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Arrived half an hour ago with DPD. I've been keeping a close eye on this ever since I first heard about it. I've admired Julian's work from the Mean Machines days. The first 250 orders come with a signed postcard. 🙂

https://www.eurogamer.net/segas-classic-ninja-shinobi-returns-later-this-year-from-streets-of-rage-4-developer Out this August, from the developers of Streets of Rage 4.

https://www.eurogamer.net/returnal-studio-heads-to-a-hostile-shape-shifting-planet-for-newly-unveiled-saros New game from Housemarque, coming in 2026.

https://www.eurogamer.net/gta-producers-big-budget-single-player-game-mindseye-shows-off-gameplay Coming this summer.

One month down so let's get this shit rolling again... gonna cut the Games not from 25 discovered in 25 down to three positions, not that i expect it to be any less of a pain in the arse but there you go and I'll add two positions to the Most anticipated just because... Game of the Year 2025. 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - Games not from 2025 discovered in 2025. 1 - 2 - 3 - Most anticipated game of 2026. 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 -

https://www.eurogamer.net/new-action-game-tides-of-annihilation-fuses-modern-day-london-with-arthurian-legend

How's this going you ask? oh, could be better. It's about two weeks after the new packs dropped and the nature of these games is rearing it's head. I am getting so unlucky with the card packs I'm opening. I have barely any of the good new cards. It's not the end of the world because thankfully they have avoided power creep pretty well and the new assist cards do breath life into the older ones, even making previously weak cards pretty good (and previously good cards irrelevant (RIP Mewtwo)). It's just I was hoping to use some of the new Pokémon but that's life in the TGC world I guess. I did get two Dialgas pretty early, it was a card shown in a trailer so there was some excitement about it but something that keeps happening is a card gets previewed or leaked and people make a judgement on it and being completely wrong (people thought Gyarados EX was going to be bad before that released... It ended up dominating the meta). Dialga isn't that good in practice 😑 But I eventually did pull two other cards which help me make a pretty good deck I enjoy using. Infernape! There's still a number of cards I hope to get but with my luck lately I'm not counting on it.

Reviews: Destructoid - 9 PC Gamer - 82% IGN - 7 Gamespot - 6 Eurogamer - 4/5 Polygon RockPaperShotgun Interesting mix of reviews. The Eurogamer reviewer really liked it. Either way, between this and Kingdom Come 2 it’s been a solid start to 2025 for rpgs.

https://www.eurogamer.net/until-dawn-developer-announces-release-date-for-sci-fi-horror-directive-8020 Latest game from the developers of Until Dawn, out in October.

I think companies should charge what people are willing to pay, in financial terms and in terms of customer good will. Thing about GTA is that it's a luxury good with virtually no competition. Even in the real luxury car market you can have the Jag salesman considering his options because of that Merc pamphlet sticking out of your top pocket. Personally I don't pay that much for games, not even a third of that. On the bleak side that means GTA six will have to wait. On the bright side I've recently bought the definitive trilogy on sale, and have never played GTA 3! Suck on that R*

On the Blue Stake I ran with the +1 per hand -1 per discard Joker - so predominantly played High Card or Single Pairs, as I'd also got the Splash (score every card) and a x2 Foil (so I could churn cards by scoring on them and not discarding, so ended up with a +65 mult on that one Joker) - then I bought loads of Tarots to get multipliers on loads of basic cards - that seemed to scale together pretty well too.

Zero discard joker is great with those ride the bus type ones that scale, but 2 pair is hard to work with I feel unless you also have a way of making your hand large or lots of specific tarot and spectral combos. I've been weening myself off 2 pair a bit. What I'd really like to try is win some hands with 3 and 4 of a kind. I hardly ever use those, they're hard to get started with. But probably work really well with things like the 8 ball. So what I'm trying to do sometimes is copy and change cards into 8s in anticipation of being able to use that joker

Ha, Blue Stake, you're so yesterday's news - done and onto the next one ! I'd left the Challenges for now as noticed I've got a few Jokers still to unlock, so thought I might as well go through the Stakes & Decks in case some of those unlocked Jokers might be useful on the remain Challenge rounds.

So naive it's almost cute. But. People need to stop with this game prices have barely risen rubbish. They've gone up every console generation. They go on about SNES games being expensive, but you were buying hardware. In that same timeframe I was buying games for various home computers at prices between £2.99 - £12.99.