J4MES OX4D

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.

I think most RE fans prefer 3rd person especially when it comes to open areas. First person worked really well in RE7 because it was largely contained to one house but it felt a bit off in RE: Village and the developers ultimately added 3rd person down the line. The RE2-4 remakes were really popular in this perspective too

Hitman 3 (2021)

Hitman 2 (2018)

I saw a post a few weeks ago on what the game would actually look like without any of the stolen assets and it looks like some gigantic placeholder. The amount of stuff they lifted is absolutely insane and makes up virtually the entire games stylised aesthetics. I believe they are still auditing their asset library and the amount of stuff they will have to replace from scratch is crazy. Without the stolen material, they literally have no brand or game.

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.

It's free now too!

Hitman 1 (2016)

Looks like Sony started issuing no questions asked refunds. Also Cohh's sponsored stream was cancelled at the last minute to avoid further humiliation for the publishers. System-wide refunds may be on the cards and this could be another write-off.

Out on PC today and there is already a demo available. Plays like a cross between Metal Gear Rising, Devil May Cry and Dark Souls. Presentation is excellent and it runs smooth. Definitely tempted to grab it as the demo was enjoyable.

I ventured into the forum and saw a few suspects who pre-ordered The Day Before previous, who were literally bumming the game. Don't know why people have a fetish in buying into shit games and defending products they literally have no idea about. Leslie Benzies is pretty washed in the industry now and was blinded by NFT's and Crypto so the GTA and Blockchain bollocks probably got a few deluded people on board but any proper gamer with a brain could see this was absolute slop nonsense with no substance.

As expected, this game is shite. The fact that the publisher tried to convince everyone that the bad reception prior to launch was Rockstar bots causing disarray becomes even more hilarious. 40% positive on Steam, about 1200 reviews and no more than 3.5k players and falling massively. It's also emerged that this was once-part of a NFT platform which would explain a lot as the game does remember part-asset flip and part ulterior motive.

It's got some good ratings on Steam from its early access period and has a decent number of players. The finished game looks more refined but still seems a bit bland. I will probably keep my eye on it to see how it plays out once the rest get their hands on it tomorrow.

I think Black Ops 7 is supposed to have wallrunning and all that mumbo jumbo. The franchise does need a bit of a shake-up even if it does go back to that unpopular type of mechanics. It's just a shame they have to bleed the brands to death because they can't be creative and come up with something fresh.