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I can't believe how bad YouTube has gotten of late - literally advert spam is insane and they are even worming their way into Premium which is a kick in the teeth to paying customers. I was watching an 8 minute video earlier and was presented with a 30 second advert, I then skipped about a minute of the video and was presented with the same advert which was unskippable once more. Not even halfway through and a 59 second video then popped up and to finish off, I was awarded the same 30 second advert I've already seen twice with about 40 seconds left of the video. So that was about two and a half minutes of adverts on an 8 minute video in which one was repeated 3 times! Also checked out a System Shock 2 Remastered video which was from a stream and 3 hours 31 minutes long - there was about 40 advert slots in that alone. Assuming the majority are a minute and unskippable, that's almost half hour of adverts in a severely broken up video where if you wanted to quick-skip, you'll probably land on a one minute advert 6 clicks out of 7. You could sometimes bypass really annoying adverts by refreshing but now I seem to keep seeing the same ones over and over and maybe after 15 refreshes then I get lucky and hit a 5 second advert which can be skipped but even after all that, I've saved myself about 10 seconds. It's just turned into extreme greed and done in the most laziest way imaginable. Seeing the same Primark/Bellingham adverts 15 times in 20 minutes watching videos is becoming torturous and they are planting so many in long-form videos now that it's making some unwatchable.

I've had this one on my backlog for a while now, and I have no idea why I haven't played it before now, because DAMN Okay, so its a Zombie apocalypse/ City Builder type game. It takes Google Maps data to create your play area..... I started a map, with my house as the HQ, and it has been amazing so far. You can create any location in the world. The game uses the map data to sort out how difficult of a time you will have. Cities obviously are the worst locations. The maps are not perfect, in that it assumes the sizes of the houses based off of google footprint. So in my case it has my house slightly smaller than it actually is, because the google map image isn't current. (See the screenshots below) You can dismantle houses for resources, and you find settlers all over the place. There is a story, that I won't spoil because I think I am about a third of the way through it, I could be wrong there though. I am way to busy farming resources to build a fortress to worry about other survivors in DC and Baltimore. Two gripes people have about the game: Zombies can cross any body of water, so can your squads. The Dev's did this for pathing reasons, as the game is still in Early Access, and I guess trying to differentiate water on a google map is hard when importing data. IDK, it doesn't' phase me, I just build more walls Radio transmissions are frequent, and can't be ignored. You have to choose an option, but luckily it does pause the game for you. That being said if you don't choose an option quickly the npc's will get grumpy. So the screenshots I am attaching are of my play area. The "Star" is my house, the HQ, the rest are shelters, and warehouses I am setting up, along with some build orders, etc. I zoomed really far out for these so you could see the street names and more of the play area.

Forza Horizon 4 or 5 You can do stuff if you choose, missions, challenges etc but you can also just cruise around. Both are great games 🙂 4 is set in the UK and 5 is Mexico. Think they're on PS5 now as of quite recently

Rocket League have overhauled their club feature for the first time since launch and its well overdue I reckon. Some nice, cool additions to the area, including badges to obtain as a club now - all obtained just by playing in your club name with teammates. A brand new stadium with new arena announcements was a nice surprise and well received. Key Club Updates: Club Career Stats will keep track of Club statistics earned over the course of the Club’s lifetime. Club Seasonal milestones will be tracked in the form of Club Medals, a new concept in Rocket League. Clubs accumulate Medals by making progress in three main categories: Goals, Saves, and Assists. Each one of these categories includes three Medal milestones in order of accomplishment: Prospect, Signature, and Premier. Reaching a milestone rewards a Club the associated Medal. This Medal is displayed in the Club profile, viewable in the Club menu and within Club matches (against any opponent, not just other Clubs). Medals will be shown publicly in the intro sequence of matches where all members of at least one team are in the same Club (these are called “Club matches”). If a Club receives the highest-tier Medal (Premier Medal) in all three stat categories, their Club profile icon will have a special look visible in intro sequences and the Club menu. While public Medals help Clubs show off their progress and prestige, they might deter Clubs who enjoy playing more non-competitively. Club Owners and Managers will be able to toggle public Medals on or off within the Club Customization menu, to prevent their Medals from being shown in Club match intro sequences. By default, Club Medals will be shown in the Club match intro sequence. Club Medals will always be viewable in the Club menu, regardless of toggle status. General Club Stats and Milestone Rules: Club milestones will reset every Season. This gives Clubs opportunities to improve Season over Season, as well as earn new Club Titles every Season. Once a Club earns a Medal, Club members will receive a notification that the Medal has been earned. The Medal will immediately be shown on the Club profile. Additionally, members will receive a notification when the Club earns a Club Title. Stats towards Medal milestones are only recorded during matches with more than one player on each team, including Club matches. There are three earnable Club Titles based on Club Medal progression. New Titles are available per Season, and linked to the tier of the Medal (Prospect, Signature, Premier). Link to full Patch Notes: Just a moment... WWW.ROCKETLEAGUE.COM What do you think? Personally, it feels a good Quality of Life update to prompt you to play more games with friends. Resets every season, so depends on how hard these medals are to collect.

Hey everyone, I know FG has been pretty quiet for a while, so I’m not sure how much traction this will get — but I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic lately and thought it might be fun to start a series of threads revisiting some classic games from back in the day. First up: GTA Vice City — a game I’m pretty sure a lot of us here played and loved. I wanted to kick things off by sharing some of my own memories and inviting others to do the same. Whether you played it solo, with friends, family, or just have moments that stuck with you — missions, music, mayhem — I’d love to hear it. For me, one of the biggest standouts from that era of GTA was the soundtrack. The 80s music was just perfect — imagine cruising down the strip with Toto or Michael Jackson blasting on Flash FM. I honestly think if Rockstar ever remade Vice City (or folded the music into GTA VI), it’d hit hard with fans. The setting was on point too — that whole neon-drenched, Miami-inspired vibe. I still remember the first time I flew a helicopter in-game (pretty sure Vice City was the first GTA to have them?) — planting bombs in a construction site, then later storming Diaz’s mansion… total chaos. And of course, who could forget spawning a Rhino tank just to wreak havoc around town? Or the classic 80s fashion — Hawaiian shirts and pastel suits everywhere. I wasn’t around for the 80s, but between the music and style, this game made me wish I had been. (Still a big fan of 80s rock!) So yeah — anyone else feel like sharing some Vice City memories? Favorite missions, hilarious moments, radio stations, or just how it made you feel back then? Would love to read your takes.

it’d be so cool if Arkane or Eidos picked it up and made it their own...

I still can't believe that was Danny Dyer!

It's amazing how these companies who continue to make massive profits manage to persuade people that this behaviour is normal.

YouTube Revanced on android / altstore and uYouPlus on iPhone. Run an adblocker on incognito while on your PC, as YouTube have started blocking people's access for using adblockers. The amount of ads on it now is abhorrent, and it won't really change until enough people fight them on it.

I started GTAv again for shits and giggles. The driving is just a load of fun

I replayed the game last year and it was great fun! Huge step up over GTA III from a gameplay and narrative perspective. The soundtrack was amazing and who could forget taking a chainsaw to the Malibu Club! The latter stages to unlock the final mission was a bit of a grind - not so much back then, but certainly now, but the majority of the game is excellent.

They did 🏆👏 Great team effort considering some of the players like Delap were playing in the shitty club world shit cup 🤪

Releasing for consoles in August.

It's become unbearable, so I also use ublock origin on firefox + sponsorblock, it works pretty well.

I (surprise surprise) fucking hate adverts in general. I dont watch tv so i get to avoid them there...but yes, it has gotten to the point on YouTube that I stop watching videos that I'm enjoying. There's an advert at the start of a 12 minute video, then a couple of minutes in I get a 50 seconder. I have no tolerance for it and I stop watching. It's fucking annoying, particularly when you also have to deal with the YouTuber plugging another product themselves part way through the video. It's ruined YT for me, but then again most of the content is mindless nonsense these days anyway🫠

Ok, it's actually just Rainbow 6 with brand new visuals etc

First Person mode and Third Person mode confirmed and you can flip between the two during the game. Sounds like a really interesting take. You do find the later games do really well with the newer generation of RE followers. They love First Person. Us oldies may enjoy the nostalgia of some third person in certain areas.

This game has now come out of early access and 1.0 is live. They have bicycles now too 🤪

This does look like they've gone down an interesting road. I think Siege unfortunately suffers from what many existing live service games have - ability to be a really good game...but only when you've learned all the characters and the maps, otherwise its a steep curve to get success. I'd like to give it a go though and its a good thing some of the options are free to play too!

That as a tech demo is probably something we have all been waiting to see on a PS5 since it launched. I think most people will need to at least try this game out to see and feel how it plays. I've started to try and play Witcher 3 but I must admit that the controls do feel clunky so hopefully that will be updated to feel more inline with most other games that are currently out.

It's free now too!

Hitman 1 (2016)

Whilst we're missing you online mate, at least you're keeping yourself healthy and fit! Pretty good going too, finishing in top 20% is class.

You both need to be in FG club so when the rest of us play, it will collate all of our wins, goals, etc together. I think theres loads more they could do to improve it, like Tournament wins, etc but not sure they'll do that anytime soon after such a big update.

Are there any games where you can just drive around and not have to worry about missions, or police, or any thing else. Just explore cities and countrysides? Every now and again I play Microsoft Flight Sim, and just being able to explore is pretty cool. I was hoping there was something like that but driving.

Love it. One on the watch list for me soon then. I'd mainly be buying it for the PvE operations but I'm sure taking a look at PvP is worth a few tries at the very least.

@Sennex I appreciate Gran Turismo 7 isn't really an open world racing game - however, it can be quite therapeutic to drive around a few different tracks just in time trial mode (so essentially free play) and mastering the turns, braking points, etc. Elsewhere, you could arguably try Mafia 2? As plenty of time to do open world stuff. Just stick the limiter on and play in easy mode and cops aren't a concern.

Yeah...reminds of how clunky Project Zero came out as a release game on the 360 I believe and the horrible controls ruined it.

You nailed it. The Phil Spencer honeymoon is long over. The ‘gamer-first’ image doesn’t hold up anymore when layoffs and closures follow every ‘success.

I actually think he's worse than Don Mattrick now - he only butchered one console, but Spencer is literally playing Russian roulette with every decision they make and as you say, shamefully bragging about the success in literally the next paragraph after statementing a commercial travesty. Phil was popular because he was seen as more of a gamer than a corporate, but now he's immensely unpopular and can't even be seen as a scapegoat because it's all his doing. Huge acquisitions of Bethesda and Activision that wont even pay themselves off in my lifetime and having to penny-pinch against the very developers they proport to support to keep game pass relevant is just a total shit show to behold. The problem is they want desperately one console generation where they get ahead of Sony and they just can't come close and now everyone, from developers to the consumers is suffering. Sony ain't doing much better as they will likely burn a billion on dead live service projects in a decade at the expense of many exclusives but Microsoft are the ones that are gutting their gaming division to save money through bad choices they have made. How they fuck up so hard after the 360 I will never know.

Another video game crash can't come soon enough IMO. These big publishers seem to think that gamers have an unlimited amount of money so they promise shareholders that profits will climb every year. Which obviously isn't possible as there are only a limited amount of players and money. This means that when profits don't go up they sack staff to save money. It's not even unbelievable that MS can sack staff and then Phil Spencer bangs on about how great they're doing as it's just the norm now. It's very believable that they did it.

Microsoft eh, raking in the profits and lying through their teeth. Closing the ESO studio, which had made them £2 billion is quite tge statement 👏

Yes, definitely the woke advert. Couldn’t possibly be they stopped building Jag’s 6 months ago so don’t have the product to sell. But I guess that doesn’t fit the anti-woke agenda or make clickbait headlines.

this one was the only upcoming game that looked promising enough and seemed the gameplay followed the deus ex/dishonored formula but sadly we can't have nice things, it's a pity

The cockney at the Malibu Club 🤣

Perfect Dark has been cancelled and the studio closed down. Feel very sorry for multi-billionaires Microsoft as this is clearly a very difficult time for them financially🙄 Microsoft cancels the Perfect Dark reboot that blew us away last year, closes developer The Initiative | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM Microsoft laid off 9,000 employees today, and cancellations and closures are following.

28 years later. Went in with high hopes as loved the previous two first half pretty solid second half utter dog shit plus couldn't see the point of the Jimmy Saville wanna be at the end.

I have been using uBlock Origin on Firefox for about a decade at this point, maybe even more, the internet is a cesspit without it, I browse FB for example sometimes and I get the default experience because uBlock can't detect its ads and it is infuriating, I would scroll past 20 posts for example and 10-15 of them would be ads or irrelevant stuff that I don't follow, can't the greedy morons understand that if I can't even see what I want then I won't care about your shitty site? At this point both with windows and the internet you are constantly fighting to reverse as much as possible the rampant enshittification going on

The game is due to officially launch later this year. It's pretty much all I'm playing at the moment after a break to play Stalker 2 and Oblivion. Latest patch has more improvements including a much needed rework of the audio.

The final is on Saturday, I wonder if they can repeat it!

@Sennex have you ran into the military yet and managed to get on their bad side? 😂 While I don’t recommend it, it’s definetly an experience 🤣

Exactly what the game needed, a new engine. Siege is already a great game and esport so this only improves it. Going the CS:GO route was what should have happened years ago.

I've seen some gameplay and it looks like a lot of fun. Like Project Zomboid on steroids 🙂

Still got 2 races to go yet possibly more if I book them. My last race came 702nd out of 5300 so not to shabby. Yeah been running in this heat which inmake sure I'm fully hydrated and have water with me. Reached my 100km goal on the 22nd of this month so definitely been putting the miles in. Definitely need to drag my self online soon and stop this running malarkey 😆

Changed over to Edinburgh to build and it forced me to use the Castle.... Oh No! whatever will I do with massive stone walls and insanely huge buildings to use as shelter and warehouses... Honestly I am loving this game, let me know if you all have places you want me to check out

Bungie have today announced that Marathon has been delayed indefinitely and a new release date will be issued towards the end of the year. Honestly, I'd probably just cancel it altogether and cut the losses. A 6 month delay at the very least wont give them enough time to replace all the stolen assets, reshape the gameplay into something engaging and appealing, plus deliver a long-term strategy where the game remains viable for both players and publisher.

So I picked this game up about a year ago, and it's somewhat usurped Minecraft as my go to game when bored at work. The basic premise is you are a convicted criminal thats exiled to a planet and you need to terraform it in order to survive. You have to gather ore's in order to build drills, shelters, generators, food growers, etc... Starting off you need to increase pressure, heat, and oxygen. This will in turn melt the ice that is everywhere and start the water cycle, from there you gather materials to start getting moss and grass to grow and spread. From there Tree's, eventually you hit insects and then animals. The thing that I love about the game is that it runs in the background, and based on how many of each type of machine you have, you get a real time countdown to when the next planetary phase unlocks. The more machines the faster it is, the less machines, the slower. So I can fire it up, sit in my shelter, and work, but the game just runs along happily, and as long as I have food, water, and oxygen in my pack my convict jsut hangs out. It was made by a small indie dev team, and it shows with some weird clipping when you get close to map edges, but other than that, its one of the best games I have played in the last year. Latest update Trailer Release Trailer Its 23.99$ right now on steam, and honestly if any of you need a fun PC game, and like to build things, this will be your jam.

An update recently stopped me playing for a bit as I had a decision to make. To take advantage of the update properly it meant wiping my character and all my progress. This was a tough decision but I finally did it today. Back to being a level 1 with my hideout barren of anything except candles to light it 😅

These games always get discounted early on - usually after 4 weeks the 'premium' edition reduces to that of the base game price and then a month or so after that you can usually get 33% off the standard. By the time the football season starts you can grab it for half price and then it's 75% off going into the new year. It's a great purchase after Christmas although the game is on its last legs at that stage but it's still great value. EA just bank on people to buy into it within the first month when things are fresh and everyone is playing. I'll probably grab this for under a tenner next January just for the single player.

Visually it looks brilliant, I just wonder how the series will cope moving onto a new protaginist. Though we know Ciri's story for some we have had 3 games of Geralt's character development and seeing a whole story arc go through it's motions. I think it will rest on the writer's somewhat who presumably have created a whole new story for the next chapter of the Witcher games. That said I will be diving right into this as the third game is still my favourite to date despite the clunky combat.