Kaepora_Gaebora

Just finished up writing an article on this, only Switch games during the Spotlight? A shame but if they've got 30 odd minutes to fill hopefully there's a lot...or 25 mins on Smash

I mean, I don't want to say that I knew this all along... (I really didn't)

On the game pre order page on the eShop it says this is the international version and that the version with nazi symbols removed is intended for German and Austrian versions...and you'll get in big trouble if you try and sell that version over there. Basically, no censorship

I can't believe I'm saying this as I think he's one of the great actors around at the moment, but Tom Hardy looks miscast in this from that trailer. I didn't feel like he was or is believable as a timid Eddie Brock, this inconspicuous undercover journalist. Again, he's a bloody brilliant actor, but he didn't fit in this for me, as much as a lesser known, up and coming actor might have. But then that's not going to sell tickets...

Agreed, in my opinion the announcement of Shenmue 3, specifically the crying reactions etc, have become a bit of a parody and embarrassing now it's taken so long to get it anywhere near ready; am I right in thinking it's already missed one release window? I mean, I was excited when it was revealed (although no tears were shed) but you're right it was a cheap pop (which admittedly worked in the short term) but long term I wonder if it may damage the momentum of the game. After all, four years in development and three since it's reveal, and Sea of Thieves was launched as an incredibly hollow experience, so time means nothing in relation to content or quality.

I'd love to see a mix up using a similar style to Double Agent, which is my absolute favourite of the series. You could have the open world as the hub almost, like (on a very smaller scale) in Double Agent when you were in the terrorists HQ and in between missions you could just bomb around, explore it and find dossiers and listen in to conversations as well to gain more evidence. And then, when you unlocked the missions, you'd then have a more linear, goal oriented game play style that was more traditional SC. Man I loved Double Agent!

Going deep into the Division has whetted my appetite for Splinter Cell definitely, some of the legendary missions on Division are very, very tough. Question is though, would you want them to go open world with SC like they are doing with most of their games, or keep it quite a tight and linear ish experience like they have been so far? As much as I'd love to see them take Sam Fisher into an open world, I'd be very happy with the familiar mission lay out myself.

Agreed, think something Splinter Cell is in bound and hopefully that'll bring all the older games back into play as well. I loved Blacklist, don't think it's sales were particularly great (or maybe that idea in my head is Wii U specific... shocker) so having a few years between entities to keep it exciting is fine by me!

Just picked up a steel case edition of Splinter Cell Conviction for £3... annoyingly both Double Agent and Blacklist are £2 each, and better games, but neither is back compat. Unsurprisingly no Panzer, so I'll get that digitally when my Xbox wants my money

Just tried to see the price of Panzer and Conker; firstly they didn't show up on the backwards compatibility page on the dashboard, and then when I searched and found them and tried to look at the price, it kept saying error and booted me straight out! Hopefully I'll be able to pick Panzer up soon, I'm not going to shout this too loudly but it's a game I always looked at fondly...but never actually played, so this will be a great chance to do so!

If the license goes to EA then surely it will be, which is a shame as IMO since 16' PES has been a much better game of football.

I was eyeying up Splinter Cell Conviction last night; I'll have a look in town tomorrow for some of these on disc at a cheaper price, if not I reckon I might pick up Panzer at least!

Are they on game pass do you know or just back compat?

I've been fairly happy to not consider getting an X, but some of these upgrades are amazing! And I've been putting alot of time into The Division again lately which has just had X enhancements too...the temptation is real!

Yes to all of the Alannah Pearce dislike, my heart sank when they said she was a guest on this week's NVC (listen rather than watch). She now presents the Daily Fix as well? I don't know if it's just us and the rest of the internet is fine with her, but she is an abject broadcaster, she's clearly had no training at it all and. Back to NVC and the whole live thing, summed up for me when Filip asked a question about Wolfenstein 2, didn't credit the guy in chat who asked, and then asked the same question again (this time from that guy) before releasing he'd already asked it...and he's the host! We all make mistakes but...What a mess.

Sound the klaxon, content incoming! Looks interesting, all for no additional cost either. The pressure is on for them to get this right, certainly the first DLC "The Hungering Deep"...having watched the trailer for 'The Meg' earlier today, I hope they put a Megaladon in this!

At the risk of opening a can of worms (or even a new thread...) Where do Nintendo go from here? The Switch has been such a success and such a natural evolution of bringing their handheld and home console ideas together, what's next? Just an all round souped up Switch 2 with 4K gaming etc etc, back to a more traditional home console and handheld seperate business? VR?

In a bid to have an enjoyable, open world type game where I could level up, upgrade cosmetic and useful items and have multiple challenges to face of I want to...I've started playing The Division again I had one last crack at this last night and just didn't enjoy myself; last leg of a quest and a two man sloop started taking all my chests while I was on an island finding the last of the treasure. I saw them from a distance and swam over to there boat spamming the "ahoy" message to show I was friendly, put a chest down on their deck for them as a peace offering...and they blew me to bits, took all my chest and sunk my ship while I was waiting to respawn. They hurled some abuse my way and sailed off, and that was that. The official forums is full of these stories and, fair point, it is a pirate game and I actually don't mind what happened to a degree, as it's part of the game...but to have spent a good hour doing all that and literally have nothing to show for it, no money, no rankings upgrades nothing at all...they need to sort this game out yesterday. As it is, I loved jumping back into the Division, where my last save had been in the Dark Zone; I gained some good gear and even after dying once I was able to go back and finish the enemies off and reclaim it, teamed up with some randoms to extract...I know it's had plenty of updates but with games like this and Destiny showing what players gravitate towards its still stunning how Rare got SoT so drastically wrong in that respect.

I really enjoyed Snake Pass myself; wasn't sure if it was just because it was the first "big" indie release on the console and, at the time, we were somewhat starved of games (remember those days!) But I've gone back to it recently and it's still full of charm, vibrant worlds and the David Wise music score is amazing. If you're just going to try and complete the levels A to B then it's fairly simple ish to do, yet getting all the collectables can be tricky and the controls can be annoying.

I know I said it before but... Bloody missed ending the 14 day free trial by a day, so now I've paid £7.99 for another month of game pass...against my better judgement may well be playing this some more when the mood takes. Almost finished the official book too...I wish it was a single player aspect of the actual game, Paul Davies has done a really good job in illuminating the world while also creating an interesting through story too!

A very fair review from EZA there. Think I've put about 20 hours into the game since last week and, I know I've said it before, but I am now done with it until they make some big changes. I came across a "stranger" in a tavern who told me he wanted all my traders reputations up to 5, so I duly obliged and went back to him, only to be told my next objective was level 10. No reward, nothing else apart from a change in the writing. The problem is, the levelling up takes so, so long! Before the game was released all the promo videos had you digging up the best chests etc, well 9 times out of 10 you get the most basic one with the smaller monetary and reputation reward too. Fair enough it may get better the higher the rank...but its too much of a slog to get there. I'll be really interested to see what the views are of people who make it to legendary status and if this improves the game and missions at all, or if it stays along the same blue print as the moment. Hopefully a player base stays around to make this all worth while, but it's got Titanfall drop off numbers written all over it in my opinion.

Lord, what a coup! Checked out his tweet and someone asked about a PS4 version, to which he replied "not currently" so I imagine this will be a console exclusive to a degree, certainly between PS4 and Xbox One. I bet this was going to be/will be an e3 announcement of the game.

I keep saying I'm going to leave this, and then keep firing it up; I feel like it's a duty to Rare to keep on trying as I don't want to see them go kaput coupled with the fact that the idea of this game (when I'm thinking about it at work) is amazing, but the reality is sadly less so. Like tonight I was on my voyage, heading to the last of three islands when I noticed a circle of birds in the shy above the ocean (if video games have taught me anything) and true enough there was a ship wreck under neath the waves, which I explored and plundered for a skull and a captains chest (lot of coins for one of those). Worth noting that under water controls are horrendous, Banjo Kazooie levels of borked, which for a game that relies on them to a degree is terrible, still... Reached the top of the ocean with captains chest to find another solo player bombing the hell out of my boat, which had a few chests and the skull on it. Got back aboard, raised anchor and went about patching it up, which I managed to do en route to the final island. I hadn't realised the guy followed me, so when I stopped with a sharp turn we ended up ploughing into each other, again causing holes in my ship that needed patching up. Then a four person galleon turned up, luckily picking on the other guy first which gave me the chance to get the hell out of there and recover myself. Went to the nearest out post and cashed in my skull and chests before going back to the final island, which was now empty... ...To spend an hour trying to solve the riddle to find the chest and having to abandon it in the end as it got so late. I either missed something obvious, or something wasn't quite right about it as every place I thought "this must be it" well, it wasn't. And the lack of any entertaining or, really, any NPC's is a crime; it leaves the islands feeling souless and empty. I get that they just want real life players to populate the game, but it'd be so much better to find a random character while you're searching for a chest, or like sometimes in BOTW you'd find a random character in the middle of nowhere and you'd get a quest from them. Writing that all down, it does sound quite entertaining (the battle bit at least) and yet, to go back to the previous post, I didnt really achieve alot in about 2 1/2 hours of game play. Not even an achievement for solo patching my ship back up and surving that chaos! This is such a weird experience; I'm enjoying it to a degree, but at the same time, and going back to the earlier article posted by @Hero-of-Time, the target audience thing is messed up; they've only gone for four player teams with microphones. I'm constantly reminded the experience is better with a mic and being a solo player is clearly an after thought...but this is an open world, "game as a service" type game, surely I should be able to play it however I wanted to and still have the same experience? Why should my play style hinder my experience, you have to say at the opening screen who is in your crew etc, so if I'm playing solo why not increase the reward from chests knowing that I've one manned the mission rather than had help and done it in half the time? Christ, late night ramble! I just desperately want to like this game for Rare as much as anything and am waiting for the moment it all comes in to place, I won't say I'm not going to play it again as I probably will tomorrow 😂 but I already feel like I'm coming towards a point where I won't bother. If my local GAME had bothered to stock any copies of Kirby I'd have picked that up today and would have been the end of SoT likely. Perhaps I just need to read more of the book before I "get it" 😝

I can't argue with a lot of that to be honest! To be fair I've been playing solo but I have wondered about the whole joining up on the fly thing, and the potential of playing with Sam was scuppered as he couldn't just join my game and I didn't notice he was online or looking for a game either until it was too late. I have ploughed a bit more time into the game and actually had a decent session last night...up to a point. Mid quest I found a strange book that gave me an island that contained some legendary pirates or something, so I followed the clues but...impossible to defeat the wave after wave of enemy on my own. I died a few times, and then when I regenerated the last time a full galleon were plundering my ship! Fair enough, that's the point of the game, but they killed me and I respawned on a different island. It was already late, so I switched off...and had nothing to show for my entire evenings play. The sentiment in that article "it's trying to waste as much of my time as possible" is very apt; I really want to like the game and when I'm playing it and admiring the art style it's great...but it feels like I'm wasting my time and not getting much out of it at all.

Haha I've seen that comparison, never played No Man's Sky though so can't comment on that! It's weird as in my own way I'm kind of enjoying it for what it is, but I couldn't really recommend it to any one else; it would be great to try a full N-E galleon to see what it's like, but after a few voyages...what's next? I'll be interested to see what happens when the first people start to get legendary status and if that then unlocks more variety. If it's just the same type of quests but harder/bigger rewards, then trouble will be brewing!