J4MES OX4D

Leaked footage of Neversoft's cancelled Call of Duty title has emerged. This was due for release in 2013 but replaced by Infinity Ward's Ghosts who then went on to make their own space game in 2016 with Infinite Warfare. Looks like they produced a few campaign missions plus there was a lot of MP groundwork completed before the project was binned off. Hopefully more footage will be posted soon and I wonder if modders can get their hands on it and make a playable build..

What a finish!

Embarrassing performance from Spurs last night. 1 shot on goal all night compared to Man City's 18. Players spent most of the evening playing high-risk balls around their own area which almost resulted in 2 goals shortly before City scored from a set-piece. There was some nice attacking play at times especially from Johnson, Udogie and Werner but the final ball was absolutely shocking and Porro's inability to clear the first man from dead balls is a persistent problem. Spurs did defend really well for most of the game but the majority of attacks City had were easily preventable with more direct football and they cannot keep playing the same high-risk football against top sides throughout the 90. The sheer lack of anything up front made for a very frustrating night and clinging on to a replay would've served no benefit whatsoever either.

I don't think they have a leg to stand on but they will certainly use IP violating mods as an excuse to target the game and many have been taken down already. In terms of the core concept, I'm not sure if Pokemon can protect itself that much. Most of it is probably down to the usual Nintendo salt on top of the fact Pokemon has been hot garbage for many years now. A game upstaging it overnight and being immensely popular was never going to go down well with them.

I think more and more people are jumping on the bandwagon as the game gets more exposed. Hard to tell when it'll finally peak as there's still a lot of people interested in it who may not have the funds to buy it right now or may jump in on the weekend. I'm more surprised at how many players jumped in on the first couple of days with the game seemingly going under the radar. The likes of Among Us and Lethal Company really took a while to get going but this is flying right off the bat!

Those free rewards are still financed by income generated from PS+ revenues whether the user has bought it or not. The rewards given away don't grow on trees - Sony have to subsidise the likes of EA in full on the contents given away exactly the same way how someone like Epic pays developers an install sum for the games they give away for free through their store. If I spend £50 on a Playstation Store game and then get a free £5 voucher and buy an indie game for £5, they don't get paid in a free voucher - that £5 has to be generated somewhere in real money so the indie developers can get paid for their game and the only ones that can do that is Sony because they provided the voucher. If Valve gave away a £5 voucher to every active account on the Steam platform then they would have to find £450,000,000 in real money so the recipient of the products bought actually get paid because they aren't going to give away their stuff for free or at a discount just because a provider decided to give away free vouchers out of thin air. This model only really works if the store owns its products and can dictate pricing and distribution. Sony probably owns about 1% of the digital stock sold in the Playstation Store and the majority that sell their stuff demand to be paid in full especially if they are already relinquishing 30% for the privilege on the cut alone.

Tesco sell their own wholesaled goods whereas Playtation sell other people's products and take a cut. Playstation Rewards are facilitated as a perk by PS+ revenues so what people think is a sweet offer is actually based off the back of their own money in the first place. It's a carefully measured offering where they do not lose any money. If they had to subsidise a digital resell or revoke market out of their own pockets for other people's products then that would cause a devastating knock-on effect for either developers or Sony like we've already seen with microtransactions when they were first introduced to combat the preowned resell market. Sure, companies like Sony could offer a digital revoke points system but it'll essentially be coming out of their own pockets and be going against their own terms of service. The likes of Tesco use Clubcard to drive and reward sales and consumer loyalty but a model like this cannot be transitioned so simply into a completely different business framework. Everything Tesco sell with a Clubcard price is their own product so if they want to take off 30p on beans they can do that but if they tried to apply that to non-wholesaled products that they sell on behalf and take a cut then they will have to pay the difference out of their own pocket and/or waive the cut and further pay some of the difference.

The trouble is who would subsidise the loss against the new product? You could buy one AAA game for £50, withdraw the licence and then claim such points against an indie game for instance. The developers of that will then either have their income reduced or someone like Sony or Nintendo would have to foot the deficit created by the points generation. The beauty of digital gaming for the likes of publishers and developers is that they have no physical media and shipping costs plus more importantly the purchase is set in stone where licences cannot be sold onward as second hand. A similar thing came up on Steam recently regarding Steam Points where someone suggested that these should be converted into vouchers to spend in the Steam Store. This was not feasible because these points are generated out of thin air so if someone spent £50 on a AAA game, got £5 in return and used that to buy an alternative product from a different developer, Valve would have to pay it out of their own pocket. Based on my estimations, if each active account earned just one voucher on average per week, it would cost Valve £2,000,000,000 a month which is 25% of their annual income that would result in a yearly loss of -$16bn. Digital games and optional DLC were partly designed to combat against the second hand market but it's now become the ultimate income stream especially with production and shipping costs further reduced or in the case of Alan Wake 2; removed altogether.

That's my biggest issue with the gameplay these days. FIFA was so much more authentic back in the 08-12 era with far more realistic ball physics and less animations. Since they moved to frostbite, the animations are so wonky and they've spent way too much time on fancy moves that look ridiculous and can be spammed to hell. The ball often has no realistic weight and often simply travels in straight lines with a consistent speed. I watched a major e-sport match a while back and they were just pulling off the most silly moves plus every pass was in a straight line and being darted around like an ice hockey puck. The final score was 8-6 or something. There was nothing wrong with FIFA a decade ago and it used to be a lot of fun trying to break down an opponent from a tactical standpoint. EA seem to think children will get bored if they actually try and create a simulator. Apparently 14 goals a game, skill spam and endless rewards based on spend and play is the best way forward and whilst that's true for their income, it's made the games so much worse.

When even IGN say the game is shite you know it's gonna be bad. They'll still probably give it a 7 to avoid upsetting the publishers but rule of thumb with them is always deduct 3 for the real score🤣

I still loosely follow UT although I haven't played a FIFA game in a long time plus have a few close friends that still play it religiously. From what I've seen, the mode is just so corrupt and bloated these days plus the gameplay is a cross between the pace of ice hockey and the scores seen in basketball. It's a shocking representation of football. They may as well just remove the actual playing matches altogether and just have pack openings with matches being simmed. EA have done the business though - they know how to drive retention and average player spend so to hell with the actual quality of the game. Sports titles are in such a shambolic place now that I don't even bother with any of them.

The player count currently stands at 1,333,559 - bear in mind that this is a normal Monday morning in most of Europe and America is still very much still in bed. Absolutely insane figures really. Nobody had heard of this game last week!

Just been released in early access and has garnered a significant 370,000 concurrent players. Released in early access on Steam at 10% off costing £22.49; it appears to be an open world multiplayer pokemon-style game. Could be the new Valheim

Some more of Bioshock

Sadly I can't see Sega ever making a comeback in mainstream console terms. The company just doesn't have anywhere near enough money required to even fulfil global hardware production and distribution let alone produce an array of new games. They've been acting as a publisher for way too long whilst the likes of Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft have been capitalising on massive revenues along with research and development. If Sega were to throw together a machine, it would likely be off-the-shelf hardware and all a bit desperate. They are however looking to revive a few classic franchises so that's worth keeping an eye on. With Nintendo adopting a lot of bad modern day practices, I've kinda lost a lot of hope and things like DLC, subscriptions, live services and DRM is pretty much engrained in the industry. If Microsoft and Ubisoft keep pushing, the next generation of consoles could see us not even being able to buy or own games outright - it'll all be subscriptions and other bullshit.

Opposing Force and Blue Shift are being remade with Valve's approval similarly to how Black Mesa was done. Operation: Black Mesa on Steam STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM Experience the Half-Life™ expansion packs like never before. Operation: Black Mesa features reimaginings of both Half-Life™ Opposing Force and Half-Life™ Blue Shift through two unique campaigns. How will you...

Rather than choosing my favourite and most iconic classic, I'm gonna select ones that would benefit and warrant more of a remaster. I'll also avoid games where I wouldn't be confident in finding a developer that could do the original justice. I'd firstly say Command and Conquer: Generals. Shocked this hasn't been remastered or remade to a degree as it's a rare RTS that combines real world elements and is still immensely popular. EA gave us a solid remastering of the original and Red Alert almost 4 years ago but nothing since. Even a basic remaster with QoL changes and modern support would be huge and a massive win for the genre. Lastly I will choose Resident Evil Code Veronica. I am confident this will be announced soon and it's the next logical one in Capcom's largely successful reboots. CV was a great game back on the Dreamcast and a huge step up visually compared to the likes of RE2 on the PS1. It had some massive flaws but these could easily be rectified. Those two I would be very happy with and that's about it off the top of my head. Max Payne 1 & 2 are confirmed in development by Remedy now which is absolutely huge as the series is coming home to a developer who is getting better and better. I would've said that otherwise as long as Rockstar had no business in it but they are in the works it seems.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League - 60 Foamstars - 71 Helldivers 2 - 82 Skull and Bones - 56 Final Fantasy VII Rebirth - 84 Alone in the Dark - 69 Dragons Dogma 2 - 87 Princess Peach: Showtime - 86 Rise of the Ronin - 78 South Park: Snow Day - 80 Black Myth: Wukong - 87 STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl - 73 Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 - 81 Star Wars Outlaws - 89 Little Nightmares 3 - 84 Avowed - 78 Towerborne - 75 Hellblade 2: Senuas Saga - 89 Indiana Jones - 73

Bioshock

Everton's legal team right now

I got that right but let's face it; it weren't exactly a difficult prediction!