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And 50p in a charity bin

I've not been adding weekly free games for obvious reasons, so this is the first time I've been able to participate in here for a while! £170 with my staff discount!

I’m soon going to be one of the cool kids again I was honestly going to wait longer but the Pikmin 4 loading times are so bad I was like ACTIVATE PURCHASING MODE

Sorry mods if this needs to be split off. Up to you if you think it needs it. I was a lad when the 80's crash was in full swing and honestly I don't think I felt it at all, mainly because I think home computing was isolated from the shock of Atari fucking up. Maybe I come in at the back end of it and saw the rebuilding, although a lot of the games I played I remember them having a lot of years on them way before I was playing them. Late 70's, early 80's for example. And this makes me think, if that market was somewhat cushioned from Atari shitting the bed and collapsing the market, do we have the same cushioning in now for parts of the industry? I know we just had a Hot Topic on it and how we all said spend less, or something along those guide lines. Is the way forward stuff that has adhered to those lines, are those developers that look at filling that niche protected or maybe even emboldened by the AAA market folding in on itself as it tries to make the next GaaS thing that costs way too much and never makes a cent back because it fails immediately? Because I have a sentiment that no matter how bad it gets, we'll always have good times. People are just not restricted into making the thing big companies want them to make, along with the outrageous targets they set for them. Like who seriously thinks the new Battlefield will get 100m sales/players? That's just silly talk. You look at something like REPO which I believe is the biggest selling game on steam this year. Yeah, it's the cost of a take away pizza compared to the £60 AAA games that they have on their, and you could argue that a lot of those sales were a group of guys that bought the game on a whim, played it for a weekend and then never went back. But you could also say that for people that bought the bigger titles as well. We have people here that have bought full priced games on a whim, spent a night on them and then not gone back, or rather decided to go back years later. And that's another thing as well I have thought about. If the support beams give way and the whole thing collapses, people can always play the older games. They are still there, not going anywhere. Again, steam specifically, but there was a lot of talk about the 2024 wrapped that barely any of the current games made it into the line up as people were playing older stuff. A lot of us have kids now and they could play an iconic game a week for years before they end up running out of things to play. Will they all be fun? Probably not. But that'd be beside the point. We have such a burgeoning library now that even if no games were released ever again we'd get along fine. Would it really be that bad if the bubble bust, for us as consumers I don't think it would. For the people working in the industry I think it would be a mixed bag depending on what they chose to do, I have a feeling some of them would go to other companies, or work for their own start ups making smaller projects. Some would obviously vacate the field, but how is that any different from other grueling fields of work (like teachers or nurses) abandoning the profession and seeking work with their transferable skills elsewhere? There's lots of what if's, buts and all sorts of questions that arise from however the tower topples. And personally, I don't really give a fuck of Ubi fails, or EA decides that it can't go anymore, or MS/Sony get a bloodied nose from bad decisions. Because at the end of it none of these big companies are my friend and I couldn't give a singular fuck what happens to them in the long run, as long as someone steps up to the plate and we have at least some sort of competition to prevent it from becoming a monopoly, I'm good.

I took that mother down good. Anyway, because of my lost 12 hours, I've been playing this for over 30 hours. If I'm gonna see the end I really need a break. I'm going to play another couple of short games, while exploring the open world in this for maybe half an hour a day, or just enough to keep the gameplay under my fingers. Fact is it's been one of the most intense experiences I've had in gaming. In the main I've loved it, but it's worn me out to a certain extent. And what's with the story? Feckin Nora. I'm going to have to go on the internet to see if anyone can explain to me what the feck is going on.

You’re just bad at games. Like Maf.

Yeah he's talking crap, first he bullies maf and now telling porkies about Clair Obscur. We're in here in the Clair Obscur mines, studying frame data of these assholes, judging their imperceptible rhythms and arcane telegraphs, our builds blown to bits like soggy toilet paper.

I'm going back in!!

I don’t remember ever struggling with a main boss. It was only the side bosses which were twats. I pretty much beat every boss first go - sometimes only just - so felt it was actually well balanced for a 1st playthrough without grinding or having to memorise attack patterns like a Souls game. & you’re correct with your spoiler. However act 3 can be as long or as short as you want basically. You could finish it straight away.

I’m telling you this is the best game ever made I turned it on briefly last night just to try the new update and in 30 minutes I lit up a tower, got shot in to the sky, found a Death Star looking ball thing which I used rockets to shoot myself too, inside was a classic light beam and mirror puzzle to unlock a chest in a cage which I couldn’t solve, so got on a platform underneath it and used Ascend to get in the cage from the bottom and bypass the whole thing Every single fucking time I turn this game on something different happens. It is unlike anything else I’ve ever played On the update specifically. Obviously the bump in res and FPS is nice. But the HDR is not very good. I followed the instructions from that YT video going around precisely, but it’s a bit flat for me Might just be my like of strong colours and strong HDR. So think I will reconfigure the HDR to what just looks good to me later

It's on sale on steam for the next 7 and a half hours as well, 25 euro edit not as cheap as Xbox is with the season pass though.

Thoroughly recommended !

You can’t break the 9999 damage limit until Act 3 begins. 👍

F-Zero GX looks great on Switch 2. It’s cool you can remap buttons, too. I put boost on LB and it’s much better Still took me 3 attempts to win the first race on novice though 😭 This has to be one of the hardest games of all time

he's got a really small hand

Partly wanted the box and cartridge, partly because the bundle wouldn’t ship until August My Switch 2 got here early! Just set up the HDR using that YT video and transferred data across. Now just need to wait for it to download 150,000 things I played Mario 64 quickly. Christening the Nintendo console right

Returned to this after all the Switch 2 stuff and having read EDGE's wonderful review ending with a 4/10. I can kind of see their point in that the level design will send you run around in circles at times and some NPCs can make that process more annoying than it should, but simultaneously I find the critique too harsh. I have been lost here and there for sure, but outside that specific area I mentioned before and they also pointed at, it doesn't seem like a design issue but rather build around the idea of the dopamine rush when it finally clicks and you find your way out of the tunnel (figuratively – almost everything takes place in sunlight). Maybe this game just fundamentally works against the playstyle of a reviewer who's facing a deadline. The forging minigame has also evolved into a fun little pastime for me after having realised that you can angle your strikes with the right stick. I was lukewarm about it before but now I enjoy getting the best ratings and having almost unbreakable weapons as a result. An odd consequence of this, at least for the genre this is part of, is that it's kind of easy the further you get. The spear in particular operates at a range a lot of enemies can't contest and it allows both piercing for combat in small corridors and wide attacks against groups in open areas. I do switch around a bit when I find a new blueprint but if you want to make life easy for yourself you can probably get through this just fine with spears only – and maybe a reserve hammer for the rare armoured enemies. Can't judge how far along I am, its narrative is really fractured and I saw more cutscenes in the last 30 minutes than I did in the five hours before that. But the longer I play the more I see the vision behind it and I think its mediocre scores only tell half the story – but at the same time it's also clearly not a flawless, made-for-everyone kind of game either. I just hope people check it out if/when it arrives on subscription services, I think it deserves a chance even if it's not for everyone.

I'm about 8 hours in and in Act 3. I'm really liking it, think it's better than the first game, at the cost of it being less interesting. Some of what's happening the nature of it being a sequel. I would compare the effect to Metroid Prime 1 to Metroid Prime 3. Being a sequel it gets to expand and add more to the experience, but it's still the second time experiencing the game so it's less impactful, doesn't hit as hard and is comparing to an expectation instead of setting one. Another reason this game is less interesting than the first game is the speed it ramps up. However you feel about DS1, spending 10-15 hours trudging over hills, back'n'forth bases, dodging ghosts was very unique and the game felt like a real test of endurance, both for Sam and the player, and really captured the feeling of isolation and the weight of the world on your shoulders. The sequel gives you a motorbike at about the 3 hour mark, and the game is so active with other players setting up battery chargers, bridges and Time Fall shelters everywhere that feeling of hardship that the first game created is not really here. Which after thinking about it, I think is an improvement and the correct way to go. Ultimately I played the first game to death and experienced that sense of loneliness and self sufficiency, I don't need to or want to do that again. There's a reason I've never replayed the game. So the fact DS2 is speeding past that process, and seemingly just trying to be a more fun video game, is making it enjoyable. But the cost is so far, this game is less impactful, considerate or heavy than the original. Death Stranding 2 feels almost as much as a sequel to MGS5 as it does Death Stranding 1. Besides the exploration, another way this game is being more playful and traditional video game is with unlocks. The amount of weapons, gadgets, tools, perks, upgrades, tactical camo, resources unlocking is constant and non-stop. It really brings to mind MGS5's never ending R+D lists of toys, except this time unlocks are done by levelling up cities by delivering packages and completing missions instead of any kind of economy based thing. The game forces combat much more than the first game as well, both against humans and ghosts. I barely caried weapons in the first Death Stranding. Here I always make sure I'm packing something, especially in ghost territory, as they're much more aggressive and give chase even when not fully alerted. It's really quite brilliant so far and a lot of fun. I already have a pistol that shoots grenades, a tranquilising sniper rifle and a puppet I can throw in the air for reconnaissance. Part of the reason the game gives so many more toys is because this game is a lot harder than the original. Besides ghosts giving chase and humans have MGS5 levels of vision where they see really far, the environment is more hostile with earthquakes, Time Fall and sandstorms (Which honestly not played a huge role yet but is still proven tricky even the limited times it has come into effect) and the ground is generally harder to navigate as well. Even though motorbikes unlock early, they're certainly not all-terrain vehicles. Lastly the story is a lot more straightforward. It's still grounded in Death Stranding's nonsense, which has forced me to read the glossary a lot because the recap is not enough. But the first game felt so bogged down in world building and the dialogue was so poor it was difficult to grasp anything past the basic concepts, or even really care about the larger narrative. DS2 still has some of these problems, every character you meet has insane context to their being which for me ranges between laughable and eyeroll. But the punch of the story is more straight forward. Essentially Sam has lost something important and that's his motivation for being on the road this time Kind of like the gameplay, the story feels a lot more like MGS5. There's several different shady corporations, factions, acronyms, private benefactors, government control ideas and such being thrown around. It introduces some new strange, sci-fi concepts to the world of Death Stranding, but mostly it's filling out the world with more classic Kojima military and government conspiracy themes. Having said that, how well the game is doing this kind of story is up for debate. The way Sam is introduced to his 'Boss' is the most ridiculous shit in the world. Overall I'm really enjoying it. It's super fun to play, the story is more accessible, and though the objectives are the same as the first game the amount of things there are to play with give the game a better sense of variety and organising loadouts and preparing for missions, particularly combat missions, is really fun. But it's definitely a less striking game. Some of that is because it's the 2nd time, some of that is because it's more of a traditional video game, and some of that is it's straight up faster and more fun than the gruelling, trudging, marathon experience of the original

I think fuck off

Having just recently played Tsushima, got the plat and done the DLC this has shot way up my most anticipated list. Don’t think I need to watch this though. Would rather go in blind.

Dude, that first game (with the new island DLC) is one of the best games ever.

The first 3 words of the article are “The free update”

This isn't my thing, but Folio Society have been branching out a lot lately. Doing more genre literature, not just classics. One other thing they've been doing is making these anthologies of classic comics from DC and Marvel. At a glance, I've no idea if any of it is even considered cool or interesting, but though I'd share cause of the Superman stuff being in the media https://www.foliosociety.com/uk/dc-superman?om_campaign=omme_ef0a1690-2ed_16422_32606&om_profile=309f-3401b3-00515773&om_send=1e3a4d16f2914b0ab1e20b751c5b18b7&utm_campaign=omme_ef0a1690-2ed_09_07_25_superman_movie&utm_content=variation_a&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ometria

I went there first like an idiot and basically beat the axon solo with Luna. And I'm not bragging because... Maybe that is a bit braggy tbf.

I'm confused on how this works, someone I have on LinkedIn I learned worked there, she posted that she got laid off and is looking for new roles. Do they hire everyone back if they get a publisher or is it just leadership and they start over again, given that many will have to move on and get new jobs Fucking Microsoft man, what a shit company

Got a 2 million bell debt for the basement

Unless you plan on buying a truckload of Game Key Cards and/or digital 3rd party titles or want to move over tons of old games from Switch 1 – no, I don't think so.

Been a good Gamepass 2025 for me so far : Citizen Sleeper Atomfall (for a while) Avowed Blue Prince Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader Still got Clair Obscur & Oblivion Remastered to look forward too. Plus unexpected bonus being a new MK game and the NS2.

There's not that many characters in this game but the different kits they have are so interesting, and fun to learn to optimise on expert mode. I've only just sort of figured Luna out, her UI is really confusing with the 'consume' and stacking of stains, and the combining of them. But I got a cool weapon for her which stains on gun attacks, and I have her crit up to 50 percent so that Elemental Trick is really good now (hits with 4 elements and stains on crit for each one). I'm able to use mayhem and some of the heavy hitting 'break' attacks more often. Verso is hard to use, his weapon gets a buff from switching between physical and light attacks, but it's very hard to remember which I did last so I might swap to another. My favorite opener with him right now is Blitz into Quick Strike. Blitz lets you hit a second time, and quick strike gives more perfection at D rank. So that gets you up to B rank, and then I can use 'Perfect Break' on the next turn which does a tone of yellow bar damage and gets a discount at B rank. When I need partywide AP I use Egide with Maelle with the weapon that gives AP to the rest of the party when she gets AP, so she maxes out AP for everyone when parrying things. That's the stuff I love, when you get this domino effect thing going, and it's designed in a really clever way here with how each character weaves through different states. Luna needs an ice stain, Maelle is in defense stance so I'll use Rain of Fire to get a burn on and swap to offense, things like that. I got Monaco now who's basically a Blue Mage type character that incentivizes you to explore everywhere and fight everything, Och will know what I mean when I say he's Gau from FFVI. He learns skills from fighting enemies and has way more skills and versatility than anyone else. That said, I haven't built out a niche for him like I have the others, and I haven't really for Sciele either, she's great solo but I find it hard to get her going in a team cause things die too fast for foretell to even matter. She's basically just for boss fights I think, where she's great (especially with high luck), but crap otherwise. Sad. Level 29 now, I beat at the house, what an annoying fuck stop trying to hit me and just hit me.

I have said it before, we need one of the big three or four to collapse. I don't really care which one falls on the sword, or if multiples of them get dragged down. But should one of them fail, I think we'll see a possibility of a few outcomes. One is they start being more consumer friendly in an effort to learn from the mistakes of the company that got pulled under. That would be the thing I hoped that they would do at least. What that list of mistakes is varies from company to company so you can't really quantify it here for the argument, but it will go somewhere along the lines of company x did this, that and the other and we're currently doing this as well, so lets not because if it can happen to them, we might be next. The opposite thing would be they survived a rival and can now get away with murder. And by that I mean exactly how EA behaved with FIFA. They pushed everyone out of the genre and then just scummified their games from top to bottom after that. In fact a lot of EA sports stuff monopolised the market and then went down that hole so it's not like it's just a football thing. It's very much a case of "We're the only game in town so if you want in you're going to have to spread them cheeks". Similarly that collapse of a company could see an even more homogenising of the game industry or a more diversified one depending on which way it falls. Not in any of the markets that are not AAA dominated, but the larger companies that part of this conversation would for sure fit into one camp or the other. Ben brought up and interesting thing that made me think. If a tentpole fell out of favour in a marquee game such as Fortnite, what would happen to the company overall? I think with EGS it's a bit of a weird one because they have so many facets to that business. But what if Madden did that? Or CoD? EA saw that that happen back in the days of Medal of Honor and didn't really have anything happen to it other than they stopped making those games, they already had a fuckload of other IP printing money. I think maybe Ubi might be a decent study on that on making all these big ostentatious games like Assassin's Creed, Farcry and Skull & Bones potentially pissing money and good will away that eventually let too much water in that they can bail out. I think as well Ubi have a lot of stuff going on that a lot of people never really pay any attention to despite having quite a hardcore following. I don't know if those games get the same ire from the audience they are aimed at or if they are well received. You have stuff like Trackmania, Tom Clancy stuff, Trails, Riders Republic, Just Dance and some other stuff you might or might not be aware of. But they also have things like Anno, Settlers, UNO, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit etc all ticking away in the background. Ubisoft are a massive company and they have a stupid amount going on. Not everything is front and centre, but the big AAA profile things that have rocked their shit recently like XDefiant, Skull & Bones as well as under performers like the last Prince of Persia game under performing make it hard to bet on them. Maybe MS have seen that they have so many holes to plug and they have plugged them. Laid off staff and cancelled games signify that stemming of heavy bleeding. Or more than likely the stemming of profits that were not seeing an immediate turnaround for payouts to shareholders. Maybe some from column A, maybe some from column B. I doubt we'll ever really know.

I was born in 85 so was too young for that crash but I’m sure it was more of an American thing which has skewed our history with it as usual. From what I’ve read and heard over the years we were more into computers like you’re saying and had things like the Spectrum, Amiga, C64 etc. so we still had a relatively popular gaming market while it was imploding over there. Regarding a crash now. I think it kind of needs it. It’s obviously fucked and unsustainable as is. But it’ll be more of a scrape this time. It’s just too big and varied to fail in the same way. & no matter how bad it gets smaller games on Steam will always be released. I do think big AAA companies like Ubisoft are in trouble though. & I could see MS & even Sony eventually falling out of the hardware. Having a large digital collection on both, that does worry me. Especially on the Xbox side because it just feels more likely to happen there now.

It's one of the bleakest times I can think of for the industry, given that I wasn't around for that 80s crash. Between ballooning budgets and erosion of stability with AI. Like I'll never run out of old games to play that I haven't already played, but I'm not terribly optimistic about the future right now. It's all made extra disgusting by reading that a lot of the massive cuts are being driven by MS putting everything into AI, with how their AI is being used in Gaza.

Probably depends on the angle you take when looking at it but I'd argue that we're in one right now. Not in the same way as in the 80s because the quality is still there, but in the sense that if a younger person asked me whether they should get into game development I'd respond by telling them to stay as far away as possible. And that's not a sentiment you'd have towards an industry that's in a healthy spot. And the results of both the people currently getting forced out of it and newer generations being reluctant to fill these gaps because they're reading the room will be very noticeable in 5-10 years, at least on the western side of game production. So yeah, I think we're in the prologue phase of a soft crash.

I think this was always going to happen, I suspect if you go back and find the buyout thread they'd be a few of us saying it. They bought a ton of stuff, but they don't want most of it, they want the big stuff and they want the marketshare that brings. I'm honestly amazed Microsoft even attempted to bring back Perfect Dark (which I know isn't from the Activision buyout), because it wasn't ever a big name for them Obsidian are lucky Grounded quietly did so well, otherwise they'd be gone now too Microsoft are turning in to Activision, holding on to a lot but they're only going to put out COD, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Forza. The likes of Gears and Halo will need to do well next time otherwise they'll fade away too, only getting teased to get gamers on side

Last night was nice. I went on twitch and saw someone streaming that had no one watching and that had peaches. After letting them know how to open the gates I came over and exchanged my pears for some peaches and hung around a bit. She was in the USA and actually playing with her husband there joining in once in a while and I had my wife here in the UK playing AC next to me too so idk it was just real cute or something and not an online experience you’d get from any other game.

Leaving July 15 Flock (Cloud, Console, and PC) Mafia Definitive Edition (Cloud, Console, and PC) Magical Delicacy (Cloud, Console, and PC) Tchia (Cloud, Console, and PC) The Callisto Protocol (Cloud, Console, and PC) The Case of the Golden Idol (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Had to cleanse myself from the latest Cross Worlds marketing.

Finally at a decent price.

GC pad turned up today from Nintendo store. I played a couple hours of Wind Waker this evening, felt good. It can turn on the S2 from sleep like the S2 Pro controller, too.

It’s time to reconnect

Let’s get weird with it

Brand new Mega Drive game! ZPF, I backed it on Kickstarter and nicely they've sent the physical Mega Drive versions out before they've finished the Steam version, so this isn't just a nice thing for the shelf, it's actual got played for a while today. Based on my first impressions, and I don't understand a lot of it except dodging and shooting (it's a shmup), it feels a little different than the Steam demo. My memory is that was a lot harder, maybe just because I was using the Xbox pad whereas the Mega Drive pad I'm using has a proper d-pad Oh, also a Pinky demon because I'm all about Doom at the minute