The Bard

It's probably going to be the opposite actually. I mean, a good game is a good game, but I'm pretty sure part of why I was so into AC4 was because I was expecting it to be a bit shit. But it's still better than Doge.

Super good brahstafarian, only knock against it would be that for a Metroid style game the environments aren't very memorable, to the point that they have to make up for it with a waypoint. If they get to do a sequel I'd love it if they worked on the world a bit more, the action and abilities and feel of the game are great. Also, I ordered The Last of Us from Gamestop. Apparently it was dispatched last Wednesday and it still hasn't arrived. Anyone have any experience with these fuckwads? Don't think I'm ever going to buy from them again.

Rock Paper Shotgun for coverage of unusual indie, kickstarter and early release as well as triple-a games. PC centric. Well written.

Anyone who has plus and hasn't tried out Strider, get on it immediately if not sooner. It's the best thing I've played on my PS4 so far.

I was supposed to read that for my fiction and narrative class five years ago. I read a fantasy series for young adults about a necromancer who kills dead people instead.

Maybe on a Nintendo console that sold 100 million consoles over its lifetime. A number that the Wii U isn't even going to reach a quarter of. Anyway, I'd like for them to do the same with RE0, never played much of that game but those gorgeous pre-rendered backdrops still look appealing.

Remember when Capcom pledged all their Resi games to the Gamecube which then went on to sell like shit? Yup. As for this, I'm really excited, it's recently become my favourite Resident Evil - one of the moodiest and most atmospheric games around. Oh and fuck, I really hope they get rid of the door opening loading sequence. Imagine how much more fluid playing it will be when opening a door isn't a tactical consideration weighed against your fucking patience.

Yeah, about to move onto the third. Looking forward to it all to be honest. I was hoping the fifth was a return to quality since the Harman returned after season 4? Abed is a more central (and interesting) character to me than Shirley because he's a vehicle for the show to reflect on itself - the constant references to popular culture are both an interesting framework for him to apply a logic and structure to the shit that happens in his life, and also work because the references allow the show to winkingly spoof other film and tv by way of presenting events through Abed's viewpoint. He's like the writers' direct line to the audience, and by far my favourite character.

Fashionably late to the party; I watched two seasons of Community over the last five days. It's the best thing of all time.

Wasn't the game pretty much supposed to be the official sequel?

I never had a PS3 until feb 2013 and I barely played it, 360 was my main and I jumped that ship because Microsoft went from pioneering great shit like their XBLA summer releases and great multiplayer titles to being all about Netflix and sports coverage. A lot of people I know are doing the same.

Sure but while in real life you get a personal snapshot of you doing a kegstand, with the Trophchievement model you get the same lame postcard from the giftshop that everyone else got. Secondly, if the thing you did wasn't cool enough for you to remember without a trophy, isn't that enough evidence that it isn't worth remembering in the first place? Good point about the challenge, but if the only purpose it serves is as a memento or incentive, why the squabbling over whether trophies or achievements are better? I realise I've contributed far too much to a conversation that I just said is pointless so I'll stfu.

Trophies and Gamerscore are about as dumb as wanting your mum to be by the pool when you do a double flip off the springboard or by the sidewalk when you ride your bike down the street with no hands. Do that shit because it's fun, not because you want the imaginary watcher there to prove that you did it.

Aw man Last of Us didn't come today, had all of the envy seeing the lot of you playing it in the middle of the night.

At the same time, the decision about whether to get a Wii U isn't made in a vacuum right? Your consideration of whether to get a Wii U or not was based on having had similar experiences in the past or on your other consoles, but you might not necessarily have been considering another console because you already had other places to play games (like your Wii or PS2 or whatever). In a land without videogames the Wii U is king. So it's natural to assume that other places to experience videogames also figures into Iun's decision, and as for recommendations we sort of have to take other options into account, especially since he hasn't told us what other consoles he owns.

Well reasons to get or not get something are given with the assumption that money is an object, otherwise the whim would be enough, and the question is obviously comparative to similar entertainment devices he could buy; a valid reason not to buy the Wii U is that there are other things he could get that would be a better bet for gaming. In China I'd even say go for a PC, there are a bunch of free to play games catered for that audience. But that assumes that he's into those types of games/ his friends also play, since they tend to be multiplayer focused. The one reason I've been wanting to get a Wii U is upscaled Virtual Console and Wii games. Hell I'd have one by now if the screen controller wasn't inflating the price, or it had launched at the price the Gamecube did. Shit, the Gamecube tech was very advanced for its time, it was almost twice as powerful as a PS2, had a far superior AMD GPU and it was only £129.99. It had more amazing games in its launch window than the Wii U had in its entire first year.

Don't bother with the Wii U unless you've literally played every Nintendo game available on the Wii. I'm still playing through Mario Galaxy 2 and I've yet to get Skyward Sword (might not bother with this one) and there are a few others. If it's Nintendo games you miss, the backlog is often better quality than the games that are coming out now. Buying a Wii U at this point won't really engage you for more than a couple of weeks and you'll be bankrolling a failed business venture than buying a properly viable gaming platform.

Before the trailer for this rolled in the cinema I mentioned to my girlfriend that I wanted to see it, after it was done we both wanted to barf it looked so fucking bad. Bradley Cooper's character is the absolute worst.

I think I'm missing some details. Did you ever speak to this girl or did you just share a commute?

Dude Road Not Taken just looks like a triple town-esque match three game. Lame as fuck for a plus game. Fez on the other hand I've heard such amazing things about but I haven't played it. Now's about the right time to get on that ish.

There are also plenty of people who would be gutted if you took away their hoard of used toilet paper. I meant to tell you, that phrase applies to a children's videogame franchise, not venereal disease. Ps. I'll pretend not to be a dick for a moment and concede that the meta-game game introduced by high scores can be fun (it's the only reason for the hours spent on Geometry Wars and Pacman) when it's a way to mediate competition between friends. But it's superfluous in a game where you can actually directly compete. So why not take mastery of the game as your incentive rather than the meta-game which in Mario Kart's case serves no purpose?

Oh right, well yeah you do have to look to other places to meet people but you're likely still engaging with them in person rather than deferring your interactions to an online space. It just feels more personal and less like you're middlemanaging something that's "supposed" to be intuitive. Again this isn't me saying online dating is shitty, more that I'm shit at it.

@MoogleViper I've never dated so I can't really comment. How so? I tried OKC for a couple of months in 2012 but it required me to develop a skillset that was a combination of writing a CV and answering work emails, two things that bore me more than anything in the whole world. I never messaged anyone but I got about twenty messages from different girls none of whom were interesting online but whom I'm fairly sure would have been fine had I randomly met them in meatspace. Allowing people to vet the persona they put online is generally a shitty idea for dating. It's different on forums because nothing that happens on here has the same fraught, insecure energy that dudes on dating sites do (apart from Serebii furiously teabagging Nintendo's corpse). Also I'm not the right personality type for online dating, it takes way more patience to wait a week for a message than it does to wait a few seconds for an in-person reply. Also my face is too sexy to translate in all its majesty to pictures. That shit makes me look like a 9 instead of the solid 10 I am.

Nah I didn't. I had one back in 2004 but then I sold it to buy a PSP (tragic error). I should get one though, been meaning to play Shenmue for a long time. But more for the nostalgia/ to engage in coitus on.

Yeah but also the "playing the numbers" thing just seems unintuitive and missing the actual vibe of meeting someone you like and instead turns it into a heartless, largely thankless slog. It's literally like grinding for a rare weapon drop in some shitty MMO.