h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My daughter taught me to play guitar hero last night, and then sulked when I beat her on Eye of the Tiger

Good work beatrice!!

On the Oblivion thing, I found the riding around *really* frustrating. But then in my opinion there's no good enough horse riding sims about. Equestriad 2003 (or was it 2001? cant remember), a three-day-eventing game on the original playstation was the best I've ever played and that had major bugs in it. When I tried to report them to the maker/developer (like it says you can in the little booklet) they denied all knowedge of the game existing .

Anyway, there's far too little money being put into a decent serious horse riding game. just getting the movement and responses of the horse right would be a start. Oblivion wasn't bad but it really did my head in in the end!

Zero Punctuation reviews Mass Effect 2. Hmmm....

www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1461-Mass-Effect-2

I quite like showing off my mounts in WoW. My paladin has a golden unicorn thing to run around on and coupled with the speed buff I quite enjoy running around on it

I wish I understood what just said.

Then again maybe not...

I read that she enjoyed showing off her mounts at least three times before it dawned on me she might be referring to horses and such.

Sorry about the triple winky thing... I'm having some odd browser issue (it's driving me nuts).

Been playing "Dante's Inferno" for several days now. Yes, it's similar to God Of War, but it's really cool in its own right. And I think the graphics are gorgeous. I also like the way you get to choose a holy/unholy gameplay- that'll make replay more entertaining.

Just had a fantastic evening playing StarCraft. It's still a fantastic game at 12 years old. I'm not even sure I'm still looking forward to StarCraft II any more - it's just prettier, really.

Been playibng the Demo of Divinty II. Looks good. Not sure I'll get the full game yet. But I probably shall at some point though.


Also playing Assault Cube. Free, online and offline shooter. Very addictive.

http://assault.cubers.net/

And by Wednesday I should have Oblivion. Any recommend any mods? Any boat/ship ones?

I dug out my copy of Oblivion and started again. It's still really clunky control wise but once you get out of the crappy starting area it really is a great game

completed Mass Effect(twice)....once as Sentinel, and once as Soldier.I am gutted that i cant afford Mass Effect 2 at the mo, so instead i am playing Condemned 2......and soon to be staring on James Camerons Avatar

<> PC or X-Box?

PC. There's too much fannying around in the menus for my liking. I know you can hotkey stuff etc but I like my controls simple

Hate to say it but if you want simple controls wouldn't you be better off playing a simple game?

Mind you, the fact it pauses the game when in menu means you can fix your health/fatigue/magic without having to hammer away on a quick key.

I guess though I have the opposite opinion to you - the interface is, I feel, too simplistic - a legacy of the designed for consoles as well process. That's what I dislike about the interface - too simple and too restrictive. And badly designed for that very reason. Morrowind was much better in that respect.

Still, guess it depends on what you want from the game and how you play it.

"if you want simple controls wouldn't you be better off playing a simple game?"

I play plenty of games as complex as Oblivion with better UIs, so what are you suggesting exactly? Maybe I should put the heavy games aside and go play Hello Kitty Online? Please don't insult my intelligence with such a patronising comment.

If people want a simple game, might I suggest Robot Unicorn Attack

http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicorn-attack-twitchy-online-game.html

Been playing a lot of Persona 2 for about a month-and-a-half. The social interactions aspect is entertaining, to the extent that my flatmates sat in to watch me play at first, and one bought the game and is now on his second run through.
After 60 hours though, the levelling is getting very tedious. It unlocks a new section of the battle location every in-game "month", and I've usually sprinted through a section within 3 "days" of unlocking. By 2 "weeks" in, I've completed everything in the section, and it's just a matter of grinding over and over again for XP...

"I play plenty of games as complex as Oblivion with better UIs, so what are you suggesting exactly? Maybe I should put the heavy games aside and go play Hello Kitty Online? Please don't insult my intelligence with such a patronising comment."

I wasn't insulting your intelligence I was pointing out that complex games tend to have complex interfaces. If you want a simple interface you ain't going to get it in a complex game - by its very nature it needs to be quite complex in order to manage the user/game interaction.

Better is not necessarily simpler. I'd be interested to know which other games you consider to be as complex as (or more than) Oblivion but with better interfaces?

Two spring immediately to mind for me - Morrowind (more complex and better interface which is itself more complex) and Fallout 3 which is as complex (not surprising given its origins) with a somewhat better interface (also a more complex interface).

Simplicity isn't the key to better, but rather usability. How well it is designed, how intuitive it is and so forth.

"I wasn't insulting your intelligence I was pointing out that complex games tend to have complex interfaces".

O rly? No s**t Sherlock.

Civ 4, for example, is pretty complex and the interface is way more user friendly. I was going to use MMOs as an example too but as you can't pause what you're doing in Everquest, Aion, WoW etc these UIs have to be simple by default. They're still better designed than Oblivion's though.

My point is, the controls for Oblivion are overcomplicated. This doesn't mean I stamp my foot with frustration whenever I find a bit of clunky gameplay and now the subject has been blown out of proportion over one comment