cavalcade

*ly cringe inducing.

Helpful thanks.... I have been looking at Bridge cameras.... Any you'd recommend? Would you see a radically improved performance over a decent phone camera (in say the 600-800 quid bracket) or would you have to spend a lot more?

Hi, some advice please! My partner uses an S7 Edge and does snapshot photography. She's good at it, and wants to start taking things further with a course and possibly a DSLR of some sort. Her big interest is in macro/close-up photography (mainly nature, but also product photographs for her fabric-based creative business). I am mindful that the best camera is the one you have with you, and she did experiment a bit with my old 400d, and I think the general bulk (and slightly archaic OS) put her off. If we were to give this another go, what would be a recommended set up for macro, with a more modern camera, possibly which might have an OS with some similarity to Android (she's not especially technically minded). Maybe something quite compact (though I appreciate a macro lens by design has to have some heft to it). The resulting pictures would need to be high enough quality to be printed onto canvas, and probably, with work, outstrip the fidelity of the S7. Anything spring to mind?

Glass road plis

It's a decent game with terrible art, components and theme. The core mechanics need to be lifted by a decent gaming publisher and put into a more relatable theme and it could be a stunning game. As it is.... "anyone got three blues for a space dustbin?"

If they win... that seems likely.

I'm looking at the next generation perhaps more than us. Again, I can only go on the kids in my immediate circles and while many of them consume media in a fairly traditional way (sitting and watching or doing one thing to the exclusion of all else) it is quite marked that plenty (even a majority) absorb multiple streams of media simultaneously. My 9 year old will frequently play music on the Alexa, while playing on a tablet and the Switch, while having Netflix also going in the background (or at least attempt to, until I force him outside for a walk saying phrases that make me sound like I'm the dad from Just William). He does play games on the PS4 and does get quite into them, but his default lazy way of consuming media is to let it wash over him. Similar thing for my partner's kids. My gym equipment has Twitter and Facebook on it. It's possible to browse your social media feeds as you exercise. This weird, constant integration with anything is fairly pervasive now. Most people who game aren't that serious about it and I wonder however hellish it might sound but a PS5 capable of displaying social and other media feeds as you play (a bit like the abortive attempt MS made at the start of the XB1) might be how things are going. You hear kids even talking like the flash cuts in Youtube videos now - if I was thinking of marketing a gaming device to the next generation fitting in with the constant sushi bar of entertainment is surely how you have to go? Or perhaps not, as Golf eloquently argued.

I appreciate this forum tends to skew towards more hardcore gamers, so this might be a disputed point, but having used a Switch for a couple of months now I'm wondering if XB2/PS5 can afford to provide a shinier version of what the PS4 and XB1 do now. A single, immersive, ,screen providing detailed feature rich games to the exclusion of all else. Looking at two of my three kids (the more electronic device obsessed ones) it's fairly rare for them to engage in doing one thing at once, be it Netflix on in the background while fiddling on a tablet or using the Switch, or even consuming multiple video services at the same time (full on 60s Bond villain style). They tend to skiff from thing to thing - pausing, sleeping devices, skipping stuff back and forward, consuming in little chunks. More generally people do this anyway - I'm sure even the older generation here browse a phone while watching TV etc. Clearly the success of the Switch is down to a variety of factors, but you often hear how it has slotted into the gaps in people's lives and given the opportunity to play where they might not have done before, thanks to family or other commitments. Attention spans are dropping generally, and the way people consume entertainment (and information) is changing. The XB1 dabbled with the concept of multiple media streams for a while until it was patched out of the OS, but perhaps the flexibility of casting to another screen, playing on the go, and being able to play the Witcher 4 while consuming a TV series on Netflix is a baseline, rather than another performance hike based on putting more polygons on screen at 4k resolutions? Or is the market for dedicated, single screen gaming devices going to be as big as it ever has? I'm not sure, and this feeling may be largely anecdotal as the Switch has transformed me from someone who had drifted away from gaming over the last 5 years, to someone who enjoys Diablo 3 while having a shit and listening to Radio 5. Which is a lovely image to leave this topic opener on, I'm sure you'll agree.

Amazing

My dock has gone walkabout.... until it turns up and recommendations for a cheap USB3/HDMI adaptor? All the reviews on Amazon seem dire.

I want you to find each and every person who did Burnout 4 and give them a kiss (WITH TONGUES) and tell 'em cavalcade sent you

I'm surprised this didn't attract further comment. Builder thing drove me mad until I worked it out. Strangely un-intuitive...

I'm sure this has been covered many times over the past few pages, but this is a great opportunity to also chuck my hat into the thankstorm to @CrashedAlex for some absolutely superb games over the years. I personally adored Burnout 4 (I was all for the purity of BO1 and 2, but four was an incredibly cohesive package and looked spectacular on the 360), and spent many many happy hours on Paradise. I think that was a fantastic observation in the original comment - the ability to just drive without failure screens and the free form approach to gaming foreshadows a lot of other IPs in entirely different genres that used this approach to build massive popularity (especially as streaming/Youtube became more popular). So thank you. From me and my kids. You've brought us all a lot of entertainment over the years.

My children get a bigger pocket money budget than Benitez has to work with at Newcastle.

Not seeing a lot of chat about Benitez. Wouldn't he be one of the best choices at the moment? Working miracles at Newcastle. Proven track record. Probably easy enough to get at a reasonable price. I can't see many better options...