Hahah! Yeah Dave, the patches were small and the demos big. Talk about a turn around. I think the patches for Crysis are mostly multiplayer related. I haven't had a chance to play it yet but I'll see how my "suit alterations" play out this afternoon.

Added: Well I got the strength and no energy cost night vision right. I may have gone overboard with the health, as the first hour of play has been in a quasi god mode, and that's not what I want. It's not ME 3 but it's diverting enough.

was playing Victoria II last week (ALL KNEEL BEFORE THE AUSTRALIAN EMPIRE!), now I'm playing System Shock 2 Impossible Co-op.

Would you recommend impossible coop?

If I got a gang of 4 players to try it out, all over the net, are we likely to have fun?

I'm down, break out the skype mics

Impossible is pretty damn hard, but still enjoyable. Its annoying that you get 1 hitted by Hybrids, nearly everything 1hits- but we manage. There's no death penalty so its not a big issue if you die all the time. Unfortunately Impossible effects loot drops, so we're not getting the kinds of nanites and ammo we'd quite like.. it makes it a bit more fun though because we're having to rely on cheaper means (ie. Energy and Melee). I'd recommend it just because it makes the game last a LOT longer than normal- and the main thing with co-op is that you want it longer (because you will likely be playing this over a couple of days/weeks- so longer the better).

4 players are likely to have a great time, I've been playing with just 2 so far, with more players its even more fun because you can pick different classes and specialties. 1 player can be tank, 1 can be PSI Mage, 1 can be the crafter/weaponsmith and 1 can be the hacker(hacker should be the purchaser of the group since they'll likely be hacking all the vendors, and YOU NEED A HACKER, they're essential for this game). My game we're just using the Hacker/Crafter combo which is still working well, but we die a shitload (mainly from Hybrids/Monkeys- robots occasionally get lucky). With a PSI and Tank it'd be a lot simpler.

This game is insane co-op.

Crysis: I toned the health down in 'config' and managed to die from a lobbed grenade just as the suit was recharging.

I have a sniper rifle now, and all I need is a grenade launcher to meet my "shooter requirements."

False advertising! Clearly, "pretty damn hard" falls far short of "impossible". I'm taking this to the consumer ombudsman!

fine would you rather improbable or unlikelybutitcouldhappen mode.

Yes.

I always preferred insanity mode.

Getting one-hit or one-shotted doesn't sound like the best of times. Maybe we should go with the difficulty one step down?

Also, do you run any mods? If I'm getting a gang of people to play this, I'll need to install all the necessary mods beforehand and distribute to them...

Yeah, me too, but not in a game.

Well, I missed getting a 'nade launcher and, since Prophet keeps dying before the third heat source, I'm redoing the game from Assault. Now that's another kind of insane, however I did manage to pick up the grenade launcher attatchment this time.

I'm playing Botanicula, and it's lovely. It's a mix of crazy and cute and wonder. It's not so much a game as it is an interactive movie though, but it works really well.

An unpatched Crysis suffers from a memory leak or two. I'm about to to do the piloting the VTOL episode, and IIRC, that's pretty close to the finish. I'm mulling over the idea of upping the strength in the config and having a playthrough where all the human enemies will be beaten, crushed, or thrown to their deaths...not shot. The aliens are a different matter.

Added: The unpatched Crysis has just bitten me. I got the first part of the VTOL section done but now it won't fly and just slowly descends to a crash and burn in the jungle. I have had enough Crysis for a while anyway.

I finished Mass Effect 3. Maybe one of these days I'll have enough energy to delve into the ME3 thread here, but right now I'm pretty sure that would just destroy my good mood

To summarise: I didn't think the ending was that bad. It wasn't great, and it was definitely missing some sort of denouement, but it was all right, and it hit some pretty high emotional notes.