footle

Don't forget that l'equipe presentation on the 18th.

Wordle 205 4/6

there was a particularly shit trend last year - proof of capacity blockchains. Basically led to large multi-TB hard drives disappearing from sale because miners. some places still have restrictions on sale of your 4TB+ disks.

I think @imp nails it. I played it solidly for two days in the summer after a bit of a scare, and it was great - but it also means that it ends up effectively on rails as to *how* you break the loop, and there are some guns/methods that are just overpowered so outside of just deliberately causing yourself chaos and hardship you’ll have to deliberately play to stretch the games boundaries. I’ve still never, for example, when deep underground in a complex full of art But if you’re willing to play in slightly less efficient ways, and explore what your various powers can do to try and work around as well as straight through some of the levels, you’ll have a good time. one of those “it probably couldn’t be everything we dreamt of” games and still something that could be completed by the vast majority of players: instead it’s a timely-wimey hitman with blink powers. but with the timey-wimey and character stuff taking centre stage, and therefore only one eventual solution (after multiple different solutions on the way there)

I’m not sure so much about the film, but the staging of the songs was great and makes up for anything else. And they’re definitely earworms.

take it out of the box first and see which fishes it looks the most like. Perhaps introduce it to the flatfish.

@erhgiezhide your spoiler

Wordle 204 4/6

07/01: The pedestrian (series x). Ok, but glad I didn’t pay for it. 08/01: Unpacking. liked this, nice ambient storytelling. A few too many socks though?

Newcastle ha ha ha.

yeah, I don’t particularly care about the B choices though it is one of the problems of doing a game of the year poll in December / early January - much of what was released in late November/December can miss the boat.

yeah, I think I have the settings slightly wrong in game because I was mostly using headphones.

ŴGame of the Year 2021 A1. Guardians of the Galaxy if only because, unlike a lot of other great games this year, I really wasn’t expecting it to be good at all. like all the others, it isn’t perfect (particularly the combat drags towards the end and it’s basically unplayable with however I’ve set my soundbar up - half the dialogue just fades out when your team aren’t directly in front of you, though that can be fixed with headphones). A2. Last Stop For the pitch perfect scrum session and an actual contemporary take on London. A3. Psychonauts 2 for existing, and really showing what can be done with inventive, stylised art and some imagination - rather than another grim, grey and brown dystopia. A4. Forza 5 I’ve played a lot, and the very short cycle times to playing it more really help. Of the games here, this is the one I’m most likely to play more of this year. A5. Deaths Door A Zelda game on other platforms! Game of the Year (premiered anywhere pre-2021) B1. Yakuza: like a dragon i bounced off all previous Yakuza games, but it turns out I just needed it to be more of a ridiculous rpg than a brawler and have an Afro haircut at its heart. B2. Miles Morales. Which was in many ways better than the first game because it tightened everything up. On this list because I didn’t get a PS5 till this year… B3. Hitman 1, 2, 3 which is cheating a bit, since it’s really Hitman 3: but bringing all the games together in one giant murder simulator, along with all the additional levels I’ve bought and never succeeded in completing over the years, got me through the best part of January and February. with, finally, a couple of silent assassins too. Biggest Disappointment of the Year Z1. They’re all scum. I’m not so sure it’s a disappointment, because that would imply some level of surprise. Perhaps the disappointment would be the bit where California seem to have screwed up part of their case against blizzard in some federal horsetrading. Z2. Forza’s networking issues. A surprise for something so polished. Z3. Ratchet and Clank Bought for the shinies, and the innovative use of the SSD. The shinies were shiny, but in service of a game that took zero risks with art or gameplay: none of the invention of Psychonauts or the Artful Escape or Genesis Noir or (you get the picture, or in the case of R&C you don’t). The SSD use was precisely what we’d cynically guessed from the trailers: canned footage which may as well have been a video, portals to (with one exception) tiny areas elsewhere in the map. Sound Design of the Year S1. Guardians of the Galaxy actual funny voice acting S2. Returnal i suspect: certainly I could hear what the zealots have been talking about when I’ve played in headphones. S3. Visual Design of the Year V1. Psychonauts 2. variety, but a cohesive sense of style. V2. The artful escape barely a game, but lovely to look at. V3. Writing of the Year W1. Psychonauts 2. W2. Guardians of the galaxy W3. The forgotten city timey-wimey in multiple ways. Format of the Year F1. Game Pass. If not Game Pass, then Xbox. Led to me playing far more varied games than I otherwise would have done. The whole of Outriders, MLB The Show, a whole range of indie games on both PC and Xbox. The PS5 is simply rendered a Sony exclusives machine. Publisher or Developer of the Year P1. Devolver. almost solely for their NFT video. —- I’ve not played enough returnal for game of the year voting, and similarly I’m only halfway through it takes two. They’re both clearly very good though. See also Unpacking, which I intended to play before this post… (now completed: I think what it does with its storytelling is nice, but it’s not going to shift my writing nominations). I have briefly started inscryption and wintermyth (?) - and suspect wintermyth would score on the writing front if this voting was in February. But they’re on PC which limits the time I can be bothered to spend playing them.

Or not. Either he’s a reckless arsehole, or a lying arsehole. 16th and 17th he was doing mass public events. Oh, and he also went to Spain at the end of the month breaking their entry law if he was actually positive on the 16th.

Convenient infection in mid December it is.

A lot of it will be roger and Rafa fanfolk, once you count them out you’ve got people who don’t like him because he’s basically a highly optimised tennis machine. But he’s taken what he’s got and hell has he really tuned it to the max. shame he’s an antivaxer nut, really.

Liked the pedestrian.

monitor, keyboard and mouse? (I’ll easily have spent £1.5-£2k self build without monitors, keyboard, mouse, case, OS, and “only” a £650 3080 eighteen months ago: 3k built with a 3090 is hilariously now reasonable).

Wordle 202 4/6

Wordle 201 5/6 4 or 5 was a toss up

I suppose he could be loved by Serbians and AntiVax Right Wing Nuts?

i really liked it, but I like Miranda stuff (and was surprised how well he’d directed) and really liked Garfield in it. And it’s a musical, so I wasn’t that bothered about how the songs fit in and was more interested in how they were staged.

Ah a nice "you know those macbook pros"... slide.

Wordle 198 2/6

Last years wasn’t bad. for this year then… 1. You know that stacked February, it’s not happening. At least two major games slip past the end of March. 2. God of War Raganok reviews better than Horizon Forbidden Ubisoft Clone. 3. BOTW2 slips into 2023. 4. Starfield shows the problems with the Bethesda narrative approach, taking more from Fallout (bleak, cynical) than Skyrim. It’s as buggy as a buggy thing (it’s a Bethesda game) and hilariously divisive. If only because there will be a forum war or two because it’s an exclusive. I’ll try it, then bounce off it because it’s not GOTG levels of polish or story. 5. GTA Online Next Gen edition launches and passes with barely a comment. who cares? 6. GTA 6 isn’t announced. 7. No switch pro is announced. 8. PSVR2 doesn’t get released, but we do get a teaser. 9. Microsoft, fresh off a year of not buying anyone, buy someone. 10. It’s been a while since Mario Odyssey, so Nintendo announce Odyssey 2. 11. Bonus Prediction: Kotick retires to spend more time with his money.