I just got my new Game Informer magazine and was pleased and a bit surprised to find that a couple of the new next gen titles (CoD: Ghosts and Need For Speed:Rivals) along with some others are being released for current consoles as well as next generation. Could we expect this game to be also released that way, or is it next gen and PC only?

So I got back up on the top of Hoover Dam via the little trap door on the north face of the dam. I then decided to walk back down the western side of the river (the Colorado) a little ways. Then I found a gully which allowed me to slide/fall all the way down to the edge of the river. I swam across. I was on the eastern side of the Colorado River.

There was no apparent way to get up to the top of the dam nearby, so I started walking south along the river bank. And walking. And walking some more. Finally, about half way down the map, I found a break in the seemly endless cliffs. I also found a crapload of deathclaws . Did I mention that I was only at level 7? Not a good level to be fighting deathclaws. It didn't end well.

I reloaded my previous save and continued walking down the shore of the eastern side of the Colorado. Eventually I came to another barrier in the water. I also came across a crapload of lakelurks. The chased me to the western side of the river. ED-E had disappeared a while back so he was of no help. I ran up some slopes and finally came across an old overlook campground. The lakelurks had given up chasing me.

Since I was beaten up and missing a lot of gear that ED-E was carrying, I decided to make my way back to Novac. Nothing much happened, except coming across some feral ghoul reavers. Sheesh. Between them and the rabid geckos I had quite a time.

Finally I was approaching Novac, hoping to get some rest, some patching up and a belated hello from ED-E. Sadly, the latter was not to be. I was notified that ED-E had died. It was very sad . I went to my room in the motel and laid down. Then I realized how really sad it was... ED-E was carrying all the whiskey

Well, that just sucks.

I got to Novac and checked into my room, had a nice sleep and decided "Hey, I've never seen Hoover Dam" [I didn't get there in my first playthrough, which I didn't finish].

So I decided to walk to Hoover Dam. And, except for a run-in with some random bad guys, I made it! I walked along the top of the dam till I got to the middle where I found a door labeled "Inaccessible". Hah! Nothing doing. So I jumped into Lake Mead and swam to the eastern shore. Great idea... except there was no way up from the shore to inland. So I followed the shore north till I ran out of shore, then I swam until I found this boom in the water stretching from shore to shore. And I can't jump over it, even though I'm standing on a floating oil barrel over it. That just sucks.

[I'm not going to do that]

To continue the tale of not backing the right side...

As I mentioned before, I was shunned by the NCR after leaving Primm. So I figured I'd make amend by going to Mojave Outpost and doing some odd jobs. On the way there I was met by this tough NCR woman in sunglasses who told me that I had three days before the NCR would hunt me down and kill me. Well, that's motivation. And I do the odd jobs for the NCR and guess what? I'm still shunned. And I bump into the woman and she reminds me I have two days before I'm bug meat.

Well, I can take a hint, so I go to Nipton and do some stuff there. And then I start heading to Novac and damn if I don't run into that same woman who reminds me I have just one day before they kill me. Well, excuuuuuuse me! I continue to Novac.

On the way there I'm supposed to fulfill this quest to rescue these Powder Gangers from a few Caesar's Legions troops. Well heck, I'm not going to do that. At least they didn't try to kill me in Nipton. So I'm going to leave them alone too. Serves the NCR right for being so nasty to me.

Things have gotten complicated out here in the New West. After joining the Powder Gangers in the takeover of Goodsprings I went to their headquarters in the NCR Correctional Facility and kissed up to Eddie, their leader. From there I went to Primm and made nice with the New California Republic troops.

After some actions in Primm I got adventurous and agreed to join the NCR soldiers in an attack on the Powder Gangers in the Correctional Facility. In doing so I became hated by the Powder Gangers. However, in the attack I managed to shoot a couple of NCR soldiers so now I am shunned by the NCR

Did I mention that I'm playing in Hardcore mode? So I need a doctor (or doctor bags) to repair my damaged limbs. I'm out of doctor bags so I'm off to a doctor... oops. The doc at Goodsprings got killed in the Powder Gangers attack, and the only other doctor was the one at the Power Gangers HQ, which I helped wipe out with the NCR. Oops

Did they ever fix the annoying "won't load a saved game" issue where it would just hang on your most recent save? Had this on my 360, not sure if it happened with other versions. Finally figured out if I kept trying, I could find an older one that would load and then I could quit back and the newest one would work. 

That was listed as one of the fixes in the last patch. You may want to start you game and see if it loads an update.

I've decided to go with Fallout New Vegas and so I retitled this thread.

So I'm in Goodsprings, the starting town and running through the opening quests. Somehow, although I didn't intend it, instead of helping Ringo escape, which would make the town happy, I helped the Powder Gangers kill him. I then helped them to kill off the militia, including Sunny Smiles, who was just so nice to me. Well, that's life out here in the New West 

Other than the bugs (which are hopefully fixed by now), I found F:NV to be a superior game in almost every way.

I did some research and found the Fallout3/Fallout New Vegas wiki which has listings of patches for each game, which seem pretty comprehensive. Also it lists the changes from F3 to FNV and those seem interesting enough to make it worth taking up New Vegas.

I never got far into New Vegas thanks to a bug that has hopefully been fixed

Yeah, that's kind of my concern about New Vegas, there were a lot of bugs when it was first released and I got a bit pissed about it. Are the bugs pretty well squashed?

I did get most of the DLC for Fallout 3, but none for New Vegas. I'm thinking if I do re-start New Vegas I would pick up the Gun Runners Arsenal and Courier's Stash DLCs initially just for the flexibility, but pass for now on the rest. Sounds good?

I'm considering going back to replay one of these games over the summer on my Xbox360. I'm looking for recommendations as to which would be the one to replay, and which (if any) DLC should be included. I played both when they came out, but with their original bug problems I figure it might be worth giving one a second full playthrough. So which place to revisit, Washington or Vegas?

It seems trivial, but my problem right now is that I used a monitor that has no speakers and therefore I can't accept HDMI as the only output option. I use the Xbox360 component cables to jury-rig a connection to a set of speakers, but I'm not sure how to do that with HDMI.

Yeah, I was just going to post something about the new free games for XBL Gold members as noted on the GT front page. Sadly the first two are games I already have. I guess I could trade in the retail discs for some Gamestop credit.

To accommodate the new DLC there was a pretty massive patch to the game released yesterday. It may (probably will) affect any saved games you have underway.

[New Game+]

Finished it up today, maybe ten hours of gameplay in the story.

I'd say it's closer to half that for the story.   It does have the Arcade mode and Newgame+ for replayability.  Easily still worth what they are asking for it, campaign roughly as long as a CoD singleplayer I'd say.

Mine was closer to ten hours because I wandered all over each level just poking around. There are a bunch of destructible items around if you have the ammo to spare. I started the story again in New Game+ mode on Hard and trying to stay in dual wielding mode. It plays much differently than with the rifle.

[New Game+]

Finished it up today, maybe ten hours of gameplay in the story. There's still the Arcade and some other mode Duels modes to try out and maybe try the main story with a different skill set (I used long range shooting first time through). Definitely worth the price, a lot of fun

UPDATE: Turns out when you finish the first time through you can go back and start the story again, but retaining all the skills you unlocked in the previous go-through; this is called New Game+. Interesting, I might give it a look.

This really is an awesome game, more so when you consider it's only 1200 XBL points. It is very much up my alley, a shooter without a bunch of over the top techno add-ons. I'd even prefer it didn't have the dynamite option, but it's really necessary at some points.

I thought the Flooded Town was a great level... till I got to the Railway Robbery 

I still have my GTA4 lockbox, key chain and duffel bag.

Me too. The key-fob is on a USB drive. The lockbox is stuck away in a drawer, probably with something in it I think is lost . And the duffel bag goes with my wife and I on all our trips, it's my gadget and gizmo bag. The bag is probably the most useful accessory I've ever gotten with a game, except maybe for my Forza key-fob and USB drive.

One of the little story devices I like is how you'll be sent down a path that ends in disaster and then the narrator will say something like "...and that's why it was a good thing I decided not to go that way". Very cool 

I just played the trial on XBLA and yup, it's a lot of fun 

My interest in Xbox1 will hang on how much I need to use the Kinect2 controller. Since I play at a desk about two feet from my screen I'm not going to want to even use it.

Here! Take my money! Please!

After seeing all the new Xbox One reveal, I'm taking my money back

If purchased through Steam you also get Call of Juarez - Bound in Blood for free. Not sure how well Gunslinger will run on my Radeon HD 6570 though.

Here! Take my money! Please!

Color me interested! I love open world games.

I'm assuming you also haven't bought a GameStop member card?  (whatever they're called these days)  Getting one of those comes with a free subscription.

That's how I get my monthly GI magazine, via a Gamestop Rewards card. It's a pretty well written magazine, I'm happy with it.

[Game: Forza Motorsports 5Publisher: MicrosoftDeveloper: Turn 10]

Game: Forza Motorsports 5
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Turn 10

While I haven't heard any official word on this, I'm guessing that after the May 21st Xbox720 announcement we'll be hearing about launch titles and it would seem unlikely that Microsoft wouldn't have FM5 in that list. I think it might be the only title for the new console that would make me a Day One purchaser.

Alternatively, since GT6 has been announced as a PS3 title, at least initially, I guess it might be possible that Microsoft would release FM5 as an Xbox360 title just to keep gearheads like me from buying a PS3.

Yeah, I was hoping to try the demo to see just how unfriendly it is in SP.

After some serious slogging I can confirm that it's a PITA to play SP. There are just too many instances where two or more player cooperation is really necessary to proceed, unless you want to try over and over and over again and hope to get lucky.

The better news is that at least on Steam sometimes you get lucky and the random people you join in a scratch foursome really understand the concept of working together. However, this is rather hit or miss and is nowhere as good as having friends work together.

Your title says "Multiplayer", is this going to be an MP only game, or have an SP component?

Out of curiosity, what brings you back to Forza 4 more than Horizons?

I got Horizons on sale and liked it plenty, but I found myself missing the exercise of learning a track and getting better and better at it. With Horizons you never really know what's coming, which can also be fun, but when I drive on virtual Laguna Seca or Maple Valley, I know I'll be pushing my virtual cars to their very limits.

What you said is part of it. Also, the Horizon world is pretty small compared to, say, Oahu or even Ibiza in TDU2 and I quickly felt bored running the same roads over and over. Additionally, I miss the parts of Forza Motorsports that were omitted from Horizon, like tuning; I tune every car in FM4 and it makes a heck of a difference, certainly for my driving style. And not having actual (as opposed to cosmetic) damage means there's no consequence for using concrete barriers as cushions for wild driving, not to mention leaning on the AI in a race. Overall, for me, Horizon fell between two stools: not big enough to be a good open world game, not comprehensive enough to be a good Forza game.

On the prospect (as yet unfulfilled) of getting a gift tuned Scion FRS, I fired up Forza 4 after quite a while away. Since the promised car was not there I spent a little time in the game, buying and tuning the last E class car available (I had already done this for all the F cars). Here is the Citroen C4:



I have quite a number of stats, some of the more interesting are that my garage is worth 120 million credits, I have completed 916 races and I own 292 cars. Only a couple of hundred more to go.

360a.org

Meguiar's Inc. modified Scion FR-S free download for both Forza Horizon and Forza 4

I've pretty much quit playing Horizon, but a new freebie for Forza 4 is nice. Thanks for the info!

What is it like to actually drive a WRC rally stage? Watch this dash-cam video as Nasser Al-Attiyah runs in the WRC Rally Portugal last month. Amazing.

After three plus hours of single player I have to say that while for some folks SP gameplay might be fun, it can also be pretty frustrating. Later missions in the game do get tougher. Playing these in SP mode works at times, but then you run into situations where your current character doesn't have the needed skills to get you to where you need to be or just as importantly, to gather all the coins on each level of each mission. The coins are important because at some point you will be unable to unlock further missions unless you "clean out" (get all the coins) on enough previous maps. And then it becomes more of a grind, attempting missions over and over to get all the coins. At least getting all the coins is independent of achieving the map objective, so you don't risk losing one goal at the cost of getting the other.

This isn't to say that, so far, any mission I've seen is impossible in SP. It might just require starting off with a different character (say, the Mole instead of the Pickpocket) and/or altering the sequence of which character you choose in which order; you get to use a total of four characters in SP play on each mission, but you can't select the next character until the previous character dies.

So I'll keep plugging away in SP and let you know how it goes. I am going to try to line up a couple of friends and try the game MP on one screen. That might be fun as well.

Regarding concerns on difficulty... there's quite a wide range of adjustment for AI difficulty, so you can challenge yourself without making it too hard, or just turn the AI all the way down to be sure to win all the events. There are quite a lot of them on the "Road to the WRC", I've played several hours and I'm only 4% complete. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of repetition of courses, but so long as they switch up the classes that will be fine.

Also the number of rewinds is adjustable as well. So far I haven't seen any real penalty in the game for lowering the AI or increasing the number of rewinds. Maybe they really do intent to make the game accessible to everyone, that's nice.

Are you just playing with the normal 360 controller?

Yup, just the standard controller and it seems to work fine, no funkiness like over-controlling or poor scaling of inputs.

Here's another example of the in-game help... on the floor of this garage is some rather useful information:


And another nice touch... I'm hiding in a closet while a guard in the room is composing an email to his mother:


And one more screenie... that's me, hiding in the bushes (note the faint blue circle).


One question I do have... I saw a mention in one of the reviews of an editor for the game, but I can't seem to find it on the Steam version. Anyone know any more about this?

[Hrothgar]

First of all, a big hug and kiss to Hrothgar for sending me a Steam code. Since I'm mostly a single player kind of guy, I decided I'd give that a go and report back.

Let's see, first of all, Monaco supports a 360 controller on the PC... very cool:


I decided to play as the Pickpocket Locksmith on my first play-through, although it's not always possible to do that since if you die on a level, you have three extra "lives", but they represent the other three members of your team, and so you respawn not as your original character, but one of the other characters on your team. Took me a while to figure that out .

The reviews are right, screenshots simply don't do the game justice. As you play, text written on the floors give you instructions and gameplay hints, just when you need them. Awesome . There is a lot of learn as you go, but it's not hard to pick up.

For the single player, there are two main modes of gameplay. You can focus just on achieving the objective (steal something, release someone from jail, etc). Or, while you are doing that, you can hunt around the map to pick up coins. Coins are collectables and sometimes aren't in the most obvious locations, but then it does make you explore the map to find them. And on some levels getting a certain number of coins gives you extra ammo or smoke grenades or whatever. It can be a little frustrating if you are short just a coin or two and have to search all over the map for that little alcove you overlooked. Still, it's not an onerous task most of the time.

If you are discovered by guards, your attempt at that level isn't ruined. You just do have to go hide till the heat is off. Speaking of that, I'm still not sure what it means when your character is emitting gold sparkles (for want of a better term). I'm thinking it's that you are either sweating or the guard alert level is still high. Or maybe something else. I'm sure I'll figure it out.

I'll post some more screenshots soon.

I've gotten in about three hours on it. It's pretty good, at least in that the stages are longer that in Dirt 3 and the cars "feel" right. The campaign mode, "Road to the WRC", is interesting in a tycoon game sort of way in that you hire staff, do research, look for sponsors, and go through a lot of menus to do it. Still, it's more involving than just running rallies. The graphics are a little muddy, but I can live with that. So, nothing earth-shattering, but decent.

Just got this in the mail (down here in Florida) from a distributor up in Canada. It's the 360 version. Although the box is labeled "PAL" the listing in Amazon said it was "Xbox 360 Region Free" and indeed it is, running on my NTSC system.

I know there's not a lot of interest in racing games, and even less in rally games , but for those like me with wimpy PC rigs but having a 360, at least this game is available. I'll post impressions after a while.

I'm (again) in the "no SP, I'm out" camp.  I totally understand that for an indie developer, it makes complete sense to make a game MP-only because coding a competent AI is hard, but as a player, it puts me in the position of buying a game I know I'm never going to play, or just not buying it.   

I'm in the same boat as you, but I've been checking comments on the Steam forums and this thread is interesting as the subject of SP gameplay is discussed. According to several of the folks, you can play it in SP just as well, although your experience is different. To wit:

It's more challenging playing sp, as you only have one ability instead of four when playing four people multiplayer. But it's not at all bad. On the contrary, you have a lot of replayabilty potential, because playing with different characters means having to rely on different strategies.

Also:

They're different. Multiplayer is zany. Single player is much more deliberate. You're not going to get the crazy, mixed up madness you'd get with a lot of people by yourself. Instead, the levels are more like puzzles. You have a small toolbox, and you've gotta figure out how to apply those tools in the right places.

And...

I almost like single player more just because I have the opportunity to sneak around and figure things out more slowly than if I was in a multiplayer game. Also you can try out different characters much more readily than when you are stuck with one for a level like multiplayer. Not to say I don't like multiplayer though, I love both modes and have had a heck of a time playing them!

Additionally there is this review over on IncGamers and the guy really, really likes the game. Here's what he says about SP:

If you’re a solo gamer then you’ll find a pair of tough-but-fair campaigns, and you can either try to sneak around as a ghost, or race to finish the level as fast as possible, or focus on cleaning the loot out of the entire level (which is incredibly difficult, incredibly rewarding, and the means of unlocking the second campaign’s levels).

The only thing I don't like is that reference to having to "unlock" the second campaign