footle

Why bother? Infinity war deliberately referenced the events of homecoming. It deliberately didn’t reference the events of this. Why try to fit it in some weird out of order continuity in your head?

Yeah, it’s not a “wannabe cinematic experience”. It’s an open world game, in which the player has agency. you can make decisions that change the route of the plot! Make decisions that have positive consequences for how the story plays out! Even make decisions about how you go about building your character, or fulfil a mission. That go beyond the length of your beard. but if you really don’t like games... :-p

Too many diversions into irrelevant side-stories simply to try and build up a "universe", and avoid getting to the final scene three or four episodes before the end.

Ferrari F355 Challenge? Was that even controllable? Clearly, the hardest ever game that I didn't complete was Jet Set Willy. And +1 for "I now have far less time than I have games so if the game doesn't grab me, I don't worry about not playing it". Victims this week include Celeste and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Meanwhile, I'm 37 hours into Into The Breach and have completed 2 and 3 islands on Normal. Once. Presumably I'm doing it wrong

Oops

"Star Wars fans aren't able to handle novelty, or reinvention. We must give them more of the same for ever and ever." And, worse, they were proved right by the reaction of the nutters to The Last Jedi.

You get to break open the loot boxes by flailing your arms around.

Outrun 3. iOS. Microtransactions.

Red Sparrow is yet more young girl torture porn as "cinema". Now TV is fine, but the quality is quite shite. The fact they're selling boxes in supermarkets with 4K 4K 4K all over them, and then in tiny white text on only one side "Now TV streams in 720p" I find a bit much.

It's more that I can see what I need to do, but my reflexes aren't all that - even with just the two buttons - that I'm not sure I want to continue.

It's very modern platformy (which means it's got a tight loop to replay, and it's far too hard for me). Finished Chapter 1. 128 deaths.

Game of the Year A1. Florence, iOS. Ok, so it's a visual storybook with light game elements. But those light game elements perfectly fit in with the story being told, and the story of a relationship in all its facets is something that doesn't break out into the mainstream of the App Store that often. Of the games in this list, it's certainly the one that's stayed with me longest. A2. Assassins Creed Odyssey, Xbox1X. It is a Game. You get to do Game things. I started this before RDR2, then as RDR2 got bleaker, returned to it to complete. Bizarrely, it was a breath of fresh air. Your character has motive! Your character responds to your controls, rather than laboriously doing something different! You can do missions however you want! You can respec your character to try different skills in different situations, whenever you want! The modern day elements are minimal, and one is even a bit of a shock. Ubisoft have taken their template, stretched it out for miles, and smoothed off all the rough and annoying edges that stop you having fun. This is to be applauded. And I thought, before I played it, that it was released too soon after Origins. It wasn't. A3. Sea of Thieves, Xbox1X. The HDR sunsets are amazing, but the early days of this tended to be odd. You could have a fairly boring time, or an utterly amazing experience: where you're in a crew with randoms, steal a fortress key from inside another crew's ship, then spend the next three hours trying to keep it. Tacking, hollering, skirting the wind, shooting cannonballs, stocking up supplies, patching your ship, dodging incoming fire, trying to draw unsuspecting passersby into your clusterfuck, firing crewmembers out of cannons on suicide sabotage missions, sneaking off the ship and dodging skeletons to .. Quite unlike any game I've played before, but desperately needed a decent tutorial and some of the matchmaking options they put in later at launch. A4. Forza Horizon 4, Xbox1X. Beautiful, but Playground Games have also nailed the weekly seasonal content. Each week you've got different routes, in a different environment (spring, summer, autumn, winter all make a difference), with different themes or constraints. I *know* intellectually that much of the weekly content was in previous games, but it was hidden in a rivals menu or elsewhere where it was easily skipped. As it is, each time you turn it on, there's something new to do. And, unlike your Destinys or Call of Duties, there's not really a feeling of slipping behind the pack, if you don't have 5 to 6 hours a night, every night, available to play: you'll always be able to afford a new car if you want one. A5. Beat Sabre, Oculus Rift. I can't play for long, because my Rift's headphones have started to break (a common hardware fault), but perfect match of form and function. And you're not going to get motion sick. A6. God of War, PS4 Sorry Benny - this was A5, until I remembered the best evening's gaming I had this year on Sea of Thieves. Just beats out Spider-man from my list because I expected Spider-man to be great. I didn't expect God of War to work quite so well, and I certainly didn't expect to be gripped long enough to kill all (ish) the Valkyries. Only really went a bit pear-shaped with the last but one story twist, which didn't really land for me. Biggest Disappointment of the Year (game, hardware, or anything else) Z1. Red Dead Redemption 2. It's an amazing world. An astonishing creation. But if I wanted to be an actor taking instructions from an arsey Director with no love for improvisation, I'd have gone to drama school. There is no player agency. Half the time, there's no player control. I'm a reasonable way through Chapter Five, and feel little desire to go back and complete it. (I'm also struggling to think of any story beat that wasn't entirely predictable). Z2. The continued deterioration of the App Store. Do you remember when it was all new? When there were new concepts? When it wasn't a microtransaction hellhole? Z3. Xbox exclusives. State of Decay? Though if there was a "bargain of the year", it'd be Xbox Games Pass, without question. (I might have had some great times with Sea of Thieves, but its hard to argue that there aren't some gaping holes in the first party lineup) Z4. Fallout 76. I thought it would be shit. Hey, it was! But it was presumably a disappointment for a lot of folk. Z5. Astro Bot Because I don't own a PSVR ;-) Sound Design of the Year S1. Florence. I've been humming the main theme all year; but the soundtrack is inherently part of the overall journey. S2. Beat Sabre. Lightsabres. VR. Music. It's somehow shocking that it took so long. What it really shows, though, is how even songs you've never heard are great if they're well mapped (and how even great songs are shit if they're mapped by an idiot). And the sound when you're crossing those sabres is perfect. S3. Return of the Obra Dinn. I hope you're listening carefully, because we shall play this only once. (Unless you go back in time again). Visual Design of the Year V1. Into the Breach. There's a hell of a lot of information presented extremely clearly via bitmap graphics. Of the three of these games, this is the one that could have been created at any point in the last decade and a bit. It's also the one in which every pixel is serving a purpose: to help you understand what the game needs you to know. A clarity of design often missed (cf. Shadow of the Tomb Raider, etc.) V2. Forza Horizon 4. 1080p/60/Open World/Console. Amazing use of HDR. But, more importantly for this category, it picks up that sense of place: it *is* Britain. V3. Red Dead Redemption 2. Amazing sense of place, detail and a scale that's not really felt in most open worlds: but with detail in every corner. The only problem is that you're "playing" a Rockstar game. V4. Sea of Thieves. The best use of HDR in games so far, bar none. During a starry night, you could sell OLEDs with it. Writing of the Year W1. Return of the Obra Dinn. Ok, it's an adventure. But it's using all kinds of tricks in its writing to make up the puzzle box, whereas most game writing is skippable: you can quite happily play Assassins Creed or Destiny without paying much attention beyond go here/kill that. Half the writing in Obra Dinn is environmental, or a sound effect, or... W2. Florence. There's writing AND then there's integrating your writing/story into the game mechanics. W3. Spider-man. Half of it - I liked Otto's story. The other half - every other bit, including Miles, including the various bad guys, including Osborne, including Black Cat, etc. was a huge letdown in comparison. Gaming Format (System) of the Year F1. PS4. Spider-man + God of War > Xbox's FH4 or Nintendo's Smash. Publisher or Developer of the Year P1. Sony. Quite clearly - Spider-man and God of War were both fantastic first-party games. I'd love to play Astrobot, but can't justify a PSVR when I've a Rift upstairs attached to a far more powerful PC. Best Supported Game (released pre 2018) of the Year B1. No Man's Sky. Each major update has been a new game. This year's major update, with multiplayer, far more diversity of planets and base building, actually working quests, and 4k/HDR or 60fps modes on Xbox1X was transformative. And the updates have been free. Your game of the year that didn't come out this year (basically what is your favourite game you played this year that came out in 2017 or earlier) X1. Threes, iOS. At least, it's the game I've played the most this year that didn't come out this year. Has to mean something. Also, I've cracked my Puzzles and Dragons habit! Best game character of the year C1. Kassandra, Assassin's Creed Odyssey. You spend hours with this voice actress, and the script - however much it's not tailored to Kassandra or Deimos being the player's character - is given life by the inflection. And, unlike Tomb Raider, it's not just torture porn. C2. Otto, Spider-man. The introduction of Otto over many hours, with the enthusiasm for Pete's work and ideas, and the hints that he's hiding something, works wonders in freshening up a story you've seen and heard a hundred times before. C3. Florence, Florence, iOS. For all the reasons that the game is in my list above - the character's story, and reactions through that story, is rooted in the character and relatable: which isn't something you can really say about the usual cast of archetypes (looking at you, RDR2).

Or: Halo 3 - Xbox 360 - 2007 Halo 3 - Xbox One X Rendered at 4k with HDR - 2017, but with the ability to use your original disk, later digital download, or just buy a copy for £5.

I'd have thought that they'd enjoy VR because... it doesn't matter that they don't see in stereo, they've still got the world moving around them - as they'd normally experience - just with a tiny monitor.

VR works because all head movements are tracked with high fidelity: pitch, roll, yaw, and translation in three dimensions. This doesn't work in any meaningful sense outside of heavily staged demos because the first three of those (i.e. natural head movements from a seated position) can't be tracked - or represented - on a 55inch tv screen two metres away. It doesn't move with the head. Similarly, from a seated position you have very little movement up/down/left/right/in/out - order of a few centimetres. That means that the angle between your head and the four corners of your tv screen changes in such a small way that the effect would be imperceptible. (I'm pretty sure I tried this back in the day with some PC software - it was a cute effect, but requires you to move round the room like a loon for it to be "realistic" by getting the necessary changes in angle of view, and the edge effects as everything moved in and out of view made it a bit pointless. It works better in video because your stereo vision is accustomed to ignoring the lack of depth in a 2d video stream: in reality, you do notice something is off when you're looking at even a well rendered 3d image that responds just to head translation in 2d: certainly at that two metre distance - it's subtle, but you see it. The objects being drawn on the screen are still two metres away. Perhaps it's different if you're missing an eye?).