From a self-confessed Bethesda-hater:

I must admit, everyone's excitement here over Skyrim caught my attention. (I wish Aspro was here to update his topic.) I have been reading through Previews, hands-ons and message boards to catch wind of bugs, better versions and overall impressions. So far people seem overwhelmingly impressed. There's next to no difference between 360 and PS3, save for some slight stuttering after auto-saving (which can be turned off). Graphically, they appear near identical. After 5 hours of game-play people haven't mentioned any bugs yet. Everyone seems to be raving about the music especially. They changed the engine the game was based on, so it runs better across different platforms. Choice between console versions really just comes down to controller preference.

I'm hoping they took their time with this one and actually quality tested it. Even if they did not, apparently, the game sends real-time bug reports to monitoring developers as you play. They receive and respond to bugs nearly immediately... supposedly.

If they actually have this kind of dedication to an improved product, they have my respect and my pre-order.

...More as I find it.

I did not just buy a 320GB PS3 with Uncharted 1, 2, and 3 at Best Buy this morning.

. . .

Nope.

. . .

Okay, I did. All of it for $299.99!

!?

...you must have purchased some kind of Pac-Man, Space-Invaders or Centipede game along with all of that... Right? RIGHT?!

WHO ARE YOU?!

It's like I don't even know who you are anymore...! !

BTW, how long does the controller take to fully charge?

No, I didn't. Thanks!

Dvader said:

Uncharted 3 not as good as U2. The story is a mess. Multiplayer is fantastic though and its all fixed from the beta.

Batman remains the best game I have played this year.

I'm still not done with Uncharted 3, but yeah definitely not as good as U2. There's also way too many times they fall back on the fucking shootout sequences in this game, moreso than U2.

edgecrusher said:

Dvader said:

Uncharted 3 not as good as U2. The story is a mess. Multiplayer is fantastic though and its all fixed from the beta.

Batman remains the best game I have played this year.

I'm still not done with Uncharted 3, but yeah definitely not as good as U2. There's also way too many times they fall back on the fucking shootout sequences in this game, moreso than U2.

Six months ago  I truly believed my GOTY choice would be between Uncharted 3 and Zelda.  Now it's Batman and Zelda.

Heh, system update only took about 5 minutes. After all the horror stories I've read, I was expecting it to take hours.

You can game share iOS stuff so I could play some of the games I got for my sister and her husband on my iPad 2 too.

Real Reacing 2 HD is a pretty decent arcadey gran turismo type thing, you buy cars and upgrade them, do races to win cash and get better stuff and upgrade to extra racing tiers etc. The graphics are PS2-ish but in native resolution, there's the occasional hitch and frame rate drop (I guess it may run better on the new iPhone 4S?) but it's not bad, it doesn't affect gameplay, and it's kinda reasonable with 16 opponents in the track, modern racers tend to have much less, no? Damage modeling too. The controls are nice, tilt works really well as a racing wheel and it doesn't affect your view because the screen viewpoint tilts the opposite way really smoothly to be kept mostly steady to your eyes, it's a nice trick. Manual gas and break work fine as on screen buttons (digital, not analog) and there are various driving aids to enable or disable and even have constant auto gas and manual breaking only and such if you don't  wanna constantly touch the screen. The only thing it's missing is manual gearbox, but I guess having that would make the controls suck. All things considered, it's much better than the price suggests and even includes online play and stuff. Anyway it's probably one of the few meaty games on iOS, outside the odd Civilization style or retro CRPG style game.

Cut the Rope is a really nice puzzle game that only works with multi touch controls (though I guess single touch version with puzzles geared around the handicap could be made).

Edge Extended is the Edge you know and love or hate.

World of Goo works as good as it does on PC/Wii.

Angry Birds HD is the shit you know.

Fruit Ninja HD is, well, what you'd expect. I don't get what people find compelling about slashing fruit with finger swipes. I guess it's a little like Point & Blank with slashing instead of shooting but not nearly as fun to me.

Sword & Sorcery that I got for myself is so far a charming adventure game, more artsy than gameplay focused, exploring and interacting with stuff, but it's compelling enough to keep going. It's mostly point & click style so it works well with touch controls.

Infinity Blade as I said earlier is shit and I wish I hadn't bought it for myself, yes, even though it was cheap.

I've not bought anything else but tried a few demos here and there.

Crimson Steam Pirates seems like a good tactical game.

Frozen Synapse that I have on PC is getting an iOS version, I think it will fit in great.

I played some games with on-screen analog sticks, d-pads, and buttons and such and couldn't get used to them at all. But that is in part due to the iPad2's size, I imagine some of them work a little bit better on the iPhone type devices. Even games with tilt controls like the racing game are a bit unwieldy but I imagine they also benefit more from the larger screen, though again it's not so great for playing in bed, while they may work with an iPhone.

Other than that I've just seen some of the free national geographic content to see how magazines work on this thing, and they're pretty sweet, but I don't have much use for it without Greek versions of the magazines.

Book reading you'd think would be nice, the presentation and interface are fine, but in my opinion this thing is a bit heavy to have on top of you in bed, at least compared to your average paperback book, if it's some larger hardcover book I guess the iPad2 might end up lighter. Still I'd be scared to fall asleep with it in bed andh ave it fall off or get crushed while I'm sleeping. I doubt I'll be buying digital books as they also don't have many Greek versions, not to mention the prices are similar to the physical books.

Apparently you can buy/rent movies too, I doubt I'll be using that either.

Web browsing on this thing is sweet, super smooth, but of course without flash (though many of the embedded video stuff function really good regardless, from youtube to vimeo) with fiddly typing so not so much for forums and you're best to add every page you ever visit to the list of favorites so you don't have to type that either. I got a free messenger app that works well for MSN/Facebook and lots of other networks I don't use. I've yet to find a nice and simple IRC app.

Some big sites and such have their own Apps to get, some with nice presentation and things, so you don't have to just go to the page which may not be formatted well for iPad (though most work fine in my experience). Like CNN's App was alright, I imagine BBC's is good too.

The camera is pretty bad quality but at least you can also use stuff like skype. I like the photo gallery functions, like making the iPad a digital picture frame with various picture switching effects and there are plenty apps for other functonalities you may want, I've yet to get any.

Google maps is an embedded app and works really smoothly.

And that's about it. Impressive device and perfect for internet use out of this desk chair. I just need to keep looking for nice and useful apps to expand what it can do which for now is pretty limited but they're hard to find among the tons and tons of shit and even if you find some good one that might seem like it's worth paying for if it's not free then you also can't decide among the tons of alternatives different people like and recommend, not to mention I want to avoid rip offs and get to the original creators etc which is a challenge also.

Not that I'm recommending it, but i can see why they're so popular with gadget freaks, richer people, and those types that constantly have to get new phones and such. But yeah as a gift that I know was acquired for a nice price instead of the super expensive western country pricing it's great.