Monte Carlo

An X-Com game with crates would be awesome. Did I also mention that it has tunnels. In space.

I dunno, maybe it's only a matter of time before the movie companies start agitating for disc checks and online technologies to validate DVD purchases... this is another issue. You buy content online, i.e. a game, piece of music or a movie --- then you expect all sorts of mildly invasive technology to kick in to authorise payment and download. But a physical copy? Why? Piracy is as big an issue for the movie and music industries. Their approach, interestingly, is different from that of the gaming industry. In the UK, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) has become a quasi-law enforcement / regulatory body that does good work in this respect with a light touch. I guess enforcement is hard work, especially in the online arena. Screwing over customers, OTOH, isn't. It's easy. The gaming industry wants us to believe that they are using online as a tool against piracy as opposed to revenue gathering. Isn't it a happy coincidence that their anti-piracy strategy is also profitable, and damn those honest gamers who bought the product?

You work in the industry. Your condescending tone towards those with whom you disagree is therefore telling. For the record I'm an information technology halfwit. I run mainstream MS applications, I discovered Firefox last week and I certainly don't live in my basement. I simply don't want to need to connect to the internet to play games. For example, my wife works from home half the time. She uses the household internet connection. If I'm here too it's no biggie because I can play offline. Offline play also (and this is so obvious it says a great deal about your argument that I need to mention it) doesn't rely on the efficacy of servers run by the gaming companies. Relic's were FUBAR most of yesterday, for example, Sunday (y'know, the day off a lot of us like to game on). Your post earns a C- from this callsign. The companies are using online as a new, salami-slicing revenue stream. End of.

I'll probably not play it for a bit as I don't have a great deal of time. I'll combine it with my pre-XP play-through in February, I have a game with a 2H Warrior good to go, level 7 in Lothering. The Bioboards are split sort of 60 / 40 (60% in favour) but at least Bio cut the price of it. Allegedly combat heavy with lots of twinkie loot (duh), I'm looking forward to it. Cheers MC

Pay attention. Return to Ostagar, the doom-laden attempt to release a successful piece of DLC for Dragon Age.

So they finally released it, also I notice reducing the price (about

That red rollneck coupled with platemail dungarees is a hot new look. Edit: I take it back, the armour looks like it was made from a sawn-off leather sofa, or the interior of a 1982 Chrysler.

In FO: Tactics you could have a Sherman Tank covered with sandbags. 'Nuff said, and the game was definitely touched with the Wand of Awesomeness. Spent hours playing it. Post Apocalyptic squad-based tactics games = pure Win. People should be making more of them.

OK, so I'm not a sports fan but I genuinely don't get PC sports games. Cricket for example. FFS? Cricket. Narrowly beaten by Watching Paint Dry Manager XII.

Here in the UK, furious with the dessicated state of the music scene and reality TV pop stars, a couple of folks started an online campaign to get an old Rage Against the Machine track to Number One, thus frustrating the reality TV pop star du jour of his moment of sugary glory. It worked, and RAtM was no. 1 for Xmas. Bwuahahhaahahaaa! The Internet is still in it's infancy as an advocate of consumer power, but I think the games industry is chancing it's arm with this development. so don't completely write off the internet.

Oh, and another thing. The Cloud. The idea that we will store all our personal information online, on servers owned by rapacious multinationals with dodgy reputations when it comes to respecting privacy. Mwuhahahhaahaaahaaa!!! Not this old fart. I'll be the information technology version of a survivalist, with an external hard drive wired up to an ox-powered generator.

Well, I made my tiny little stand over Empire: Total War. I love the Total War series, they are up there in my top five games ever, the quintessence of what I'm looking for in a PC game. But for reasons that Tigranes has already articulated, I loathe invasive, internet-dependent applications like Steam. I won't use it, ergo I had to let Empire TW pass me by. Which I regret, but that was my line in the sand. Creative Assembly have lost a loyal fan and paying customer, I've never pirated a game in my life. So, yeah, I suppose CA and Sega are hardly losing sleep and the technological and commercial imperative to go down this route remains strong. But for me, I still won't buy them. Cheers MC

It's a brilliant idea just to see the Fallout Taliban freaking out.

The graphics look nice but the costumes look awful. I won't be getting it, for some reason the whole thing leaves me cold.

No, it really doesn't. Braveheart is a fantasy on amost every level. LotR has more meaningful things to say about English and Scottish relations in the 13th Century.

I'm still playing CoH and need a wingman or two. It's now crazy cheap on Steam, it's the best RTS ever and it would be great to play some of you lot online. PM me for details. Cheers MC

Dennis H doesn't feature in the VO credits... but the rangers sound just like him as Snake Doctor in The Unit. VO is important to me. And RTS games aren't noted for their excellent VO (Silo Needed!) so CoH deserves a special mention.

^ Oh, and CoH also has the most awesome VO, I'm pretty sure Denis Haysbert does the US Army Ranger sergeant and the dude from Full Metal Jacket does his Drill Sergeant schtick to perfection.

Men of War.... hmmm. I can't make my mind up about it. There's something... flat about the visuals and it has the worst, most wooden VO EVAR. It's certainly not as good as CoH as far as I'm concerned. EDIT: An review on GameSpy I have to agree with 100% Art direction, music, mood, VO, gameplay... all polished and executed with extreme skill and style.

Far Cry and / or Far Cry 2 are good fun (and I'm not much of an FPS guy) but I echo Pops and others views on Crysis. One of the few FPS games I ever got addicted too and I loved the Predator homage vibe. In fact, at times it feels like a sand-box exploration RPG with lots of shooting --- this cannot be a bad thing. Lastly, Mercenaries (old and probably dirt cheap) and Mercs 2 are cool and I've heard good things about Bad Company. Cheers MC

^ It's a genuinely good, if not flawed, CRPG. I'm in broad agreement with Gromnir. Bio keeps up it's unique power to create genuinely irritating NPCs of little or no merit, and the game mechanics were possibly created during a marathon caffeine-and-sugar fuelled brainstorming session, but you can have fun building a character. It's also, like every system, open to amusing min / maxing and twinky munchkin abuse. Not that it's a bad thing. It's party-based --- the bigger battles genuinely make you think. There is lots of fighting in tunnels, a rip-off of my unique CRPG ruleset but I've a heart the size of a big thing inflated with helium so I'll let that one go. The fighting in tunnels is my favourite part of the game. It also has a confusing currency system and an in-world economic scene where a backpack costs the same as a small castle with hot and cold running water. Buy it, I suspect you'll have a laugh with it, possibly more than you thought. Cheers MC

FWIW, will these boxset spammers please realise that their annoying spam makes me loathe them and not buy their products. Delete the post, ban their accounts. Or something.

This DLC thing is marvellous, why didn't they QA it properly then bundle it as an extra with the XP and charge a couple of dollars more?

You just reminded my of how fugly the character portraits in ToEE were. And the VO... LOL didn't they run out of money and hire a load of students to do it?

^ You've simply identified the paradox Bioware trapped themselves in with Dragon Age. For Bio, 'story-driven' means extremely linear --- the choices are illusory. Then, to make things worse they tried to make the Grey Wardens all things to all men to square this circle --- badass destroyers of evil (if that's your thing) or paladin-esque upholders of good (ditto). Alistair is the fly in that ointment, he's easily one of the most annoying NPCs they've ever written. It would have been easier to put 'evil' characters under some sort of geas and make them defeat the Darkspawn by hilariously evil means. It would have been more fun than the plot mish-mash and inconsistencies you describe.