J4MES OX4D

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!

Not sure where they can go from here. They've tried everything now and even allowed borderline porn in the last few weeks in a desperate attempt to expand their range. Be interesting to see if Amazon hold onto it or if they just sell up and wind-down their struggling gaming division. I personally don't like Twitch as it's a cesspool of overpaid scummy creators and useless interaction features. Its extreme bias has pushed so many away to YouTube and other rival platforms and it seems every new innovation gets rolled-back because of woeful implementation or it being a downright stupid idea. Very hard for aspiring streamers to make any progress at an entry-level if they aren't managed by a shadow-network either, and even with the toxic hellhole of Kick up their arse, they still can't get stability even with all the garbage that's left the platform. After Laying Off Over 500 People, Twitch Boss Admits the Business Is Not Profitable - IGN WWW.IGN.COM Twitch boss Dan Clancy has answered questions on the state of the company after announcing plans to cut over 500 members of staff.

Made a thread about this last year but not much new information has come to light since. It's nice that Embracer have decided not to hold all their IP's they bought off Square Enix under ransom but the interest in this seems quite dry and games like Uncharted have far surpassed in narrative and mechanics. You can also buy the original Tomb Raider trilogy in the Steam sales for £2.49 so this will probably be a hard sell and lots of users already emulate these via Duckstation. It really depends on how well the games are modernised without losing the original feel but I dunno if the OG mechanics will translate well.

Even more Uncharted 4

I've don't think I could name 3 games coming out this year so I'll just see what drops. I'm mostly planning on playing older games - currently going through Uncharted 4 again, then will probably do Monster Hunter World and after that it'll be No One Lives Forever, Metal Gear Solid Master Collection version and then the PC decompile of Zelda Links Awakening. I've even got Blade Runner installed to go through again at some stage. Looking forward to saving another £300 on not buying new games!

More Uncharted 4

I can see the likes of Ubisoft jumping on this and the state of Call of Duty writing these days; it may as well be written with AI. Actually AI could probably do a better job than what Sledgehammer did for Vangarbage and IW for MW3. I think a few indie developers have already expressed interest in using AI generate art for some in-game stuff which could save time and money but the AAA ones shouldn't go down this route. It's bad enough with copy and pasted assets and concepts *cough *cough Ubisoft. Sadly if jobs are lost and big games go this way then the gaming community probably wont bat an eyelid as they support enough horrible practices these days as it is. On the other flip side, some of the writing in games is so dreadful, AI is worth consideration. It will be interesting to see if AI is capable of generating extreme-quality in-engine assets through which could be a game-changer but as of now, I only support hand-crafted games from reputable developers.

I'd just suffer it to be honest. I don't use the service but it's probably no different to where YouTube went a decade ago and that's tolerable. Certainly wouldn't pay to skip them and I don't know of anyone who has a premium YT account. There's really very little profit for companies with these subscription services as evidenced with how they work with gaming so if they can make more money through direct adverts then it may benefit the platform. What I don't want to see is adverts worming their way into games consoles.

Uncharted 4

I didn't buy Dead Space, Hogwarts Legacy, EAFC, MW3, Alan Wake 2 or Diablo 4 as expected so I instantly saved over £350 and instead mostly played (older) titles I have in my Steam library either revisiting, or previously not played and also picked up some bargains. I don't think I will ever buy a AAA game on release ever again unless it's of the masterpiece standard and I have enough time to play it at launch. I don't own PS+ or Xbox Live or any other subscription services so I save a lot there and things like this can really add up especially if you throw in other services like Spotify or Prime. Although these AAA-type games sell really well, many gamers seem to be holding back these days and that's down to the increased pricing and degrading of quality. The new Diablo 4 DLC could very well cost $100 which is absolutely disgusting so for the future I am avoiding these rip-off live services without much consideration. Recently I've played MGS3, MGS2 and Warcraft 3 and I've got more value and entertainment out of those than any major release will provide.

GTA Definitive Edition has arrived on mobile and it's actually better than the current gen versions. Dare I say it actually looks good with far better colours and lighting and much more in-line with the originals