Hendo

I’m a couple of episodes from the end of Stranger Things. I like it so far, but I also liked series 2 which apparently didn’t go down well with everyone else?

Nearly finished my first (well, on this copy of the game) run through of the campaign with the necromancer. I remembered that the difficulty settings in Diablo are always labelled wrong but I wish I had gone one level up from Hard, as it’s still been too easy. I’m probably gonna run through again on some more classes before the Adventure stuff or whatever is at the end. At some point I’ll have to do some digging because I really don’t understand what the seasons are all about, or how “meta” supposedly works in this kind of game.

I started it and I probably wasn’t in the mood but I dropped off at the point where detective vision comes in.

PLAY Picross S3 Been playing this a lot as one of my podcast listening games. Only a handful of puzzles left but I'm really struggling to see the logic in working them out. I've even tried to get my head round the logic of the Mega Picross mode but that still eludes me. Colour mode is really cool, though. Dead Cells Another podcast game. Currently playing with one of the boss cells activated, which makes it significantly harder, but the right amount of challenge I need. Over 100 hours played, according to the console. Slay The Spire Not been as addicted to this as I expected, but still really enjoying it. It's also a good background game for multi-tasking. Diablo III I've finished this once before and played the opening act probably 5 or 6 times at this point. Still a lot of fun for mindless mashing. Sea of Thieves Played some more of this with Simon and it's a good co-op adventure. Not sure I would buy it if my GP sub ran out tomorrow, but it's a good chatting game. Clash Royale They introduced a battle pass at the start of the month and it has some really good features with it. I've got very few common and rare cards to max out so it's currently a case of storing up gold. No sign of the game slowing down for me or the community just yet. WANT Not much on the horizon I can think of. I want to get back into some of the stuff I started on GamePass. BIN Deactivated my Facebook account for a bit, not that I use it much anyway. That feels pretty good.

Started listening to Behind The Bastards, after hearing it recommended as they do a deep dive on the Jeffrey Epstein case. I’ve learnt a fair bit about him, and also Paul Manafort (who has real blood on his hands), Alex Jones and nearly finished the 3 part episodes on L. Ron Hubbard, who comes across as more of a likeable Billy Liar than an outright evil bastard. There’s a lot of ad breaks which doesn’t always sit well, but the shows are good.

This is on sale right now on Switch so I picked it up. Can’t remember which class I used before, bar the monk for healing, which is not that useful when playing on my own. I seem to remember trying the witch doctor, but this time went with necromancer. Still on act 1 but the cool skills are starting to unlock. I just need to work out how to open the multiplayer so it’s not just friends only. If anyone has it on Switch and fancies a game, let me know.

Giving people the ability to delete posts could prove problematic, to be honest. We could turn the rep to be not anonymous but I think it’s better how it is now.

It’s not as good as Bastion.

I’ve only got most of the way through the first episode but it’s good so far. I didn’t have any hate for the second series, but I couldn’t remember much, bar the kiss at the end as the actors involved made a big joke about it on the behind scenes episodes. The recap was ultra useful.

Had a decent 2 hour session on this with Sly. Did a quest for the mysterious stranger. Had to go back on ourselves as I didn’t realise there were two things in one of the chests that we needed, so went back to where I dumped the chest to pick it back up. Even on the lowly original Xbox One, it does look lovely. The sea especially looks awesome.

New Stuff:

New Jumanji looks ace.

I tried an online match the other day. It took ages to connect to anyone and then there was really noticeable lag. Not the opponent zipping round the track lag, but a noticeable difference between the time of pressing the steering one way or the other and then the car actually moving that direction.

Anyone seen the new Shaft yet? The trailer looks good fun.

Think I’ve seen that before, bless ‘em. The Cure are on Glastonbury right now and I’m gutted I’m not there. I had the live feed streaming from iPlayer, my boss walked in on A Forest. “That’s The Cure? That’s pretty dark! I thought they did pop songs?” I bet Bob Smith would find that hilarious, I was just stumped.

Enjoyed that, good conversation, boys. I do have enough in my savings for a decent new TV, but it’s all going to the move-out fund.

Just had another great run. Finally got through to the new Giant area and defeated the boss. Along the way picked up a nice weapon with a gaming reference - The Boy's Axe. You throw it out and it does more damage as it comes back to your hand.

Nearly! You copied and pasted the date so it said 26th of May, so I had to fix that, but other than that, spot on.

July Gold stuff:

For me, nope. I remember seeing screenshots but I’m not sure I ever saw it running. Certainly never played it before. It runs really well and as someone who never played it back then, I’d say it holds up.

All these years later, and I finally get to play this, after coveting the super expensive MD cart when it came out. I never played it in the arcade or on an emulator, so the Switch version is my first experience of this. Firstly, really impressed with how it runs. I've heard that this 60fps was not on the arcade original but it's bloody smooth as silk. I was expecting it to look really old but it actually looks really stylish and I could imagine someone making a new game in this style and it looking equally great. The only time it looks bad is when you change the view to cockpit view and the amount of frames of animation for turning the wheel is comically low. Only 6 quid as well. A reasonably priced port that they've done a great job with.

New film and funny shit threads created. Any other long beasts let me know.

It’s always difficult for me to properly work out whether the site is slow or my phone net is being rubbish. Probably column A and B. It’s been slow for me in work, but I’ve also been dead busy so haven’t had much of a chance to look at much today. I think Jim said earlier that the problem shouldn’t be thread length but we might have to look at cutting some long threads down again.

Hot-steppin’! Enjoyed that. Starting to get my head round it, despite the game not trying to help me in any way.

I need to get some food soon but I’ve done all my prep for work so should be able to play till about 10.