J4MES OX4D

One of the few promising upcoming games. Intriguing two player concept made by a good development team. Sadly being published by EA but there's no sign of loot boxes...yet.

Champions League last-16 draw: Chelsea v Barcelona, Bayern v Besiktas Real Madrid v PSG, Shakhtar v Roma Porto v Liverpool, Sevilla v Man Utd Juventus v Tottenham, Basel v Man City

Nice to see someone telling it how it is. He may lose his future event invites like many others who criticised Bungie publically in the past but it must hit home either in the studio or at Activision that the brand is in utter disarray for a multitude of reasons and a lot of people have had enough. It's usually publishers that fuck up AAA games like this, especially Activision but in this instance Bungie have had the budget, they've had the timeframe and they have the software to create a generation-defining product. They have not done that and what they've chrurned out is painfully appalling with the resources available. The content lockout and XP scaling saga just added insult to injury from Bungie and I question whether they deseve the right to make another game after this terrible effort.

Hard to believe that Man City's toughest game this season has been against Huddersfield! United were poor and it was another dismal tactical performance from Mourinho. Even without Pogba and after last week against Arsenal; I was expecting much more from the home side. 1-2 is a fortunate result as it could have been a far greater margin. You can literally see them going not only unbeaten but winning every match remaining.

It's thick snow where I live so I'm going to phone a taxi to take me 150 yards to the pub

The usual PR from Bungie; it's just like the XP scaling situation. Try and play the situation down as an unforseen 'issue' by 'investigating' the 'problem' despite them creating it and implementing it that way by choice. Once again, they got found out. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/bungie-will-fix-destiny-2-locking-some-trophies-ac/1100-6455473/ "We are aware that there are some Destiny 2 Trophies and Achievements that have become unavailable to players who have not purchased Curse of Osiris. We are committed to fixing this issue, and are currently investigating a solution. Please stay tuned for more updates on this topic as progress is made."

The Game Awards 2017 Winners Game of the Year - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch) Best Game Direction - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch) Best Narrative - What Remains of Edith Finch (PC) Best Art Direction - Cuphead (PC/Xbox One) Best Score / Music - NieR: Automata (PS4, Xbox One, PC) Best Audio Design - Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (PC) Best Performance - Melina Juergens, Hellblade (PC) Games for Impact - Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (PC) Best Ongoing Game - Overwatch (PC, PS4, Xbox One) Best Independent Game - Cuphead (PC, Xbox One) Best Mobile Game - Monument Valley 2 (Apple/Android) Best Handheld Game - Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS) Best VR/AR Game - Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (PC, PS4) Best Action Game - Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (PC, PS4, Xbox One) Best Action/Adventure Game - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch) Best Role-Playing Game - Persona 5 (PS4) Best Fighting Game - Injustice 2 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) Best Family Game - Super Mario Odyssey (Switch) Best Strategy Game - Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (Switch) Best Sports/Racing Game - Forza Motorsport 7 (Xbox One, PC) Most Anticipated Game - The Last of Us Part II (PS4) Best eSports Game - Overwatch (PC, PS4, Xbox One) Best Debut Indie Game - Cuphead (MDHR Entertainment)

To add insult to a deserved injury for Bungie; Sony and Microsoft have been offering refunds on the base game of Destiny 2. Although this 'loophole' has been temporaily plugged whilst Activision get their house in order; still a few persistent users are managing to secure refunds on the basis that they cannot unlock all achievements or 'finish' the game.

Seens loads more community fury today http://www.pcgamer.com/some-destiny-2-endgame-activities-now-require-the-dlc-to-access/ This may cause a lot more people to abandon the game fully rather than being enticed to buy the content.

I heard the campaign portion of the DLC can be completed in 90 minutes; is this true?

New map is called Miramar

A charming Christmas carol

Desert Map gameplay reveal two days

It's baffling really. You could be the best player in the world but if three of your random team mates suck or quit; you'll get screwed over. The ultimate kick in the teeth is wins counting as defeats which the the purpose of these placement matches and is the whole point of League Play. This was delayed a month so it can be perfected yet the mode is buggered right off the bat in embarrassing circumstances.

When Cologne was going on at the same time Call of Duty had it's eSport event; COD only achieved 8,000 viewers. If COD only achieved 192,000 viewers last year at the World Championshops, that all but proves that the franchise doesn't have a place in the eSport arena any more. People streaming Farming Simulator have had bigger weekly viewership than that. The series just tries to please everyone and ends up failing on all fronts and that's why they should have chose a direction and stuck with it - either casual (99% of their audience) or pure competitive (>1%) Now they are leaning back towards casual because supply drops are raking it in and most competitive teams have either grown up and moved on with their lives or are following the money and playing the current gaming trends such as Battle Royale.

Call of Duty should be casual and the series began to go downhill when they started catering more towards the eSport crowd even after many players and teams turned their back on the franchise. Skill-based matchmaking was the first thing that really impacted the game and then the shoebox sized maps with 3 lanes killed the enjoyment for many along with hefty balancing of core mechanics. COD was at its best when it was purely casual and anyone could pick up and play. The competitive side was always there but largely seperate and very minimal in terms of the overall playerbase - probably under 1% from Black Ops 2 onwards. eSports is still worth a lot to COD but they've lost probably 15m+ players in the last 5 years despite having a far bigger reach than ever before with supply drops being the real money maker now. Many competitive players wont even touch Call of Duty now and Activision could easily knock it on the head as it's not worth the expense. CSGO Cologne had 27,000,000 viewers a while back and at the same time COD was getting about 8,000 on average. Sledgehammer's competitive focus with AW alienated many players and whilst I don't think it's as bad in WW2 as it was back then; I don't think COD is much of a eSport game now and there's not much diversity or skill required in them. Arena and team-based shooters are actually becoming less popular in this domain now as it's quite a saturated and unspectacular genre now.

Titanfall 2 was 2016 which was last year

From what everyone was saying; Destiny 2 feels more like DLC than a new game anyway Although I didn't bother with the original; D2 in comparison certainly doesn't seem to be a step forward and the core game is supposedly even more inferior than the DLC of the original.

Not been a great year for gaming in all honesty but there's been a few gems. PUBG has proved to be a revolution and hugely popular. Divinity Original Sin 2 is an absolute RPG masterpiece. Even Resident Evil 7 from way back in January deserves credit for how well it's thrived and delivered throughout the entire year. I don't own them but Breath of the Wild and Odyseey are in a different league but in terms of a game owned and played I'd probably have to give it to Divinity Original Sin 2 because of how incredibly well-produced it is in every way. Hellblade and Cuphead also deserve huge credit.

(Stupid) people don't seem to realise that most of the supermarket Black Friday TV's have been created for the purpose of that event. They end up spending a couple hundred on a big but absolutely shit 30hz TV and the retailers and manufacturers still walk away with a huge margin. Retailers obtain development plans for low production cost TV's and approach fringe manufactuers to produce them months beforehand. They build a set that costs about £30, ships them to the shops landed at £80 and the shop then sells them at a 250% profit whilst the customer thinks they are getting a steal paying £200 for a 42 inch TV made by a company called Defuct or something If they actually spent fifty quid more they could probably get a decent 32 made by a real company like Samsung. It's also good way for retailers to shift shit and still make a decent return. Most of the deals are just an illusion anyway and retailers usually bump up the price a month before so they can give items more attractive 'discounts' when actually the item has been cheaper plenty of times before. People just don't do their homework and deserve to get burned.

Keeper scores against AC Milan in the last minute for the teams first ever point and to end a run of 14 straight defeats

League Play has began and it is riddled with bugs and fundamental flaws unsurprisingly. Apparently users are seeing their wins being logged as losses - some player had 6 wins out of 10 but it was showing as 10 defeats! Also you cannot play with your friends in this mode so far meaning you are relying on absolute randoms for your individual placement. You also can't earn XP but stats count towards your core ones which is another truly bizarre decision. Bravo Sledgehammer - I swear they are just trolling or spiting the community now. Hard to believe that the only game where league play actually worked well was Black Ops 2.

I absolutely bet that in Battlefield 5 you will have to buy ammunition through microtransactions I can almost envisage it now:- 'Pre-order the Battlefield 5 Deluxe Season Pass Edition and get access to the bonus map plus one free weapon magazine and access to the game 3 days early for just £119.99''

It's pretty much judgement week for Destiny 2 as players will have to decide whether they commit to the upcoming 'expansion' and the game with a long term view, or simply to get out now and not spend another penny and likely never play it again. I played the game for a solid two weeks and had a reasonable time but once I finished the campaign along with completing many other elements such as the adventures; I didn't feel motivated to play it again. Bungie also released a load of generic patch notes of alleged improvements and detailed a brief about the games future in a PR move to try and assure users their medicore game can be salvaged post-DLC once again. A few media domains such as Gamespot even mooted that the DLC wasn't even very good whilst others said it would unlikely improve the core game as the offering wasn't substantial enough. For me; I cannot see myself returning. The focus of Destiny 2's improvements seem to surround loot but for me the problem with the game is more regarding the overly-casual and repetitive nature plus lack of an engrossing narrative. The Curse of Osiris will likely add nothing apart from a few new locations to the current game plus a story strand that will probably go over people's heads. Earning loot is supposed to be the hook that keeps people playing Destiny 2 but irrespective of any changes that Bungie make; earning loot was not satisfying for me in the slightest because the lack of a difficulty and soulless combat just made everything simple and underwhelming. Nobody ever starts COD campaigns on recruit difficulty and no matter how many enemies you faced in D2; your status was never under threat. Even if you did die; there was no real consequence and you were always guranteed spoonfed loot that would slightly bolster your power. Even on the more high-end events that took a shedload of ammo rather than skill; earning higher tier loot just never felt like it was well earned. The story which is coming from the same studio (in name only) that created the Halo brand which has been huge for 15 years thanks to its characters, writing and development plus quality games. We actually got a 'story' in this game but even so; everything seemed so mediocre with only some fine humour from Cayde and Failsafe being memorable. I intertwined the story through as many adventures and events as possible to drag it out so I wasn't lumbered with stacks of meaningless 'side' quests by the end. Even in doing that I found myself doing the same thing over and over against the same enemies over and over. I did a campaign mission on Titan and the very next and only two adventures available were in exactly the same locations! Nobody would play the same Halo mission 3 times in a row on the easiest difficulty and that's exactly how this game felt. Although my desire was almost extinguished last month to care about the future of the game; I was still interested in seeing what Bungie could do to improve things along with the DLC. It already didn't sit well with me that they'd gone two steps backwards after finishing strongly with the original game and a part of me questioned whether they deliberately ommitted aspects which they would then conveniantly add before the DLC to reel people into supporting the game long term with a 'game-changing' update. After the XP scaling drama of last week where Bungie played the usual PR card of 'we are unhappy with this....even though we created it and are just unhappy because we got caught out' plus this seemingly overwhelming patch of generic notes; I just can't see them ever drastically improving the game and I'm not willing to pay up to find out. They just don't deserve my money by virtue of how poor the core game has been IMO. I was hoping to play Destiny 2 for a good two years rather than two weeks and already many players have departed. I was reading that the game lost nearly 80% of players in under two months which didn't bode well for the PC release and I'm now one of those that have felt too underwhelmed to continue. There is also nothing unique about Destiny 2 - it's a 'social' shooter with heavily restricted and dated online elements and very bland features made by a company who are a shell of their former selves and backed by a very smart publisher who are experts in marketing and brand development. It doesn't do anything that Borderlands, Warframe and The Crew don't do. Bungie's name, their engine and wonderful art team is what makes this game look and feel fantastic but everything else is a complete and utter mess. What is everyone elses thoughts on the upcoming material and is it enough to keep you engaged or will you simply walk away?

I LOL'd when I saw that the Xbox One X's centerpiece game was Minecraft. I could probably build a PC out of spare parts and my washing machine and still get 31fps on PUBG. I would love to hear someones justification for buying an XB1X.