Shorty

The reason we held off is that lots of custom themes were created and I'm worried how many of them will break. We could perhaps look into it though, what were the big changes?

Deferring to @Ashley who I believe put some restrictions on new signups recently to try and scupper bots. I think the intention was to prevent new accounts making threads - not replies.

Kotaku's feedback is absolutely glowing, maybe I'll pick this up sooner rather than later after all. I understand not wanting to give a company your money but remember that real, good people work for them and work hard.

Nintendo doesn't dip prices, they have an image as a premium, quality product that doesn't do flash sales and cash-in bargains. The world is not as black and white as "Activision does it, why can't Nintendo?" They don't want to give the impression of "here's three old games at cheap prices" they want to say "here's a lovely, well organised, well treated collection of absolutely sublime games that you know will have been ported perfectly and look better than ever". Activision also supplements a huge amount of their income from shifty practices like loot crates, pay to win and microtransactions, for one thing. If we wan't to talk bizarre decisions, it's the crazy choice to provide this in limited physical supply. Which will just lead to loads of NES-Classic style scalping.

After their track record, this definitely isn't the kind of game I'd preorder. It's got a good chance of being great, but an even better chance of them totally messing it up somehow. Got my eye on it though!

I just had to bump this because somehow it skipped my attention until last month. Truly extraordinary game, wow. It landed itself straight into my top ten games ever. It's a once-in-a-lifetime type. Like Portal meets Journey. I played this as a kind of sofa co-op partnership with my other half, which we've only done for a couple of other games namely The Witness and The Witcher 3. It was perfect for that, take it in turns, explore a new idea each time, bounce ideas off each other, figure things out together. We were waking up in the morning still thinking about the game and itching to get back on until it was completed. I was quite proud of us for working it all out as well, and pretty quickly, too. I was having dreams about it. That music and light at the end of each cycle haunts me. Such a stunning game, the design of it is absolute perfection, the way it's all there right from the start but you're completely lost at first, and the pieces gradually fall into place, I can't fathom how it was created so perfectly. We platinumed it pretty quickly after beating it and I felt almost empty knowing that there was nothing to go back for. I never had any concern with having to translate text each time...? Not even sure I understand what that refers to. There was almost nothing you had to do, unless you were trying to get the achievement for 100% log completion. Really looking forward to watching that doc later!

We were under attack for a bit, I have lowered the protection level now.

Even if you play the originals, you won't understand the story.

Could’ve been a false negative, still loads of those occurring, or he could’ve got tested too early. Or they may just not have passed it to them. We have to be careful with contact and distance but it’s not as if you automatically catch it by being near someone who has it, there has to be a direct transfer, so even a small amount of care (washing hands, not touching face) could prevent you catching it.

Man I want, want to write a load about this game. But I feel like there just isn't time. I'd almost rather have a whole podcast about it where I sit with three other people, who felt similarly or disliked but at least completed the game, and really hash it out. There's so much to say. The "ludonarrative dissonance", the disappointing lack of choice, the incredible world-building. I just want to spoiler tag a list of things that I liked and didn't like about the game, and thoughts I had on the way. I can't possibly gather together all my thoughts on the game so I'm just going to reel them out instead. It ended up mostly being a list of complaints, which I always find myself falling back on when I finish a game. I find it much easier to list the things that annoyed me. And it's weird in TLOU 2 because what's great is so passive, and what's bad is so aggressively prevalent, that it's much easier to bounce around the bad and hard to come away saying "but it's still... good?" Anyway... There are a lot of other things I would like to touch on, things that deserve more than a bullet point like the excellent diversity and accessibility, but there's so much to unpack. At the end of the game I couldn't believe it said I'd played for 28 hours, because it felt like hundreds (does it not count reloads? Cutscenes? Or was it really not that long?) Edit: Wow, I avoided any forums, reviews or journalism from this game until after I'd finished it. It's a crazy world out there. Reddit specifically seems so hate-filled about the story. I dunno, whole thing feels like too much of a minefield to debate. Also some of Naughty Dog's reactions have been pretty un-cool. But I think I'm firm in saying that I loved what I loved, and what I hated didn't stop it being what it was.

Not a bad shout at all. To be honest, uploading images is something I never even turned on for admins as image hosts were so prevalent at the time. I'll look into it! Edit: Should be possible now

I want to write a lot about this game, might do so tomorrow. Certainly one of those most complete and incredible games I’ve ever played, despite some kind of glaring missteps. It’s so strange, it’s as if everything they did, the amazing production values, visuals, audio, voice acting, world building... elevated the game to a point that it has to be judged on a whole new level. Things that people are unhappy with would be so minor on a lesser title, and yet the game basically forces you to hold it to a higher regard. I can’t wrap my head around anyone thinking the story is anything less than fantastic. But in order to really accept and appreciate it I found I really had to separate out the components, the parts that were there to make it compelling, parts that were there to show what a shitty world it is and how terrible people can be, parts that actually wanted to hint at redemption... and then parts that had to go “hey yknow this is just a video game and we really need the player to just shoot some people for five minutes so they don’t get bored”. Such a weird dissonance, so much to dissect. A few real moments of frustrating disappointment. And they almost detracted from an outstanding video game. Almost. But man. How much of this game did I spend not pushing the analogue stick all the way? Yknow? Just... taking it in.... What a game. Gonna write in more detail (and spoiler tags!) next time I’m in front of a keyboard!

If I hadn't just put nearly 200 hours into Persona 5 Royal I'd probably be getting it just to play it on the big screen. If you have a PC and have never had a platform to check out P4G, I urge you to give it a look.

He meant nothing to me Ashley, it was just bells! Meaningless bells.

Just pinged you a friend request @Helmsly if you plan to open again any time this evening I'll be there! Thanks.

I have a weight bench which, when I moved to a smaller house, was tucked away and relegated to the garage. Now, it has pride of place in the living room since a dining table has become a second home working space for my SO Before covid, I was about the strongest/fittest I'd been for a long time since I'd been going to a bouldering gym twice a week for a year. Absolutely gutted that I can't do that at the moment. A huge number of people online have been building their own bouldering walls for the workout, but given the inconsistency of British weather and the faff that would be to move when I move house, not to mention a cost in the £500-1000 region... not something I'm taking seriously yet. So weight bench it is. And man, do those gains fall off quickly if you don't keep them up. I can still do bodyweight excerises quite well since that's the core of climbing, but my presses and squats have completely faded away. I was also walking to and from work every day before lockdown, so I've lost a huge amount of mobility, flexibility etc. And put on a loooot of that beer weight

Yes please @Katie !

Ah man my other half didn't get in til after 10pm and I totally forgot about the offer because I was waiting for her to get in. Anyone got any good prices today?

Thanks! Only bought one set of turnips so won’t take up much of your time, but just sent a friend request from my island representative!

We’ve only just got in! So if it’s too late now we’ll join before Nooks closes, thanks 😊

We'll be over later please, @BowserBasher !

I'm cautiously optimistic about these. It feels like everyone's ignoring the fact that they did HD re-release of these two games this last gen and they were pretty poor, messed them up with a couple of stupid choices, no split-screen, no park editor, some crappy design changes. From what I hear you'll be able to manual and revert in both games, even though neither was designed to have those... No doubt it looks gorgeous this time, but I'll wait for the reviews before jumping in for this one. Fool me once...

@darksnowman any chance you live somewhere that’s BST-12

35 here