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£1.46+P&P on eBay. 😁

Tales of Arise and Deathloop turned up today. NMH3 I think I got last week but forgot to post

Wow, that picture turned out super blurry. Also, fun fact: these NMH boxes are magnetic on the sides, which I found out after picking them up again.

The Wii purchases continue. £8 on eBay.

Had a bit of a mad month. Luckily NMH 3 is done so can sell that for some money back. Managed to get all for less than £50 so not too bad.

£9! Liked the look of this when limmy played.

Thank you @DANGERMAN, very kind of you. My first Dreamcast. 🤩

Finally getting round to turning back bedroom to a gaming room. Decorated and got my new media storage sorted.

Couple of pick-ups this week. Most notably @DisturbedSwan's GOTY Balan Wonderworld Also the Steven Spielberg classic Boom Blox

Hopefully scratching that old school Resi itch. And I'll blame @mfnick for this one.

It looks a bit like it says God Botherer, but my copy of No More Heroes 3 came with a bag and a heart badge

Here they are. My initial impression of cruis’n is very positive. I thought it’d be a bit crap tbh.

Two randoms. Spider-Man’s 3rd time lucky to grab me.

I bought some of those video game things all the kids are talking about

Shopto didn’t have Aliens in stock, so they refunded my lost copy. Sold some games in town for extra credit, so got the digital version of Aliens, and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles.

Couldn’t resist. Came with some bag and other shite but not arrived. They’ll be sold anyway. Side note, I love reversible covers. Theyre always more interesting.

Back at home... Let normal service resume.

I didn't see it posted anywhere else so here is a list of the N64 and Mega Drive games coming to NSO. Launch titles: Super Mario 64 Mario Kart 64 Star Fox 64 Yoshi's Story The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time WinBack: Covert Operations Mario Tennis Dr. Mario 64 Sin & Punishment Future Releases The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask Mario Golf Pokémon Snap F-Zero X Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards Paper Mario Banjo-Kazooie Mega Drive Launch titles: Castlevania: Bloodlines Contra: Hard Corps Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (Puyo Puyo - Japan) Ecco the Dolphin Golden Axe Gunstar Heroes M.U.S.H.A. Phantasy Star IV Ristar Shining Force Shinobi III Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Streets of Rage Strider

I got given this for free (yay - deluxe edition) and have put a couple of hours in so far. Where to start? Initial impressions - it's cool as fuck. Your character - Colt - wakes up on a beach with no idea who he is and a very angry female antagonising him from the offset. Your character says 'mutherfucker' a lot. It seems to balance the fine line between being edgy and well written quite well. Overall feeling is it reminds me a hell of a lot of Bioshock. The island feels very much like a super stylised James Bond set from the 70s, and graphically it looks a lot better than it ever came across on the presentations I saw. The game is still opening up a lot of it's mechanics but it seems pretty standard Arcane fare so far. The twist is the whole time loop thing. You're essentially re-living the same 24 hours of the day throughout four different areas. Each area isn't particularly big, but it's very intricately designed and is incredibly open. Arcane have literally given you the keys to do approach things however you want. I found about five different routes through the first objective. You're given a 'slab' (special abilities that you customise for your load-out at the start of an objective) that essentially gives you three revives before your kicked out of the current objective and have to start again, minus the equipment and discoveries you made on the way. So far the objectives have been fairly quick, taking between five and thirty minutes to complete so it isn't particularly a roguelike (unless the game suddenly reveals a whole new mechanic). You're just trying to do the objective, explore a bit then get back to the exit with whatever you've managed to unlock. The neat thing is different things happen at different times of the day in each area, the clues of which you can discover from terminals, or overhearing in conversation. A good example is early on there's a locked gate that someone leaves open by accident later on, unlocking a whole new path through the level. There also seems to be a souls like PvP option that unlocks when you hit a certain point, where you can play as the female assassin, trying to kill other Cole players. So, as said, early days, but the story and premise seem really intriguing so far. The music i've heard has been excellent and it's nice to play a game that utilises the haptic feedback/triggers so well. I think it's safe to say, that if you've ever enjoyed Arcane's previous output and/or Bioshock, you'll have a great time with this.

Well hooked it all up today, and pretty satisfied so far, just testing on PS2 withmix of PS2 and 1 games, the variety of resolutions had me switching between line modes to get best fit for the screen, but basics were not as complicated as I had feared, and seems a better image on PS2 than some youtube videos have you believe. I am even tempted to leave with these settings I have stumbled across as are fairly solid. Only one issue is processing of some interlace signals with Bob deinterlacing adds a little judder to screen, which noticed at first but soon got used to, will be interesting to see if any of the options can tame it a bit though.

Kororinpa for £2.75 is probably my bargain get of the year to date. Also WarioWare because Wario is the best.

The game collection were selling The Pathless cheap, looks fairly interesting so I've picked that up Also I keep being sent Edge. I'm not being charged for it, I don't think it's very good, but they keep sending it and I can't work out how to make them stop

Never even heard of this game until Eurogamer's review popped up on my Twitter feed today. Looks right up my street.

The long awaited sequel is here! And it's generally a decent follow-up. It takes place right after the original and it's like it's never been gone. It just confidently does being Psychonauts. It feels a bit tighter than the original but it's basic fighting and platforming for the most part but it's appeal has always been the imagination of the world and how it takes mental well being and makes these charming worlds out them and from what I've played so far it continues to do a good job of that. And with these new fangled graphics it makes it look really nice too. They really lean all of it into the art style they made in the original and I think it comes out well, it's a nice game to look at in a weird way. All Double Fine have done is make a Psychonauts game for 2021 and that's all I wanted, and that's all we got. Neat!

Just finished this, overall really enjoyed it. 34 hours it took. Im sure it could be done a lot faster, i went slowly be because i was trying to do it stealthy, which often failed, so it could have taken much longer as well. I did quite a bit of optional stuff too, but not everything. its a bit like dishonoured crossed with the outer wilds, but you dont have to really work anything out yourself, well not in the main story, and the stealth is maybe a little broken. I dont like it as much as dishonoured but its cool that its different and that isnt a big put down because i really really like dishonoured. i really enjoyed creeping around taking people out without being spotted, and sometimes everything went to plan and it was great. More often it does not go to plan, sometimes because i havent been careful enough, and sometimes the game does odd things, like an enemy spots you from miles away or through a wall or whatever. And it can be pretty easy to die if theres a lot of people around when you get spotted as you die pretty quick, but you have to die 3 times in one stage to die properly which was quite easy to avoid, you can get upgrades to make you harder to kill but i was using stealth upgrades instead. And the combat could be pretty fun too so its not all bad when you get spotted. I didnt really like the aiming controls on a pad but it has snap to aim stuff which makes the aiming a lot easier so that was good. You can get some cool guns too like a sniper the roguelike nature of it doesnt come into play very often really, i dont think i was very good at it but i only died properly once or twice. And if you die you go back to the start of the day but im pretty sure you dont lose any progress on objectives and so can just skip back to the time of the day/location you died at, or if youd already done the objective there you can skip past it. the timeloop stuff was pretty cool how everything fits together, its all laid out what to do next in missions so you dont have to work anything out, i think in a way thats good but also would have been cool to work some stuff out myself, but its a fine line where that could be annoying though and i think the way its done here is fine. Some of the optional stuff youre left to work out yourself. Ive still not used a delivery point thing - read a spoiler though and think theyre for theres some stuff i might go back to do so might not be finished with it yet. i got a trinket that lets me hack But accidentally scrapped it and never saw another one so maybe theyre rare? They could have made the infusion stuff easier by marking duplicate trinkets (duplicates are useful for the gun ones mind) a good tip is when youre hacking something you only need to be looking at it to start the hack, you can hide for the rest. no more crashes since the first day playing it, so thats good. as ive already said i really like the graphics. And the music is great too. oh and i havent tried playing the invasion mode, and turned the online off in my game so was only ever invaded by AI. It sounds interesting though so might give it a go.

that's kind of redundant isn't it? They're opinions, so long as people can back it up with a critique of the game, film, music, whatever, I don't see a problem

I've put a few hours into this now and thought i'd post my initial impressions. First up, can't comment on the PS4 version but on PS5 this game is absolutely gorgeous. It starts you off in a dark cave and the moment you step outside it's a real 'wow' moment. The vistas in this game are gorgeous, and the in-game cut scenes could be straight out of a Pixar film. Gameplay wise, i'd echo what some of the reviews say in that it doesn't bring anything new to the table. It almost feels like a PS2 game, but I mean that in a complimentary way. The in-game tutorial is incredibly brief and they seem to have taken a 'figure it our for yourself' approach. The puzzles so far have been pretty basic and involve the use of the 'Rot' - the cute little black blob things that you collect which then follow you around and allow you to interact with certain elements of the level a la Pikmin. Combat is standard Zelda 'lock on' fare, with a basic ability system that lets you unlock new moves and attacks by spending one of the in-game currencies. You can also buy and equip hats for your Rot to wear, which just adds to the games charm. One of my favourite things about it so far has been the music. It could have been lifted from a Ghibli film. So for a first game from a new studio it's not doing too badly. I can't imagine it being a game that lodges itself in my memory for long after beating it, but it's a lovely game that's packed full of charm which is a nice change of pace from the hyper-intense shooters i've been playing a lot of recently.

Played two hours of this so far. It’s a beautiful looking game that combines elements of Zelda and Final Fantasy. The biggest influence seems to be Earthbound, there is even an in-game rpg you can play called Earth Born. I like everything about the game. It takes its time with the opening, there are a lot of references to the “surface world” but the game doesn’t dump you there within the first 5 minutes. As far as I know the game was in development for many years and it certainly feels like it. To use a cliched description, it feels like a love letter to those games I mentioned. My kind of game. I’m happy to see it’s gotten off to a good start on Steam (88% positive rating after 2000+ reviews so far). It hasn’t dislodged Tales of Arise from the top spot in Japan but when I bought it it was the third best selling game so that’s good.

Seeing Maf and Dwarf disect Strive has been unsettling to me. I learned much less than they have by just playing lots of fighting games but being mediocre at all of them, but at least getting to know the game. I don't have what they have so I really have to give up my kinda unearned title of being MFG's fighting game guy. And Mary being here too. I guess I understand them better than I play them but it's definitely long padt I hang up the mantle. Maf and Dwarf have the capacity to be better than me and understand future fighting games if they choose to stick with the genre. But, I was there early on. Remember that. I was uploading shit as soon as it became easy Here's early SFV when I wanted to be a Karen main (it didn't last, as the game grew she became hard to use to idiots) I tried to git gud at MvC: Infinite. The only footage I have is this Man, I even tried out the EX Layer beta and used what I knew to play a pretty unfamiliar fighting game It's pathetic but all I knew about this series is dash and go low. But, it doesn't look like much but I did a Demon that cancelled out their super and that is dope but only if you know the language of fighting games. And DBFZ was a hoot in the early days. Just everyone hitting buttons, weird shit happening and you try and learn it for next time. I don't think this is quite year one, but it's very early. I've certainly not used this team for a long time. I wish I had some KoFXIV footage but I don't think I ever had a good online fight. Which is sad as I learnt some dope shit for that game. Anyway, I just hope Maf and Dwarf take their Strive knowledge and enjoy future fighting games. It's transferable and other games are dope in other ways.

Holy fuckballs this is amazing! Played about 2 hours & im loving it so far. This is exactly my type of game. It’s bright, loud, insane, funny, it’s just got so much style and character and is so unique to everything else. Especially these days. So much of it just feels like it has a loads of effort put into it, even going up to a door fills the screen with colour, icons and symbols. Like NMH2 it has a shit open world portion with busy work, which I normally hate but in this I really don’t care just because I love everything around it so much. In fact it can be oddly compelling. Hopefully I still feel the same as I progress. This feels slightly different too, I remember not being a big fan of 2 but this feels like a real return to form for me. But if you didn’t like NMH 2 or just don’t like Suda’s style you’ll still hate this game. For the rest of us, these first 2 hours are the best Suda has been since Killer 7 IMO.

Saw Shang Chi at the IMAX, loved the film; very strong intro for an origin story. Having martial arts in a blockbuster movie is always a plus in my books and the choreography was 👌 Tony Leung as Wenwu was amazing casting. Chinese folklore was a bonus.

Finished the main story yesterday. I really liked it but at the same time I think it's simultaneously better and worse than the first one. Its main problem seems to have been the budget they got for it, as there are quite a lot of little things that very obviously are the results of corners being cut. I imagine this has to do with it being a HD sort-of home console sequel to an under-appreciated handheld game, meaning the budget probably didn't increase enough to make up for the more polished visual fidelity they had to go through while at the same time improving and expanding on the original template. For example, progress is very formulaic for the most part. There's an overarching plot where you investigate mysterious pits in the ground that send out a beam of light which drives surrounding monsters crazy. There's one of those in every area you visit but before you can get to it, you have to do some quests in every dungeon in said area. All those quests are about a monster making life difficult for the people in that area and every dungeon's layout you visit is made up by the same modular pieces, so by the time you visit the second area you've basically seen them all in one way or another. And there are other small things that show that this just didn't get the same treatment as, say Monster Hunter Rise. The framerate is all over the place, ranging in the 40s in some of the dungeons but dropping frighteningly close to the 20s in some towns. Camera control isn't analogue, so no matter how far you push the stick it always rotates with the same speed, which reminds me of PSP shooters. And despite some good quality-of-life features, some very obvious ones are missing, like for example a dial menu to switch you leading monster instead of having to go to the menu every single time. The first game, in contrast, had a more organic progression, more unique dungeons. And also felt more polished all-around – relatively speaking of course because it's a 3DS game. It's like it was tailor-made for that platform at that time whereas Stories 2 feels like a game that might have been planned for the Vita and then got forced into a bigger system and is now punching above its weight because, even though I would have been absolutely fine with less content in some areas, it seems they wanted to fulfill a certain quota in terms of monsters, armour, weapons, areas and playtime to be able to compete in the landscape of big HD-TV RPGs. They didn't even get proper support for the RE engine and opted to use MT framework instead, which was solid for its time but has since been eclipsed by REE, which also powers Rise, so it's not like Switch can't handle it. But outside of all that, which I really can't blame the actual developers too much for, there's still a wonderfully motivating Pokémon-like here with a truckload of charm. My initial reservations about additional party members proved misplaced as I've grown to like them. Sometimes you're going to roll your eyes when you see the action those NPC party members take in battle but you quickly learn how to use them to your advantage. If you see the opponent targeting them that gives you a free turn for buffs or healing and if they plan to use their special attack – which locks the opponent out of their action for that turn – means you basically have a free turn to do whatever you want. Or you can choose and use your own special attack for a devastating coop move. It all works really well and those moments where you're on your own still happen from time to time when moving from one area to the next. The storyline seemed a bit undercooked with one group of baddies thrown into the mix and then getting basically forgotten for about 15-20 hours until they pop again very shortly close to the final. The latter is pretty bombastic though, not unlike the first game's, with a very cool-looking final boss and a very drawn-out fight (didn't watch the clock but wouldn't be surprised if it took 45 minutes or so). There are some genuinely good and gripping cutscenes in this though, but some aspects feel a little underdeveloped. I did enjoy the story though and the characters for the most part are rather likeable (though Navirou can be a bit annoying now that he's voiced). The monster collecting stuff is still highly motivating because it brings with it so many different new things to uncover: what weapons can I make now, which armour can I craft, what moves does this monster have if I manage to get one, how does its special attack look? There are moments where I had to force myself not to return to the last visited city every time I beat a new enemy just to see the items I could get my hands on. It's a different take on the Pokémon idea but it has the same effect on the player IMO. Perfectionists can also pay special attention to genes and breed perfect monsters, but just like in the first game I only scratched the surface here. It's mostly useful for postgame stuff, which I will check out at some point (lots of new monsters here you don't see in the main areas) but for now I'll take a break from it for a bit. My final Rider Card looked like this, I coloured my Deviljho armour black to make it even more edgy:

I'm a degenerate who's always loved them.

Been mucking around with this over the last couple of nights, probably put in 4 or 5 hours (maybe more)... I'm not going to pretend we have GotY on our hands but it's doing exactly what I expected of it, namely leaving your brain behind a blasting the ever living fuck out of anything that moves. It's nailed the look and sounds of the movies, at the start you have a fairly basic create a character menu with male and female options, there's four classes each with their own perks and abilities... so far so normal. I went with the Demolition class as I wanted to be like Drake in the film and repeatedly shout "right on Vas" while I'm mowing down Xenos with the Smartgun. The fodder "runner" enemies don't really offer too much in the way of tactics, they'll head straight at you but some of the other types do use hit and run tactics using vents and stuff to get behind you and cause a little mayhem... I've also just got to a level where it's almost turned in to a Gears game (there's a cover system... which is no use at all with the Aliens) as I'm fighting the Working Joe's from Alien Isolation. I'm only around half way through the game (there's 4 acts with 3 missions in each) and there's been a decent amount of backdrops so far. I can imagine the game is going to get pretty difficult too especially if I play above normal difficulties as when more than a couple of Warrior type enemies appear things generally fall to shit... and that leads to the games biggest failing so far, matchmaking is fucked, so far I've found one game and the game taking the place of real players really doesn't cut it. I hope that they can sort out whatever is going on with that because it is putting a slight downer on the whole experience.

Just play what you like and let everyone else do the same. It's largely the same kind of people with similar tastes that work in games criticism, I'd say moreso than other creative media. So that's why there is more of a consensus and that's what results in these kinds of conversations. The whole overrated idea is cancer to conversations about games, and anything else. It's trite to say but it's all subjective, we get different things from different games (or even the same game), we have different things that do and don't irk us and trying to quantify it is so pointless. So the boys in California can say what they like, I may even agree at times but they're not the authority and there shouldn't be one.

There's a few, just flick through any issue of Edge. The worst review I can think of was that IGN one that gave Football Manager a 2/10 because you couldn't control the players On the Nintendo thing, to the surprise of no one I suppose because I've mentioned it enough, I do think they tend to score a little higher than they should. Pretty much all the Paper Mario and Mario rpg games post Gamecube have been dull as fuck, proper 5/10 material a lot of the rpgs imo, yet they're given pretty safe 70+% scores. The most recent one was talked about like it was hilarious, it really wasn't, it wasn't terribly written but I can't think of a single line that made me laugh. It is one of the better games in the series though Luigi's Mansion, I'm personally not taken with any of them, but the 2nd game was so boring, such a slog to get through. I've got the third but again, it's just a non-event, at least the 3D was cool in the 3DS game, LM3 is just a flat line all the way through Essentially I put it down to, Nintendo's b-tier just isn't very good, it's stuff made to fill their line up, it's relatively risk free and made to a template. They can, when they're allowed, do some interesting stuff, you see that in some of the Kirby games, but then Yoshi took the yarn formula and made it actively irritating. The big Nintendo game I think was massively overscored, because it leant in to nostalgia so much, and was reviewed by Nintendo fans, was Mario Odyssey, a 7/10 game for me. Well made, but again, just too flat Non Nintendo stuff, Hollow Knight had design issues waved away. There was also a spell of big sequels that I think all scored a little higher than they deserved. Uncharted 3, Gears 3 (and 4), Arkham Knight, big, expensive 7/10 games you wouldn't dare give that score to edit: @one-armed dwarf yeah, Bioshock Infinite is a good shout. It's not a terrible game, it's got better combat than the first game, but the lauded story and world just don't hold up to any sort of scrutiny

Since the game is basically free, May as well.

When Chris Pratt says 'so long gay bowser' it will now be because he threw him into a conversion therapy course

at ShopTo on eBay using code PURCHASE4LESS. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Metroid-Dread-SWITCH-PRE-ORDER-ITEM-Release-Date-08-10-21-/384394703455?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l6249&mkrid=710-127635-2958-0

Watched BlackkKlansman yesterday, aka Obama's favourite movie of 2018. It's certainly easy to see why, because outside of the obvious themes it depicts it's surprisingly easy to watch, so to speak. It's a masterfully executed balance of very serious themes packed into a well-paced movie that also manages to switch between tense moments and funny ones on a whim without any of it feeling forced or sabotaging itself one way or another. As a white european person there's obviously aspects that won't resonate with me as much as with other people, but it's about a part of american history I never really bothered looking too deeply into, so it was rather educational as well (with keeping in mind they took some liberties and made some things up to make it more cinematic). Good acting all-around as well, soundtrack was surprisingly excellent, too. If I had to nitpick I'd say I didn't like the tacked-on real footage towards the end. I can see why the director wanted to include it but it's a stylistic choice I'm not too fond of as it seems like they think their movie didn't get the point across. I had similar feelings about Waltz with Bashir and American Sniper who did that as well.

Spent a few hours with this on Sunday... what with deaths and stuff I didn't make it too far. The game starts with you (as Caroline Walker) receiving a postcard from missing twins pointing to an abandoned mansion/hospital, of course she decides to traipse over there and ends up being knocked out... she wakes naked in a bath, connected to respirator and missing an eye. The game straight up plays like the old style Resident Evils, fixed camaras with tank controls... although the new controls included in Remake are also present here. Early on you are given a Nail Gun and Crowbar, these are the primary attack choices through the game... I know you later get a Shotgun too. Enemies are a lot quicker than your standard zombies so I've taken to shooting until they fall then caving in their skulls with the melee weapon. It's gone really old style with limited saves (that work just like Resi) and no auto save at all, you die you lose the progress... and that sometimes hurts, I think I've been conditioned with modern gaming that not much is lost on death. I got to a certain point on Sunday where I basically had to tap out a rhythm on a door knocker to open a door and was convinced that my game was bugged, it must have taken me 15 minutes to get through that bastard door... I turned it off minutes after that but up until then I was enjoying it a lot... they've nailed the atmosphere. Looking forward to getting back to it tomorrow.

I was pretty fond of the whole "CD-R" franchise on Dreamcast. So many good games in the series.

Leaving Soon Leaving September 13 Red Dead Online (Cloud and Console) Leaving September 15 Company of Heroes 2 (PC) Disgaea 4 (PC) Forza Motorsport 7 (Cloud, Console, and PC) Hotshot Racing (Cloud and Console) The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics (Cloud, Console, and PC) Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (Cloud and Console)

It's a shame when anything with a bit of colour in it is Fortnite now. The only difference between this and 3 & 4 at this point is some slightly more stylised characters. Back then it was wacky antics, dancing and neon. I don't have any skin in this, I've never played any Saint's Row, but I recognise shit talking, and this sounds like that.

I'm still completely cold on this game, even if it drops a Definitive Edition on Game Pass in a years time I know it won't get touched... there's just something about this type that kills all interest.

The new release date