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

Do be aware that there are some older games that do run on Windows 7 that some folks have had trouble getting to run on Windows 8. For instance, when Dangerous Waters was made available on Steam a bunch of folks couldn't get it to work under Win8, while it ran fine for me under 64bit Win7. I'm not aware of other instances, but there might be others out there.

[cars]

And more about this free DLC, the 1000 Club...

Man, I'm going to wrench my back going for that... oh, it's about cars. Sorry 

I liked the Test Drive Unlimited series, although they did ship with bugs and had legendary online issues. Recently I had the urge to revisit huge driving worlds, like Just Cause 2 and Fuel, and TDU and TDU2 are definitely in that group.

And with that, a new sig file message 

The new Winter Update is available, lots more ways to die! 

Update Notes - Feb 26th

WINTER:
-Winter comes every 20 days or so, with snow and a new audio landscape.
-Ambient air temperature is modelled, and Wilson will get colder the longer he stays out in the open.
-Getting too cold for too long will cause freezing damage. You can extend your time away from the fire by wearing warm clothing.
-Nights are longer, and vegetation does not replenish.
-Bees and butterflies don’t leave their houses in the winter.


IMPROVED MOD SUPPORT:
-There is a new mod API that should make mods break less when the game updates, and allows multiple mods to work at the same time. There is some documentation on how to create
a mod at: http://forums.kleientertainment.com/showthread.php?10817-TUTORIAL-Creating-a-Mod-using-the-Mod-System

-Language packs are now actually supported. The game supplies a 'strings.pot' template file with every update, and the game can load .po language files. This should make maintaining translations a lot easier, and allows the usage of industry-standard tools. For more info, go to: http://forums.kleientertainment.com/showthread.php?10819-TUTORIAL-Creating-a-translation-using-the-PO-Format


NEW CREATURES:
-MacTusk the Walrus - Sets up camp in an igloo, and then hunt you with blowdarts and hounds.
-Deerclops - He’s big, he likes to smash stuff, and he’s really hard to kill. You should probably just run away.
-Winter Koalefant - You can harvest his warm winter trunk.
-Snowbird - A winter bird that drops a new type of feather.
-Mosquitos - Spawn from ponds or Maxwellian traps. They eat too much and explode!
-Ice Hound - Comes instead of the Fire Hound during winter.


NEW ITEM DROPS:
-Blue Gem
-Walrus Tusk
-Deerclops Eye
-Tam o’Shanter
-Snowbird Feather


NEW CRAFTABLES:
-Ice Staff
-Winterometer
-Blow Darts (damaging)
-Winter Trunk Vest


ADVENTURE MODE (CONTINUED):
-This update continues the development of Adventure mode, and seeks to refine the difficulty curve.
-Varying summer/winter lengths
-Varying day/night lengths
-New resource-starved worlds
-Island chain worlds with lots of wormholes


SANDBOX MODE (CONTINUED):
-Added a new world creation screen. There are only a couple of options enabled currently, but soon you will be able to unlock more!


SANITY TUNING:
-From our testing, we determined that sanity was coming on too early for new players, but was also easily avoidable by established players. The intention is for sanity to be a long-term lurking danger, so this was the complete opposite of what we were going for. Here are some changes to help rectify this:
-Vegetables, crock foods don’t regen as much sanity.
-Monsters cause more sanity drain when near.
-Player’s Initial sanity is higher.
-Pure darkness causes a large drop sanity (instead of a gradient around a light source).
-Shadowbeasts show up later in the sanity curve, and are unattackable when you are not insane.
-The crawling horror is weaker and the Terrorbeak is tougher.
-The invisible monster deals sanity damage when he hits you.
-The sanity effect jiggles more slowly, so as to be less nauseating.


TUNING/FIXES:
-Rabbit traps work again
-Maxwell leaves traps for you in adventure mode
-Armour is less effective
-Player attacks are less powerful
-Pigs can’t be stunlocked, have less windup animation before an attack, attack less often, have more health, take longer to respawn, and attempt to kite their targets
-Bees run around between attacks
-Meat healing and health values adjusted
-Dead rabbits respawn slower
-Beefalo drop fewer meats
-Honey doesn’t heal as much
-Honey generates more slowly in bee boxes
-Spider dens have more warriors, and cycle through levels faster
-Spoilage is a bit faster in general
-Stale food has less of a hunger penalty
-Healing values are a bit lower in general
-Ponds show up in more places
-Eyebones turn to ash during teleportation even if you hide them in a backpack
-Teleportato pieces are more scattered, and have little setpiece scenes surrounding them
-Panflutes require a mandrake to craft
-Darts shouldn’t miss targets that are walking away
-More effective bushhat

Back to Basics? If they do it right, I'm in. From the picture I'm guessing it's going to be pistols only

I'm using my xbox 360 controller and it's working fine so far.

Ditto that for me.

We had confirmations last night and today over on Kotaku that the PS4 will play used games and will not require an always-on Internet connection (as well as leaving it up to the game companies as to whether any particular game will need initial Internet activation to play). Those issues, plus being able to play streamed PS1, PS2 and PS3 games makes me think that unless Microsoft does close to the same thing, my next console will be a PS4.

I hadn't played it in several months, but getting the DLC motivated me to try again.  I noticed a few fans have created some video tutorials and posted them on the Steam community guides site, so I'll probably will check out 1 of those.

Here's a video series I found useful.

My son saw it in the Steam sale and he knew I'd been meaning to get it for the past year. He bought it, along with The Republic expansion, for me as one of my birthday gifts.  I'm looking forward to exploring it later this evening.

I hadn't played it in several months, but getting the DLC motivated me to try again. This time I quit worrying about studying the manual and the user's guide and all the numbers and nuances and just play for fun. I ended up staying up half the night ruling my little duchy, marrying off my children to lock me into some bigger kingdoms, overthrowing my neighbors, and (oops) having to throw my son into prison when he refused to return the title to me that I gave him when he was two years old. Well, he got to enjoy it for four years, what is he complaining about?? 

*sigh*  

season pass announced

1600 points for three add-ons i suppose is not bad though

It's getting to the point where this kind of pushing is turning me off even games I'm looking forward to. I'm not pre-ordering B:I even though I'm planning on getting it close to first day just because I want to cast my vote, so to speak, to tell them to just put all the bonuses into the damn game when I buy it. And no more Season Passes for me either.

Don't know if this will help anyone, but True PC Gaming posted a System Shock 2 Modification Guide.

I'm always on the lookout for more classic rock stations. Which station was it?

Can I just vote for Alpha Centauri instead? 

OK, you can offically vote for Alpha Centauri in this thread if you wish

And I consider it second highest, right behind Civ 4 in my list.

Just a heads up to folks that might still be interested in this game, or maybe got the base game and not all the DLC. Steam has had CKII and most of the DLC on sale this week, 75% off. The sale ends in 37 or so hours. I picked up the main DLC packages Legacy of Rome, Sword of Islam and The Republic, although I opted out of the Aztec invasion one as that just sounds a bit too, well, odd for my tastes.