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Retro impulse got me again FF Tactics with box, manual and innards I think is a pretty good deal. It’s in pretty great condition, too Then Turok 2 was just sitting there. Not the best condition because it doesn’t have the inside cardboard just the cartridge and manual. But I think I only have the cartridge and it was £25 so I thought why not. I love Turok

Tactics Advance is a great game. inFamous Second Son I bought after watching theRadBrad revisit it, I didn't know it had a PS5 update and runs at 60fps. Definitely want to play through this again at some point. £4, a steal. Ring Fit Adventure mint and complete, doesn't look like it's been used at all, £25. Burai Fighter Deluxe, never heard of this before but took a punt for £6 at CeX and it's a decent horizontal shooter. Wario Blast was £7 on eBay, loved the game as a kid and looking forward to playing again. 3D printed stand for my Analogue Pocket.

I listed a 3DS game a few weeks ago for a high price as it's quite rare. It was the only UK green spine copy on eBay at time of listing. It sold today at full asking price...

I cropped this so there wasn't so much wasted space, and it's ended up emphasising the boobs SNK 40th Anniversary, a collection of some of SNK's older arcade games

Let's go!

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.

Ed's treating himself to some Lurpak with that kind of money 💰

Wasn't planning on buying this so soon but after hearing DF talk about its backstory I just couldn't help myself.

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.

Congratulations on actually finishing something.👍

I’m going to start a new YT reviewing channel called time to boredom and my rating system will be a percentage based on how many minutes of the total amount of minutes I survived before doing something else FU, Rotten Tomatoes, I’ll show you how it’s done

Absolutely nothing wrong with emphasising boobs. 👍

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.

Todays session ended at the floating continent. I'm getting as many loose ends completed as possible before that point. I forgot how some new characters are really fun (Kupo!) while some are not (gamblers and little kids)... I have a day off tomorrow. So I'm quietly confident I'll be wrapping up the game in the very near future.

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!

New games coming soon Hundred Heroes, finally. And Have a Nice Death looks like a cool 2D rouge-lite. It’s been in my Steam wish list forever Also Hmm. I would have liked to have tried Loot River, but not that bothered EDIT: I messed up the quote and spoiler boxes again. The button look exactly the same lol

Clouds of Sils Maria, a story about an older actress who receives an opportunity to star as the deuteragonist in a reimagining of a theater piece that launched her career 20 years prior, where she played the younger protagonist. It's an extremely complex movie that tackles a lot of themes and ideas, but I lack both the knowledge and the intellect to really dissect this. It's very layered though, so on surface level I found myself really enjoying the back and forth between Maria, the actress, and Valentine, her personal assistant as they navigate the pros and cons about whether or not Maria should return to the play. There's some sort of three-step meta-narrative during the segments in which they go through the lines of the play, where you're not always sure if it's the characters acting, the characters saying what they think or even the life of their actors coming through. There's very strong chemistry between Juliette Binoche (Maria) and Kristen Stewart (Val) and I can absolutely see why the latter won a César for this role. Really enjoyed this – there's a very ambiguous moment towards the end that I found unsettling, but in a good way, if that makes sense. Also some rather impressive landscape vistas to look at, as a lot of outdoor scenes have been filmed in the Alps. And that concludes my little Stewart marathon. There's a few more on my list but they'll have to wait a bit. But she's made some really interesting choices and out of the six movies I watched no two were alike, with this one and Spencer being my favourites.

I reached the same point yesterday and I think I'm finally liking the game. I mean you have to have a heart of stone to not fall in love with it during that scene, really well executed, especially considering its age. The new gameplay additions you unlock shortly before that are super interesting, too. Give you significantly more control over how to develop your characters, vaguely reminiscent of the whole EV stuff in Pokémon but thankfully more openly communicated by the game. I have not looked into Gau at all though, and probably never will. Don't really like those RNG mechanics.

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.

I mean it's obviously going to be easy if you overlevel your party. Kinda nuts that auto battle covers Blitz as well though, haven't really tried the feature yet. I've died against three bosses so far, mostly a case of not knowing what I'm up against than anything else though. Which is kind of how games of that era balanced themselves to be fair, because the mechanics themselves aren't super deep, at least in the beginning. There's only so much your team can do or deal with, so throwing something at you that you don't expect is one of few ways to make it challenging (the other being pure number inflation). I was rather negative in my other post, so I'd like to say that I still adore its soundtrack – I've also began to switch around between Classic and Arranged, some stuff does sound decent in the new version after all. And I appreciate that it went for a more limited colour palette, which was unusual for its time and pretty much set the tone for both VII and VIII.

Bit behind but got it downloaded. Will be joining in soon.

This had a cool demo so I decided to treat myself to a little sidegame over the long weekend. I'd actually encourage giving the demo a shot, because the game looks like a run-of-the-mill pixel indie title but it has an amount of quality and polish to it that really makes it stand out. In a Nintendo-ish way, it's entirely designed around a singular idea and that's the drill your character carries around. It allows you to drill through certain areas of the map, be it ground, snow or other, it works as a propellor underwater, it can revv up certain machines etc. I'm not going to spoil in detail what the developers have cooked up, but there are genuinely cool surprises here throughout and no two levels feel the same – again, very much Nintendo-like. This seems to have been in development for about seven years, which sounds absolutely bonkers, but it shows, because it's really an incredibly accomplished take on one of the oldest genres out there. There is one caveat though and those are the boss battle. I'm not going to mince words, they're all pretty bad. Well, at least the three I played so far. The first one was okay-ish I suppose, but the two that followed were just very tedious 'death by a million cuts' affairs that don't use its central mechanic in an interesting way. The third one, in fact, is easier if you just don't drill into the ground at all. It's weird to see how devoid those fights are of ideas considering how excellent the rest of the package is – almost as if they had been made by a completely different team. So while that might sour the experience a tiny bit at the end of every world, I don't think it drags the game down overall. From what I read it's not super long, but quality over quantity seems the focus here, and there's time trials for crazy people to get a bit more out of it. As a final commentary, the soundtrack is extremely good as well and I wish I could link a few samples but nobody seems to have uploaded anything yet. It's on Spotify though, if you want to give it a listen. Completely misrepresenting screenshotTM

That was clutch. Thanks. I completed this earlier. My thoughts didn’t really change. It’s just missing something. I can tell its a well made game and if you put the time in I’ve no doubt its precise enough to pull of incredible feats in these levels. But it just didn’t really click with me. I even went back after completion to try some of the time trials or go for some more skill coins but to be honest when I started to I realised I’ve just got no interest in doing so, so stopped almost immediately. It’s weird, I just feel nothing regarding this game when I think about it. It’s by no means bad and I’d still recommend people play it. Especially <£10. But yea, just didn’t hit for me. 6/10

I feel the opposite on the runtime, it felt more like it was a 3hr30 film crammed into 3hrs and had a few snips here and there. But Nolan's films often have that hurried feel to them where they don't really allow you to linger in one moment too long. There's also the fact imo that Nolan seems less interested in people (except one person) than he is in narrative techniques and tricks, which gives a sense of emotional coldness to a lot of his stuff (except maybe Interstellar). I have issues with the film but I think its narrative structure made up of criss-crossed fragments is what makes it interesting. Feels like the story is built around these tiny narrative particles colliding across time and memory, mirroring the turn of history itself as the invention of atom bombs triggers chain reactions into the future, changing the world fundamentally and mostly for the worse. I just thought that worked really well and made it interesting

Gone back through the archives for this question... which I think I'll do more often now, so expect questions about the 360 and PS3 soon...😂

Jesus that's long. I scratched the 20 hour mark yesterday, will probably take me until summer to get through at this pace. After the first area I went to the south, thinking I had a choice, but just barely made it through the first battle (by leveling up five times per unit). Went to the east then and am currently just stomping everything because of that. Kind of odd hw they give you a choice here while there's a clear order to proceedings. But I agree, it's hard to really throw any big criticisms at it. It really does everything well it sets out to do. Maybe its focus on allowing the gameplay take place on the map you're running around could mean there are some limitations to map design (no elevations for example), but I guess I'll find out at some point. But I think it's extremely impressive how easy it is to digest all of its complex mechanics. Not saying that this results in me min-maxing it at 100% (far from it), but it never feels like you're looking at something and not understanding it. Mostly it's a case of not thinking about it instead. In that aspect it really is a masterclass of intuitive design combined with a readable presentation.

So I decided to play this after all. Can't guarantee I'll follow a certain schedule but it'l be nice to finally (hopefully) see it through until the end after my short-lived attempt on the PS1 (such bad ports, loading times galore). First thing I did was changing the font to pixelated. Second thing I did was changing the OST to original. Not that the remixes aren't good, but some themes suffer a bit from over-instrumentalisation I think, with Terra's theme being an unfortunate early victim of this.

^ yeah i agree, glad i was playing on tactical. Think i might have overleveled a bit though as i did nearly all the battles. finished it earlier, overall i think its a really good game. Maybe i didnt get the most out of it as im not great at this type of game. Possibly like dmc or beyonetta, i really enjoy those but am rubbish and sort of half button mash through them. 108 hours on the clock its a long game but like i said i did nearly everything, think it maybe would benefit from being shorter, like i sort of want to try it on a harder difficulty but no chance as its so long. Some of the tactics you can employ are pretty cool, but the best one i came up with on my own was still pretty basic really polished game, can barely think of any annoyances, it was hard to sort through all the items/accessories and thats it. so yeah good stuff.

DF generally positive about the game. Tech side it’s passable with some issues, mainly the camera not being great for combat seems rough. But they say the puzzles are fun and it’s worth playing It really reminds me of The Medium for some reason. Which isn’t good because that game stinks. Still I want to play this. It doesn’t look great, but it does look enjoyable. Roll on, Gamepass

I dont really think characters like Roche have anything to do with that I think its more that the games are overly marketed to and tailored to players of the original, which are a shrinking and aging demograph (This discuss came up on the previous page I know but half as much as remake is new info at least)

So I went ahead and finished this yesterday... First off complaints... the story (what there is of one) is absolute guff and to be fair they may as well not bothered, it's probably worse than the first game in that regard. It lacks areas to stand against Bluemoon Tower, The Catacombs and The Shadow Fort from the first game, the amount of decent creatures cut (Hydra, Cockatrice and giant Gorecyclopse to name a few) there's a lack of end game grind which you could do with The Everfall and it seriously needs either a hard mode or difficulty sliders. And even after moaning about all that the game is so moreish... I literally jumped straight back in to NG+ with my same characters and started all over again... this time I think I'm not gonna rent Mages or Sorcerer and just roll melee class characters, I've already been in stitches watching Laurana (Thief) and my rented Fighter and Warrior steamroll a Troll by throwing exploding barrels, rocks and sometimes each other at it. I really hope my end game issues get sorted with an expansion because I'm definitely not ready to say goodbye to this anytime soon.

Well I'm having quite a bit of fun with this. I still have an old TV so it more or less looks like it does in the screenshots for me. It's unusually high contrast but I think I just don't like how it overly highlights interactive route pointers. The cutscenes look like the grindhouse aesthetic from a while back that a bunch of games went for and it looks quaint now. It's just more that not a lot happens in the cutscenes except have the lads actually tough, but it's not written in the most entertaining way. The game itself I'm enjoying a lot. I wasn't expecting something so close to God of War '18 either but it definitely has a lot of that. I checked the devs previous games and a lot of that is mixed in there too. They made the Shadow Warrior games so you can also see them doing the grindhouse thing there too. But their shooters are made in a way where swapping weapons and making use of their traits is the optimal way to play. And that's in here too but it's kinda better because your always just a button or combo of buttons away from using a particular skill to take advantage of a situation. And they do throw a lot of enemies at you and it can be overwhelming. I have died a few times, it gets serious pretty quick. I've been enjoying the B-movie-ness of it, it's very third act of From Dusk Til Dawn but in a video game. It's fun.

Well, 15 frames per minute is 1 frame per 4 seconds, so it would be very challenging to input the button sequence needed to get Sabin to suplex the train. (also I think VI actually ran at 60, or maybe 30. Depends on the video signal maybe)

Played FF Tactics Advanced so much on the GBA SP !!!!

A bit, yeah. I randomly stumbled upon an interview with her over the weekend that I found interesting and started to look into her post-Twilight work. She seems to have carved herself an interesting niche since then, not unlike what Daniel Radcliffe did after Potter. So I picked six movies with her I wanted to watch this week, the remaining two are Certain Women and Clouds of Sils Maria.

I'm about 8 hrs in now, and whilst I'm really quite enjoying it, the universal acclaim (and sweeping the board at the BAFTA Awards) is utterly baffling. There's just so many poor interface decisions (maybe exacerbated by me playing on a console) and odd / poor gameplay mechanics - when compared to things like the Pathfinder, Pillars of Eternity, Solasta, Wartales or even D:OS. Feels to have got a bit of a free ride due to the popularity of the official licence and how really nice it looks. The hidden skill check thing makes absolutely no sense when in battle you are clearly shown a hit % (why would you know that if you don't know the likelihood of passing other (non-combat) checks before committing to them !?!?). Definitely not a bad game, but I do wonder how many people bigging it up have played many other CRPGs (albeit if they hadn't I don't think BG3 is particularly welcoming, with it's lack of clear system introduction). Notable perhaps that both Pathfinder games got 34 Critic Reviews on Metacritic, D:OS 39, D:OS2 46 whilst BG3 has 119.....

£12.49 in current sale. I have to know.

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.