hunter42

I wasn't aware of the park ranger, cheers Where can you find police bikes? I've only seen them in missions and random chases. Same with unmarked cruisers. If you want free body armour, the big police station where they impound your cars has some in the waiting room. Highest level I've had is 3 star, so I've only seen the police vans. Edit: when you say the back of the station, do you mean by the automated gate? Or is there another area? I tried taking a cruiser by the gate earlier, but the officer saw me.

I love being able to switch between the three crew members. It makes missions much more interesting and you don't miss out on any action. Also you can knock people unconscious with sucker punches. I've spent most of my time knocking police officers out and stealing their cruisers Small financial tip from the guide: There's also a mission where you impersonate a biker cop, and one where you use a police helicopter to find a target and direct a crew member to his location. Oh, and don't stand too close to police officers - They get upset quickly and you'll get a one star level.

Picked mines up about an hour ago. Got 8GB to install. Nearly done. I bought the game guide as well, quite a lot of interesting random events going on. For anyone interested, the guide shows 14 emergency service vehicles, not including aircraft and boats.

My dad works in the UKBA. This is what I remember him telling me. When confronted by an upset person, they need to take a defensive stance and calmly tell the person to settle down. If that doesn't work, then you become more authoritative, and let them know that they will end up in trouble if they continue. The next step is to physically push them back away from you. If the person hasn't calmed down, remove your extendable baton from your toolbelt (but don't extend it, just hold in in your hand away from eyesight. Extend the baton and let them know they will be arrested if they continue. Arrest the person. That's off the top of my head, so I've probably missed a few steps. I don't think you're allowed to hold the person though, as that counts as detaining them. I don't care much for maths, but you need to level the two populations to get an accurate figure. The UK has a population of 62.74 million and US a population of 313.9 million.

Shhh Yay I wonder if it'll be like Fire Chief/Department where there's units from several countries.

There's a limited edition version being released which includes "A keyring made from Fire Hose material", among other things. It says on the storepage: "Language (s): English, German, French. Are they? Fragment Production LTD is the only listed developer I've seen so far. If Colossal Order are involved, that would be great - I love Cities in Motion

So what free game did people choose? I went for Mass Effect 3. Been wanting it for a while, but not so much that I'd buy it. Also, I had every other game offered except Dead Space 3. My favourite bit is when you have lots of police cars patrolling and a crime is committed at night - Streets light up like a disco ball. I'm annoyed at how dumb things can get in the game, especially since they boasted that the glassbox engine is smart. -High Density Avenue leading to workplace? Nah, I'll just take the High density street like EVERYONE ELSE because it's a shorter drive. -Your sims are going to your Neighbour's city for University education? That's cool, just don't expect to benefit from any of it. -Mayor, there's people protesting outside the city hall! What do they want? idk,lol. And I hate that disasters aren't unlocked in Sandbox worlds. All I've got is the stupid Lizard.

So is the Hyundai i30 replacing a specific car model? 2 year old van with several dents in the door, lol. Wonder if it's due to Police duties, or not being able to judge corners.

Very nice. Is the department changing all the colours?

Same I'm picking up my pre-order after work on Saturday. Really looking forward to it. I played the beta for a few days last month. It was really good fun. I love how you can expand buildings to make them more effective.

There was a few topics ages ago about the new Police Interceptors that Ford are making to replace the old Crown Vics. Couldn't find the topics (well, couldn't be bothered finding them), so I'll post these here. Top Gear magazine did an article on the two new vehicles. Sorry for the poor quality. Might be easier to save the image.

I'll definitely buy Rescue Hero when it comes out. Does EM5 have a release date yet? Or is it still TBC? Just wanting to point out, there's an Airport fire simulator 2013, coming next January. Meant, not mean.

I like Rondomedia. They release good games. It's coming out in English too, that's good news too. It looks like the game's going to be more detailed than the Emergency series, since it focuses more on fire and rescue than all services. I wonder how many units are in the game. Picture 3 shows a German ambulance, and picture 5 shows a distinctly different ambulance (probably Finnish). I hope the modding workshop is user friendly.

I like Skyrim for a number of things. The individual holds, sneaking, kill sequences. The implementation of Steam workshop is brilliant too. But I prefer Oblivion because it was a much better game. Oblivion's story was better, the world was better, and the quests are better (except for the thieves guild, Skyrim nailed it). There's more houses you can buy and they look so much nicer. Using mods to make Oblivion better looking, I would say that Oblivion is the best of the series. However, I often find myself thinking about what Skyrim does better - and vice versa.

Well, it looks like Far Cry 3 is out now. So guess what I bought... Oh god what am I doing. From what I've read, Far Cry 3 is only out in certain countries and if you try to activate it, it'll lock the game until the 30th. I'll probably pick it up in town tomorrow in that case. Anyway, Polizei 2013...yeah... Still uses the .Model which sucks, and haven't tried to edit/unlock the .dds files. I only played six minutes, and it's got some new stuff. I'm quite annoyed at the moment though because the people who made this game have shown that they are lazy. The game is advertised as German only, but we all know that the text files are in XML format, so you can edit them. Once navigating to the Data/Lang folder, I spotted two folders - "DE" and "UK". Sure enough, the game has been translated into English. Start up the game, go to settings. No language options. Oh, well that's easy to fix. Just back up the DE folder, and rename the UK folder to DE. That'll fix it. WRONG Now this is what's really annoyed me. Here is an example of the mainmenu.xml file from the German file: And here's the same section from the English mainmenu.xml file: "Gee, the English XML quote sure does look a lot smaller than the German XML quote" You're damn right it is. Half the stuff isn't even IN the file. Like if you want to select your profile, it just appears as: "ID_BTN_PROFIL_SELECTION". But it's not an oversight on the main menu, it's done throughout the whole game. It's like five people worked individually worked on separate parts, and gave up at random intervals. The tutorial only gets about two steps in then turns to garbage, and your tool belt is about three quarters translated. The really annoying thing is that it's not like they forgot to put the describing words in - the strings aren't there full stop. It'll be quicker copying the English stuff onto the German file and filling in the many blanks. Why did they even bother? Rage

Extra liveries can be installed by following these instructions

Any good? Havebugs/glitches from 2012 been dealt with?

Sleeping Dogs is probably one of the few games this year where I've enjoyed the story. Sleeping dogs is getting new DLC, Nightmare in North Point If it's not too scary, I'm definitely getting it. Can't decide if I should get Borderlands 2 or not, because I got quite bored with the first one. What's good about Borderlands 2?

I just picked up that ABC-Schultz simulator last week too. Pretty decent. Interesting units and emergencies, but not as good as the Airport one. An english patch would be nice though. Have you looked at the fire department/chief series? They're quite old now - first release was in 2003 - and they're no longer supported (Monte Cristo went bust). I don't think you can get the first one via download, but it was the best Second one didn't work with any OS above XP and no one stocks it Third one is pretty good and you can get a digital version from Game for £10 Edit: Here's Fire department 3 for download at £9.99 http://game.gamesplanet.com/buy-download-pc-games/Fire-Department-3-160-43.html It's pretty good. There's several different country's units you get to Use, but only when the mission is in that country, missions are fairly decent, but I haven't finished the game so I don't know how good/bad it gets. Should work on W7 2nd edit: And here's Fire department 1 at £7.99 http://game.gamesplanet.com/buy-download-pc-games/Fire-Department-1356-43.html This one is better than the third IMO. 4 country styles to choose from (UK, FR, GER, USA - I'm sure there's a 5th though) with some very nice 'Emergency' style missions. I think I'll install FD when I get home now.

I remember going to my friend's house to play halo co-op campaign. Whatever story the game has was totally wasted on us I remember a mission in... Halo 2, I think, where we were crossing a bridge with a tank and warthog. My friend was racing back and forth across the bridge - until he crashed into my tank and flew off the bridge - he'd also triggered lots of enemy spawns so couldn't respawn until I killed them all. My best and only halo memory.

Facebook has some benefits. It allows my immediate family to instantly contact our extended family, much easier than phone calls. I do think facebook is highly over rated though.

Last I heard Turkey was moving forces to the Syrian border because the Syrian army shot down a Turkish fighter jet, killing both pilots. Global Thermonuclear War A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. No one would make a strike against these 'power hungry' nations without the support and backing of the US. There's no way in hell that China or Russia would sit back and write an angry letter. Kim Jong Un has proven himself to be totally different from his father. Now is the time to try and make amends through diplomacy and reduce tensions in Asia. That would be pretty brave of the US government. Iran knows it can get away with it publicizing it because everyone has secrets they're trying to hide.

Oh hey, it's that time of year where I buy an obscure German simulator game, pretend I know what I'm doing, then recommend it for some stupid reason. This week it's... werksfeuerwehr-simulator, thing? Translated: Factory fire simulator. (Screenshots are spoiler tagged due to size) This game is brought to you by the same people who made Airport fire fighter simulator, and has a few improvements.I haven't played much, but got some screenies to show some new things. Couldn't get FRAPS to work with the game, so used Steam instead, which kinda worked. Apologies for the overlay at the edges. So here we are, in the meeting room, as usual. I have no idea what the hell the guy is telling me to do, but I get to use Florian 1 today. Yay. You can't see it in the screenshot, but nobody swaggers around like pimps anymore, so that makes the game 10 times better AND you can skip the tutorial ...Seems legit. Ahh, good old Florian 1. Sadly Florian 2 got scrapped, and 1 became so depressed he downsized from a jeep to a Volkswagen golf. These two fire engines are cool. The closest one has a front canon, while the next one has a roof canon. The others don't. What the hell am I looking at? An emergency....crane? Better consult the store page: "Driving special vehicles such as the Zikun ® Turbo extinguisher, TLFs with roof monitor and turntable ladder vehicles" Of course, a Zikun Turbo extinguisher, how silly of me. If anyone's interested, here's a brochure for it - it's basically a fire engine which shoots water out its ass. Yay, new cameras! You can have the camera inside, fixed from behind, free move, or door. The speedometer and fuel gauge inside also work, which is nice. So I'm just chilling around, looking at all the industrial stuff, when the boss man gets on the radio and starts shouting some text at me. It seemed rather important because a waypoint arrow appeared and a timer started. NOW I understand what the emergency was. There is a raging inferno threatening to burn down the industrial park. Millions of lives are at stake here, and backups not gonna arrive in time - I have to act quickly. Again, I have no idea what boss man is telling me, but I'm pretty sure the mayor's giving me the keys to the city - and probably ice cream too. Because I was driving off road for a while, my car got dirty. That's going to be embarrassing when the mayor arrives. One of the pictures on the store page looks like the guy is cleaning a fire engine with a hose. Seems logical. Except this isn't a fire engine and I don't have a hose... Yeah, that'll work. Other stuff I missed and thoughts: - You have to get out and 'use' petrol pumps when refueling. - There are access points around the map for fire hoses. Don't know if they're used to fight fires, or refill your tanks - or both. - Animations are still a bit stiff, but better than the airport one. - There's almost no traffic... just a few forklifts and workers walking around. Kinda disappointing, since Airport firefighter had loads - One of the points on the storepage is that you can go inside burning buildings to extinguish fires and rescue people. That ought to be good. - I found myself driving along roads which abruptly came to an end. There's a slight speed decrease when you go offroad, but noting to stop you. I'm gonna play the game some more tomorrow and see where it leads off from there. EDIT: Some other things I've noticed in game. Vehicle defects When I ran the game through steam, I noticed the siren wasn't working despite the green light coming on. I assumed this was a sound glitch or something. When I started a new game later on, the siren was working, but the left indicator wasn't. There's a service building behind the fire station where you can fix your vehicle. This is also where you go to get a pressure washer to clean your vehicle. Continuation My shift finished, saved the game, and moved on to the next day. I was still using Florian 1, and I noticed there was still dirt I missed from the previous shift, and the tank was 3/4 full - that's quite a nice touch. More responders Whilst cleaning my car, the alarm went and all the garage doors opened. Joining me to the reported incident was both ambulances and a fire engine. This seems to happen on the majority of calls regardless on the fire size.

I'm glad I subscribed to Playstation plus, it's really paying off. £40 has got me: Crash Bandicoot 1, 2, 3 & racing Oddworld Stranger's Wrath Sky Fighter Toy Story 3 Deus Ex: HR Saints Row 2 Total saving: £64.92 Now all I want is to be brought onto the store. It freezes after about 30 minutes on the PS3 Is anyone here going to get Sleeping Dogs? It's coming out in a couple of weeks and I can't wait.

It turned out to be a pretty good day for the relay. It was quite good. I clocked four different police forces involved: Fife, Grampian, Strathclyde and Metropolitan. I wonder if the Metropolitan officers get paid extra to travel everywhere with the torches. Loads of bikes aswell. Fife (assuming): Strathclyde: Grampian: Metropolitan: Unmarked police van: Unmarked and marked ambulance: Then there was this police jeep going up and down the street. (pictures not very good. Didn't see it until the last second) And finally some Olympic vehicles In hindsight, I should've brought a stepladder so I could see over people, lol. The torch handover happened right across from where I was standing, but everyone rushed out into the street so I couldn't see