Great fun, but with a couple of niggles

The sims series are acclaimed for being so addictive, while only having a rather mundane theme. But nonetheless, that should stop you playing and enjoying it.

I will warn buyers now, if you use an ATI Graphics chipset upgrade to the newest version before you install, as this game REALLY disagrees with some older drivers and especially the catalyst 9.9 version.

Aside from that rather annoying driver disagreement the game has pushed the boundaries once again, but with some disappointment on my part. The fact you can see and explore the whole town is great, and the added bonus of collectables is fun, but there is the fault that you can only use one household at a time, and switching households causes the family to lose a lot of what you've given them (especially the wishes and lifetime happiness points the sims have now) so should you have a newly married kid move out you have to choose: Parents or Child. So you no loonger mangage the whole neighbourhood, only one family, making life a little more difficult.

The new customisation feature is by far the best new feature, allowing any item to be customised by adding a different pattern or colour. The items no longer come in set colours, but in set styles, you can edit up to 4 colur channels on each item. Wallpaper and tiles also fall into this as they no longer have set colours, but set patterns and you choose the pattern's colours

Overall a great game and worth the money

Probably the best RTS game ever

Very good game. The campaign has concrete story behind and really good cinematics.
The online gamiing is very good and the races are balanced imo

GTA polished up

I had a choice of two versions of Mafia 2 the PS3 or the PC, thankfully I went with the PC version. It's a stunning game to play. I was blown away by the sprawling world that they created for GTA IV but Mafia II takes it to another level. Far more detailed and far more realistic when it comes to driving around.

When it comes to the actual game, unfortunately from what I've seen so far, they really don't make use of the wonderful world that we've been given to play in. There must have been two developement sections and the one that did the gameplay didn't see what the world developement section had done until it was too late.
We can only wish for add-ons/DLC in the near future.

At the moment, I've played 4 hours worth and the game is very good as an interactive movie. Shooting, driving and punch-ups all in unique settings throughout. I wouldn't say the gameplay is quite as good as GTA IV but it's close enough to warrant being a very good rival. Driving around is great fun in periodic vehicles that drive the way the probably did. Adding snow and ice to the equation certainly has the correct effect too.
The story is good too (less cheese) and I think I'm going to be digging out The Godfather trilogy out of my collection for an airing now.

I'm running it with no major issues on Win7 64bit. ATI 4890.
Installation takes quite a while and I did fear that something had gone wrong once the 'Preparing to run for the first time' stage is reached. It sits there doing nothing for at least 5 mins! This maybe a DX10 issue on a Win7 machine (it's trying to install DX9).
There appears to be a minor bug when exiting the game where the desktop remains dim. There is a suggested fix but I'm finding it easier to log-off and back on again in order to recover.

sims 3 ambitions

this game uses a huge amount of memory and we have had to delay using it.

I miss the old Battlefield...

I love the Battlefield frachise. I loved the big maps and the fact you could run and hide/be stealthy etc. But I'm old and slow and I realise that EA have to cater for the kids so they've brought out a variance on the MW2 gameplay.
It's very, very cool and unlike MW2 it's based on BF 'squad up' gameplay. But I still wish for the old
BF...

Addicting!

When I was first told this game was addicting, I dismissed it - I will decide if that is true or not. Well, there is no question that this is a VERY addicting game, and extremely fun. But it's also frustrating, as frustrating as watching your own favorite team in real life perform less than expectations some days and other days playing so well, you wonder if they couldn't beat everyone!

Certainly the game is limited in some capacities - you can't interact with the players as much as I would like, for one. But in general, for a computer simulation game trying to take the real world into the virtual, it's incredible.

thought jersey was in the english channel not the pacific

Well ordered the game 2 weeks ago and I'm still waiting, in the meantime I'm no longer able to level my main characters until i receive this expansion pack... yes the games got its good and bad points but I'm certainly not here to review something that's been released for nearly 2 years now. I'm here to make others aware of the shoddy delivery service and hoping that if and when it does eventually arrive that it's the genuine article as there's a few recent reviewers that have had problems with this provider, due to games that must have been opened and resealed it seems.
Only wish I had done two things 1) checked out the reviews in more detail and 2) not canceled my order from another website because I thought it was going to take to long... which sucks big time as I'd have it way before now.

Must buy item

Brilliant headphones well worth the money I use mine for gaming and they're everything I was looking for. Postage was really good got to me before the delivery date and they were in excellent condition. A must buy.

One of the best games I've ever played

Started of with a few security problems, but this was quickly sorted by securom.

This is a great game vanilla, with stainless steel mod it is superb, very absorbing. Its only weakness is, as with most games in single player mode, the AI. 3 for fun, because after you master tactics (which for anyone with knowledge of medieval warfare is about 2 hours) you will roll from whitewash to whitewash, especially if you play as england with those pesky longbow men.

It is a shame that later and future total war games are steam clients, which is something I refuse to have and therefore SEGA/Creative Assembly have lost my custom for their games, which otherwis they would be assured off. I accept disk check, I will put up with later versions of securom, but will not have steam and laugh in the face off windows live and always on internet connection (settlers 7 fail).

Wow! Totally amazing

Excellent game, totally immersive and a huge world to play in.
Having never played any of the Fallout series, this was completely new to me but I haven't been able to put it down.
The story line and dialogue is excellent, the graphics are extremely good and gameplay is rich and diverse.

Running on a laptop with Vista, I had initial install problems. With DVD 2, I followed advice off the web to copy the DLC installer from the dvd to hard disk and it ran with no problems.

My graphics card is not recognised correctly but it still plays pretty well and I don't see too much difference between high settings and medium.

To prevent some random crashes, have the task manager on in the background, though I still have problems alt-tab switching back into the game at which point I end the process in task manager.

Other than that, I am thoroughly enjoying the experience.

Despot rules!

I have been playing this game frequently as it is rather addictive, however, once you know what to research in order to get more technologically advanced arms etc., it becomes a little predictable. When you reach the end of the game - such as winning through domination - you can elect to play 'one more go', I did this and ended up taking over the world!

The downside to this is that you only have a finite amount of turns which prevents being able to build a space ship. The longest game is if you select 'Marathon'.

I did rather enjoy picking wars with people though! That probably says a great deal about me!

I would recommend this if you like simulation games, please also bear in mind that you need to have a very good graphics card - I am only able to play part of this game as you get 3 lots - Excellent value for money and it certainly beats watching TV!