J4MES OX4D

Just done this mission on The Witch Queen campaign - step 4 I think. Did it on legendary, solo and with a power level below the required one, however it doesn't actually state the requirement. Absolutely hard as hell and probably took me well over an hour just like the previous mission. Pulsating stuff though and a fantastic challenge throughout. Machine guns are an absolute godsend against armoured elites and bosses. I can't actually believe how many enemies get thrown at you but you just have to thin the pack and chip away at anything and everything. Really makes a change because some campaigns the missions last 6-10 minutes and are so easy but this is a huge ramp up in action, length and difficulty.

I had a bit of a shock returning and my power level at zero. I'm just playing for the story now and not too worried about seeking out all the exotic gear and doing add these padded side quests. Beyond Light had a 34-step mission and then some extras at the end which was good enough and I saw all I needed to see. Just started The Witch Queen on legendary which seems a real step up in narrative and mission-depth terms. Not really sure how power level works these days or when things got reset. Seems a lot of back-end changes have been made with things removed and others added. I had to sift through and remove a lot of obsolete stuff in my inventory too. If I am still playing after finishing these campaigns then I'll happily buy into the new content at full price as what I have now is a steal!

I've started Beyond Light today which I never got around to buying all those years ago. It's not part of the Legacy Collection but the whole campaign is free within the game which is great. Once that's done, then I can focus on the newer expansions I got yesterday. Slowly finding my feet and getting back into the swing of things. Just done the Praksis mission which was good fun!

It's a shambles that they've had to censor the PC version just to get it on console. They spent years saying they would never do this and now they've bucked at every hurdle.

Bungie are having a sale right now and in which you can get 3 expansions plus other content for around £7. I thought I'd revisit the game after an almost 5 year absence and it's a bit overwhelming , but I think I am slowly finding my feet. There are lots of new things and quite a few old elements that I have forgotten about. I seem to be going through the New Light campaign for returning and new players which is a bit of a recap of sorts. Once that is out of the way I can have a look at the expansions I didn't stick around for. This game is definitely a convoluted mess for returning players, let alone newcomers, and I think Bungie have made a lot of things rather shambolic and bloated. Much of it is a result of sustained development even with the vaulted content, but others are through efforts to drive income particularly when they went solo away from Activision and it looks quite messy. The content included in the Legacy Collection (2025) are:- The Final Shape Standard Edition Lightfall Standard Edition The Witch Queen Standard Edition Beyond Light Pack Shadowkeep Pack Forsaken Pack 30th Anniversary Pack Pit of Heresy Dungeon Shattered Throne Dungeon Grasp of Avarice Dungeon I'm definitely going to look forward to working my way through this content and it may even lead me to purchase some of the newer expansions. I hope this bundle will get more people back to the game but it may be a little late in the day for many and I must say Destiny 2 is one of the least welcoming games for new players and even past veterans because of its approach and execution despite simple and enjoyable gameplay mechanics.

Microsoft use flawed AI image to advertise new jobs🤣

It's basically a Chinese Battlefield 2024 with an old trademark they purchased. I never bothered with it in the end but it's getting a lot of players. I imagine it's a lot from China and the majority are probably cheating🤣

The initial decline in the last few years originally stemmed from the knock-on effect from Covid. I'm not saying the advert is responsible solely for a 97% reduction in sales, but this rebrand has been in the works for some time and the figures are comparably shocking compared to other manufactures operating in the same climate and legislation. There is a huge quantity of new stock unsold at probably at 30% less than the typical entry rate and the rebrand is likely a huge factor in people not going out in droves and securing what is left before the new roll out. People are not solely queuing for their electric cars when the rest of the market is flowing with your typical diesel/petrol standard. My local VW sells between 9 and 10 new petrol cars a day still, yet Jaguar can't crack 50 up and down the country in a month, despite having an overflow of stock. My local dealer is like a car park. The cars are all for sale, about 40 of them are 24-25 plates and models that were £40,000 and going for under £30k comfortably. There's no firesale, there's no limitations, they just can't shift them. All these new cars coming out are practically outdated by design anyway, but when your flagship model is going for the same price in the luxury market as a Seat Leon and £3k less than a Polo, then questions have to be asked of how they got to this state. My guess is that the alienation of its customers and values after the turmoil of Covid had, and then the published rebrand reveal, is a huge factor and I'm willing to bet that they will struggle out of the gate and will likely have to sell off part of the company. The most likely explanation is customers that were awaiting the new range have seen it and have shopped elsewhere before they even land and haven't looked back, not even taking an XFR for £12k less. So if Jaguar re-launch and sell 20,000 new cars at £115,000 each then it will be a huge success but with the lack of interest in the last 5 years and new dead stock they can't even give away, I don't know where the market is.

Another major name in the industry has spoken out against the game pass and then own employer. It's good for consumers short-term when there's a game worth playing for but developers, it's a travesty and I would love to find out how many games have actually become profitable at less than $1 an install. Imagine working 4 years on a game and then being buried on the game pass and having just 30,000 play your game and your studio doesn't even break even. The same game could've easily achieved 300,000 sales at full price as a standalone and marketing. With Bethesda and Activision propping up the pass and driving prices up, smaller games and devs are going to be forgotten about which has already happened and ultimately MS makes no money. I don't think the Game Pass has seen growth in years either.

This poor guy got tortured but whoever did the Stan edit is legandary

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.

Krafton as well this week sacked their entire leadership team from Subnautica 2 because the development into early access was 'going too slow' despite the team having two previous and highly successful projects on their books executed the same way and self-published. Just like Kerbal Space Program 2, the game will probably fail miserably and everyone will walk away. These scumbag publishers just ain't got a clue.

There is plenty of stock to sell - it's just not selling and to shift the blame on shipping and production is nothing more than a corporate cope. You can get a brand new pre-brand Jag cheaper than ever now but they aren't selling and people can bury their heads in the sand about the rebrand being not to blame, but that is clearly an aggravating factor. Jaguar was alienating its customers and brand identity long before the advert was published anyway, when a full compliment of stock was being manufactured and shipped, so it's clear this is a long-term problem and the rebranding is a culmination of everything in the last 18 months. At my dealership, you can get as 74 plate XFR for £24,995 brand new and it's not selling. Two years ago, the same vehicle was £36,000 and people would bite your hand off at that price. So despite a surplus of stock and a 25% markdown, there doesn't seem to be much demand and this is up and down the country. I very much doubt we'll see a 10,000% influx when the new range is available and I doubt that's what customers are waiting for.

That's funny because my local Jag dealership which I pass 10 times a week has a forecourt of about 70 of them and they ain't shifting. There is nothing clickbait about it - their sales have dried up and that's from their own press release. Just because their lines may be stalled doesn't mean there aren't tens of thousands of cars dotted around for sale.

Well this was expected Jaguar Sales Crash 97% After 'Woke' Rebrand! Is This the End of British Luxury? WWW.IBTIMES.CO.UK Jaguar's European sales tanked to just 49 cars in April 2025 after a divisive rebrand and EV pivot. Can the iconic... it’s amazing how normal people could see this happening but corporate marketing executives couldn’t😂 49 cars sold in one month globally has to be a record low!

Xbox's Executive Producer of Publishing has suggested that the 9,000 employees affected by layoffs should seek solace in using AI to recover their plight. I've been studying LinkdIn cringe a lot lately and this surprisingly is one of the most normal posts on there but at the same time, it's laughably offensive at what is a very difficult time for a lot of talented people who have been persistently let down by the higher-ups before given the chop.

I still can't believe that was Danny Dyer!

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.

Premier League Winner, Nations League Champion, got married 5 days ago and now this. Absolute tragedy.

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.

More Resident Evil

Forza Horizon 4 has been delisted from sale unfortunately. The Crew 2 has a pretty massive landscape and a great mix of watered-down cities and countryside plus even water. Euro Truck Simulator and American Truck Simulator have huge maps to drive around on.

Would love to see a remake of this or a brand new game. I'm not sure why Capcom didn't pursue the series further.

Resident Evil Remake (2002/2015)

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.