Posts by Thrik

It bothered me.

Agreed.

Awesome!!

I'm fairly sure you don't need PSN to do either of those, but PSN is nonetheless awesome for demos, trailers, and DLC — not to mention being able to play games like Mortal Kombat online, which has now been sat limited to single-player for weeks. Least I'll be really good by the time I can go online.

Yes. Episode Two is like a step towards being a true sequel in that it's pretty much all awesome new environments, dramatic events, etc. Episode One felt more like a cheap by-the-numbers expansion that reused far too much of HL2.

If the idea of HL3 sounds good to you, get Episode Two. It's not HL3 but it's about as fresh a Valve experience as you're going to enjoy in the Half-Life universe until Valve eventually decides its time to move back to its mainstay.

I'm certainly disappointed by the compromising of the details, but they've satisfied me that they're going to address it by completely overhauling their system and bringing in three different security auditors/contractors to completely tighten it up. After something this disastrous I expect that whatever issues and lapses existed will be sorted out — unfortunately it often takes a huge fuck-up like this before companies realise the error of their ways.

At this stage I just want the damned thing back online so I can use the online aspect of my console, it's dragging on big time. I just got Mortal Kombat and want to play online!

Well you definitely have more credentials in the genre than me Taylor, I can only go off what I find fun and I found Heavenly Sword fun. I haven't tried Devil May Cry or Bayonetta so I'll probably give those a whirl at some point and find them even more fun based on what you've said. I have tried Ninja Gaiden (Sigma) though and found it incredibly frustrating and wasn't really drawn in by what was happening.

That's right, but it's not really a concern anyway as it's not PSN that's had credit card numbers compromised, but Sony Online Entertainment — an entirely different beast.

Eh, not really feeling your criticisms Sentura. It's not exactly uncommon in hack-and-slash games for jumping to be absent, just see classics like Zelda and Fable. And I really like the bits with loads of enemies, very satisfying to demolish so many bodies.

You've definitely got some fair points Taylor, the gameplay isn't as sophisticated as God of War. I wouldn't say it has no depth though, as there's quite a bit of skill to correctly using the three attack modes in tandem with the various button-sequence combos you can do. It's quite fun if you don't adopt a 'do the same thing that works constantly' approach. I think it's fair to say that nothing in the entire genre really compares to the absolute precision which with GoW3 pulled off the formula though, so I don't really want to get into comparing those.

Perhaps it's the fact the game was only £8 that's made me a bit less critical. I feel like I've got an excellent little game that's proven to be quite a nice surprise, which I read many good reviews for but the concerns about its length put me off when it was retailing at full whack (exactly why I won't touch Killzone 3 and its 5-hour campaign until it's similarly priced). Darksiders was a similar surprise.

I totally stand by my opinion. I've played a few games of this type this generation (God of War 3, Darksiders, Enslaved, Dante's Inferno, Castlevania) and I'd definitely say Heavenly Sword is a superb example of how to do it right, albeit not as splendid as GoW3.

Unless you just don't like this type of game I can't see why you'd hate it? To be sure I'm not insane I just checked and the game does have very good reviews apart from length criticisms. By all means throw out some issues so others can decide for themselves though.

I dunno, great game IMO. Intro could have done without the shooting sequences (which fortunately rarely resurface) but otherwise quality. I love the combat mechanics.

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Turns out this is like one of the best action/adventure (God of War-style) games of this generation. It's technically absolutely superb, especially considering it being a first-wave title of the generation — the graphics are quite frankly incredible, polished to perfection and with beautiful art direction. I've also not seen so many NPCs on-screen this generation without hitting the performance at all. The gameplay is surprisingly in-depth and spot-on with regards to how it all slots together. I'd go so far as to say the hack-and-slash gameplay is way superior to that in the developer's next title, Enslaved.

The story is also compelling, the voice acting and character performances are excellent (some genuine LOL moments, particularly with the main villain), and it's just basically a quality game in every regard. The only downside is that it's simply too short, supposedly being six hours-ish for many people — but seeing as it now goes for less than £10 you're hardly getting bad value.

Very good game. Sad that it joins Uncharted as being a game many people missed the first time round due to it being released right at the beginning of the PS3's life when it was difficult to find outside the US, extremely expensive, and kind of unpopular. Even more unfortunate is that unlike Uncharted it never really recovered from that initial shot in the foot.

Any PS3 owner should have this game!

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Quote from Liske

Might as well play some custom maps or just portal over again, I was playing it to develop the story on from the 1st.

Interesting because a lot of people have been complaining about there being too much story fluff and not enough hardcore puzzling.

At the end of the day Portal always has been and always will be a puzzle game. It just happens to have an excellent narrative to encourage you forwards, but it's always going to be secondary to... you know, puzzles.

It is fairly insane the scope of what's happened here. From what I can tell we can't play online, we can't update games, we can't buy games, and any publishers who've chosen this week to release their stuff with timed marketing campaigns, etc are going to be fucked.

Yahtzee is a one-trick pony and that trick got worn out a long time ago IMO.

Of course it's great to be able to freely discuss games without restriction — that's exactly why you can highlight any piece of text in your post and hit the 'spoiler' button above the posting area to hide it from the eyes of those who've yet to enjoy the game. It doesn't even break onto a new line so you can hide just the most sensitive stuff (it should be obvious what kind of things these are).

I'd like to think people on MapCore are smart enough to understand what kind of discussion is going to occur in a thread about a hot new game, what kind of ultra-sensitive stuff should be spoilered, etc. You don't have to go crazy and spoiler every slight detail, but posting major points of storyline is obviously going to upset people.

I understand your point about it being nice not having to worry about spoilers Jetsetlemming, which is why I only outlaw spoilers for games that're fresh — if you're still reading threads and articles about games once they've been out for weeks you're just asking for it. But I think when we're barely 24 hours after the game's online release and it's yet to even come out in Europe for consoles, it's a little too early to deem it a game everyone's played.

For what it's worth, I exercise an absolute zero-tolerance policy on spoilers for newish games so if this has occurred on the forums let me know and I'll not only delete the posts but temporarily ban those responsible.

(Consider this an opportunity to get deleting your posts if you're stupid enough to have done this!)

So is it quite a bit longer than Portal 1 then, considering the full retail price tag it's now carrying?

Yeah reviews seem good, and the demo I played was a superb throwback to the last Mortal Kombat game I played: MK2 for the SNES.

Glad they did away with all the 3D crap because that put me off trying the others — they looked awful. This one is beautiful visually, there're loads of moves and fatalities, and the combat is very satisfying with an actual human opponent.

Good fighter!

Looks incredible.

Quote from twiz

Home Theater PC build:

Can you let me know how your wireless mouse and keyboard hold up? I got a HTPC built a couple of years ago and a consistent weak link has always been the keyboard/mouse — not at all happy with my Microsoft X8 or whatever, despite allegedly being a gaming wireless mouse.