Jamba

Almost word-for-word my feelings on things. I'm a SS fan for the same reasons and I think what you have explained about exploration goes a way to suggesting why I don't like TP very much. I think what you get out of the exploration has to be meaningful as well, such as some great views of a beautifully designed world ala World of Warcraft or keeping ahead of the curve game-wise ala Metroid. Big empty spaces =/= large worlds. One thing I'd add, that not a lot of people mention about SS is the relationship between Link and Zelda. For the first time in a while I've felt some genuine emotion for those characters. Zelda was a strong character as well rather than a classic helpless damsel and Link wanted to help/save her because he cared about her not because she was useless like she is in some of the early games. Link saves the world to help share her burden.

I finished The Inner World recently and that only took me about 7-8 hours but I really enjoyed it and didn't feel cheated out of my money or anything. The problem I have with longer games is that if it takes you 20 hours to finish the normal playthrough and it's single player, I'm finding a lot of these games suggesting that I haven't got the vast majority out of it yet. I'm all for exploration and challenges but when I invested that much time in a game, something I have less and less time for, I don't want the act of getting to the content to be a chore. Take Smash for instance, it does a very good job of allowing you to get to most of the roster quite quickly which is great. And if you want you can earn the rest. But contrast that to Virtue's Last Reward... I've really enjoyed my first playthrough on that game but at the end it essentially says a massive "fuck you, you don't get the end of the storyline unless you play through this again... twice." I wouldn't have minded much as each room is a different puzzle so the game would have been different but I've had to read through HOURS of dialogue. I have no interest in trying to figure out which bits I can skip or not and it's completely put me off finishing it.

Don't care what your argument is, the tone is inappropriate. I'm the second person to tell you that. Read, understand and please chill the fuck out. If someone doesn't agree with your argument then you need to find a better way of discussing it. Telling them that they're an idiot is not the right way.

I want to play but feel so out of my depth!

Time investment =/= pay-off? Come on dazzy, you know this but stop expecting publishers to invest lots of development money in something that they don't think will do good figures.

Do you think you could maybe discuss things rather than throw insults? Don't you think that people are going to (as they have in this thread) ignore the point that you are trying to make if your front your point with personal attacks? No one is going to back up your argument in here if you talking to others like this. And it's not just you in this thread but you're definitely the worst offender.

Right so here is my review for The Inner World:

I wouldn't say so, I think that you are misunderstanding the intentions behind why people are saying what they are. You're raising the fair point that a lot of women/men are abused and trafficked through the current prostitution. But many others are raising the point that prostitution, the act of exchanging having sex with someone for money, is not in theory an awful thing. It's the abuse and underground nature of the industry that allows the bad to taint what could be a reasonable thing. In short, you're talking about the industry at present and everyone else is talking about what it could be.

Nah it's good dude :-) Would love to pick it up but can't really afford to be buying it atm. Think I might be able to scrounge it from an irl friend but will have to see. Really didn't want to play AA5 without having played AJ first.

I had something similar. Had a return from a customer the other day saying that reset button on their unit wasn't working only to have it arrive at work and find that it had been destroyed by one of their "engineer" with a screwdriver. They then claimed that the reset wasn't working and that's WHY they had a go at it with a screwdriver. I had to point our that this really didn't make any difference....

H interesting facts Mr Ike.... So basically midnight i.e. Friday morning in Japan then :p Was wondering why it was coming out on a Thursday. Onto a slight tangent, can't believe no one will lend me a copy of AJ. Is it just that no one owns it anymore, or is it's everyone's precious?

Me neither... bigger problem is that I've been in contact with @bluey this morning and it hadn't come onto the eshop yet. Hope is has this afternoon...

A lot of it is down to the physical medium and the size of the print runs that companies can afford for Nintendo to do. Big N aren't particularly flexible concerning this (weren't in the DS days anyway) and you either do a small run or a big run. Very rarely does anyone do a second print. Also the cartridges do not tend to get significant amounts of wear and handheld titles are relatively unaffected by the faddy, must-buy-newest-game-cos-all-my-friends-are-playing-it whirlwind that tends to go with console releases. What I CAN'T explain is why digital prices stay so f'ing high. Nintendo really need to start taking a leaf out of Steams book and have some proper sales. Get people going bat-shit-crazy for a games which would create enough buzz to increase sales at a higher price.

Duuuuuuuuude....

I can only see one likely option going forward which would be a model that drops the cartridge bay altogether. Maybe with this and improvements in chipset fabrication then they might be able to rearrange a few things, improving the spacing of the design. In short, the kind of stuff that I'd expect them to be doing for the next generation of handhelds anyway.

You're lucky your genders aren't the other way around. When an Indian couple get married, the wife usually goes to live with the husband and their family under one roof. *shudder* Sounds like it's not a huge loss though. Would have been nice but only short term thing right?

I would go so far as to say that this entire upcoming generation (Wii U included) has far stretch promise written all over it. The PS4 and XB1 launches both looked pretty uninspired and I think companies are asking a lot of consumers to invest so much in hardware without really being able to deliver on a lot of things at or even near launch. For the me the big selling point is trust in those companies to follow through, which is an entirely personal thing: For me personally, my opinion on Nintendo's rhetoric has massively changed. If I'm honest with myself, they very rarely deliver on their promises and with the release of the 3DS and the Wii U, I wouldn't say that I automatically read everything they print/present and lies but definitely "only true from a Nintendo perspective". By comparison I think that in the past both MS and Sony have been more forthcoming and transparent, with Sony having a big fumble in that department with the start of the PS3. However with the XB1 I think it has become clear that MS is willing to lie through it's teeth consistently nowadays. In short, I've become someone that will only invest in something that is either proven to be achieving what it's claiming to be valuable for or has an extremely safe cost/risk balance. A new console is neither.

Hey dude, bad decision made but not the end of everything. Why do you think it was your last chance anyway? If she was interested in you as a person then she would have picked up on that before you got skwiffed. And if not then that's fine too. Doubt you want either of you to be in a relationship that wasn't what you wanted.

I think this has far more to do with your interpretation of what law is and what it's for. You dislike people controlling you so you interpret law as being a set of "dos and don'ts" created by a group of people you have never met telling you what to do. Equally you could view it (as I do) as framework built upon a set of values that creates a nationally agreed standard for responsibility and accountability. If someone does something to break the law then their is a legal structure to define that they should be held accountable. Obviously some (usually the worst) laws are implemented to be deterrents or as @Cube put it, mandatory rules for the uninformed/great unthinking. But at the same time if those laws didn't exist, you could even have a smart person who simply decided that the probability of them being in an accident was very low so they would take the risk today. If they were in an accident then it would be less clear legally speaking that they would be accountable for causing injury to themselves or others by not wearing a seat belt. That would mean either that they wouldn't be held accountable at all or you would have to default to using broader, less specific laws which would require vastly greater periods of time to process and charge if necessary because it would be a less black and white situation for the courts. So in short, yes I can see where O_W is coming from and I understand that he doesn't care that much about this law in particular but it really does seem like the argument against is perception rather than a definable problem.

You bitch! To give it some context, I'd just spent the past day teaching 7 people (5 from the BBC) about TCP/IP and have managed to achieve a small miracle in terms of fitting a huge amount of context into a single day with that course. This by contrast was harrowing as I'm positive a decent amount of money gets put into this shit and no one ever checks that it's getting spent properly. The aim was to improve the PR image of the XB1 and get people enthusiastic about it. MISSION FAILED. A pod in the shop with no PR people would have been better.

On a serious note (and completely avoiding the spoilers above), would someone be prepared to lend me Apollo Justice? It's the only one I haven't played yet and I really want to find out what's going on with the guy with the penis shaped hair.

Eurgh! Don't wear that! The horizontal stripes make you look FAT32! On another note, people have already been kicking around the idea of Pokemon Z and I say, NO. I want Pokemon R.... I want to play as Team Rocket and I want my choice of starters to be Meowth, Ekans and Koffing. I want to go snag Pokemon in exchange for monies and fame. I want twinkling stars on my entrance and get exploded into the sky if I lose a battle! Someone make this happen nyaaaaaow!

So last night I went to the XB One lock-in party at the GAME store that bluey works at atm and I would say that the experience of the event left a huge amount to be desired. But let's start with the console experience first: Playtime Rise Demo was of a couple of levels of online (in this case directly networked) co-op. With no tutorial type help to get to know the controls, "Hit X to kill things" seemed to be the order of the day. It's a very pretty game with some reasonable lighting but not at any point was I inspired as many of these new visual features just seem to be poorly implemented, like the overly viscous water that reflected things nicely but made it harder to see what was going on. The camera work is atrocious and leaves you feeling really constricted and the controls generally made you feel less of a badass but more someone that could time a good parry. You progress through the levels by completing a barrage of mini objectives that are fairly arbitrary, most of which are "kill wave 14 of bad guys". After slashing up a baddy, they soon get a skull above their head, telling you that there's an opening for a finishing move which triggers a quick time event in which you can start skewering someone or slicing their limbs off. This links into a mechanic for gaining favour with the crowd that are watching your gladiatorial exploits however this seems to have no impact on the game at all with the exception of the very arcadey score board at the end of each level. It's a potentially interesting mechanic but in reality a massively missed opportunity. The AI could also have been outwitted by a 5 year old, with enemies waiting to be sliced in the face and no sign of any higher cognition than simple attractive movement. The whole thing seems like a mess without any clear idea of what it wants to achieve from a gameplay or experience point of view. If anything it's a slightly interactive CGI gladiator movie that just comes off as a pretty dull game. If it wasn't for the graphics I could have sworn I was playing a really shit, early PS2 game. Dead Rising 3 The demo for this put you into a large, free to explore section of a city at night which, you guessed it, is teeming with very sleepy and hungry looking people. You get dumped straight into the fray with an arsenal of weapons already including a pair of wrist mounted guns that spray bullets in all directions (which we affectionately called "Wolverine guns"), a flame thrower and an electric slam hammer that all got us feeling pretty Thor-happy. Whilst not highly detailed graphically and (frankly) a bit murky on the pallet, you do get pretty impressed by the fact that there is an absolute shit load of mobs on-screen at any time. You trot around a corner and are confronted by a group of not 10 or even 30 walkers but by an army, if not a sea of fully animated, crowd behaving zombies. Now don't get me wrong, their AI was particularly "intelligent" but it was varied and mobbing. There were some great instances where you could see the mob actually take notice of you and the situation change very quickly or other points where you fire flares and huge crowds start to gather around the light. Not bad Capcom (with your horrible new logo).... not bad! To give my playthrough some context, I've never played Dead Rising.... EVER. So when I got stuck into the combat I started to get the feeling that it was going to be all about hitting X repeatedly again. However the variety of the weapons, from close quarters to projectile or even electrifying, combined with their variety in firing modes makes for an interesting mix. This gets topped off with the hilarious special kill moves that really get pretty spectacular, from sticking a band saw in someone's crotch and slicing them in half from balls to scalp, using a heavy object to hammer one with and explode their head and torso or even "doing a Kratos" and grabbing one from behind, squishing your fingers into their eye sockets and getting enough grip to rip their head clean off. All of this kind of thing splashes goo all over the camera which has some great effects. As fun as this was, I was worried that this was all going to wear until I started discovering the sheer variety of toys around. Cars to run things over with, diggers to mow into these armies of the undead, motorbikes to zip around in and even a wheel chair to push around at speed and try and "catch" a zombie into sitting in. Then I discovered a whole other level to the game, (which I later found out is not a franchise first) which is the weapon crafting system. When you first jump into things, you see the game suggesting you should pick up all kinds of shitty little objects like a hand bag or a some jewellery, even a toaster. Now these are pretty crap for killing hordes of your ex-next-door-neighbour right? WRONG! Finding blueprints around the city allows you to combo these into making some insane weapons, including a giant ball of spikes and blades that you swing around, exploding teddy bears and (my personal favourite) a mechanical cat made of oil drums and other rubbish that viciously pounces from place to places shredding up any zombies in it's wake. Great and fun experience with lots to explore. I'm not really much of a sandbox person however this was right up my street. The sizeable amount that was going on on the screen with no noticeable pop-in and very far rendering distance did a great job at showing what the extra muscle in the machine can really do. There were some interesting ideas that were teased, such as the Kinect picking up on whether you were being noisy or not which would get you noticed but, although present, none of the Kinects were turned on! Killer Instinct Having played the original and as fan I was quite looking forward to giving this a try although not expecting a huge amount. I played a couple of matches with Glacius and Jago and was happy to find a lot of the old moves still in play however it felt a bit weird on the thumbstick so I switched to the d-pad. Was a little terrified by some 15 year old muscle memory that almost allowed me to do Jago Killer combo off the bat but only got a 10 hit in. It's all there as you'd expect with the combos and the breakers however it's attempted to update itself so little that everyone (even Jago) feels pretty heavy and the game has no sense of agility. The character models are again very pretty but stylised in a way that I didn't really like although Glacius looked sweet as hell with special effect flying all over the place for all of his moves. From a gameplay point of view this feels pretty dated now and I fear for the new business model that is going to be attached to it as well. Feel of the console generally The pad is as you would expect. Ignore the bullshit, it's just a 360 pad really with a non-shit dpad. We did cheekily hit the home button and try and have a look around the dev unit. The interface looks horrible (my opinion) and seems to have no sense of organisation at all. Just a bit random and cluttery, funnily enough just like the metro interface on Win8. This one however you cannot edit I bet. Had a look at the hardware itself too. Pretty damn big and the power pack is external, which is also pretty mammoth. The Show So those were the games.... "but what about the event itself?" I hear you ask. Well that was even more underwhelming than the console itself. Firstly there was a presentation from the events guys. They used a Surface tablet plugged into two HD TVs which visually was fine but for some reason the audio came out of the tablet only and was almost inaudible. The presenter tried to whip us up really poorly at the start which instantly made the crowd think he was a total nob. Then he decided to let us watch some videos of E3... which was nice :/ He then proceeded to show us a really poor MS slideshow whilst reading off a script which was scribbled on postit notes. He didn't look up once to make eye contact with the audience. I wanted to jump over the counter, knock-out punch him and take over just to stop everyone there being tortured by the experience. Then we were let on the machines. At which point the events guys ignored everyone: - No help with the playthroughs - No pointing out interesting features - No explaining the controls - No explanation or hype about reasons to buy the platform - No stories about their experiences - No attempts to make a mini tournament or anything fun out of the games The whole thing was a fucking sham. MS and/or GAME are paying these guys to essentially just chaperone the hardware and ignore you. They did nothing to improve the image of the platform or make it desirable. On top of this, there were no demos using Kinect and more importantly: no fucking Titanfall. I'm sure this event cost someone a reasonable amount of money and as a result simply solidified everyone's feeling of ambivalence towards the platform. If you go to one of these events please give these guys a hard time because the deserve it (but not the guy with gingery hair... he was quite safe).

Anyone had a chance to try The Inside World yet? I bought it on account of the art and loving it so far. The main character is a wonderful simpleton as he's been in a tower most of his life and there quite a lot of politics and religion even if not taken very seriously. Will report back with mooooore

@f00had - You sir are an absolute genius. That SD card is the BOMB and Monster Hunter loads is about 5 seconds now as opposed to 30. The music is working a treat and I can actually watch the FMV. I swear it's been bottlenecking a whole bunch of other stuff as well such as the download speed and my interface is much zippier now. Looking forward to having an entirely digital catalogue :-)