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

I have four shouts but only one dragon soul. I was hunting down a dragon for a third soul but the game bugged and I had to revert to a previous save. The dragon was gone of course

Err I have four shouts and two souls

13 souls and about 12 shouts.

Rah!

I've got about 19 dragon souls and something like a dozen shouts
but to be honest I rarely use them.
The freeze shout comes in handy at times as a last resort but
even that didn't help me whan I came across some kind of mage
in the mountains.
I don't know what he had but he wiped out my magica and my life
in one go and I had to watch myself go tumbling head over heels down
the mountain.
Tried sneaking up to the spot later but he/she wasn't there.

OMG, just looked at the time played on Skyrim last night
and it's about 108 hours so far.
I've been doing side quests and wandering into various caves
and mines so often that I've forgotten what the overall story
is about.

Same here! I keep getting sidetracked but it's all part of the fun I've always said the Elder Scrolls games were great value for money.

Yesterday I finished playing Heavy Rain. I may play it again at some point, now I know how the whole thing works, but I find it distressing that I 'completed' the whole thing in only 3 afternoons. I still haven't even properly got used to the control system and bedded in! Admittedly, it seems like part of the key to the game is keeping you off-balance and _not_ allowing you to get comfortable, but in my experience, most games tend not to _really_ start until the control system becomes second-nature, which seems to happen after about 20 hours of game-play. Moreover, Heavy Rain has an unconventional system (e.g. walking by pressing a button to go forward and using an analog stick for direction) which takes unusually long to learn.

Heavy Rain sits accusingly on my shelf daring me to pick it up.
I made a hash of the ending and then something else came out
so it got relegated.
Yes, I have to admit that I'm a bit of a game magpie, easily distracted
by a shiny new game.

I will not buy Skyrim... I will not buy Skyrim... I will not buy Skyrim...

Buy Skyrim....buy Skyrim...buy Skyrim...buy Skyrim....

I've not finished Fallout 3 yet, but I keep hearing more and more good stuff about Skyrim, so I've given in and ordered it. Mass Effect 3 out fairly soon too... spoilt for choice...

I must say I'm looking forward to getting an arrow in the knee....

I have a couple of bows and selection of arrows here so I could oblige...

Now I have my new shiny computer, I have spent most of the weekend playing 'Europa Universalis III'. After a couple of false starts while I was still learning the ropes, I've managed to get going with Burgundy. It's now about 1490 and the Americas are just starting to open up. I've got myself a colony in Canada (although I'm not sure about that, since large chunks of the map are still unexplored and so obscured), and I'm trying for a couple of other places...

I've read a couple of reviews/starter tip articles for Skyrim that suggest getting an xbox-style control pad, as it's designed to be played with one. Any thoughts?

Have I been missing out by playing PC games with mouse-and-keyboard?

My guilty thing in video games is this: I can't stop playing Call of Duty. I'm perfectly well aware there are other games. My friends tell me to get Battlefield 2, and later 3, because they're superior for proper tactical play. I paid money for Forza 4 simply to be able to pretend to be the Stig on the Top Gear Test Track - played it twice and back on the shelf it went. I buy new games with the best of intentions of playing them, but CoD is like crack - every time I get to the end of a game, I know that during the next game I'll get some challenge or other and I think "just one more"... and there's always more.

Skyrim doesn't stand a chance. I've got Mass Effect AND Mass Effect 2 on my shelf, fully sure they're really good. I "want" to play Halo Reach online, I "want" to play Halo Anniversary - Halo was why I bought an XBox in the first place, after all. But I can't crack that CoD habit. (Worst of it is just as the effect starts to wear off, after about two or three months, they release a map pack, and it all starts again. First map pack for MW3 is out Wednesday. Arrrgh!

Mostly lots of PC games are better with mouse and keyboard. Though I find with 3D wRPGs a controller is much better.

Also, if oyu have a PC rig that can handle it, you can output to oyur TV and thus play without having to sit at your computer desk. Which for my money is ace with a crack laced game like Skyrim that just eats your life!

The Xbox wireless adapters for PC cost about 12 quid on Amazon. Well worth it i'd say.

FB

You know COD is one of those things that has just passed me by. I have never got it or liked it. Even the earlier ones in the pre "modern" era.

Is strange because I am a massive game addict, but horses for courses I suppose.

FB

I've always liked games, but have been able to take or leave them. Even when I first got online with the 360 and had the revelation of proper multiplayer on Halo 3, it was still a pleasure I could dip in and out of without any particular drive. Then I got CoD4 (the first Modern Warfare)... and that was it.

It's interesting to me the way it perpetuates the player's addiction, rationing reward, generous at first, then less and less generous as time goes by, so the craving rises. Then, just when the craving is REALLY bad and the rewards are in danger of running out... prestige mode, and you start all over again. It's diabolical, all the more so for still being effective when you know how and why it's working.

I find that I just enjoy replaying the same old games I'ev played before at the moment. Skyrim hasn't been touched in weeks, and I'm on maternity leave, with hours in a day that I could waste on it (heck, that was one of my justifications for buying it!) and yet instead I've dusted off the PS2 and got out Final Fantasy X. There's something cvomforting about playing something so familiar, even though it's plot-led and I know the plot backwards. It's still not boring.

Of course, part of that could be attributed to baby-brain of course - I'm not really up for many mental challenges at the moment.

I finally finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and apart from the incredibly irritating boss-fights I really enjoyed it, definitely recommend it. The Missing Link DLC is quite good too but I found it a little short, thankfully I grabbed it in the steam sale so it wan only a couple of quid.

I am looking forward to the demo/alpha for Castle Story (http://www.sauropodstudio.com/) which should be out in a few weeks or so. And I'm enjoying Torchlight at the minute and I#m looking forward to Torchlight 2.

Sadly ME3 is an origin game so I probably won't be getting it.