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Yesterday I mived the goal posts of my lingest swim from 8km to 10km All the extra swimming I been doing this year been working towards this goal. Delighted to have done it. Been trying to do it the last 6 weeks but weather on weekends haven't been great. Yesterday I knew the forecast wasn't going to be 100% what I would want but I also knew it would be within my tolerance for choppy water. I had a kayaker on standby and he was cool with the conditions too. Though it did slow me down more than I thought it would. There was a section I'd say between 5 and 6km that was really tough. Both mentally and physically. I had to breaststroke more than I would like as I found it hard to keep rhythm for the front crawl. Then I came round a corner and saw a landmark (the pillars in the Twitter post) that I was worried might be further away, once I saw that my mental confidence picked back up as that landmark I knew exactly where I was and exactly how far I had left to go. Didn't start to feel cold till I was about 1km from the finish but at that point I just hand to get my head down and power through it to get to land 😎

You can't actually catch half of the Pokémon in this picture Pokémon Colosseum is a turn-based RPG for the Gamecube that released in 2004 in Europe, it's developed by Genius Sonority. Building off of the base of the N64 Pokémon Stadium titles to make the first ever 3D Pokémon RPG. The game takes place in the Orre Region, a desolate place that is inhospitable to wild Pokémon. You play as Wes, a member of the criminal gang, Team Snagem. Well, former member. He just quit, and he delivers his P45 in the form of blowing the headquarters up, yoinking a gadget, and driving away on his ridiculous motorbike, alongside 2 of his closest companions, the decent Espeon, and the absolutely useless Umbreon. Along the way, he saves a young woman getting kidnapped, her name is Rui. She was getting kidnapped because she has the ability to see certain shadowy auras on Pokémon. These Pokémon, dubbed "Shadow Pokémon" are Pokémon who have artifically had the door to their hearts closed, making them dangerous fighting machines. Well, Rui's in luck, the gadget Wes swiped is the Snag Machine, a device that allows the user to catch other trainer's Pokémon. The two team up to steal these Shadow Pokémon, open the doors to their heart, and stop whoever is behind all this. Yeah, this isn't your standard Pokémon game. And it's not just the setting that's weird. Wes isn't a newbie trainer, his 2 Pokémon are over level 25. The entire game is done in Doubles format, and the Shadow Pokémon plot is the sole driving force of the game, no Pokédex or Gym Badges here. While you can steal Pokémon, you can't just steal any Pokémon. Only Shadow Pokémon can be jacked, and this severely limits the Pokémon that you can choose from. It's worth remembering that this game came out during the third generation of Pokémon, and that certain generation was during the jump to the GBA games. This resulted in a group of Pokémon from the Game Boy games not being available in the GBA games. Colosseum was the start of filling in that gap. The majority of the 52 Pokémon you can get are Pokémon from the second generation games that weren't in Ruby/Sapphire. The side effect of this is that about 80% of Pokémon here are kinda, well... rubbish. This seems like a decent team on paper. But this is Gen 3, and Colosseum is restrictive in team building. So here's why my team is mostly awful. Anyway, this results in an interesting dynamic where the lack of good choices means you have to really capitilise on the strengths of whatever you use. A while back, I compared the sequel to Colosseum, Pokémon XD, to Pokémon X/Y. Long story short, I concluded that while X/Y is the technically better game, it's blandness in comparison to most other Pokémon games meant that XD was more interesting to play. The same applies here. Doubles is a better format, and I wish mainline Pokémon would utilise it more outside of the competitive scene. XD is better then Colosseum, mind. Colosseum builds off of the base that the N64 Stadium games set, warts and all. Pokémon animations are long and elaborate, which is a joy to watch, as, at the time, this was the most personality Pokémon had outside of the anime. On the other hand, Pokémon animations are long and elaborate, which means the game progresses at a glacial pace. I see a few complaints that modern Pokémon animations are worse then these ones. This is a rubbish viewpoint, because trust me, you don't want animations that can last up to 10 seconds each time you attack! It's better these days, believe me. The visuals are... rough. It's hard to hold it against Genius Sonority, because this game was clearly done on a budget. But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that all the Gen 1 and Gen 2 Pokémon reuse the N64 Stadium models. And some of the Gen 3 Pokémon look... weird these days... Eurgh... Soundtrack is great, mind. A very strange departure from what you'd expect from a Pokémon game, but it's solid! And that's Pokémon Colosseum, a weird take on Pokémon games. But that helps it to stand out. I would recommend XD instead though, but Colosseum is still a fun time.

Even though it’s actually Insomniac’s Spider-Man… Does that mean that the title should really be “Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man”?

1 Its a misleading number. The main COD audience is on PS/XBox consoles for now unless Nintendo create a competitor. Its a similar terrible argument people use for mobile(iOS /Android) and Windows. Remember Mobile and Windows are shrinking. The main gaming growth is in in DLC/micro-transactions. So technically, less people will be spending/playing on COD if you remove PS from the equation. The most valuable part of the COD business is PS. Its interesting because Hollywood and US TV has run into the same problems. Streaming hasn't worked out at all for them. For Xbox they tanked game sales because of GamePass with nothing to show for it so far. The evidence given to all 3 main agencies (FTC, CMA, EU) is quite damning. Remember that we are discussing entertainment/content based industries. This is where the US Judge's arguments fell apart quickly (not to mention moved goalposts from the Within/Meta merger). The CMA and EU were unable to really do much on this side despite their good reports and focused on Cloud like a non entertainment business. This is a glaring limitation for both of those agencies and France are correct to highlight that it makes DG comp useless.

Spider-Man 2 for the GameCube was indeed excellent. However, that was named after the film Spider-Man 2, whilst this latest one is so-called because it is the sequel to the PS4 game Spider-Man, and not related to any film. It's all gone a bit confusing really. Especially because the first game was known as Spider-Man PS4, so this one should really be Spider-Man PS4 2, or Spider-Man PS5, but it is neither of those.

I can't believe I spaced on this write-up! Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed is an RPG developed by Monolith Soft. It is a direct prequel to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 that was released as part of that game's DLC. It came out on the 26th of April. The game follows Matthew and... someone else. Honestly, it's hard to give a synopsis of this game. Because literally anything I say is risking spoiling stuff for not just Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but the other games in the series as well. All I can really say is that the plot goes places, is well paced, and concludes in such a satisfying way. But I'm serious, it will spoil everything in the series. So it's probably a good thing that unlike the similar prequel seen in Xenoblade 2, you can't buy this seperate from the base game. It makes posting screenshots such a massive minefield, that I'm not gonna even bother. Unless you just want to see pictures of the sky. It's the only thing that's safe. The game plays a lot like the base game, unsurprisingly, a mixture between explorative gameplay, and MMORPG-style turn based battles. It's not an open world game, but there's loads of avenue for stepping off of the plot-mandated path. The game does an amazing job of rewarding people who explore, as finding landmarks, cataloguing the various enemies, and completing sidequests accrue points, which can be spent on the 6 characters you see above for stat boosts, passive benefits, and abilities to use in fights. It's an amazing tweak to the system that's a great incentive for me to aim for 100%. The game is much shorter then the base game, obviously, it takes around 20 to 30 hours to see the credits. While I'm not normally bothered by long RPG's, it is nice to play a more bite-sized one now and again. I mean, just look at the likes of Chrono Trigger. I mentioned this back when I talked about Xenoblade 3, but the game looks a hell of a lot better then Xenoblade 2. Like, it's not the most amazing looking game, but it's serviceable. Music is just as solid as the base game as well. But yeah, it's great. But you can't really play this unless you've played the other entries in Xenoblade. I mean you can, but that's just dumb.

Jeremy Hunt in "not a good look" shocker.