What are you playing at the moment?

[NokkonWud]

Finished of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 last night and I have to say, this is easily my game of the year so far.

It's a combination of the best multiplayer game I've played this year (and this almost certainly won't change) and the best single player game I've played this year. It's almost flawless if I'm being honest and it even takes the king of the Battlefield multiplayer crown from Battlefield 2.

Amazing 5.1 audio (probably the best I've ever heard), stunning graphics, brilliant weapon balancing in multiplayer, entertaining story with some of the best characters in a game in single player, vehicles, massive weapons, unlocks, free downloadable content (maps will always be free too).

I'm rattling my brain to think of anything that I could really give as a negative toward the game and that's proving really difficult, and that's after 155 hours of playing time according to Raptr.

[Streeteh]

I can think of one:

The weapons are horrifically imbalanced (this is very widely agreed upon)

The 40mm grenade launcher has an insane amount of splash damage, reloads quickly, has incredible accuracy and can be rearmed from the very ammo boxes the person using it can drop. You end up with people just camping in windows chucking grenade after grenade out onto the terrain, rearming themselves as they fire.

The Gustav rocket launcher is insanely powerful and with the extra ammo perk gets 8 rounds. That's enough to kill dozens of people without any real need for accuracy or a rearm.

The M60 machinegun has less kickback than the sub-machine guns, deals out incredible amounts of damage and has a 100-clip mag. If you end up in a face to face with someone carrying one of these you've just got to hope they have terrible aim as they're guaranteed kill you faster than you can kill them (more dps than any other machinegun) they can run about while shooting more accurately than you and you will run out of bullets before they do. Something's wrong when the best gun is given to a support class, not the assault class.

Other than that it's fantastic, but until these three weapons are looked at by DiCE i personally won't see it as flawless. After that, possibly.

[NokkonWud]

I've never experienced a single issue with the grenade launcher, splash damage seems no less than normal grenades. I've only encountered one person using the Gustav launcher a lot too, can't see I ever noticed it be any more devastating than the RPG-7 though (which is my Rocket Launcher of choice).

A lot of people DO use the M60 though and it is a ferocious weapon, perhaps it is a little overpowered, but I don't ever find myself saying "Goddamit, stupid freaking M60s", but from using it I do know how good it is.

The only gun I'd heard a lot of complaints about was the Abakan assault rifle being too powerful, which I found hilarious because I absolutely suck with it and after getting Gold stars on all weapons (bar last 2 assault rifles) I would say that it was hands down the weapon I was worst with.

There are so many great guns, I'm a big fan of all the Engineer guns, the Neostead shotgun and the GOL Sniper Rifle as well as the XM8 Prototype. Those are the real stars of the game for me.

[Streeteh]

What's the playercount limit on consoles? On PC it's 32 and it can get a little crowded hence the grenade spam being so preferable to those who lack skill. If the console limit is lower then that could explain why you didn't have that issue.

[NokkonWud]

24 on the consoles, which for the size of the maps feels absolutely spot on, personally I would have liked them a little bigger, but Bad Company is a Console game so I assume it was a case of making the maps and then just throwing in a PC gaming figure for the player limit, but that will have an impact on why it feels so crowded on PC.

[Streeteh]

Originally Posted by NokkonWud

24 on the consoles, which for the size of the maps feels absolutely spot on, personally I would have liked them a little bigger, but Bad Company is a Console game so I assume it was a case of making the maps and then just throwing in a PC gaming figure for the player limit, but that will have an impact on why it feels so crowded on PC.

Hmm, that's an extra squad per team which goes some way to explaining why it feels 'spammy' on the smaller maps. The game really comes together in the larger maps, just had a game now where i really felt like i was contributing a significant amount to the team (was part of a 4 man antitank squad, one of each class with me as the engineer, just went around hunting armour and the other guys supported me, ended up with 3 heavy tank kills, 4 light tank kills and a quadbike for good measure), but in smaller maps i just feel like i'm running around avoiding explosions.

[NokkonWud]

I love being in a good squad, but I only really play it if my friends are playing, so we're all in the same squad, chatting in party chat and having a real laugh, it's absolutely brilliant, for me this is now the best Battlefield game and the only game that holds its own with the Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942.

[Haly]

Just completed Final Fantasy XIII. Really enjoyed it despite its flaws. It's a real departure from recent FFs. Shame the pacing is so off making the early stages rather tedious in places.

Battle system and crystarium work very well once the game opens up a bit more and makes it much more interesting. Quite tactical too.

Probably one of the shorter FFs clocking in at around 40hrs although I haven't started the end game yet (such a weird concept for a FF!) so that should keep me busy.

If anyone's interested I'll let them know when my review goes up later in the week as I'll obviously discuss my thoughts a bit more

Also played some more of Battlefield Bad Company 2. Really enjoying the single player, more so than Modern Warfare 2.
Jumped into one multiplayer match and was mostly intimidated at figuring out where to go and how not to die But I'm sure I'll play more of it in the coming days/weeks.

Better start up Star Ocean: The Last Hope for the PS3 soon too as I promised a review of it once I finished FFXIII. Giving it a second chance after my time with the 360 one.

[Justsomebloke]

Dirt 2 + Forza 3.

I bought myself a 2nd hand wheel yesterday from my local Indi for 48 quids, There was one in Gamestation for 45 quids but it felt floppy where as the one I got for 48 is Mint.
I have been pondering a wheel purchase for about 3 weeks & finally bit the bullit.
What can I say, I should have got one when I got my X box as it's added so much as far as involvement & enjoyment to my Racing. I played for hours yesterday Happily trying to get my times back down to where they were with a controller, I failed.
I am quite a bit slower with the wheel at the mo but don't care at all as the feel & involvement is sublime. I honestly don't know why i am slower as holding your lines is a breeze with the wheel & I Know I am driving better with the wheel. I'll get there & I will enjoy every single minute of Track time.

A Happy Gamer.

[Garp]

Fallout 3

Loving it and hating it at the same time. Great game, but after patching it up from initial release patching it's become worse, not better. I know there are a number of game killing bugs that have been fixed so I'm soldiering on, but now having to put up with random crashes, jerky radio/music and the lack of ability to alt-tab away.

The game itself has some annoying things, like I'm able to be shot by things I can't see because they're too far away, when they're really not all that far away. Their horizon thing is so many kinds of screwed up. Seemingly random objects are and aren't visible at a long distance. I can walk up to a factory, see it's wide open to the world, even see in through the door, but then all of a sudden a door appears, and then not long after that some boards appear hammered across it.