Luseth

My brother went to a gig last night and sent me a couple of videos of a band he saw, just so happens it is a band I used to listen to a lot when I was in my teenage years, obviously it got my reminiscing and I am sure at some point I will create a playlist dedicated to those years! What I want to see from this thread, tell us what sort of music you are into today and then tell us what you were into in your rebellious years, let's see if you have changed and by how much 😄 My go to these day's tends to be country music (though I will listen to almost anything), I mean who doesn't love Shania Twain? 😄 My teenage years however was much more emo / metal, the band my brother saw last night was bullet for my valentine but I used to listen to a lot of Slipknot, system of a down, Tool, Metallica and one of those groups that I was probably the only one of my friends list that knew of them, I loved Nightwish.

Sorry forgot to say thank you, this did work 🙂

Another one for the test @GazzaGarratt Loading…

They were lucky I bought this one, I have enjoyed it but I think I have said before it will feel a little like the way customers were treated with BF2042 and that really left a sour taste for me. I don't think it will be likely I will buying the next one as I just feel it will be such a rush job and will result in another half attempt at a game. Like @phil bottlesay's there are a lot of games coming out this year all fighting for my limited time and I suspect my time will be better spent elsewhere and at more affordable prices as well.

Wondering if there is an apetite for this, something that I have seen done elsewhere is a shared google sheets where everyone could add games they think everyone should play at some point in their lifetime. Considering there seems to be some appetite for retro games too it could end up suggesting games to each other that you may never have heard of or played before or maybe even genre's you have never played before (i.e. a lot of my suggestions would be rpgs / jrpgs, but someone else might suggest horrors as it is their preferred genre and I find something new in what they have put up ^_^ ) So we could sort the sheets so that it is by console allowing people to look at games related to consoles that they have access too, I imagine between us on here we cover a lot / most of them! What do people think? ^_^

So I completed the story the other day, it was decent and the ending had that Harry Potter feel too it. I think the game lost some of it's charm doing the trophies as it was a lot of go from point A to point B to kill monster A or to collect chest 139 etc. That said I have only 3 trophies to go which require me playing through to the map chamber with the other 3 houses, can't imagine it will take me too long to do that so might actually have another platinum come this weekend ^_^ My final thoughts on the game - Exploring Hogwarts is magical, as someone who grew up with the franchise it is just incredible seeing it brought to life in a new way. Collecting the various chests etc in Hogwarts was also great fun, finding little passageways, puzzle rooms and interacting with some of the paintings and such. The story was better than I expected I think, I did not really expect much as I thought the whole focus would be on Hogwarts and thus not leave much for other aspects of the game. Though it won't happen I would not mind seeing what happens to the main protaginist after his time at Hogwarts. Visually it was great, the first time seeing Hogwarts is one of those gaming moments you won't forget (despite it looking even better on the big screen). The combat grew on me, as you learn more spells you can combine them to do more damage and such and hitting a troll with his own club is always funny. That said it is not clear some of the things can be done in combat, it could have done with a bit more to try and show you how creative you can be with the combat as it is so easy to just use your preferred spells and then never discover that you can pull a Dugbug up into the air by it's tongue. There were some great little details, just the way you open the kitchen was as you would expect, the way you could run into Peeves getting up to mischief almost anywhere. The wider open game area was really quite badly done I felt. Camps were never explained, treasure caverns were somewhat pointless, a lot of the exploring of the map was just to find collectibles and there were no real stories or side quests to be found out there. It just felt quite lifeless because of it. The game did not feel finished, maybe rushed so that it did not suffer another delay. Quidditch missing seemed absurd, I imagine it will be brought in as DLC now but the cheapness of why it wasn't in the game with the bed in the hospital with a note and it all saying redacted by the headmaster. Harry almost died in the films and yet they never cancelled quidditch did they? The other thing that irked me somewhat is that in what school would a teacher (Fig) encourage their student to be galivanting around the countryside going into undead crypts, fighting Trolls and fighting Goblin rebellions. Though Dumbledore was grooming Harry the rest of the teachers would not have allowed it yet in the game it's somewhat encouraged, why was there not more sneaking out of the school to go and search said crypt and avoiding prefects or teachers to get out. Oh and from what I can tell you can't really play a good or evil playthrough. I tried to play a good playthrough and then you use the ancient magic on an enemy only for it to bash said enemy's head off the floor or turn them into something small and stamp on them. Equally so there is one storyline where you can see someone going down a dark path and even up until the last decision the character is somewhat defending and justifying what he is doing. It just feels like whatever way you play it, it would not have any impact on the game. I reckon if I went around killing people with the killing curse everyone at Hogwarts would treat me the same and that just doesn't feel right in modern open world games. Heck back in the first Fable game if you were evil then npc's would respond differently so it's not a new idea or new tech. My thoughts are me keeping the HP tinted specs off, as a HP fan it would be easy to just claim this as the best game this generation so far but there have been better games over the past 10 years. I will do my plat trophy now and then maybe do another full play through once any / all dlc has come out 🙂 It's a good game I just felt that they could have done so much more / better, but I suppose this is the studio's first proper open world isn't it? So they have things to learn.

I did yes, a volvo s60, not the most exciting to drive but it ticks a lot of boxes in comfort, economy and all the gadgets i could ever want. I have added a bit of structure because otherwise I just won't play half of them, I have decided I will pick like 3 games and see which I am feeling when I complete Hogwarts so that I am not tied to just 1 game. So they will all be different genres and it will be whatever style of game I fancy when I get to them. I like the idea of us all picking a game, essentially a bit like a book club ^_^ Maybe put up a poll for several games and see what the majority have available to them and pick one of those.

To go back to the original post, I have a 500gb drive in my PS5 with a heatsink and I would tend to be over cautious and get a heatsink than not get one and face issues down the road. As for size, I have found the 500gb to be plenty in addition to the internal and I do have some biggish games on there like COD, Hogwarts, Fallout 76 and fifa and such. If I had spare cash yeah maybe I would go bigger but I don't find I play more than 3 or 4 different games in a week because I just don't have the time too anyway.

They tend to be so badly compressed. Something to bare in mind though, more often than not games that have ps4 and ps5 releases, it is the ps5 version that tends to take up less storage. From a couple of years ago but just found this online - But yeah the issues is developers being lazy I think more often than not resulting in large game sizes (in some instances it's about money, suspicion is that COD already has a shit tonne of assets in the game and they flick a button and all of a sudden we can buy them), I mean Call of duty is always over 200gb yet they can put games like Cyberpunk in 150gb and Hogwarts in 80gb.

It can very much be hit and miss against teams now. We either come up against really strong sides or teams we absolutely walk all over ^_^ Enjoying the highlights each week @GazzaGarratt 🙂

So I went to my first little retro game fair this morning. Safe to say I enjoyed it and now have my eye out for the big one that occurs in Doncaster every now and again ^_^ (Anyone fancy an FG trip maybe?) Anyways my little haul for the day -

I think my despair at Blues is really crippling my love of the sport at the moment. Yet more charges to come for the club and people at it from the EFL, this time for allowing people to run the club (part of the recent takeover attempt) without passing the proper tests etc. Our current ownership is so inept and really shouldn't be anywhere near a football club. There is an investigative journalist who has been looking into the ownership for years and he has found the only reason they are holding onto our club is because the company that owns Blues need to have an asset such as the club in order for them to be on the hong kong stock exchange. If they did not have Blues they would not be allowed to trade on there. The problem with this is it does not matter what state the club is in, so long as it continues to function. It won't matter if it drops down the leagues, loses millions every year etc it just need's to be functioning. We had such a good start to the season and I think part of that was due to the potential takeover but the wheels have certainly come off since that all fell through. Think I am going to just ignore Birmingham until we get new owners as it's just a bit sh*t and start following Stourbridge my local club.

Not convinced it will get game of the year, simply because games released so early in the year tend to get forgotten about when it get's round to voting time. There are also some potentially big games coming out this year as well with spiderman 2, the next Zelda game, diablo IV and Stalker 2 to name a few. That said I am getting quite far into the game now and have almost 50% of the trophies done and I am still quite enjoying it. I feel like there might be too much to collect and what probably let's it down is that you just go from point A to point B to point C just collecting items etc. I think of the Witcher 3 as it is still my top game, you would go round various points around the map but you would be following little stories and the such that would guide you to the points. I mean there are all these goblin camps all over the place and I don't think I have ever been introduced to them or told why they are scattered about, I know there is a goblin rebellion but I am not sure the game has ever suggested it was such a big open rebellion. In fact a lot of Ranrok's stuff had been skulking around for the first portion of the game. I just think it could have been fleshed out a lot more. Another thing I thought about, your meant to be this kid going to Hogwarts school, you can sort of choose a good or evil play through by choosing whether or not to learn the unforgiveable curses but then if you use the ancient magic you can be bashing people off the floor or turning them into a toad and stamping on them and such. Those seem as grim if not worse than the unforgiveables, or am I wrong? The game looks fantastic and I am enjoying it as a Harry Potter fan but I don't feel it will be game of the year unless all voters are looking at it through HP specced glasses. I imagine you might be able to, if you stealth everything and just stupify everyone / everything I reckon you could.

Please let us know, this is one of those games I was keeping an eye on but yeah I wasn't sure if it would be great or not. My game pass has lapsed at the moment but I was thinking I might renew it at some point.

Just going through more modern games in the backlog to name a few - Dying Light 2 Rage 2 Scarlet Nexus Kingdom hearts 3 Devil May Cry 5 Diablo 2 (remaster) & 3 Triangle Strategy Harvestella But yeah there are quite a few more, I found an app yesterday that will allow me to keep track of them easier and log when they are done called gametrack (iphone)

This is key, nothing has been done since humanity discovered the damage it was doing to the planet. Any steps now are just being done to try and keep the masses quiet and ticking along. It need's sweeping changes not just to the way we travel but our whole society and it need's to happen in the next couple of years not by 2050. I do not see it happening. It's not just transport that need's to change, it's the products we use and moving away from consumer goods, it's where our food comes from (we should all be growing some of our own), it means reducing our meat consumption, it means reducing the number of humans on the planet and it means each human need's to be putting more into the planet than they are taking from it. All of this need's to happen whilst also having the rich (it would likely have to be the end of capitalism), the oil companies and such trying to put down everything that could result in them making less money. But yeah I think I will leave the conversation there. I think everyone appreciates change is required, how we go about that change is often not agreed upon but I don't think anything we discuss on here is likely to be drastic enough to reverse the damage done and being done to our climate. I suspect we will carry on as we are, people will die and those that are left will have to learn to live with the damage and it's all quite grim and sad to think about especially when I know it's my children likely having to live with it.

It goes hand in hand though doesn't it? Public transport and it's reliability issues. If more people used public transport rather than individual cars, it would mean less traffic on the roads allowing buses for example to run more on schedule and to also run quicker because they are not sat in traffic. More people using buses means that more buses required and with more regularity. It is easy to blame it on poor public transport but it does require a shift in attitudes from the populace as well does it not? I am not sure how it works in the US but here if they put on more buses right away to try and improve the system all that would do is put more traffic on the roads and make things worse, people won't suddenly one day go oh there are more buses I will start using them, they will likely carry on as they are and those additional buses would take up more space on the road and likely be empty. It requires a mentality shift as well as investment and improvement in the services.

I have comitted to getting a new car this weekend and it's going to result in monthly payments so I decided to work out way's I can save money elsewhere in my life. One of my biggest expenditures is my gaming hobby as I often buy games new or buy games when I have loads still to play 😄 So this weekend I started noting down my gaming backlog with the intention that each time I complete a game then I will delve into that list first for my next game rather than buying a new one to help save a few quid. Turns out I have a big backlog, I only noted down physical games as if I include diigital it includes the subscription services and steam and get's rather big. So my intention for the next 6 months is to focus on playing just games I already own, I think I have 2 additional games pre-ordered in the next 6 months but I am going to try and not buy another game between now and August 🙂 So how big is your backlog? Do you actually play games from it or do you frequently say you are going to and never get round to it?

Agreed @techno we should really just be looking to move away from everyone owning their own vehicle. Public transport should be good enough that it's not needed, there shouldn't be a need to commute to an office for work when you can do it from home. I mean there are cities now trying to move away from cars altogether (just thinking of Oslo in Norway here).

We had some good games but I was reminded last night why I moved toward battlefield from COD. The crossbow kills, akimbo pistols and shotguns are ridiculous in COD at times. The number of times I got 1 shotted by crossbows at ridiculous distances (and when looking at the killcams whilst the player is jumping and hopping all over the place) is just absurd. Same with shotguns managing to take me out at range against my assault rifles and the such. I appreciate for a lot of people this is what appeals to them about COD but if it continues down this path again I imagine I will be drifting away from the game before too long ^_^ Such a shame as I felt it had such a strong start (with the exception of new content, more like the COD's of old). And I won't get into the cheating by those French guys / lasses ^_^ Annoyingly I am not really enjoying the other shooters at the moment as I feel a lot of them have lost their way so I don't feel like I have many options at the moment for that war zone / battlefield esque shooter (especially with Dice screwing up the latest battlefield).