NEXT GEN CONSOLES

[WS_Jack_III]

Anyone got The Last of Us? Live up to hype and reviews?

Going to buy it sometime soon as it looks brilliant.

just downloaded it off of PSN and it has an installation time of 8 hours Think that is more to do with my crappy internet connection.

[Jackmypie]

Picked up Tomb Raider for £20 in Tesco today. First game I've bought in ages.

[luckysalt]

Toys R Us in UK sold out of PS4 preorders now. They were doing it for £334.99 tho!

[WS_Jack_III]

Finally played through most of Red Dead Redemption after owning the game for years and my god it's a boring game. I honestly don't know how it got such high marks across the gaming world. Okay so the finding your former gang and killing them part is good and after killing the main dude I thought I was done but now I'm playing happy familly, herding cattle around for a few missions in a row, shooting crows out of the air and delivering corn. When is it going to end?!??

Edited June 17, 2013 by III

[viberunner]

RDR - I disliked the disengagement from the atrocity you're avenging but don't witness (so have no emotional investment in) but otherwise it's a masterpiece. But I enjoyed chasing down horses. Collecting flowers. Riding through the scenery. (And, yes, shooting stuff).

Undead Nightmare is fun too. Hard though.

I won't tell you about the very ending of RDR because spoilers.

[WS_Jack_III]

Yeah i've been told it is all worth it in the end. I can't see how spending mission after mission with this whiny kid is gonna be worth it to be honest.

[t8yman]

I persevered with it for a while, but ultimately found it to be mega dullsville, ive never been a fan of that type of game, oblivion bored me, fallout was frankly as dull as dishwater, and I have said on here many times that GTA is my idea of hell.

[viberunner]

RDR is one of the finest games ever made, it really is the journey not the destination. (And Undead Nightmare is great fun too).

Oblivion, Skyrim, and Fallout 3 suck; but Fallout New Vegas is sublime.

I agree the GTA games are boring. Saint's Row 1 and 2 on the other hand are masterpieces.

Sleeping Dogs is pretty great too, though short compared to the other games on this list.

[windy_miller]

RDR is one of the finest games ever made, it really is the journey not the destination. (And Undead Nightmare is great fun too).

Oblivion, Skyrim, and Fallout 3 suck; but Fallout New Vegas is sublime.

I agree the GTA games are boring. Saint's Row 1 and 2 on the other hand are masterpieces.

Sleeping Dogs is pretty great too, though short compared to the other games on this list.

I fired up New Vegas the other day for the first time in over a year. Took me about an hour to work out what the hell I was doing! I really should try and finish it.

[WS_Jack_III]

See i love the Fallout games.

[pryce]

ive finally started Witcher 2 ... ...its blimmin different to the first one .... trying to remember the controls on the keyboard is difficult enough

[kaosmark2]

I love the first 2 Fallouts. 3 was a pile of pants though. Never liked Elder Scrolls games either.

[viberunner]

I loathed FO3, but adore New Vegas. It has the FO3 engine, but goes back to FO1/2 in terms of humour.

The GOTY edition (which has the DLC, which is pretty much essential IMHO) is pretty cheap, perhaps you should check it out?

[kaosmark2]

Might do at some point, but I kinda prefer the earlier engines, although that might just be nostalgia. I'll probably pick it up eventually.

[Jackmypie]

Completed Tom Raider in about 12 hours. The story line was good but imo the game was much too short. Atm I'm just getting all the collectables to get the most out of the game cos the multiplayer is awful and it takes about 20 minutes to find a match because no one plays it anymore even though it's only 3 months old! 5/10 for me, as soon as I 100% it I'll sell it on.

[G-Stud]

I've been thinking more and more not getting a next gen console and building my own gaming rig. Anyone here built their own?

[Spindles]

I've built many

I'd recommend either a high end i7 with plenty of ram and the highest spec nvidia card you can lay your hands on, or the same pattern with a high end AMD (as many cores as you can lay your hands on, stick to the FX range/black editions) and a high spec ATI card.

My current rig:

Q6600 quad core (old, but still a solid performing quad core, would be a step down to go to an i3 or i5)

8GB DDR3

1GB nVidia Geforce Ti550

96GB SSD for OS and Apps,

128GB SSD for games

7 TB Sata array for media

This still gives me the ability to run almost everything at my native resolution on a big screen TV with an xbox pad. Realistically I should move to an i7 as my chip is now the bottleneck, but that comes with a motherboard switch and that is where the price starts to climb.

I'm getting 60fps with a variety of high, Maximum and medium visual settings in Far Cry 3, Battlefield 3 can run maxed at the same. I've yet to really meet a game that I've had to really lower settings on to get performance and this is on what is a machine made out of mostly quite old parts now.

After Glastonbury I'll be replacing the board, chip and GFX and adding a couple more drives (as I'm down to less than 1TB of free space) and would probably purchase my parts from ebuyer, overclockers.co.uk or novatech.

My problem really is that the socket 775 quad cores were so good and the early generations of the i3,i5 so weak in comparison that I haven't been willing to make the leap to the next generation, although the 3rd gen i5's are looking more like it.

I'd go AMD, but my problem there is that you are sort of tied into the ATI ecosystem if you are a gamer with an AMD chip if you want to get any advantage from the chipset and specialised extensions (not to mention the onchip GPU cores these days).

I've been an nVidia fanboy since the Ti4200 and their bang for your buck means that you can get some pretty high end graphics for not too much money.

Personally my recommendation is to set yourself a budget for what you are prepared to spend for each component, then look at what you can get for your money with each of the vendors, try to stage upgrades so that you are not spending a fortune in one go and then you can give your PC a boost every year or so with a single component upgrade between major upgrades (motherboard swaps, basically are your most costly spend, usually as that means new chip and new RAM also).

[G-Stud]

Thanks! It's looking like it's going to be a pretty costly initial outlay, but it should be worth it! I'm thinking of going for an Intel i5 processor, and there's a few more things I've looked at. I'll fire up a list so you can see what you think

[Jackmypie]

Wheyy

I knew they wouldn't go through with it

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57590134-75/microsoft-pulls-a-180-rescinds-xbox-one-connection-mandate/

Xbox 180

[t8yman]

hahahahahahahahaha, that is unbelievable, especially the bit about "we listened to our customers reactions" corporate bullshit technique.

we just need to get rid of Kinect now, and xbone may stand a slim chance.

and yes jackmypie, the xbone should now be referred to as the "xbox 180"

[Purple Monkey]

What's scarier is how quickly people are u-turning to suddenly jump back into bed with them.

[minute5072]

Bought myself a ps3 yesterday which came with a 30day ps plus trial. What a great service! Uncharted 3, xcom, demon souls, ico and shadow of the colossus all for free

Edited June 20, 2013 by minute5072

[jump]

What's scarier is how quickly people are u-turning to suddenly jump back into bed with them.

Yep, and I don't even buy they wont go though with it. My money is on them introducing all of the same policies a few years into the console's lifespan.

[t8yman]

there are claims that somewhere it has been said "for the life of the console" but I've yet to see that in official form.

and yes, the fact that people are u-turning themselves to reinvest in microsoft is troubling. they have betrayed a trust, and I wont be returning. I've no doubt that gaming will go that way, but we are not ready for that yet.

interesting to see what evil plan EA have to make up for their cancelling of the online pass, which was quite obviously linked to this now defunct policy.

and the language in the press release was priceless "we have listened to you" "you love the way things are done now" "thanks for your candid feedback"

fucking arseholes they are.

anyone read that article on gizmodo? sponsored by microsoft or what?

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/06/the-xbox-one-just-got-way-worse-and-its-our-fault/

[G-Stud]

I'd never looked at gizmodo before, and I won't again. What a lot of pish.

My DIY gaming rig plan remains!