Rock, Paper, Shotgun

So I am busy playing through Mass Effect 3 at the moment, with my collected thoughts on the events, happenings, and systems therein to appear on Tuesday. I’ve been doing a bit of retrospective browsing over the first two games, too, and comparing events in those to the events in the third game. This process led me to wonder this: what has been your favourite event in the games so far? And why?

As a follow up question: who is your favoured character? Garrus seems like the obvious choice for acerbic/murderous sidekick, and I generally take him on missions for the sound of his voice, but I think Thane was the highlight of Mass Effect 2. Anyway: speak your brains, show your working.

What are you playing this weekend, readerfolk? Anyone for Amalur? Anyone still lost in Skyrim? Or perhaps you are up to something multiplayery? Joining in with one of the RPS communities, perhaps? I’ll be wandering the kills of Perpetuum, I suppose, between a bit of messing about it the alpha of some peculiar RPG we got sent.

Anyway, let us know what you up to – speak your brains!

Oh, hello. You startled me. Come in, sit down. I was just updating my Google Calander. See, I’m so wonderful and popular and in-demand by just about everyone that I need to mark every minute down, or I’ll just get swamped. I had a look and it looks like I’ll be too busy to play anything this weekend. But what I’d like to do, no please help yourself to a biscuit, what I hope to do is live vicariously through you. You’ll play games for me, while I’m crying in the corner out partying till 6am in a warehouse in Islington. Tell us all what you’ll be playing.
Read the rest of this entry »

My default position when old-ish tech dies is to assume it’s too much hassle to deal with the company, and that something that lasts 3+ years needs to be replaced properly. It might just be me, but I don’t think it is. I hear a lot of people asking for suggestions to replace dead technology: it seems more people check Amazon before checking warranties. But December and January were disastrous months for technology for me. In order: my monitors died a week apart and my mouse squeaked its last. I’m still getting teary-eyed just thinking about it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hello. I hope you are having a lovely day. I wanted to ask you something. Now that the Skyrim frenzy seems to be dying off, and your gaming digestive system is bloated with games hoovered up from a run of excellent indie bundles, what will you be playing this weekend? How many of you are going back to things you bought before the Skyrim addiction set in? And how many of you are now faced with a stack of indie games that each demand your attentions? Perhaps you’ve finally realised how wrong you are about the Stalker games and have finally got around to playing them, eh? What shall it be? Speak!

Me? I shall be playing a bit of Starfarer, a bit of Perpetuum, and a smidgeon of Trine 2, just to balance out all those lasers.

What are you intending to play this weekend, eh? That copy of Terraria you just bought in the sale? Skyrim again, more, faster, again? Perhaps something else stacked up from a sale? I’m going to be mysteriously messing with some unreleased puzzle game with punctuations of Serious Sam 3, Alec’s adrift on that Terraria/Skyrim angle, and Mr Smith? Well, he’s all over both Sam AND Skyrim. The tart. John, I believe, has invented his own game based on a 2000-year old rulebook he found in an old building in the middle of town. I dunno what it’s all about, but it seems popular!

Anyway. Speak your games!

Because why not? It’s Tuesday, after all. And I am not even going to make a bet with myself this time.

DON’T hit vote til you’ve ticked all the boxes, because it bugs out. But actually if you refresh you can still vote on missed ones. So it’s okay. Sort of.
Read the rest of this entry »

So. I lost a bet with myself. Now I owe myself fifty quid. Thanks a bunch, Internet. I was certain, absolutely certain, that the majority of you would have pursued mostly wizardly activities in Skyrim, what with all the magic and the magic college and everything. But not so. The majority of the twenty thousand people who polled in our Skyrim survey played as warriors, with mages (21%) coming in second. Amazingly, assassins and thieves were neck and neck for third place with 14% each. There’s a 13% bunch of hangars on who couldn’t actually figure out what they’d spent most of their time doing of course, but then this is an Elder Scrolls game, so perhaps we’ll forgive the ambiguity.

Ooh, I can feel another poll coming on. Any suggestions?

So, that’s close to a week of Skyrim under our collective belts of minor loafing, which means we’re hitting Skyrim content saturation point. Or we will tomorrow, anyway. Maybe. In the meantime: what have you all been doing in Skyrim? I spotted Alec installed new poll software, which means I can have a go at doing a poll to find out! Yay. Actually, I mean I’d been planning to do a poll anyway, but was too confused by the poll plugin. Anyway… What have you spent the majority of your time doing in Skyrim? Vote below!
Read the rest of this entry »

I worked on a PC hardware magazine for years, and found myself as caught up in the bitter CPU and GPU wars that characterise that industry as much as the next man who cares a little bit too much about expensive circuitry, but even so I’ve never really fancied a multi-card system via NVIDIA SLI or ATI Crossfire. The noise, the expense, the technical potholes…

However, between Rage, Battlefield 3 and Skyrim (particularly the latter, wanting to try out all of the settings tweaks and mods to max it out), for the first time I’m thinking about doing it. I’ve got a GeForce 560 (non-Ti) which more than holds its own, but there are usually a few bells and whistles I need to turn off if I want a solid frame-rate at 1920×1200. The expense of higher-end cards is extreme, but for around £120-50 I could pick up another 560. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. But have you ever dabbled in the dark art of multi-card systems? And was it worth it?
Read the rest of this entry »