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Since this was available on Game Pass day one, I jumped in over the weekend and finished it on monday night. You control Harold, a depressed handyman on a colony ship which left Earth several generations ago to find a new home, but which crashed on an ocean planet and is now an underwater city for the inhabitants. I thought it was going to be a 2D adventure game style affair, but there's not really any puzzles or challenge involved. It's much more a narrative game, you go around the ship talking to people to tick off items on your to-do list which moves the story forward. I imagine this could disappoint some people, as you don't really 'do' a lot else. It's a pretty slow-paced game as well. I've seen Wes Anderson's name bandied about a lot in articles and reviews, and although I feel some of it is rather a surface level reaction to the look of it, there were some moments especially towards the end that I think would be right at home in one of this films. It looks incredible, from the clay model style characters, to the ship locations. It's also got a nice, low key soundtrack. I really enjoyed taking my time wandering around the ship, talking to people and the gentle pace that the story moved along. I can also see why that won't be everyone's cup of tea.

The sexual tension in this thread is palpable...

Disagree, that's not the way of the monk. No shortcuts. Only manual inputs.

Needing to raise some cash to cover GPU purchase, so reluctantly selling this - Yakuza 0 - 6LP deluxe black vinyl - would love £70 but consider sensible offers.

Yeah, we’d never claimed on it before. New TV has arrived anyway. Was half the price of the old one and paid outright, trying to wean myself off finance with the mortgage coming into play within the next few months.

So cool

I don't see any downsides to just passing them around and giving everyone as many tools as possible. The only thing you have to pay attention to is having the right Esper equipped at the moment a character is levelling up, because not all of them give stat bonuses (mentioned at the very bottom of the Esper description). From what I understand that's the only way to actually increase the base stats, so you need to take advantage of that as much as possible. At least that's how I understand the system and how I've been playing, there's probably more invisible stuff to it but for a normal playthrough this should hopefully be good enough. As for the number of characters to keep relevant, I just hope the game lets me keep my favourites, because I'm very much neglecting some (mainly Cyan and Gau).

This will make me seem younger than I am👴, but my failing memory tells me the games (I can't remember which was first) I bought with my own dough, for myself, were Sands of time and Resi 4. This came about because my eldest child wanted a playstation 2 for Christmas one year. Before that I'd had no interest in gaming or even given it a moment's thought. But now I had to get involved, getting my kid through the hard bits in Ratchet, Spyro, god of war😀 et al. And I was rather enjoying myself. Next minute I did a bit of research and discovered that there were games, just like movies, intended for adults. The rest is history 🎮

My brother had a 48k Spectrum, but don't actually recall buying anything for it (in the days of tape to tape copying with other kids in school) so that was just a bunch of blank C15 tapes from Boots or WH Smith. First actual one I recall buying was around 1986 when my parents bought a new TV & Video from Comet and got a free Tatung Einstein thrown it. So it was probably Le Mans on the Einstein:

I just want a FF game to do 2D pre-renders again. I don't really want any remakes I just want a new FF that looks like this: Reject modernity, embrace tradition.

That looks like such a misleading message 😂 Cool though, enjoy!

This just got announced. There were a number of elements about the first that put me off, but this is a great looking trailer The idea with it afaik is it's a RPG which is very into verisimilitude. Things being all realistic, even to a mundane and frustrating degree, but doing so in order to make its role playing feel immersive I feel it's probably the kind of game I would like. The presentation here is pretty impressive, Witcher vibes

A few nice games, Steamworld Heist 2 being a highlight. Also a demo for Cat Quest 3 available now and some stitching puzzle game as a shadow drop that looks way more interesting that I made it sound here.

Nicely done OCH. Going back to the XP etc. I’ve put XP, AP and cash to x2. Ive just got too many games to play to spend time grinding. So far it’s still not been easy so don’t feel bad about doing it at all. If I do find myself steamrolling through bosses and whatnot I’ll turn it off again but otherwise it’s staying on. Grinding is something I genuinely used to enjoy when I was younger. No more though. Im keeping all the other options on default though and not using auto battle. Want everything else to be as OG as possible.

THE END Still a great game. There is a reason it has such a high level of respect within the FF community to this day. It's not perfect. Some mechanics are Very rough prototypes of what we would enjoy in later FF. Plus, the obtuse side quests and nonsensical additional characters do it no favours. Especially in the second half of the game. But when it works, it works. There is a moment of the final cutscene. Alongside a particular swell of the ending theme that even got to me, well done game. The final dungeon and boss are still the right amount of challenge. Even when I had one of the game breaking spells. While there is still a superboss encounter on the map, I think I'm done. 8/10 Thanks for bringing me back to it @Metroid66

Backlog time! This is one of those projects that came out of Riot Forge, the unfortunately now defunct initiative from Riot to establish the LoL universe beyond the base Moba. In this case, we're looking at a relatively classic, linear action-adventure title, made by Tequila Works (Deadlight, Rime, Gylt). On surface level it looks a bit like a companion game à la Last Guardian or Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom, but it works a bit differently in the sense that you control both Nunu (the kid) and Willump (the blue Magic Yeti) in predetermined sections. So there's no manual switching or anything like that, which makes the entire thing relatively streamlined, but also rather simplistic. Nunu can play the flute which allows him to manipulate certain objects to solve puzzles, whereas Willump comes into action for, well, the action when you have to fight. There's also a bit of platforming which both can take part in and a multitude of other little gameplay gimmicks to mix things up, some of which born out of the most unexpected inspirations (Katamari). They can also both throw snowballs, either at each other for fun or to interact with distant objects. Overall its systems, mechanics and difficulty level suggest this is very much a game aimed at kids, with the writing also mimicking your usual tales of family and friendship you'd see in an animated movie. For me I looked at is as a light palette cleanser type game and for that it worked really well. There is a certain amount of ambiguity about the antagonist, resulting in a conflict based around perspective rather than just being black & white, which is a neat touch that goes a bit beyond what you'd expect. It's a cute game overall, 7-8 hours long so doesn't overstay its welcome and even has a few cool surprises up its sleeve. The beginning is a bit bland, both visually and in terms of gameplay, but the latter half really picks up in both of these areas. Not a must play or anything but if you like some simple, well-made classic videogame stuff, this is a nice little project. And also probably a good pick for the intended audience, because it has so many different gameplay elements (platforming, puzzles, combat) that it's a good appetizer for what videogames are about. Forgot to upload some screenshots, I might edit them in later if I don't forget.

20/4/2024 - Final Fantasy 6 Pixel Remaster(PS5) Still one of the best FF's, in spite of some bizarre creative choices that I didn't notice as a kid. But are quite glaring now. 8/10

I suggested it to mine. We saw 2 and I don't know if we'll watch more, it's so painful to witness.

Extreme G was great! It looks soooo shit now though, it's hard to imagine how modern this looked at the time 😅

Went over my screenshots folder the other day, there's just something about Atlas Fallen's look that I find incredibly pleasing to the eye. Also a good case of how stylised, manual lighting can still impress in the age of RT imo.

It’s not embezzlement. I just authorised the decision to give myself performance based bonus for the brilliant service I provide at work

I watched Naked (1993) which stars David Thewlis going on a sort of Odyssey* around London for a few days/nights. It's like what if Leopold Bloom was a dickhead. It's a film I really didn't like at all, despite its great acting performances. Thewlis plays this very loquacious but abusive as fuck asshole, especially to women, kind of a narcisstic emotional vampire with how he seduces people with his quick wit but then mistreats them to feed his own ego. I know there's additional layers here but it didn't really work for me cause it wasn't the film I really needed to watch right now. *he holds the book up at one point saying "you know what this is about, yeah", so it's kinda on purpose. Meant I could even predict the ending, sort of. Then I watched The Lobster (2015), which is directed by the guy who did Poor Things recently and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. It's set in this sort of dystopic future where being single is illegal, kind of like a Logan's Run situation. If you don't have a partner, they take you off to this hotel where you have 45 days to partner up or you get turned into an animal of your choosing. People pair up based on superficial similarities, like having a nice smile but also things like being short sighted, having a limp or suffering from nosebleeds. Everyone speaks with this kinda flatness of affect in their dialogue and has this sort of autistic kinda way of relating to each other and the world. I thought it was really funny in that deadpan way that this director's films are. It's sort of like what if David Lynch directed an episode of Father Ted, or something. Colin Farrell is great in this type of surreal-bordering-on-horror-comedy, hope he keeps doing these types of films. I prefer Sacred Deer though cause it veers more in the direction of absurd horror than comedy. This scene made me lol but it's NSFW

Side Quests ..more than I expected! So now, I have the full cast. I didn't remember FF6 having 14 characters? But there you go. Just like I thought Gau was the Blue Mage of the game. He isn't. So I don't really know what you would classify his Rage abilities as if not Blue Magic?? Anyway, I thought at this point. I've only got the last dungeon. But no. Sprinkled secretly around the map are at least half a dozen side quests I've completed today. As much as I loathe them. The trophy list has been quite helpful for telling me when some people have maxed out their abilities. The list of Rage arts I have for Gau by now is very long. But apparently not complete? Next session, I'm going to work on completing the Blue Mage ability list.

Consider me keeping well and truly away then.😂

If you didn’t like the first one then don’t play the second. It’s exactly the same but bigger and more annoying

I tried the first and realised it wasn't for me so I doubt I'll bother with this one even for "free"

Looks about on-brand, seems neat and will catch on streaming On the integration of X-Men, I dunno if the idea here is they just chuck in a bunch of 'variants' into the existing universe or try and do it from the ground up. Tom from Cruises make it pretty clear this is some other Logan, I mean I guess that's inevitable

Me too, loved almost every minute

DF made an hour-long video about videogame water: I might grind through this in short lunch break steps, it's a funny idea for a video. Also kind of cool to see Hydrophobia in the thumbnail, I randomly replayed that last year (hasn't aged well, but the water still looks great).

That opera section is off its nut. Surely the most elaborate scenario ever invented to procure a lift. And how did that boss retain a healthy moistness in the dry atmosphere of the higher arts?

Yeah, the grind’s kinda harsh imo. But makes sense considering it’s the whole game. I’m about level 10 as well. Hit me up this week if you want to play. I want to get back in to it now I got a mic

Ok, I guess that makes sense. I already have the upgrade that lets me reuse bolts. @mfnick the achievements look super easy, just a bit time consuming. But with a guide for the chests, running by enemies without caring about being seen and skipping cutscenes. Shouldn’t take too long EDIT: For the record I don’t hate this game. I think it’s just very light weight with a bad story

“Hard earned” is a bit of a stretch - I basically saved up pocket money for months and traded in a few games given as gifts previously. I just wanted a new game so went to market with my mum and a bunch of games a little bit of pocket money. I bought this because I thought the cover was cool AF even though I knew nothing about it. Even as a kid I knew I’d fucked up 10 minutes into playing it. I was so gutted. It was bad. Couldn’t let my mum know though, she’d have killed me wasting money on it like that so had to act like I loved it.

@one-armed dwarfAccurate?

Yayyyy... Tbf there's nothing too taxing in this... bar fucking yourself over in the Unmoored World. Ready for an expansion now Capcom... hint hint.

Done some cool stuff in the Creche, found a Legendary weapon and forwarded some quests. This game is at its best when it gets story heavy. Now it’s time to head back to the Shadow Lands I think.

Back playing this too, put another hour or so into it. Still in the same place as I mentioned above, the Githyanki Creche. Around 75 hours in at the moment.

Yeah, new TV out there sweet talking the wife.

Finally made a start on this. Only reached South Figaro but already hooked. Music is fantastic as always with FF. Playing the pixel remaster and had to immediately change the font though. Even after everyone else complaining about it, it doesn’t prepare you for just how bad it looks with the new font. So weird they’d pick that. & surprising how much of a difference it makes. Music wise though I’m struggling to pick. I keep swapping between them, love both but think I’m leaning towards classic. Confused by the formation thing if anyone can help though? I’ve set mine out below. Want Edgar and Locke front, Terra back. Which is how it looks here. But in battles it keeps being the opposite way round - however since changing formation my battles have always been facing left so is that why? May as well just keep them all the same position if random battle direction messes it up.

Yes! That was a bit of funny moment when that scene happened, because I actually wasn't aware. When I looked up her stuff I focused on post-Twilight movies and she made this just before those. Rather small role though (but not unimportant). But that definitely explains why the movie popped up in my bubble recently. Freaky algorithms.

Whoa whoa whoa - let's backtrack a bit on that one.... ....doesn't that film also feature Kristen Stewart......!?!?

Into the Wild. Took me a while. I remember my mum raving about the book, then going on about the movie when it came out, and people telling me to watch it because I really like Life is Strange (the second one took some massive influences from it). But for some reason I just never got around. I find it difficult to write about this because a lot of things I either like or dislike about the movie are basically my perception of the ideological reasons of what transpired in reality, and not really about the movie itself. For simplicity's sake let's just say that I enjoyed watching it because it perfectly captures the overall (off)road-trip atmosphere, but the more that I think about it, the more negatives keep coming to the surface. The narration from the sister, for example, has a tendency to portray Chris as an enlightened, heroic figure, but he was simply a free-spirited egoist. Supposedly his father was a significantly more awful person than how he's portrayed in the movie, which would to some extent explain why he didn't reach out, but I found this one-sided approach to storytelling a tad misleading. That's not to say I disagree with the overall concept and idea of just wishing it all away, and there are some exemplary scenes that portray just how needlessly complicated and bureaucratic human life has become (i.e. the kayak thing), and I'm no stranger to the eye-rolling, almost revolting moments that it can produce. But I think what I want to say is that the film lacks nuance. Chris himself is also portrayed as not quite as interesting as he possibly was? Everyone around him immediately falls in love with him, but he never had that kind of presence in the movie IMO. There are some really, really interesting locales (Slab City) and scenes here though. I rented this via VOD, but I think I'll pick up the BluRay at some point because I imagine the behind the scenes stuff and commentary being absolutely wild (no pun intended).

Sabin should have three Blitz moves at that point. The Fist of the North Star Thing, the Kame-Hame Ha and then this Zangief Piledriver we keep mentioning. The latter is the strongest but it has a higher chance of missing (which makes no sense when you think about it, but that's RPG RNG for you). I'll admit I have used a FAQ whenever the game asks me to split up the party, because those moments make me paranoid about running into a dead end five hours later due to suboptimal team comps. For everything else I'm going in blind though, I think having the genre experience and knowledge from today is already kind of a cheat code when playing this vs. experiencing it as a kid in the 90s.

Flying through games it looks like Metal Hellsinger is good though, yeah? Check it out. Little cracker of a game.

I watched the 5 episodes of X-Men 97 that have been released, tho at the time of posting it looks like there is a sixth but I guess the 5 that are out sort of form a unit by themselves anyway. It's not really what I expected this to be, in that it's a continuation to a kid's cartoon that's much more about the relationships of the mutants than I would assume the 90s one could ever really get into, cause I think that one was for little kids. It's very stylish yet also effortlessly retro. The animation is a bit strange, looks like Archer sometimes, but it's fine cause every big combat sequence has some sort of unique way of expressing what the different traits of the mutants are. Which, you know, it's actually kinda important cause I don't know who the fuck half of them are, like time travel man. That's the thing with it also, it doesn't drop you into the deep end but it does sort of expect you to keep up cause it's running forward from the position it was in nearly 30 years ago. The storytelling is very crowded though, but in a kinda lopsided way. Some bits feel as slow as they should, and with appropriate buildup to specific big moments. Other stuff feels like they just rammed it in there and pushed the fast forward button. You just have to roll your eyes at some of it cause it feels like a cliffnotes adaptation of some older mythologies these characters have so it won't really leave its mark. It feels a bit like it's under some sort of budget pressure, there's one ongoing thing with Storm which feels slotted in so inelegantly to everything else but also some pretty big things with Jean Grey which feel like they could have their own entire season. But there's also a lot of IMO cool creative things it does within those tight confines. It is what it is. There's one episode where they veer into some horror stuff, another where it's some 90s video game inspired shenanigans. They make it work somehow Magneto is great but I've always liked this character in every iteration I've seen him him, especially that Nazi hunting shit he was doing in First Class. Great scene. Episode 2 and 5 of this also have great scenes with him demonstrating his power, but also giving him some story developments which take him in surprising directions. He doesn't just fuck things up, he also fucks. Even if you're not caught up the cultural osmosis will stop it from being impenetrable, you don't need to know what that cloud guy thing is in the post above. I do wish though they were able to take their time a bit with the pacing here, and that they replaced Wolverine's voice actor cause he sounds fucking ridiculous. Ray Chase plays Cyclops, aka Noctis. I've seen some people call him robotic but I think he's fine.

I finished it now. I'm all over the place on how I feel about it, it's got plenty of peaks and valleys. I'd say it's the best video game adaptation for the reason that the makers deeply understand the thing they're adapting (as mentioned) but also are completely unafraid to leave their own mark on the property and take massive swings That said, it relies really heavily on this type of drip feed storytelling I've grown to really dislike, from other TV shows to FFVII Remake to this, this kinda 'mystery box' stuff where they draw out a mystery to keep you tuning in, and do it really slowly. I hate this type of storytelling cause it just feels like episodes pass you by with nothing interesting being said in them. Westworld did it too I think, which is what these guys worked on previously. I'm glad this was a binge drop, cause I would have dropped it otherwise. It's pretty clear to me IMO that the show is not actually intended to be binge viewed, they wanted to do a weekly thing to get engagement going cause of the big megatons it drops towards the end. But I'm glad I didn't have to put up with that nonsense cause in this day and age it sorta feels a bit of an artificial thing considering the way on-demand viewing works. At the same time, I bet the show's viewing figures would have benefited with that (not that it's hurting in that regard) I think towards the end it gets a bit too serious and dour and forgets to have a bit more fun with the setting, cause of the things mentioned. But even with all that it's actually a great installment in the Fallout series, a sort of Fallout 5 in a way. It made me resume my New Vegas playthrough and put Fallout 1 on the backlog for an isometric RPG to play at some point. I don't love it, there's bits that fucking suck, but it's just a much more interesting work than The Last of Us was. It's not a facsimile like that was. It's pulpy, but in a good way. While the video game coding of its world can be distracting at points, it's also just sort of part of the deal that you should be ready to accept anyway cause it's not embarrassed about its video game origins either, and they find innovative ways to integrate aspects of that gaming language into plot developments but also its narrative expression (try to tell which karma alignment each of the main characters is supposed to represent, and which way their moral compass tilts overtime)

Why howdy there pardner! I see you have downloaded and installed Fallout 76. A good choice! However I do not mean to be untoward partner, but did you actually mean to download Fallout New Vegas? It's an easy mistake to make pardner, so I thought I should remind you that Fallout New Vegas is also available on gamepass! Just go to manage storage and clear that space away and make room for Fallout New Vegas, it's easy! Anyway thought I would just try and help you out there pardner, it's an easy mistake to make. Don't be afraid to holler if you need anymore tips on installing Fallout New Vegas! Happy trails!

Cool. Blue deck, found a joker which increased multiplier for each Tarot card. Got him to x35 plus some other multi’s and general upgraded card. Fell lucky with the final boss blind this time. “Only” 100,000 points and his debuff was to shuffle and place jokers face down which had no effect at all.

The problem with the combat as I’ve said before is I don’t understand half of what’s going on or what I’m capable of doing. I’ve watched quite a few videos and read a lot of idiot guides to it but I still just can’t grasp it. Doesn’t help it takes an age going through all the radial menus checking each ability. Like I say I can admire this game and what it’s doing but just not really for me and I’m past trying really. Also I really didn’t feel like I rushed Act 1. I genuinely don’t know what else I could have done. I had the whole map uncovered and spoke to just about everyone I care across but didnt have any outstanding quests apart from 1 or 2.