J4MES OX4D

I've probably used my Playstation 5 three times in the last 6 months and two of those occasions was to do a system update and play a beta for a couple of hours. The most action it's seen is when I played Bloodborne on it back in August of last year. Anyone that's paid a scalper or dedicated days of their lives trying to buy one of these really needs their heads tested because there really isn't many reasons to own one at this time especially with many new games just being old gen titles anyway. I think it will take until 2025 before we really begin to see proper next gen titles but by then, I'll probably be too fed up to care about it. The PS4 did also get off to a slow start and the Xbox One was a pile of shite to start with but it amazes me how every generation transition, we seem to take steps back rather than build upon. Even these so-called next gen games don't really do anything new and that's because they are being held back by a lack of creativity and vision. Companies like Ubisoft will never make a masterpiece because they will forever play it safe and publishers like that only care about the bottom line and not pushing the industry forward. Sony have also made a complete shitshow of themselves with their lack of foresight in the PS+ service and whilst Microsoft start throwing money around to capture any game possible for their pass, they really aren't doing much to grow in-house studios. Google have probably set back streaming and caused incredible alienation because of their inability to captilatise on the hardware and service they created also. With Unreal 5 being widely accessible and impressing, hopefully some innovating devs will do something with that but for the next two years at least, it's more old gen titles and the same old shite. Fingers crossed for Forspoken and Harry Potter but even these could turn into generic flops.

Another one delayed into 2023 despite taking pre-orders and having a big marketing campaign leading up to what was supposed to be the release date. Feedback must have been shite and from what I saw of the game, I could see why. Company of Heroes 3 has been delayed to early next year | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM 'Our team has decided the game is not quite up to our players’ or our own high standards'.

Stumbled across this absolute gem in the Steam NextFest. Also has a demo available which I urge you to try that lasts about 30 minutes. Game has some serious potential especially if you're a fan of the Doom reboot

I love how Ubisoft are so shit and out of ideas they have to name about 7 games of the same series just to make up for all the ones they've cancelled🤣 They'll probably announced the next 3 Far Cry games in December at this rate! The way I see Ubisoft; if you're going to play it safe with your usual gameplay template and recycling of old shit, I wont buy your games. 10 years ago, they showed so much ambition with Watch Dogs, The Division and The Crew and now they are just farming out the same old tried and tested games whilst what's left of their original line-up is canned entirely.

His link-up play and pace is proving a huge threat and he always seems to be in the right place at the right time. He's shredding the Prem even harder than Germany so far which is pretty crazy! Be interesting to see if he can maintain this level along with City as a whole. Also hope England can get the best out of Foden for the World Cup.

Just tried it briefly and the attention to detail is really impressive. Insane zoom levels Interface needs some work and will take some getting used to but this game has a lot of promise.

This looks a brilliant medieval strategy game with a focus on city building, battles, economy management and society simulation. Demo has just gone live for a short time if you want to check it out Manor Lords on Steam STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM Manor Lords is a medieval strategy game featuring in-depth city building, large-scale tactical battles, and complex economic and social simulations. Rule your lands as a medieval lord -- the seasons pass...

Prequel to the classic 2000 FPS game. Not holding out much hope about this one as it's gonna be a tough game to live up to and pull off conceptually these days but it's nice to see the brand being rejuvenated. The original was a slightly flawed but deeply challenging espionage game where you largely infiltrated guarded compounds and military areas and had to complete objectives. No saves, no checkpoints and no regenerating health. Weapon sounds and music were absolutely awesome and the varied environments looked amazing for the time. Bit janky in places and the second game was generic but the original was severely underrated and still has a huge cult following today. Still can't believe many of the videos have over 1m views.

Some really shocking situations outlined in this video - really hope developers can resolve and be reimbursed for their work.

Oof

Seen this a few times and still don't know what to make of it. Will definitely have to take a deeper look into it

Dude looks like he's gonna lose 6000 hours worth of progress on Red Dead Online for the Stadia

Yep, there was no real key benefit in choosing that over owning a traditional physical copy or licence on an established device. Not only do you burden your internet as well as requiring a constant connection, you also had to pay for the service and then a hefty price just to access the game. No platform-transferable cloud saves either so you were locked in. Instead of paying £100 for the console, £100 a year for the sub and then £50 on most older games, you may as well own a game on an existing system for £15 with the only stress being disk space. Other key games were also ruined by latency. The writing was on the wall early as Google stopped marketing it plus they didn't explore or capitalise on any unique opportunities like being able to offer game trials to prospective customers as a purchase enticement. They let it rot and it just became a system that sat awkwardly behind the Xbox and Playstation. They could've really pushed it especially with YouTube and its partners seeing that Google owns that also but instead all the marketing mostly came from negative publicity from owners or the media.

Progression already causing concern I played Overwatch 2 on a new account, and the hero grind sucks | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM With a limited set of heroes, I felt boxed in.

Google Stadia closing down in January with mass hardware and software refunds being issued🤣 Stadia is closing down in January, hardware and software purchases to be refunded | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM Google's game streaming platform "hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected."

Watched The Hunt for the Read October last night. Classic film with a very strong cast. Some excellent external scenes for 1990 also.

Need for Speed Heat is 95% off on Steam at £3 from £59.99! Save 95% on Need for Speed™ Heat on Steam STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM Hustle by day and risk it all at night in Need for Speed™ Heat Deluxe Edition, a white-knuckle street racer, where the lines of the law fade as the sun starts to set.

Didn’t expect this Gangsta's Paradise rapper Coolio dead at 59 NEWS.SKY.COM His manager said he was visiting a friend's house in Los Angeles when he apparently suffered a heart attack. Gangsters Paradise will go down as one of the best songs of the 90’s and of all time.

Looks like the camo challenges are littered with mount and crouch challenges. This will be pure hell to play against and attempt.

Ubisoft's blockbuster game been delayed for the fifth time! March 2023 is the new release date despite it supposed to be launching sometime in November and having a recent pre-release marketing campaign. Another shambles for Ubisoft who will miss out on their bumper pre-Christmas payday yet again. Not interested in this game whatsoever though as it's basically Black Flag Lite and its development history is sketchy to say the least. This delay is probably tactical as well as it not being finished. Skull and Bones Delayed for the Fifth Time - IGN WWW.IGN.COM Skull & Bones, Ubisoft's pirate battler that's been in development limbo at least since 2017, has been delayed yet again. This is the fifth time.

I'd go with this team and then leave them in Qatar😎

England 3-3 Germany after coming from 2-0 down thanks to two howlers from Maguire. We played well for about 15 second half minutes when we had nothing to lose but failed to shore up when we got ahead and Pope made possibly a career-ending error to cap it off. Our defence is horrendous so we need to focus on pure attacking football especially with the players we’ve got. Foden needs to be utilised better or dropped altogether and we really can’t persist with Maguire if he’s going to play that woefully against a German B side. Bellingham is looking really good at least but we are still in a very precarious position going into the world cup with no more international fixtures left. If Maguire remains dropped by United then he seriously can’t play for England in Qatar.

Beta ends today in a few hours so I thought I'd share some final thoughts after about 3 hours on PS5 and 4 on Steam;- I think the beta itself has been very poorly handled especially with no flexibility on feedback, lots of shoddiness and the game itself not being the significant jump we should be getting. Despite the game looking great and handling fairly well, it doesn't have the initial wow factor we saw with MW2019 and I'd say that game probably is more refined despite its catalogue of bad design and concept decisions plus washed out aesthetics. 2 years is a very long time for this game to run especially when COD MP aspects seem to fizzle out before Christmas now so they really will need to improve on what they have so far and go against their grain to keep people happy unless this is part of a deliberate push to get people on Warzone. Footsteps, perk framework and the gunsmith tree will probably be huge sticking points for many and these will persist as they are because they are deliberate and conscious design choices rather than mistakes or bugs. I'm also not convinced about the new modes or big filler events - we all remember the hype and absolute travesty that happened with the Spec Ops mode 3 years ago. The same old issues still remain with connectivity and bullet registration (not an issue in many other FPS titles) and with no real enjoyable honeymoon phase, much of the community will be going into this game negatively with design and technical frustrations right off the bat. I also didn't find the gameplay to be much fun either - it's as exhausting as ever plus with disbanding lobbies as per, the social aspect is completely depleted and this is something that is totally underestimated as part of the huge decline with common multiplayer deathmatch. Players just feel like a pawn in their monetised matchmaking algorithm. I honestly can't see myself buying this on launch or at all. I really want to play the campaign but not for 60 notes. The game may be in a better place in year 2 but by then it's just a bit late in the day with only tryhards remaining in a depleted community. Gonna be a tough choice.

Even the nighttime Miami map in Cold War, you were still able to easily see people across the main stretch and in the alleys whereas on the museum map on MWII in sunshine, it can still be very difficult to see people because of darkened areas, shadows and other textures that just blend. The hotel map is also a nightmare and your best hope so far is that the enemies are wearing grey on the largely brown palette. For all the realism, I'm still bumping into solid locked-down objects such as the tables and chairs on the museum map and it's like the more realistic they've tried to be in instances, the most unrealistic other parts of the game begin to be. I remember when the devs on Vanguard said they wouldn't be adding certain community wishes because they wanted to keep the WW2 identity and a few months later there's laser beam weapons and other crap being thrown in! I don't think they've deliberately tried to make visibility shoddy though - it's probably just a design consideration that was missed whilst they focused on other deliberate changes.