Dresden on 22/12/2011 at 11:52

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You never finish Bethesda games. You just find a place to stop.

catbarf on 22/12/2011 at 17:19

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I just got accepted to the beta for Tribes: Ascend. I never played the original Tribes games, so can't comment on how it stacks up to its predecessors, but it's pretty fun in its own right. Everyone has a jetpack and everyone can 'skate' (ie, keep the same velocity while scooting along the ground), which makes movement hugely important as losing speed and hanging around on the ground means death, as does rocketing way up into the air and getting splattered at the apex. There are two classes to start with, one with a non-hitscan assault rifle and a mortar pistol, and the other with a splash-damage slow-firing energy weapon and a hitscan pistol. Since the primary weapons aren't hitscan, properly timing and aiming your shots is crucially important, hitting enemies as they touch down before jetpacking again.

Combined with the movement system, it's clear that there's a fair degree of skill inherent in the basic gameplay. Once I learned what I was doing, I could outrun people who weren't properly utilizing jetpack and skate, dodge the shots of people who didn't know to aim for where I was going to land, and easily take out the people who were predictable in their jetpack usage. In my second round I went 13 and 2 with 2 flag captures out of my team's five, which is unusual in that I'm usually pretty bad at competitive FPSes.

As far as I can tell, the pay to play part is only used to get increased experience from matches, but that of course could change. That said, this is a free FPS I might actually play.

Phatose on 23/12/2011 at 19:13

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Been playing Tropico 4 while I waited for Arkham City to finish downloading. According to the avatar screen, I'm a hardworking, Industrial Genius, Vigilante. So, apparently I'm the Tropican Batman.

Koki on 24/12/2011 at 06:58

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God dammit icemann.

EvaUnit02 on 24/12/2011 at 14:48

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Hey assholes, Merry Xmas.