Holiday Video Game Shopping List

[CJH]

There are a ton of great games coming out this Holiday season. Feels like there haven't been any good releases in quite a while. I have been playing BF:BC2 lately - Muliplayer is mediocre, but I am bored with everything else. Here are games I am looking forward to:

1) COD:MW3

2) Elder Scrolls V:Skyrim

3) Assasins Creed Revelations

4) Rocksmith

5) Battlefield 3

6) Uncharted 3

Too many games to buy at one time, but I am getting MW3 and Rocksmith when they come out, then probably Skyrim or ACR after that.

Anybody else pumped??

[Nick Kuhn]

1). Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

2). Halo CE Anniversary. My CE disc stopped working years ago, love to play that again. Hopefully the Reach engined can be altered to allow for true CE gameplay online.

3). Would be Diablo III but it won't be ready until early 2012.

Not really too excited for anything else. Skyrim will eat up a ton of time on it's own. That should keep me pretty occupied until D3 rolls around. If it's anything like D2, D3 will keep me busy until at least the 2012 holiday season.

[DTro]

RAGE looks good.

[Slabasaurus]

Uncharted 3

Halo CE

Final Fantasy XIII - 2

Not new releases by any means but there's some DLC for Fallout: New Vegas that I have yet to play.

[CJH]

Forgot about Diablo III- whenever that comes out, plus the next chapter of StarCraft 2 as well. I'll probably wait to pickup Skyrim until the first patch is out.

Rage actually does look pretty fun.

I am sure I missed a few more. Amazes me the studios choose to release all of these after a pretty quiet summer season.

[itchmesir]

And then the sequel.. oooo.. it has minorities!.. my parents are gonna be sooooo mad to know im virtually dating a mexican

[rushing]

I have been lookin forward to Rage for months now!

Rage

MW3

Mass Effect 3...but now its not gonna be out till next spring

[CJH]

Picked up Rocksmith last night. After playing it for an hour or so, gotta say I kind of like it. The fact you use your own guitar is pretty cool. Basically its like reading and playing dynamic guitar tab. The cool thing about it is that it automatically adjusts the difficulty level, so if you are doing well, it adds more notes and if not, then it pulls back. Solid track list as well, with more song DLC coming. The price is a little high ($79), due to the special guitar cord you need to connect to your gaming console, but considering its a one of a kind game, I am fine with it. If you play guitar, you may want to check it out.

BF3 will be the next purchase when it comes out next week. Anybody else picked up anything else yet?

[Bigbartguy]

CJH - re: ROCKSMITH

will it help me improve my skills and learn new songs? It sounds like kind a 'play the guitar tabs' kind of game?

I've been wondering about this one. I've got 3 guitars that I dont use as much as I should

[CJH]

I was only able to play for an hour or so last night, but I think it will help you improve your skills. On top of playing the songs, there are side games built in to work on specific skills. I haven't played them yet, but you unlock them the further you get in the game. I unlocked about 5 of them last night, including slides and hammer ons/offs.

As far as learning songs, I am not sure you are going to learn every note of every song, but I do think you will learn riffs. I learned the basic riff to "I can't get no satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones last night, which is the song you start on. Once I play it a few more times I'll have it memorized, I was just too eager to move on and try some other songs. It is fun playing along with them, even if you are at the beginning stage and just playing a few key notes here and there. I am just relearning how to play, and I can see myself playing more and getting better while playing this game.

Some other cool things are that a tuner is built into it and it checks your tuning quickly before each song. It has all the effects/distortions built into it, so when you are playing the Stones it sounds like their classic fuzz distortion sound. Also, if you have your game console hooked into your stereo, then the audio plays through that - so you are basically using your stereo system as an integrated amp.

Like I said, I have only played it a little bit, but it definitely seems like it was well designed (its made by Ubisoft so that is not surprising).

[DarthBaiter]

RAGE = NO

It's another Bethesda game, nuff said.

[Bigbartguy]

Rocksmith sounds like a winner for any guitar players out there. I'll be asking for Christmas

[Nick Kuhn]

Rocksmith sounds cool, the song list just doesn't look that appealing. You have to have some Zep or Van Halen on there. At least give the guitar players something challenging to try master.

[CJH]

Rocksmith sounds cool, the song list just doesn't look that appealing. You have to have some Zep or Van Halen on there. At least give the guitar players something challenging to try master.

Hoping that is downloadable, but who knows with all of the licensing obstacles.

A little game called Skyrim comes out tomorrow.......... BF3 was replaced by MW3, but they both might get put on the back burner tomorrow!!!

[CJH]

Anybody played Skyrim yet? All the reviews have been off the charts. I am going to wait and pick mine up after Christmas.

Also, would you play it on a 17" Laptop @ decent settings, or on a PS3 w/57" big screen and surround sound? I had planned on picking up the PC version, but now I am kind of leaning towards playing on the big screen......

[EBass]

No on the Skyrim, but I did pick up Uncharted3, MW3 and soon Arkam City. My buddy let me use BF3 for 3 days before he returned it. I do like MW3 better though.

[Slabasaurus]

Anybody played Skyrim yet? All the reviews have been off the charts. I am going to wait and pick mine up after Christmas.

Also, would you play it on a 17" Laptop @ decent settings, or on a PS3 w/57" big screen and surround sound? I had planned on picking up the PC version, but now I am kind of leaning towards playing on the big screen......

To me, winter means two things. Ice fishing and video games. For whatever reason I just don't ever feel like gaming if it's not winter. Anyway...

I finished Uncharted 3 the night before Skyrim came out, and I've been playing Skyrim ever since.

All the reviews I've read so far (IGN's most recently) have been spot on. I've put in 30 hours so far, and have only done 2 or 3 of the main story quests. Compared to a buddy of mine, who has 60 hours in already, I've done very little. Funny thing is we're both at the same spot in 3 separate questlines.

They've improved some issues, didn't improve others as much, but overall I'm impressed. I really wish they made more use of the d-pad for favorites, but what they have done with it is usable and fluid.

I'd recommend the 57" surround setup. If you have a powerful enough PC, the horizons are much more detailed, but overall the game on the 360 is very sharp, I am sure the ps3 is the same. I just bought a house and haven't wired my living room yet so my surround speakers were not hooked up. That did not last long. My livingroom doesn't look as nice anymore but the sound is worth it until I figure out how to rig this. I digress...

my .02, go with the ps3 version. The game has not let me down so far, you won't go wrong either way.

[Nick Kuhn]

My brother attempted to install the PC version of Skyrim on my PC but the drivers on an 8800GT haven't been updated in ages and the game artifacts during fight sequences to the point it is pretty unplayable. Looks cool, probably will be getting the XBox version for my birthday in a few weeks.

[pureinsanity]

I am amazed how anyone finds time to play more then one game? With work, and other things going on I try to get a couple hours in here or there. I find it hard for one game, let a lone several others.

What are you secrets???? I want to know them.

[Nick Kuhn]

I can do most things in half the time it takes other people: and I'm being 100% serious when I say that. Maybe it helps that my commute is only 10 minutes: if you are commuting 45 minutes I already have more than an extra hour a day on you 5 days a week.

[DARK30]

I've been thinking about getting the new Dues Ex from Eidos Games. I guess they are currently working on Thief 4 too. Not much to choose from if you don't care for the GI Joe stuff. Might just have to reload Unreal for the winter

[EBass]

Picked up Batman Arkham City. It's a lot better than the first one and I liked the first one.