FishyFish

No, bizarrely enough. That one at least looked Star Wars, despite its ridiculousness. The Boston Dynamics droids just looked completely out of place.

Lewdle 06 2/6

I've never participated in these threads before, mostly because I was hooked on Battlefield to the detriment of pretty much everything else through the last gen. I'm clean again now though, so... 01. God of War (PS4/PS5) I've never played any of the earlier games in the series and was expecting some kind of fancy 3D Golden Axe type thing, which probably wouldn't have been my thing. But as it's included in the Playstation Collection and it has rave reviews, I decided to give it a go. What I got exceeded my expectations. It looks great and there's a ton of content (I've completed the main story, but have loads uf unfinished side-quests). Looks lovely too. I'll pick up the sequel when it arrives. 02. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (PS4/PS5) I remember seeing the initial reveal trailer for this and thinking it looked a bit "meh". It was only later (and probably post-Mandalorian) that it started to attract my attention so I bought the digital version in a recent sale. The combat felt far more floaty and lightweight than GoW, and it felt a bit janky too with some odd glitches and unfair deaths. I wasn't impressed at first but, gradually, as my force pabilities grew, it became a lot more fun. It's bastard hard though (to me, at least) and I dropped the difficulty down to the lowest setting for much of the game. 03. Until Dawn (PS4/PS5) Another one that I didn't really have much interest in before. One of my sons has it and liked it, but for some reason I imagined something akin to those old Mega-CD FMV games, so never really looked into it. Again, it's in the Playstation Collection so I thought "Why not?". At first I wasn't impressed. It looks really nice but the movement is glacial. I'm also not a big fan of quicktime events, so that's another mark against it. The characters all have a weird uncanny valley vibe to them too, with weird, sparkling vampire eyes, and they annoyed me considerably in their bro-ness. Again though, the game grew on me, really picking up after the somewhat pedestrian opening sections. I only saved three of the plastic-looking fools though. :D

Mine's a Rowtron Television Computer System, which I *think* I got for Christmas in 1982, although it could have been the year before. It's in the garage in its original box. I'll have to have a look - maybe the receipt is still inside. I also have a Bambino UFO Master Blaster Station LED handheld, which is older, but that doesn't count because it's one i got from a boot sale, not my original one.

I think that, unless you intend to use it, or to display it somehow, then collections easily fall into the category of hoarding. Most of my stuff falls into this latter category and I am taking action to get rid of stuff. I sold a load of old 8-bit stuff late year - mostly Sinclair items - and, at first, it was difficult. My mind telling me "But, but, you'll never find a Sinclair Interface II in original box with perfect poly's again!!!", completely ignoring the fact that said item had been sat unused and unlooked at in a cardboard box in a loft for two decades since I bought it in a collection in the 90s. It was a nice tangible thing to own, but I didn't need it. And since it was sold I haven't missed owning it. I spent some of the money I made on the clearout - which probably came to well over a grand in the end - on photography gear, which I do use. The rest went into my savings. I've still got boxes more stuff to get shut of, the main thing stopping me is the effort required to test, photograph, and list it for auction, which is a massive chore. Financially it will be worth it though. In the end I'll still have a bunch of stuff, but hopefully things that I have a direct personal connection too - things that I owned at the time for instance, rather than which I collected years later and never used.

Wordle 219 5/6 This one was tough.

The only droids that have taken me out of it so far were the Boston Dynamics "dogs" they snuck into ep1.

Wordle 218 4/6

I can see them on my TV if I'm using my Fire Stick. During the episode press up on the remote to access X-ray, and then select bonus content. The built in Amazon app on the TV doesn't have them though oddly.

Wordle 217 3/6

But both Uncharted and The Last of Us are games that, while very different to Naughty Dog's old output, were hugely successful and rank amongst the best titles of their generation. The same can't really be said for RARE making the Kinnect Sports titles. I'm not anti-Microsoft or anti-RARE at all, but I do genuinely feel that the ball was dropped somewhere when they moved over. Maybe RARE was already past it's heyday - Starfox Adventures on the GameCube wasn't their best effort - but at the time I remember eagerly awaiting what they would come up with on Xbox and it never really seemed to materialise.

That's not really the point I'm making, which was that RARE went from being one of the hottest developers around with Nintendo to being diminished under Microsoft's ownership (for whatever reason). It's nothing to do with nostalgia, or what titles I wanted from them, it's just the way it felt. You suggest that they're more successful making new IPs since leaving Nintendo, but that consists of five new IPs in the last 18 years (Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Kameo, Viva Pinata, Kinnect Sports, and Sea of Thieves), and even then Grabbed by the Ghoulies & Kameo were originally Gamecube titles switched during development, and Kinnect Sports could be said to owe quite a lot to Wii Sports (whether you consider it a sub-par knockoff, I don't know). Everything else has been sequels, re-masters, or re-releases of previous titles. Nuts & Bolts is the standout as, while I don't think it's what a lot of B&K fans wanted, it was a brave direction to take the franchise in and one that worked fantastically well while still keeping the character of the original games intact. Another 3D platformer would probably have been a lot more successful, but I can't fault the quality of the game. I didn't mention any titles at all to be fair, so can't be said to have written any out of history. As I've said above, N&B was a brilliant game. Putting RARE to work on Kinnect Sports titles always seemed like a waste of the brand. It feels akin to Sony buying Naughty Dog and then getting them to produce family oriented Playstation Move games.

I think the main issue with Microsoft's acquisition of RARE wasn't the poor use of the IP (although that's a part of it), it was the fact that, once the Stamper's left with their bags of money, and the other key members of the team went seperate ways, all that was left was a logo and a list of reminders from the glory days. The creative soul of the place was gone. The studio might have well been renamed to MS Dev Studio 26 or something. I'm not sure what Microsoft's objective was, but it felt like a massive missed opportunity.

I hope there’s a scene where an 8-year-old “tech whizz” saves the day by hacking into Mecha Godzilla using Siri.

Half asleep this morning so I made a rookie error. Wordle 216 4/6 At least the solution was apt.