still unsure when I purchased it. Part of me thought that I should have gone for Far Cry, or Wolfenstein, or something equally as safe. There was that definite fear of the unknown. I knew absolutely nothing about this game and hadn't played any of the Souls games beforehand. Instantly, I was put off. The game is disorientating. It's fucking HARD. It's got long loading times. Oh, I died. I died again. Again. Loading. Dodgy frame rate. I spent about an hour trying to get through THAT street in Central Yharnam and kept dying repeatedly. I came onto here and ranted. I went to facebook and expressed my disappoint. I spoke to Ine and told her how I regretted getting this. I hated it. It was my worst purchase of all time. So, I ran. I did anything I could to get through that fucking street and I ran past everything. It failed miserably the first time. The second time, I got slightly further than before. The third time, I'd made it...I was in this unknown section with a fountain. Where do I go next? I don't know...there's no maps, no objective markers, no waypoints...I have no idea what I'm doing. I slowly started discovering new areas. I become more powerful. I got destroyed by Cleric Beast, but then hung in there and obliterated him the next time I tried him. I unlocked short cuts. I started becoming more powerful. The Forbidden Woods became a favourite area of mine. I would play this game with Spotify on in the background (listened to Machina by the Smashing Pumpkins which has now become my favourite Pumpkins album and is synonymous with my love for this game). By the end of the game, something had changed. I know loved this game and it has become one of my favourites of all time. It's re-taught me everything I thought I had already known about videogames. I had re-learned how to be patient, how to not take death as a negative, but as a positive learning experience. "Right, you died this time, so what do you do differently next time?" I had learned how to be intelligent about how to approach things. I became less rash, more measured. A fucking WARRIOR. The Walking Dead: Season One and Two. Never played a point and click. Massive fan of the tv show and this did not disappoint. I'm not ashamed to say that Season One depressed the fuck out of me and left me feeling completely bummed out in certain sections. Season Two was no better! In truth, I loved every single second of it and it was fun to play this alongside @Eenuh. I can't wait for Season Three or even some DLC to tide me over. Episode Two of the first season is one of the most unsettling things that I've ever seen or played and it'll stay with me forever, but it's also a mastercraft of storytelling and script work. I'm currently playing The Witcher 3. I just...can't believe a game like this has been created. It's huge, it's got a fantastic storyline and I love the world that has been created within it. I've already talked about the quests and how it feels like everything is connected together, but this is a real work of art and it's already in my top 10 for favourite games ever. I'm not going to talk anymore about this because I've covered it all in its own thread already. Within only one year of owning this machine, I've had numerous games and experiences that have been game-changers for me. I thought I had already had a vague idea of what I wanted in a videogame, but this year has thrown so many curveballs and has begun to ask me new questions. I can't put down The Witcher, I made it through Bloodborne, I survived Alien Isolation, I listen to the Last of Us soundtrack as least weekly...it's been an unforgettable year for me and has been hands-down the best bargain and usage of £300 that I have ever spent. I'm gaming now more than I ever did at any point in my life, including the Mega Drive, N64 and GameCube eras.

Imo, it would be very difficult to keep up the suspense in the game with more than one of the creature. Even the film Aliens shows this. There's more of the creatures, so it becomes a different type of terror. You never had the impression that each individual Alien in Aliens was as terrifying or indestructible as the one solitary Alien in the original. What made Isolation so good to play was that it felt like you had one adversary that was out to destroy you. It felt very personal. At least for the vast majority of the game.

Arsenal were by far the better team. I was initially surprised by Villa's performance. But, when you look at all of the different factors, it does make some sense. They've not played well this season and almost got relegated. They've not been playing well in their last few games. They've got a new manager who was brought in at a difficult time to primarily keep them up. Certain players have either been injured or are flat out knackered after the relegation fight. They overachieved in getting to the final and the fact they made it there is a huge achievement. I thought that they might cause a surprise today, but their performance shows that they deserve to be exactly where they are in the league and it also shows that Arsenal also deserve to be where they are. Arsenal looked great and played excellent football. First real game I've actually noticed Ozil on the pitch, tbh. Cazorla has been my favourite Arsenal player to watch for a while and he was great again today. Deserved to win the final.

I did at the start but then it seemed to go off slightly in another direction. I know absolutely nothing about this developer or Amensia and Penumbra.

Just for the record, I've thanked Goafer's post for the following bits. I think there's already a thread somewhere about colour and diversity. Maybe you guys should carry this on in there.

It's overwhelming at first, but then becomes less physically imposing the more you play. The stories and quests just drag you in and you can quickly sink hours into it. I'm ashamed to even look at my play time...I don't dare look.

Thanks to @Retro_Link for finding this.

I think that's worth a new thread.

Cheers Bard, can't unsee it now. You fuck.

I feel like I've been cut off from the rest of the world because I've been on a camp-out with work/school. Blatter got in, again. Really? Really? I laughed as soon as I found out. So, allegations of bribery, of World Cups being "bought", of representatives being corrupt and yet the elections still went ahead and he STILL got in. Seems legit. World cup? World cunt, more like. Or c*nt as @Wii would say.

I doubt I'd buy it now, tbh. I would've been all over that 18 months ago. Or, better still, when it got released elsewhere when it should have arrived in Europe. ExciteTruck was great and I was ready for a follow up. The delay between ExciteTruck appearing on the Wii and now is just far too great to get me in the mood again. A massive shame, as I plunged so many hours into that game.