Flanders

I’m really enjoying this series but I reckon the pacing issues that some people have are a byproduct of Holden being relatively sidelined - while it’s true that the likes of Naomi and Amos are more interesting characters played by better actors, Holden has always been this show’s main instigator to move plot forward.

The whole affair has somewhat dented the idea that GamePass and subscription services in general are the set in stone destiny of gaming. Firstly because we just got given the cleverest indicator yet that lots and lots of players don’t want to pay $180 year for a subscription service even if it does have hundreds of games, because it doesn’t have the two to three FIFA/CoDs into which they actually put their limited time. And secondly, because the move itself points towards a concern within Microsoft itself about the model. I think that in addition to the £1 Gold top up potenti

I wonder if they did some number crunching and realised the whole Gold-Game Pass stacking thing was going to be ruinously expensive in the long run. I have wondered if it’s been a bit too accessible for their own good, how many people on here are fully signed up until 2023/24 and won’t be paying Microsoft a penny extra until then? Of course that’s probably a good way to build subscriber numbers and market share but if you’re an executive you don’t want to face potentially terrible revenue numbers in the meantime.

Smash Brothers is beloved by all fans of Nintendo’s enormous character roster.

No disrespect to the Wii - just that it did have a period of intense demand followed by a pretty sharp drop off. And like I said, why didn’t Nintendo make a Wii 2 instead of pivoting to the Wii U which as others have mentioned in this topic was more like a prototype Switch?

In fairness the Wii kind of was a fad - Even Nintendo seem to think this at some level given that they never bothered doing a proper successor. The Switch isn’t nearly as out there an idea as the Wii though, it just seems like the logical progression of what a Nintendo console should be. Like, in 1998 if someone told you that by 2021 Nintendo had combined their home and handheld consoles into a single device that could fulfil both functions you’d nod your head. If someone told you that in 2005 they’d release a motion control machine your head would explode.

I think the £70 release price is one of two things - a greedy boneheaded error that will be swiftly corrected when it dents software sales, or an attempt to alter the tapering process for game value - ie they don’t necessarily expect any but the biggest games to sell well at £70 but they also don’t want the first cut after two months to put it at £35 or lower. Demon’s Souls is already available for £55 new from Amazon - I wouldn’t be surprised if an early cut to this level isn’t standard procedure for all £70 games.

I feel like some people have developed amnesia over what the Xbox/PS4 launches were like. Not just the launches but the whole first year of both consoles was incredibly weak in terms of software - I looked back on my play history for all my PS4 games when the PS5 came out and it looks like I barely played anything after launch until Shadow of Mordor came out the following summer. The PS5 launch and first year is miles better in comparison and not just first party wise - Hitman 3 is out in two weeks and out I’m pretty comfortable in predicting that will be better than an

The Soulsborne base games do get easier the further you get in them, but of the ones I have completed Dark Souls and Bloodborne raise the ante with DLC expansions that are absolutely brutal compared to the main game. I never finished Bloodborne’s and spent about five hours each on two of the main bosses in the Dark Souls one before finally beating it. I understand it’s no different for Dark Souls 2 and 3 - Demons is the odd one out that doesn’t have this kind of DLC.

Unanswered Resi questions - did 5 get hamfistedly turned into a coop game because after the first proper trailer dropped everyone pointed out that Aryan superman Chris Redfield gunning down hordes of black people solo was a touch racist? Not that coop is 5’s only problem. It’s a game where it feels like the developers had ambitious ideas that they couldn’t make work on the PS360 tech so instead they had to revert back to a very uninspired rehash of Resi 4 with none of the quality design or charm. Such a shame, because ‘Resident Evil in Africa’ was a wonderful concept. Prob

I’ve never subscribed to the whole idea that New Vegas is better than Fallout 3. 3 is a much better designed open world to discover things and mess about in, and there’s plenty of lovely offbeat weird stuff in there that I remember really fondly like Oasis, the Republic of Dave, the vault full of Gary’s. This more than offsets the supposedly deeper story and mechanics that New Vegas offers - I say supposedly because I find Obsidian’s writers to be way less clever than they think they are. And I can’t remember any of the New Vegas side quests at all. The Outer Wor

Play Resident Evil 4. Then find some way to wipe your memory of doing so - a blow to the head, electroshock, hypnotism, whatever. Then play Resident Evil 4 again so it’s as if it’s the first time. Repeat ad infinitum. The single greatest videogame ever made.

24 was always weirdly politically confused though. For every dodgy torture scene and bug eyed Muslim terrorist there would be an evil white military contractor who was the real instigator of all the wrong doing for profit. The second half of season 2 after the nuke goes off is all about stopping military strikes against three Middle Eastern countries over fake evidence. The show’s biggest villain is an obviously Republican President who looks just like Richard Nixon. It’s wild.

I haven’t played Cyberpunk yet but I agree with a lot of this - lots of gamers have a peculiar habit of viewing each new big release through the prism of ‘ideal game’ rather than what the developer has done in the past and what they’re likely to be good and bad at. Witcher 3 was a game that really had a lot of flaws - even the main narrative is a bit of a mess - but it was carried through by extremely good characterisation and incidental writing. The problem is that lots of people who loved the game don’t seem to be able to isolate exactly why they liked it - ‘I love the game so the

That Eurogamer review is really good - but it makes me want to hold off until the game is fixed. The uncooked aspect doesn’t sound restricted to bugs, it seems like the balance between the deeper RPG mechanics and how your character can actually use them isn’t right - which also seems like something that could be improved with more time in the oven.