Video game addicts...

I've got a wad of birthday cash burning a hole in my pocket.


I've decided I'm going to burn it on a new XBOX game.

Off the top of my head I'm interested in Fallout 3 and GTA 4, but there's others that catch my fancy occasionally too. Help me decide. I'm kind of in the mood to add another shooter but with more depth than L4D and more gritty and less spacy than Mass Effect.



My current library consists of.

Ace Combat 6
Forza 2
Left 4 Dead
Project Gotham Racing 3
Mass Effect
Assassin's Creed
Saints Row
Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix (wife's I swear)
Lost: Via Domus (also my wife's)

...There's a couple of others in there too I can't think of, but you get the idea.

Fallout 3 grabbed me and didn't let go. I hope you have a lot of spare time if you go that route the hours just seemed to evaporate when I was playing it.

Resident Evil 5?

+1 on this.

The area you walk in is simply gigantic. Tends to be a bit of a mood downer sometimes, but postnuclear war worlds probably have to look a bit depressive.

I gad GTA IV on order. 20 minutes later, I loaned it to a friend.

Free advice: pick up a used copy of Gears of War. I grew addicted to the online, playing two or three hours a night. Had 64 people on my Live friends list who also were into team play- it was awesome. Stood in line for Gears 2, which isn't so awesome for online play.

People now seem to use their XBOX as a Netflix player.

I'm currently playing Dead Space, which is pretty good- very Half Life 2-esque.

I still love to get on and play Gears 1 online, though. A lot.

Though I have 4. I never really caught on to the whole rsident evil thing. I'll take another look at 5 again though.

I need to rent it. I was told it was like Oblivion, which I felt was large- but boring large. As in "let's walk through this forest for no reason other than the world is large." Is this a valid assessment?

BTW- I've been hitting up Gamestop for a host of used games- I'm much more forgiving anymore when they cost me $20 - $30 rather than $60.

I had gears of war. Fantastic game, but I don't play often enough anymore (I still enjoy playing) and am too cheap of a bastard to pay for XBOX online, it was too short of a game after I played it through a couple of times. I sold it a few months ago so I could get L4D.

Dead space looks really cool though!

I was doing that for a while about a year ago. I'd get onto amazon and spend maybe $30 on 10 games for PS2 or N64 that I could never afford when they came out.

I've never played Oblivion but Fallout 3 has that "I wonder what's over that hill?" thing going for it. There is a ton of stuff to check out.

This is one of those things I like.

I'm sure it's boringly big sometimes, but I bought S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl when it came out and I loved the open world (even though it was divided into sections) and how you could approach any base or camp an infinite number of ways or just happen to stumble upon special guns or whatever in some random corner of a map. Also, this game was fantastic at creating a creepy atmosphere in the underground bases, etc.

Infact, even with it's mediocre graphics for when it came out. I really liked that game and I'm sort of looking for a modern replacement for it. I know they made a sequel, but it looks like they really didn't change anything from the first time.

COD World at War.

Ben is pretty picky about the games he will play. He liked Fallout 3 as much as I did, but he's not so hot on the full on shooter games like Halo.

I picked up a used copy of Mass Effect and he's enjoying that but it's a little sterile. He likes the combo Role Play & Shooter style but prefers killing aliens and mutants rather than humans, unless they're really evil humans.

Anyone have any suggestions for other titles he might like?

One thing I do want to know about Fallout 3 is are there any mutants in the game. I know there's like mutant people, but I mean something less sentient, more monstery.

There's a lot of puzzle solving as well as shooting of aliens in Dead Space- but it's a bit much for young kids. My 11 year-old I deemed okay to watch me play. He's a great helper as we solve quests. I'm realy liking it, though- we play it as a team. It's probably more fun for me with the controlled than him, but we have a ball. He has his own games, dammit!

I'm going to have to checkout Fallout 3 now.

This is true, I really like the game but it's a bit too sterile at times also.

So he's going for something inbetween halo free for all and mass effect sterile tactics?

Yep, still loving COD World at War after a few months.. Great to play "nazi zombie mode" or just run around with a pump shotgun on the "Dome" map. When I get bored, COD 4 "Modern Warfare" is nice for modern high-tech weapons....

No. There are a lot of various mutant animals like giant ants & scorpions and things called Mirelurks that look like giant walking horseshoe crabs which are a bitch to kill until you get some good guns.

There are several humanish enemies. Raiders, slavers, & mercenaries are pretty much just human thugs that roam the Wasteland. Then you have Super Mutants and Ghouls that are a little more monsterish.

Ever seen Zero Punctuation's game reviews? Maybe they'll help you decide.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/posts/Yahtzee+Croshaw

L4D was fun, but I picked up Far Cry 2 about 3 weeks ago. The driving gets boring, but the actual combat is interesting and the storyline seems decent.

GTA4 has a new expansion out, too.

Ah ok, that's what I wanted to know. I was afraid I'd get bored pretty quick just hunting and killing a bunch of mad max wannabes all the time.

There's a lot of variety in things to kill.