around this time, maybe should've mentioned E3 in the title as well.

GTA IV (yes, I'm behind the times), Lord of Ultima.

GTA IV sucks. Lord of Ultima is interesting, but not sure it's my thing. WIll stick it out for a bit to see what happens.

E3 should be great this year.

Looking forward to what the name change with EA's NBA titles will bring.

Playing Red Dead, matching up online is rather difficult. Managed to find one player (once) and shot him dead by accident so he left. Never found another player online again.

love this new thread smell!

playing red dead too. loving it.

i'm ps3, btw, and i'd like to say how much this new generation of gaming is shitting me. I don't have as much free time on my hands to play games as i used to so it shits me to no end when i put in a game i'm hanging to play, like red dead redemption, and i have to update my system then load in a bunch of trophy information and all this other bullshit i'm not interested in. it's not that long ago that you could put a disc in a console and be playing a new game within 2 mins. what happened to those days? sorry about the rant.

Has anybody created a park on Skate 3 yet?

couldn't stand skate 2 so no.

my little diatribe aside i do like playing buzz on the internet

Still on Dragon Age and Torchlight over here. Gotta love replay value.

I'm playing Portal, InFamous and FFXIII at the moment. Good times.

I've gone backwards. Playing The Operative: No One Lives Forever on PC. OLD but still kinda fun. Gotta love $2 Vinnies finds.

Looking forward to heading home and hunting armadillo's, breaking horses in and getting myself into duels with douches who I shoot 12 times before they even pull their gun out of their pocket.

so I'm 26 hours into FFXIII now (playing it slowly because of uni commitments, but uni is over now..) and it has finally opened up into a free roaming game. It looks spectacular, and is actually quite a lot of fun. I just wish the characters didnt suck so much, and the story wasnt so confusing.

What part are you up to k2? I gave up in some machine like area or more specifically where the black dude and the aussie girl have to press four buttons to get through a door. Much more past that? I'm considering selling it.

im up to Gran Pulse - chapter 11 I think. I got stuck for ages on this boss guy Cid Raines. I seriously dies 10 times trying to kill the fucker, but finally did it after changing many battle team combos and paradigms. Seriously, I feel like the game just started. At least I can grind for a bit now and get my levels and weapons up. I'm doing missions at the moment too.

So the true FF game is yet to come still? I've all but hated every second of it so far. So restricted.

playing half life 2 ep 2 on osx right now, it's awesome

Red Dead and Mirrors Edge, both on Xbox 360.

In between these I'm in training for my Sonic The Hedgehog Marathon for Charity

If you guess how long it will take me to beat Sonic 1, 2, 3 & Sonic and Knuckles on Mega Drive in one sitting you will win a Sonic Prize pack and a $50 donation to a charity of your choice. No shit.

If anyone wants to host this at their venue it would be much appreciated. Otherwise it's my lounge room.

RDR - just saw a bloke ahead of me on a dirt track get off his horse and run into the field and stop. I followed him to see what he was doing. He was taking a piss on a rock. Yellow stream and all. Then when he's done he gets back on his horse and continues about his way.

This game is amazing.

haha. if you see that in your city you'd be disgusted. yet now they're putting it in games y'all loving it.

haha. if you see that in your city you'd be disgusted. yet now they're putting it in games y'all loving it.

That just put an image in my head of happycow running up to some guy pissing in the street, watching intently, then saying ''this is amazing, there's a yellow stream and everything''.

hahaha!

Agree with some of what you're saying Happycow, but for me, the key differentiator consoles still have over PC is that one size fits all in terms of gaming experience. No need to upgrade video cards/RAM/CPU to keep up with min. requirements for Crysis 7 (not that I play FPS all that much, but you get what I mean).

Here is my prediction for this year: Apple TV / Steam box.

And that my friends, will be the death of the American game console.

When you get sick of that, the PS2 is an absolute GOLDMINE of brilliant games.

Too true, mon frere. I got a PS2 a few years ago and, through eBay, gradually acquired a mountain of games, most of them great. I've still got about 15 that I've either yet to finish or haven't even played. Probably the best selection of games that any console's ever had.

X-Box One is hopefully a failure. I'm absolutely sick to fuck of the gaming industry trying to penalise customers for buying second-hand. Either price things reasonably or fuck off. Things like Steam and GOG.com (while not perfect) will make the greediest in the industry seem like fools in the long-run. ''What's that? You want me to pay a fee for the privilige of playing a second-hand game? Nah, think I'll just grab System Shock 2 for $5 and politely advise you to go fuck yerself.''

When you get sick of that, the PS2 is an absolute GOLDMINE of brilliant games

Do they still work second hand though? DVDs are notorious for screwing up fresh out of the box.

I have the cheapest computer I could buy from MSY with not even a 3D card except for the basic on-board capacity. Not sure if I can play games on it. Might need to upgrade soon as it keeps overheating if I leave the computer on too long.

Console gaming is clearly not dead and it's a bit silly to say so.

I'd love to have a great PC to play games on, but my PS3 does a good job.

I put in a disc, bootup and I can play. No fucking around with hardware, steam updates (ok, - there is the odd PS3 update). I don't have to worry about system requirements at all.

That's the appeal of consoles to me.

But yes, the not being able to play second hand games looks like a dumb business model to me - what is the thinking behind it?

Amazon UK: Wii U Sales Rank Jumps 875% Following Microsoft’s Xbox One Reveal

The Xbox One’s disappointing reveal has shot up sales of the Wii U on Amazon.com. The system was at #390 before the conference, but now has shot up to #40 due to Microsoft’s glorified TV box.

This momentum should carry Nintendo right into the summer as they have big plans for the Wii U at E3 and this fall. The console race has just begun but it’s good to see gamers are picking up a system that’s dedicated to gaming first, and multimedia second.

Xbox 360 shits me with the opening screen wanting to look for the internet all the time just to display ads. I thought consoles were meant to be easier to play? Is some interesting stuff on Steam these days, my friends keep wanting me to play with them.

''What's that? You want me to pay a fee for the privilige of playing a second-hand game? Nah, think I'll just grab System Shock 2 for $5 and politely advise you to go fuck yerself.''

Do not understand this logic.

Buying a second-hand XboxOne game - possible resale fee
Buying a second-hand Steam game - impossible

You can trade games on Steam.

You can trade unplayed games. Not second hand.

I think there is a general acceptance that you cannot re-sell a digital copy of something since all you purchase really is a licence. Physical media on the other hand has a long history of second hand trade. They are trying to basically make a move towards no physical media (once you install the game, you no longer need the disk - soon people wont bother with the physical disc at all if there is no reason to own it).

Do not understand this logic.

While you can't buy Steam games second-hand, you can get them at a reasonable price. My point was, in Australia, video games are ludicrously priced so to take away the option of buying 2nd-hand (or trading with friends) by adding a greedy extra-fee, you're saying to people like me: don't bother with our system. As I said earlier, Steam is by no means perfect, I still don't like the idea of owning a license to play the game rather than the actual game (which is why I use GOG.com primarily) and I PREFER console gaming, but the direction the console gaming industry is going seems pretty fucked (especially as I have no interest in multiplayer, don't have a Facebook account to share videos and already own a TV to watch TV on) so I can see myself moving more towards PC gaming when the new generation console is in full swagger.

I'll probably do as I did with the PS2 and PS3 - buy a PS4 years later when/if the selection of games is large and the cost non-exorbitant.

Fair enough, maybe using a 15 year old game as your example of cheaper Steam prices wasn't the best choice though :)

When you get sick of that, the PS2 is an absolute GOLDMINE of brilliant games.

i'm well aware. i have GTA III and Tony Hawk HD installed on the machine. i also play katamari a fair bit. i'm not above getting ico/shadow of the collosus and okami.

fck yr interchangeable FPSs, next gen games.

fck yr interchangeable FPSs, next gen games.

Random thought - anyone else over FPSs?

fck yr interchangeable FPSs, next gen games.

fucken THIS

I like good fps games, mainly bf3, but don't really need another until bf4.

I have a ps3 but have decided I just don't like the feel of most console games. I like it for some, mainl sport games but online multiplayer on those games just hasn't come along as much as I thought it would have by now.

I find fps games pretty fatiguing, but I have been getting a kick out of the first Bioshock of late.

Fair enough, maybe using a 15 year old game as your example of cheaper Steam prices wasn't the best choice though :)

I thought that as I posted it, haha. Really, I should've used Hotline Miami or Amnesia or any number of great recent adventure (point-and-click) games as my example, as it's those things where GOG has really been fantastic. Very little money can get you many hours of gameplay thanks to the recent prevalence of great indie games and the cheaper GOG/Steam model.

i reckon bioshock is pretty tits. and i also enjoyed timesplitters on the ps2 BUT this desire for ''realism'' from game designers has meant that every shooting game set in a bombed out city looks and feels the same. i also couldn't give two fcks about weapon customisation (the same way i NEVER looked under the hood while playing Gran Turismo).

i've heard a lot of great things about skyrim but while watching my mate play it i was pretty bummed out about how much fckng around with his inventory he had to do. all these bells and whistles were why i decided to just stop playing metal gear 4. i LOVED metal gear solid on the ps1 because the outlandish premise basically boiled down to ''find a way to sneak past these dudes'' rather than ''use this camera gadget in combination with this sonic screwdriver and THEN sneak past these dudes''