Withywarlock

As far as I'm aware, no. Currys is the electronics place in the UK and the only reference to 3D in televisions is "3D surround sound". I think manufacturers' attentions have turned to Smart televisions and other such features. I've a feeling that if 3D is to make a comeback, it'll be a lot different to how we imagine it now. Perhaps - like the 3DS - just a button on the remote, or a vocal command to turn it on or off.

Blizzard Entertainment not buying out the Dawn of the Ancients modders who would then go on to make Valve millions with DOTA 2. Saltily, Activision-Blizzard went on to make Heroes of the Storm, a game that was dead out the gate and flailed for the remainder of its life, having no meaningful impact on the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) space. That's the only one that comes to mind, strangely enough.

If it can be called such as we were just friends at the time, my partner and I's first date was us going for a walk around a lake, which I think is a good way of getting to know someone: you can find out what pace they like to move at, what they prioritise (such as the exercise, the sights, or conversation), and you can build up an appetite for dinner later on. Food is a major part of just about any social occassion, so it's another way of finding out what people are like: table manners, tastes, what they like to drink and how they approach the bill (being a gentleman, I would always offer to pay the bill.) I would tend to avoid more involved activities for first dates because I'd be focussed more on the activity than the person involved. There's the similar problem of going to see a movie: my date and I won't learn much about each other if we're sat in silence for 90 minutes, barring if we like popcorn and fizzy drinks. Either way, I'd also probably be too nervous to fully enjoy myself, trying to divide attention between both delicately without showing nervousness.

I don't think I'd play this myself, horror's not normally my thing, but I do appreciate how good a use of the castle this is. It's nice to see it being reappropriated for a first person game, no less. Play it while you can I say.

While I disagree that Mario himself has outstayed his welcome, nor have the mainline games, Mario Kart definitely has. It's too feature bloated to be recognisable as what it once was, and Mario Kart Tour - as much as I like it - is less about the racing and more about how many points you can rack up for seasonal rewards. But then maybe that speaks volumes to the game: that despite the unnecessary feature and character creep, it's still a solid kart racer. It doesn't beat Crash Team Racing by any means besides graphical fidelity, but is otherwise a fun game. I think Nintendo once said that the reason why their prices don't come down is so it doesn't devalue the brand (or words to that effect), but this is the company that made 25 Mario Party games, so make of that what you will.

This is turning into the chat-style messages of before which have received no end of warnings and is bringing us off-topic. Please either contribute to the topic of 3D TVs or resume this conversation in private messages.

I can't believe I'm saying this but... Hello Kitty & Sanrio Friends 3D Racing. I'd bought it a good while ago because I wanted a new kart racer to play, but then I saw how easy it was to complete. For some reason I'd uninstalled it halfway through perfecting it, and so going on an Achievement Perfection spree, decided to finish it off. It's... functional, and its music is awesome, but the gameplay isn't particularly challenging and not worth the £15 price tag unless you're a die-hard karting fan. And yet it's still better than most kart racers I've played by virtue of it trading efficiency for everything else. I won't lie, the game's had a profound effect on my desire to look up what exactly Hello Kitty's all about. Good grief. I'm sure I speak for all of the forum when I wish you a safe and swift recovery!

That's stretching the definition and is not the context this thread started out with though. I get what you're saying, but it's not what the OP is looking for. Thank you, this is what we're looking for or similar events that make it otherwise too offputting/upsetting to continue playing further.

I like Empire's answer: it depends on the game and what the game wants of you. Frogun is not a game I play to relieve stress because it's proving difficult and at times needlessly frustrating. However there's times where I can pick up Total War and calmly see to my people's needs. Sometimes I need a good audiobook, podcast, playlist or video to chill out, and there'll be rare occassions where I don't want to play a video game while doing that.

I learnt that my social batteries drain less quickly when I'm just chatting to people rather than partaking in an activity with them. I learnt that while lasting relationships of any kind can be formed through them it doesn't come highly recommended as the game cannot be the only thing you have in common. I learnt that I have a patience for the incredibly repetitive and mundane, but not for practical purposes such as money-making or gear improvements. And finally I've learnt, to quote that Kenny Rogers song, "you got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run." When the fun stops stop. I'm struggling to understand what MotoGP has to do with MMOs. If I've misunderstood then please correct me, otherwise let's keep this on the subject of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games please.

That absolutely makes more sense. In an Elder Scrolls game (barring daddy Oblivion, naturally) NPCs are quest dispensers but because they follow daily routines they're quest dispensers on wheels. The Witcher III: Wild Hunt is made in such a way that NPCs have conversation and banter with Geralt, a mutant who has to put up with bigots who see him no better than a necessary evil and convenient scapegoat for all their ails. The Witcher is a very different game if you skip through the dialogue and get straight into the combat, which is mostly what an Elder Scrolls game is even if you hang onto a character's every word.

Yesterday I'd gotten into Josh Strife Hayes' videos, and he was talking about why there'll never be another World of Warcraft. One reason being that MMOs are no longer required to be their players' "forever game" like WoW was (and for some still is). However, I still think that forever games are the best and if you can design it in such a way that people want to log in each day and socialise, rather than feel they have to group up for content, you'll see a difference. People will communicate not out of necessity but leisure, and if they can do content that is leisurely they'll be much more likely to chat away doing so. Take fishing in games: you're waiting for a meter to run down until something bites. You've nothing else better to do than either listen to YouTube or Netflix in the background or talk to the person next to you. Not necessarily because it's boring but because it's a relaxing activity that interfaces well with communication. I found some of my best conversations in MMOs were when I was doing light activity: training cooking, fishing, or other professions. If I was farming reputation, I'd have nothing else better to do than strike up conversation. Last I checked World of Warcraft still has a system that basically gives you a time limit for conversation: you'll only converse so long as you've got some hub to clear, some dailies to see to, and perhaps a Looking for Raid (LFR) reward to claim. Once you've done that, it's time to play another better game and ergo stop engaging with that community. When you've got activities that take a while and you can sink hours at a time into doing it, that's when the community experience shines. In conclusion, the best games that make for a good MMO community give people a reason to engage with one another without feeling forced. It's not enough to just produce group content, but at the same time players have to make the effort to be courteous and take time out to help others enjoy the game.

It's currently 20% off its £11.99 price tag for another 5 days on Steam. I've played it some more and it hasn't got any better or worse, so that's good.

Recently I've got back into PC Building Simulator, and discovered one of the achievements for its IT Expansion is "PC Load Letter": Fix 5 printers by hitting them. Between that I was playing Just Cause 2, which has a lot of achievements for grappling enemies like Pinata Party (kill 30 enemies with melee while they're suspended by the grappling hook) or Juggler (kill 30 enemies while they're suspended in the air). Both got a giggle out of me, and I was wondering if viewers here might have some particularly amusing or otherwise enjoyable achievements or trophies in games.

I've not really been looking forward to all that many. Warhammer 40,000 Darktide, which is 'Vermintide in spess', minus Spess Mehreens, looks pretty good. Fatshark know how to make a good Warhammer game, so I'm rather hopeful to see that coming soon. Beyond that, I've only recently come across Stuntfest - World Tour, which I believe is going to be a vehicular/jetpack-based battle royale game. I don't think it'll do all that well if it comes with a price tag as the market's heavily saturated and I'm not overly sure what the concept is, but I'll give it a look in. What about you @Nebulous? Any upcoming games you're interested in? This is what they're referring to, I would imagine.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III. I even preordered the £99 collector's edition for a pretty crappy hammer that came with it. Not really had that sort of buyer's remorse since, thank goodness. I must play it now my PC can handle it, though perhaps not the file size. I've still got three expansions' campaigns to get through yet! How about you, @StaceyPowers? Any particular games your better judgement decided against? I'll begin by saying I'm terribly sorry for quoting you all the damn time: woke up to 9 notifications myself this morning so I appreciate how aggrevating it might get. Just wanted to say that I didn't know CS:GO was on the Xbox 360. I remember quite vividly The Orange Box with Portal, Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2, but not much else besides that.

@Kane99 Thanks for the suggestion, I've moved the thread (first moderator action so bear with me if it goes to cock). I've no suggestions myself, but I thought I'd mention the move so you don't get lost, Tom. PS: Welcome to the forum, I hope you'll be staying with us!

I've not forgiven WB over the treatment of Michael Forgey (read: exploiting his passing), but that doesn't necessarily mean I can't appreciate a good game when I see it. I wouldn't pay for this game myself, but I'm much more tempted to give it a go now than if it had a price-tag. The genre's not my thing but I like the concept well enough.

I've played about the first hub world and it's a really good game. The frog-gun (or 'frogun') mechanics take some getting used to, especially if you're in a hurry and need to get off your current platform to reach one in the distance that's too far for jumping, but otherwise it's solid. Think Klonoa and Captain Toad: it's one of those treasure tracking games that uses the proper 2.5D perspective innovations to make the most of the scenery. I reckon I'll write an article, or post one here about it. It's been a while since I did a review of a game like this.

As said before they've already done Vietnam in some fashion or another with Black Ops, and Treyarch's first CoD title was World at War which has some of the most iconic scenes of the franchise including its Pacific intro. The stealth missions are pretty popular so one could easily have a patrol mission, and who wouldn't want to be a tunnel rat for 15 minutes (virtually anyway)? The only downside for me would be stepping on punji sticks or being bitten by snakes every five goddamn minutes 😖 I don't think Call of Duty would go into the Civil War unless it was a very heavy spin-off, as people like their fully-automatic weapons and tactical reloads. Even Battlefield 1 went through great pains to convince people full auto firearms beyond heavy machine guns existed, most of which were prototypes anyway. Then again maybe there's potential for that: every mission is based on a different war. The American Civil War, the English Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands, the Gulf War... might even be a way to update the single-player as time goes on rather than committing to just one theatre of conflict.

Normally of non-mainline games I'd say something is a good game, but not a good entry to the franchise. Sonic Adventure 2: Battle is both a good game and a good Sonic game, despite it being radically different. When it wants or needs to it gets the speed and momentum physics down to a tee without being as fiddly as the original games, and that depends on the character: Sonic and Shadow, and Knuckles and Rouge being the speedsters, and while Tails and Eggman's stages are... uncharacteristic in terms of gameplay, we at least get to see the characters in their element and the game still remains a platformer. It's really the race segments in vehicles that are the most jarring, that and the Chao Garden. The music kicks ass, the graphical fidelity's pretty good as is the animation, the voice work's great (even if the direction leaves something to be desired), and the level designs are just all around cool. It's not as iconic as the older games by any stretch, but 3D suits Sonic, and all the ideas of Adventure 2: Battle suit it also.

Similarly to others with simulator games, PC Building Simulator is good but you've got deadlines to hit, parts to order and make sure the thing's fully built properly. I've had to uninstall the game because my backlog of PCs awaiting parts is massive and trying to remember which ones require which are insane. I might go back to it today or tomorrow, clean it up and see if I can continue the game without taking any jobs. How about you @StaceyPowers?

My pick for a game that features this would be The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. It's so easy to off the beaten path only to find yourself being chased by cliff racers. Given the game's combat system with percentage-based hit chance you really ought to train up before straying from what your journal tells you. Or just install Morrowblivion. 😅 You've also got 'the shortcut' to New Vegas wherein there's loads of Cazadors to the North... that's fun to figure out. "They'll be just like bloatflies" are some common last words. The first game especially. The first encounter with the first boss, the Asylum Demon, is meant to be run from before facing him a few minutes later with an advantage of an aerial attack. Then in the central hub the skeletons are tricky even with blunt instruments. If you go down the elevator you'll fight ghosts, or attempt to, because you need a certain weapon or status effect to fight them. So the only way is up, as they say.

You've said it yourself: making a trailer is hugely different to making a functional video game. It's the same with the Bully 'remake' trailer you and I have both seen (thanks @Kane99 for making us aware of that): that yes, Rockstar somehow required millions upon millions to make such a bad remaster of three old games, and there absolutely should be a conversation about where those millions go by people within the industry, but it still takes more than an animator to turn this into a meaningful interactive product. When it comes to tech demos Unreal Engine 5 is the most impressive out there, but tech demos are only good in so far as demoing the tech. Seeing someone make a game out of it that fits on our storage mediums with (un)compressed textures, high quality sound files, so on and so forth is another matter entirely. I say similar things to those who watch the Warcraft trailers and want someone to make a movie out of them: it's one thing to write a teaser, it's something else to write a 90 minute feature film. And while someone did, I wouldn't say it was anywhere close to the teaser because that's what the teaser's designed to do. Having said all of this, as little as UE impresses me I do appreciate the hard work and time that goes into these especially if someone hasn't had any formal training in doing so. If it gets people into games design, making it easier for them and can be applied to other things I'm happy for it.

That's a design problem more than it is a player problem. If the game doesn't give me compelling characters and plentiful quest information, why should I care to remember? If there's too many NPCs and quests, again, that's on the developers for bloat. I haven't played a whole lot of The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, nor have I in a long time, and I remember a great deal more of that than I do most of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind's characters, or V: Skyrim's quests. The test I give to a modern RPG's quest design these days is "can I complete this without any aid from the UI based only on the information the quest giver and my journal give me?" The answer to that most of the time is a resounding no. If a developer cannot take the time to tell the player how to perform the quest without map markers and so on, I'm not going to take the time to learn the character's name: it's evident they care more about me spending time in the game for metadata, and I'll only care for XP in a bloated reward system.