J4MES OX4D

Current best is 40% off at Indiegala which is just shy of £27
Save 40% on Football Manager 2024 | PC Game | IndieGala
WWW.INDIEGALA.COM Step into the shoes of a real boss and write your own football story in Football Manager 2024, the most complete edition in the series yet. Whether you’re a manager who likes to build from the bottom or...  
That will probably be the best price we'll see for a while as I expect retailers and the publishers will keep it quite high after the cancellation news. Even CDKeys are charging £29 now! 

Too late in the day for me. Overwatch was absolutely brilliant years ago and even lootboxes were done well. The level of polish, progression and nature of the gameplay were all top tier and they even proved that you don't need a campaign to deliver an abundance of engaging lore. The developers neglected the hell out of it (and we all know why) and Overwatch 2 was a needless sequel that cancelled the campaign, made progression absolute torture and also performed gameplay changes that people didn't like.
 
They are only doing this now because of Marvel Rivals and not for the community but they can see how much money there still is in this market. The damage is already done for me and it feels that original era is long gone. Now they are just chasing any last shreds they can get their hands on by doing stuff they should've done 7 years ago. None of this makes up for any of the broken promises and that includes the single player campaign which should've also been done instead of trying to save money. 

An Overwatch 2 Spotlight dropped yesterday with lots to unpack in it:
 
 
I think Marvel Rivals was the kick in the arse OW2 needed to start coming back to the table with a series of updates. Perks are the new way to upgrade a hero through the fight, with minor and major upgrades becoming available as you go through the round. 6v6 is back again, and I think they have a separate Competitive queue for it(?) with the Goats Meta being introduced when 3 tanks and 3 support was key to victory.
 
Hero 44, Freya, comes out and a new one on the horizon too.
 
'Stadium' is the biggest new mode ever released and is very interesting to say the least. Definitely adds a different dimension on how to play a PvP match and most likely far better to play when you play as a group together given you have buy specialist updates to your heroes out of a pool of funds you receive from the previous round - best of 7 rounds.
 
Oh....and Loot Boxes are BACK! 🤣
 
All in all, I was pleasantly surprised at the news. Stadium feels like the right way to go, but I do fear you need a serious amount of people to want to jump in and play it with you to make the most of the mode. 6v6 for me is key. Whilst they touch on the long stale matches that could happen and other key issues they had with it, for the majority of OW players it really hit the spot so i'd be interested to see the player pool sizes if they ever released them. It will only get good traction though if it has its own Competitive queue otherwise they still can't compare 5v5 and 6v6 properly. Outside of that, loot boxes back makes me laugh after all the years of drama.
 
Never sure if this is enough to perk people's interest again for the next season (15). A full competitive rank reset comes with it which always helps if people returning to see how it plays. Thoughts anyone?

I'm shocked Eustace would trade a playoff push for a relegation battle. If he thinks Derby is the best bet going forward then that is a worry for Blackburn but I just wonder if he's using it as an excuse to force a move through. I thought Rovers had a decent window in January and I get he has ties to Derby but it just seems a crazy move especially with them being in a terrible place in the league and off the field. 

Absolute disastrous times at Blackburn. Sitting in the playoffs and the owners have never really been forgiven for our downfall for the past 10 years and now John Eustace wants to leave us to go to relegation favourites, Derby. Its not left him in a great light either tbh but overall picture is just an absolute circus.
 
Good owners are hard to come by these days, but boy I'd love it if we could find some that want to see our club flourish once again.

Cancelled!
FM25: Football Manager sequel cancelled after two delays
WWW.BBC.CO.UK Developer Sports Interactive says the 2025 edition was "too far away from the standards" fans deserve.  
What a total cock up from Sports Interactive. 

That team is absolutely unreal, no wonder you won everything. 
 
Yeah I should of picked up Fm24, was on sale not that long ago. 
Decided to wait a couple of months for the new one instead. 
It was like £17 on steam a few weeks back, then went back up to £45.
 
Now although I can afford it, but it is the principal of it. 😜

It's a good job Sony are back-peddling on the PSN requirement for some of their PC games now. This was announced prior to this latest outage but it just goes to prove that such things just hamper their games and gamers alike. Imagine not being able to play a single player game on PC which is already DRM protected by Steam, just because Playstation is down once more. 
 
5 days free PSN is also a peculiar reward seeing that most people compensated will be rolling PSN members regardless. Doesn't make sense really. With a range of Microsoft games coming to PS5 soon like Halo and Forza Horizon 5, incidents like these will become even more embarrassing for them. 

Pretty embarrassing for Sony especially with all the money that's involved on the network now with 3rd party games. Activision and Epic must be peeved! Wonder if they are getting DDOS'd like it's 2011 again🤣

Sega will definitely be fuming especially with the licencing costs they are shipping for what will be nothing this year! They'll also be furious that there isn't a contingency plan in place i.e have an annual update on the side, which they can charge a smaller amount for but at least it'll keep money coming in and people happy. Konami did the same for their final paid eFootball game before they transitioned to a new engine and a F2P model and that worked pretty well and they were also honest about what was going on and what would be in the final product. Definitely should've been in place especially with the amount of high-risk changes and updates they were doing for FM25 and you just can't get away with delays or non-releases in annual franchises. 
 
A rare but extremely costly mistake from SI games. Not a travesty for the community though as a database mod update will do the job but it's disappointing none the less.  

A whole new engine, the game is in no state to release to the public. 
Apparently they wanted to add woman's football leagues as well. 
 
I think people will be disappointed, but at least they will miss a year. 
Unlike Fifa or cod, they would just roll that shit out anyway. 
Sega will be pissed at all the preorders cancelled and refunds on FM25. 
 
I was actually thinking about picking it up, as I have been out of the FM series for a about a decade. 
I liked all the old school championship managers, premier manager, LMA Manager etc. 

Cancelled!
FM25: Football Manager sequel cancelled after two delays
WWW.BBC.CO.UK Developer Sports Interactive says the 2025 edition was "too far away from the standards" fans deserve.  
What a total cock up from Sports Interactive. 

Pretty embarrassing for Sony especially with all the money that's involved on the network now with 3rd party games. Activision and Epic must be peeved! Wonder if they are getting DDOS'd like it's 2011 again🤣

Yay!!  Another PSN outage.  It's been down for me since last evening.  Grr and stuff.

Too many of these games do that, I spent ages waiting for a cheap version of Anno 1800 with all the dlc ...but was worth the wait, saved a fortune.

I'm tempted just to play VI. Although I own just the base game, the entire collection is available for less than £8 which includes all the expansions and other DLC. 
Sid Meier’s Civilization® VI Anthology | Steam Game
WWW.FANATICAL.COM Civilization VI is a historical strategy game with one goal: build an empire to stand the test of time. Explore new land,...  
I'm sure Civ 7 will come good but not for another 5 years. The grand strategy genre is one of the worst for cash cowing and Firaxis are becoming worse than Paradox.  

I had to ban myself from Civilisation 5, such a good but dangerous game when it's 3am and you just have to do one more turn 🤪
 
I have Civ 6 and debating installing it as a mate's partner is playing it a lot lately and I might join her for a challenge.
 
But yeah, why buy a barebones iteration, makes zero sense...

Not a good start with only 44% positive ratings on Steam and this is coming from premium buyers of the £60 game. Seems incredibly starved of content even by modern strategy game standards and the UI looks like it's a placeholder. The mechanics look quite light and simplified too which further diminishes the experience. Gonna take a lot of work and paid DLC to turn this around! 

🥲
 
 

Some Battlefield 3 vibes which is good. I'm fairly optimistic about this one especially as Respawn Entertainment managed to salvage BF2042 to a degree and keep the series going.
First Official Look at New Battlefield Gameplay as EA Reveals Battlefield Labs - IGN
WWW.IGN.COM EA has delivered the first official look at new Battlefield gameplay as part of an announcement around player testing and its development set-up.