Dranoel

And here was me expecting u all to have Leisure Suit Larry: Magna **** Laude! Instead there are some real trends! Mass UT2004 (more so than HL2!) is the biggest surprise (though the game does rock!) Rest s fairly predictable

Is that all? Damn if I hadn't had to do a full reinstall about 2 months back I'd have bloody loads!

XCOM TFTD and the crappy 3rd one! Hong Kong Phooey 3: Bad Dog (After the awesome marvel that was HKP2: BotD a real disappointment!) Fallout 2!!!!!! Chicken McNuggets after the resent obesity furore (I'm not fat - I'm 6'4 and weigh 12 stone ffs! Bloody Fat Bastards ruining my calorie intake! Have to get my salt fix from drinking copious amounts of Sea water now!)

LOL you can buy the walkthrough in English and German for Xenosaga I & II (preorder) on Amazon.co.uk. You can also buy the Kokoro theme from Xenosaga video game (soundtrack) at Amazon.co.uk. You just can't buy Xenosaga the game!

Excluding all the cheap games that come as standard - Freecell, Hearts, Pinball etc, what games are currently installed on your hard drive? Guess I should confess first: IWD2 (My BG2 disc 3 is knackered so I installed the only game to hand of similar type PST et al are in Germany at the moment!) Halo UT2004 (Great Game!) HL2 (nuff said!) War 3 and TFT (embarrassing to say the least) Dawn of War (better than War3 at least!) Starcraft + Broodwar RTW (rocks!) MTW (dated but good - suppose I might uninstall now I have Rome!) AoM + Titans (embarassing but I like RTS games and I'd already uninstalled C&C generals!) Vampire TMB (only just got!) X2 (haven't even had a chance to play but it was going v. cheap!)

U know - FF12 will be out eventually though it probably won't hit europe until sometime next decade (look how long FFX took to cross the Atlantic - almost 6 months!) You either love, hate or feel totally ambiguous towards FF series!

Last time I played 40K was almost 10 years ago but Dark Reaper missile launchers were identical to the marine, Imperial guardsmen, orc and every other type of rocket launcher. They were the eldar anti-tank infantry and you could choose between Frag and Krak same as everyone else! Maybe they did get a reimagining which would really suck as they were the only aspect with any real chance against a Land raider! If you send in fire dragons they were bound to get toasted before they got half way close enough to use melta bombs! But seriously though 40K is focused around melee weapons that inflict more damage consistently than their ranged counterparts. In DoW compare thunder hammers vs regular terminators. Regulars seem to rule on all fronts. War 3 - Incidentally Thingolfin... ever tried NE vs Undead who has teched to wyrms? Unless he's really crap he will also have fiends which are ridiculously good vs both NE anti air counters - hippos get netted and dryads just die! Yes there are counters to air units but they remain the single most powerful unit type in the game - particularly due to the base damage amounts they inflict.

Personally I recommend Hong Kong Phooey 2: Beware of the Dog. A truly quality rpg title. Don't you agree?

It all depends upon when you came to the series', the time and the circumstances. Personally I only came to Starcraft recently (last year or so) and I don't much like it particularly as its graphics are so dated now. The definitive RTS for me remains C&C the original which, on an 8 player LAN connection rocked despite the tendency to experiment with cheap tactics (chinook with commando anyone?) and the fact that, if I played it again, I would undoubtedly think it was a truely dated with almost no flexibility. For similar reasons my favourite FPS of all times remains Quake 1. Being able to yell and physically throw things at your opponents in frustration is great (the mods ruled too - grapnels and starwars skins anyone?) Personally I'm not too fond of WC3 - wtf is up with all the uber powerful flying units that cause about 3x as much damage as Taurens (cost about the same) plus have their bonus against heavy armour (plz shoot whoever decided to put air units in WC!) Similarly I dislike Dawn of War due to the fact that vehicles take negligible damage from all except certain weapons. Anyone who has been happily progressing with a combo of Dark Reapers, Guardians, Banshees and scouts who is suddenly confronted with a dreadnought should surrender then and there. There are numerous counters but these are costly and don't often have much place in squad to squad combat. The there are the units that should cream vehicles but clearly don't e.g. Dark Reapers (they're all carrying Rocket Launchers FFS!) and Assault Terminators (Their weapons ignore all armour don't they? - not in this game!) That is one of the advantages of C&C. At least everything could kill everything else (theoretically!). Hitler was not giving out Ironcrosses to Hitler Youths who destroyed tanks with other tanks! They climbed on the bloody things and dropped grenades inside etc! Don't get me started on air units in WC3 again... they should rip their bloody wings off! (edit... Personally I think War 3: RoC has a pretty good single player storyline considering, though the missions are quickly repetitive. Good cutscenes too. They alone should justify your $5 you cheapskate!)

I think it all depends upon when you came to the series'. Personally I only came to Starcraft recently (last year or so) and I don't much like it. The definitive RTS for me remains C&C the original which, on an 8 player LAN connection (at school) rocked despite the tendency to experiment with cheap tactics (chinook with commando anyone?) Similarly I regard Fallout 1 as being far superior to the sequel for storyline, novelty and gameplay. Fallout 2 is just more of the same without the novelty or cutting edge! If you came upon them both at the time of their initial releases I reckon Fallout1 and BG1 wiped the floor with all comers including their sequels!

Personally I loved BG for the freedom it gave you whilst the fact it was realtime and pausable was great. Sarevok was also a great enemy as was Jon Irenicus and the voices used were great (David Warner? (I think it was him) sounds just like Charles Dance - Last Action Hero, Alien 3 and loads of old films). Very atmospheric setting the tone, though I hated Irenicus' lab as a dungeon :rrpa: (Right Royal Pain in the Arse). The expansions were just a bit **** imo. But Fallout was the only reason I even heard about BG. Fallout 1 was exceptional (I'm sure I've still got a 'copy' somewhere) though I felt the storyline lacked some of the consistency or clarity of BG (incidentally for the quiz at Fallout 2 launch how the hell can u tell that Racoons (or whatever) morphed into Dreadclaws - the references from that damn computer were so vague that any guess to that effect was a leap of faith at best!). Fallout 2 was just disappointing in comparison, compounded by the bugs (I didn't have an internet connection so couldn't patch) and the fact that Arroyo and that town with the Rat King felt boring with little to do. Personally I felt no compunction to aid the villagers after they were abducted by the Enclave! Conclusion: Fallout > BG Fallout Series < BG Series!

A division of Interplay axed before the **** hit the fan more precisely. But Fallout 2 - man if you played the first release before any of the patches came out... anyone else remember hunt the car (often the only place it might be rediscovered was NCR) or more amusingly spot the trunk? That trunk appeared on every map, usually imbedded into the wall of a building (San Fran had it in the wall of the BoS outpost!). Damn that was the most screwed up game I ever played on release!

Gotta say that Icewind 1 was the worst game I've played that used the infinity engine. By the time I reached Dorn's deep, which was ridiculously overladen with storyline characters, I was so fed up with the thing I just ploughed through it and even slaughtered that elven bird without even registering it. I only recall her cos you get one of the magical armours listed in the manual off her corpse (I was more concerned about the stupid fire giants at the time so I skipped the dialogue!). Turns out she was important to the storyline of both IWD and IWD2! (The only thing I really liked about IWD was the town layouts of Kuldahar and Easthaven and the music in those places!) IWD2 was a close second though. The greater flexibility of character creation helped but was ineffective at hiding the fact that the game was very boring and repetitive with an absolutely linear storyline allowing no deviation from the path. The set encounters drove me mad. Any other poor bugger playing HoF must also have screamed at the encounter which lined your characters up, unscreened by summons in a shooting gallery format, to face ranks of mages, archers and bears from the host tower encounter! (Music in IWD2 was erratic as well, starting up for no obvious reason just to shock you out of contemplation whilst you looked in your inventory - half the time the wasn't even anything there, the rest of the time it was one lowly goblin!) Thought BG1 and 2 were great, thought the expansions to both were a bit **** really. When I finally understood PS:T I thought it was great, though it was seriously hampered by little or no introduction to the scenario (which would have helped massively immediately prior to character creation!) and a truely dire manual which left me wandering all the way through to the final encounter looking desperately for the armour mentioned in the manual. Fallout 1 was great but fallout 2 was released way too early! They were fixing problems with bandits dying and turning into bookshelves about two weeks before release. It was therefore bug ridden throughout which really wound me up. When the patches came out I wasn't even sure I wanted them (I gained 4 charisma for losing an ear in Reno, with patch I would have lost that gain, the associated NPCs and an additional point!)

You can have it if you like! Come round a week next thursday and you can take it away gift wrapped for the low, low price of $999.99 (while stocks last) There is no returns policy, warranty or other such protection. Actual merchandise might differ from the one advertised

I notice that the cheesy Shadow Hearts Covenant thing isn't included. Probably already been mentioned but I can't be arsed to read 15 pages!