Pob

My Elite v2 developed stick drift after being thrashed hard on Trials Rising. Very annoying but to be fair the replacement process was quick and painless, which is should be for a five-month-old product!

Oh that's what it was! So stupid I missed that - I thought it was some essential component for his contraption, hinting that the kindly old lady was actually some electronics whiz. Doh.

Is there a store link? I’ve not got the disc any more so can’t launch the game.

Just read this @K, because my son made me apply that victory emote as soon as I unlocked it and I’ve had it on for the subsequent 30 hours. It still raises a chuckle.

Actually, the reviews for both Wildlands and Breakpoint were pretty negative, which put me off getting Wildlands for ages. So that didn't sway me so much. It's more that they took the sequel in the complete opposite direction that I was hoping for, by playing up the loot and spreadsheet angle, grafted across from The Division. Plus I played the alpha and the beta and could tell it was a mess of different systems all crashing against each other, and couldn't be arsed to even play on after a couple of missions. The sci-fi fantasy setting doesn't appeal either.

Maybe it's got the old 'hog effects.

It's amazing how far they went off the rails with this. Wildlands was a massive seller, all they needed do was set it in a new real-world location and refine it, giving more options and modes for those who wanted a classic GR experience. Instead they went in the complete opposite direction and tried to get a slice of the loot pie. Wildlands is one of my favourite games if this generation. I didn't even buy this. That's a tier-1 fuck up. It sounds like Ubisoft got the message, at least. Perhaps we'll get a return to form in the next gen Ghost Recon. The team clearly has it in them - this direction probably came from Ubi HQ.

I'm tempted to give the game a go with these new 'Immsersive mode' settings: https://ghost-recon.ubisoft.com/game/en-gb/news-updates/47glKHsGQnwesnGk832Wkp/the-ghost-experience-new-immersive-mode-coming-to-tom-clancys-ghost-recon-breakpoint It sounds like they're just offering a bunch of options, rather than a tailored new experience, so no idea whether the game will be playable if on my chosen settings! Wholsale getting rid of Gear Score, and having enemies drop their actual weapon, sounds good though. In fact, just like Wildlands! In retrospect, I wish they'd focused on just improving Wildlands with the new survival mechanics and developed this new immersive mode there.

Trials Rising The much-reviled UI conspires to halt your progress, but behind all that, the game is as satisfying and addictive as ever. Once you figure out what you're supposed to do, there's a good spread of skill games and other challenges that mix things up with the standard Trials medal and leaderboard-chasing. Seriously, though, the front end. I could (and might) write a whole article about how how it obfuscates and traps the player, and how inappropriate a map interface. Not a single Trials player cares or even knows where tracks are geographically set, meaning the icons are essentially scattered randomly around a large scrollable region. Even if you use the filters to narrow down the icons, there is still no order to the results. It's liking asking an archivist to retrieve some some files, and they climb up to the mezzanine and empty the box of documents all over the floor, leaving you sift through the mess. You need to gain XP to unlock new tracks, but finding where to get XP is a not-very-fun treasure hunt. After a while you'll work out that 'contracts' give the bulk of the XP you need. Some actions randomly unlock new 'sponsors', and suddenly a whole load of new contracts are splurged all over the map. I only worked that out after 20 hours. When I first started playing it on release, I tried for ages to complete a backflip contract on an Easy track. Much later I realised that although the track is Easy, the contract was 'Extreme'. Why was I given an 'Extreme' challenge so early on? I stopped playing it for a year due to all the confusion. Then there's the loot box cosmetics. It's one of those games where loot boxes contain fairly boring things, so as an adult gamer I can't really be bothered to open them. I have over 100 of the things, and there's the customary 10-second fanfare every time I open one, designed to promote the release of endorphins or something. I will never be bored enough to spend 20 minutes opening those crates, meaning even if I wanted to customise the look of my bike and rider, there's a tedious barrier in the way. But it's Trials, possibly the best platform game ever. There are a shit-tonne of tracks, all of a high quality. The difficulty curve is well-judged this time. The best bit is Trials University, which I mentioned earlier in this thread. This teaches you advanced techniques like slope landing and rear-wheel hopping, and genuinely helps you improve your skills, making Hard and Extreme obstacles seem do-able. I got as far as completing the Grand Finale, and cleared all the Extreme tracks, except for Inferno V (Inferno is always the hardest track in Trials), on which I can't even make the first jump. If you can get past the terrible front-end, it's classic Trials. Previous

I reckon if I can freely walk around inside my ship, on planets, onto space stations, between vehicles and perform EVA I'd be all over it.

Are they ever going to have atmospheric planets or free movement of the player character?

Most people get expensive phones on credit, though. If there are decent contracts for the new consoles, tying you into Game Pass, PS++, or whatever, no reason they can't replicate that model.

I looked Palma up on Wikipedia. There's some truth to the events but it was nothing to do with Felix, and Clavel was a trafficker rather than a lowly driver: Bloody hell.

What was the postcard that Mike demanded be taken down behind the bar at the start? Why does Nacho live with an OCD woman who's not his girlfriend?

I thought that too. Admiral Picard, five minutes into next week's episode: