dan-likes-trees

Honestly man I can't believe you can be following the news this week and think that the two examples you cite equate in any way to the general elections in the past that 'sometimes have gone your way, sometimes haven't'. It's not that people have become 'so indoctrinated' that they're shocked by Trump and Brexit, it's that they're both genuinely massive political earthquakes in a way that general elections in the past 50 years haven't been. Regardless of whether or not you agree with Trump's overtly racist, sexist rhetoric, you can surely understand that the scale of people's reactions to it correlate with the historical magnitude of his election as a world event. Brexit is obviously more nuanced, but again will have consequences, for better or for worse, far beyond that of a general election that rolls around every 4 years. Speaking as someone whose girlfriend of two years could well be kicked out of the UK following Brexit I find it pretty insulting that anyone protesting such a razor thin majority (following a campaign packed based on outright lies, by the way) could be described as 'having a tantrum' and 'not accepting democracy'. There are lives, families at stake with Brexit, and I have huge respect for anyone for continuing to express their views in the aftermath of a vote. The 'you lost, get over it' view that has surfaced after some of the last year's big votes is completely abhorrent to me, particularly as, in both cases, there are endless repercussions and further choices to be made in the aftermath, and the other 48% of either demographic shouldn't be ignored. Back to games.. I don't broadly disagree but To me this is the opposite to what the Colin Was Right video was saying. The 'certain people' you describe are surely the game devs. If people at the top of the chain in studios are increasingly tending toward less sexualised depictions of women, then more power to them. There are certainly still a tonne of games out there where women are depicted in sexualised ways. Same goes for movies or music videos - Game of Thrones is one of the most popular TV shows of the last few years, for example. To my mind, moving to equality in the mainstream is always a positive, especially given the huge diversity of entertainment out there. In a perfect world, developers should have the creative license to to shape their games how they want, not to provide sliders with settings for how their vision should be interpreted. That's how you'd have enough variety of experiences to please everyone, non?

Do keep us updated - can't find any vr-only reviews so I'm interested to see if you stick with the VR all the way through and keep loving it (and avoid a heart attack). Might be the game to convince me to buy psvr for myself at last when my birthday rolls around.

Good thread! I don't have an unlimited card but, kind of simialrly, we go to the cinema once or twice a week and see pretty much every movie we're interested in.. anything we don't get a chance to see I'll try and get on Netflix or Prime - if they're not there I feel like I 'do my bit' more than most for the movie industry and have no guilt in pirating stuff I've missed. I think the problem with streaming services is that they've made everything else seem so pricey by comparison - 15 quid for a blu ray looks mental next to £7 for a month of unlimited HD movies and tv. Similar to @Ashley 's point about buying TV shows. The other major annoyance I have is how much more things still cost to watch in HD. It should surely be standard practice by now, given how trash DVDs / SD look on a big-ish TV. I'll frequently overpay on things from small groups that I want to support (patreon-ize podcasts, buy indie games day one, buy books, etc) and not feel the guilt for torrenting Edge of Tomorrow, or dodgey-streaming every football match ever. Enough money in that industry without me pitching in..

Haha, yeah that was kind of my thought. Thread wasn't meant to be specifically about Nintendo games but I'd encourage suggestions... if there are any. On a related note, does anyone know what happened to Advance Wars? Is that a Nintendo IP? Quite enjoyed Days of Ruin's story, along with the older ones. get it on iOS!

Been playing The Witcher 2 and Banner Saga (which is a great mix of FFTactics and the Oregon trail) recently, and realised that, increasingly in my old age, I play games for the story above anything else. I also feel like that's part of why I've moved away from Nintendo games recently - and why to many they all seem quite similar to many people - lack of engaging, well written narrative. So I'd be keen on suggestions on Ninty games with good plots (I've heard good things about the Fire Emblem stories). So - what are the gaming stories that have stayed with you over the years?

Wooww.. shame there aren't any Man City fans on here - what a game!! Two absolute clangers by Lloris to go two down, great goal by Alli, then Walker has the most outragously brazen push on a through-on-goal Sterling, who misses... rush up the other side of the pitch and Sonny gets the equaliser! Finish the game with two mids in central defence to top it off! Cheekiest point I've seen in ages! All for Chelsea to lose after today's results though.

Resurrecting dat thread!

Had a pretty similar response playing Assassin's Creed Syndicate.. Hoping Mass Effect Andromeda will scratch that itch soon! Did you ever play Witcher 2? I dug out my 360 and a copy from CEX to go back and see what I'd missed and have put in a few hours - it's great! I expected it to have dated a lot in comparison to 3, but aside from a few niggles it holds up really well. The plot, script, dialogue trees and voice acting are all top notch - a slightly grittier and political storyline. Obviously it lacks the open world aspect but it never feels too linear anyway. Helps that some of my faves from 3, Triss, Triss and Letho all have pretty big roles so far too.. Well worth going back to play!

Random side thought I had whilst reading this list and thinking about why Nintendo games don't hold the appeal they once did - to me a lot of it is related to narrative. Where games have really come on leaps and bounds in the last few years, for me, is the quality of the dialogue and storytelling. With the exception (hopefully) of the upcoming Zelda and Paper Mario, I can't think of any recent Nintendo exclusives that have a plot that isn't more or less totally redundant (I'm sure there are exceptions!). Putting gameplay first can be great, but I think part of why Nintendo games all seem a bit similar is the lack of narrative diversity as much genre diversity. The other one is art style. There have been so many interesting releases on Steam and PS4 recently that look unique as well as playing in interesting ways (Firewatch, Inside, Last Guardian spring to mind) whereas the majority of Nintendo games seem to have the same kind of bright, rounded 3d Mario-y aesthetic. My Nintendo knowledge isn't what it once was so I'm interested to hear what you guys think. I'm actually, regardless, quite excited to get a Switch having skipped WiiU!

Got myself an ipad for work so I thought I'd get a thread going, since I'm finding it night impossible to find anything that isn't total rubbish on the app store. I've been playing Subterfuge this week, which is a week long, real time strategy game along the lines of Risk, with submarine bases and various special units added into the mix. Attacking a base will usually take between 5 and 20 hours real time, making for some tense standoffs as the clock ticks down. It's brilliant, kind of exhausting, and all about playing people off against one another, forging alliances, backstabbing. Nervewracking waking up in the morning to notifications of subs entering your sonar range...! I might start an N-Europe playground match if people are interested (it's free to play) Also a fan of 80 Days, which is a kind of narrative-driven game where you take trains, planes, boats around the world as ther servant to a rich toff. Good fun! What have you guys been enjoying recently?

Read that list and thought it was your actual top ten, which seemed pretty on point to me - suggesting that indie games are definitely where my interest lays as I get older! Looking forward to playing Abzu, Inside, Witness and Invisible Inc. 6 games I've played and actually enjoyed this year.. 6 - Stardew Valley for being a total relaxing joy to come back to during my first few weeks on a new job 5 - Overcooked for the great local coop 4 - Hitman for bringing back some childhood joys 3 - Firewatch for the great voice acting and engaging dialogue 2 - Witcher 3: Blood and Wine DLC for basically being a full game stuffed with great quests and amusing detours 1 - Last Guardian, which I haven't quite finished yet but is quite unlike anything I've played, incredible animation and interaction with Trico, and some deeply beautiful environments. Can't quite believe it didn't suck after all these years! Shoutout to some 2015 games that I've been playing catchup with; Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, Subterfuge, and about every Telltale game form last year Probably spent the most time with Rocket League this year, which just keeps getting better and less annoying the more I play it.

Probably not going to have the time this week I'm afraid, been a bit of a busy time for me. I see my first match is away against Angry Greeks, could be a shocking start to Winston's season going on current form! I'll definitely contribute some roundups through the season though : peace: Fairly confident Roger will be back

^ Yeah, it's a fantastic game. Great atmosphere, addictive progression, and has that rare thing in a videogame of making you feel like a bastard for doing immoral things. I got them both already! Damn. Titan Souls is the perfect Plus game - I played a couple hours and found it quite frustrating, but it's pretty charming and I can people having a lot of fun with it if they put up with it.

Good to see some of you guys getting this - steal at this price! To give the contrasting view - I found it a great experience - really good voice acting and dialogue trees, beautiful visual design, somewhat moving. Fully worth the 8 quid IMO. That said I can totally the negatives. It's full on walking simulator, no puzzles, and the conclusion is kind of an anti-climax, even if that is the point to some degree. I reckon you could work out if it's the kind of game you'd enjoy before you buy it. Not much for me on psn sale but I've been waiting for The Order 1886 to drop to a reasonable price for the 5 hours of gameplay or whatever. Might add it to my swelling backlog

Yeah I got that part, I meant is this the main thread in which people are discussing PSVR in general, which it seems to be. Cool, cheers dude. Nice site that - looks like there a lot of games I've not heard of that look alright! Definitely agree with quite average games being kind of amazing from my experience of the GearVR. Decided to hold off for now but might jump in later - when I was looking pretty much everywhere was sold out (in amazon, argos, game) so that bodes well for it in the future!

Camaaaannnn!!!! What a year for Winston. Terrific final chase against @Nikos9 - was worried a 7-0 demolition of Seahawks and a final defeat against Drahkon could see me slip but we pulled it over the line! and... two double jumps, one 18-6 and a 21-8 and 4 milli in the kitty!! What a time to be a Warrior!! Looking forward to season 2. Up for a couple weeks off to catch my breath though - Christmas celebration at Camp Winst are to be huge! See yous all in the new year!

Same. It was fantastic. Thought he pulled off a Star Wars with a real sense of immensity and scale that I haven't seen from the films before, whilst getting pretty great performances out of the cast despite a script without much space for characters Loved it for all the reasons that I loved KOTOR - fantastic worldbuilding, zipping between different planets and enclaves, all with terrific set designs, costumes, extras and the like. Also felt truley StarWars-y, particularly in the visuals (one of the few sci-fis not to be overloaded with naff FUI and HUD stuff). It all genuinely felt like a story about the minor characters and tiny side stories, which tFA puported to be about, but ultimately wasn't at all. Thought k2SO was brilliant, though struck me to be the most obvious evidence of reshoots / reedits / shoehorned in extra lines. Great to have such an epic story, all contained in one film. Up there with Empire for me : peace:

As The Man Haden says, it's defo a game that's all about the long term develpment and nuances but we enjoyed having you in any case! Definitely a good effort this season - still a good shot of finishing above Haden after I crush him on Friday! Seeing your posts around the boards I can tell you've a tonne of other games on the go at all times so fair enough if you've not the time! Dunno mate Big game on Fri.. Winston hoping for a Merry Christmas starting this time next week!!

^ Thought someone was about to finally join in on my lovefest but alas.. (I'd actually recommend anyone wanting to check this out not to watch that video as it blasts through quite a lot of the game / gives some stuff away. Like watching a letsplay of Journey or something) They must like it quite a bit..

Is this the main PSVR thread? I'm considering picking one up over Christmas but I'm pretty put off by the lack of chatter about it. It honestly seems like as much of a fad as pokemon go! Is there just been a total absence of new games post-release or what? Are you guys still enjoying yours / regularly playing it?

Plunged a good 25 hours in on steam earlier this year. It is a brilliantly zen game. Also pretty outrageous in how flagrantly is rips off Harvest Moon (though kind of the best version of that game). The mining cave.. thing is great. As with Harvest Moon, it's all ultimately a massive grind of incremental progression doing the same thing over and over, but it's a good chillout game for sure. Serious props to the one dude(!) who developed it

Put in two or three hours since my copy arrived. After all these years.. it's beautiful, and a joy. Plays like a mix of the Shadow of the Colossus and Ico, jumbled up with Uncharted, Journey, with a healthy dose of How to Train Your Dragon smattered throughout. I've also found zero annoyances so far, far less than I'd anticipated after a recent playthrough of SotC. The camera is frankly pretty shit - although less from a gameplay point of view and more from it being a pain when I want to pan around the amazing scenery and keep an eye on Trico when he's doing things. Climbing feels satisfactorily manual and platormer-y. This sums it up for me. It (he/she?) feels so real, so alive, so completely like a massive version of my cat in it's movements - often hilarious and adorable in it's inquisitive looks, cat-ish chasing of butterflys, splashing about in puddles, but also with a real heft when you're clinging to it's back, as it jumps over huge chasms, smashes things etc. There's some interesting plot points / mystery developing in the first few hours with a couple of nice surprises, none of which I'll spoil on here! For all my comparisons above, it really feels like a completely unique experience. I dearly hope it doesn't get lost in the mass of great releases lately. I highly recommend! : peace:

Got rather waylaid by life stuff, new job, new flat, another new flat, but I finally got a chance to finish Blood and Wine this week. Bloody hell it was good!! On par with the very best of the base game. Not much chat about it on here - did you guys play through? It’s an essential in my book. Superior to (and longer than!) most of the full length games I’ve played this year.

DuDs collapse with 4 points from 4 games The big news of the week has surely to be the utter and complete collapse of DuD and his Baggies as a competitive force, most surprisingly losing to Drahkon in a match that will surely have knocked them out of the running for the title. Danielsson’s injury was the silver bullet; DuD have been totally outclassed in midfield in almost every game in his absence. Even Micky Partridge’s form is below par - in the first half of the season, DuD had conceeded 3 goals. In the second half they have already conceeded 8. The Baggie fans are baying for blood and DuD is looking as nervous as Renzi on referendum night. Teamwork a key for wobbly form across the league An exclusive telephone conversation leaked between Winston and Roger Federer saw the latter unveil a true oversight, in which teamwork values were being ignored by this experienced managerd; and he is not alone. Nikos9 had also marked this as a key to Haden’s struggles this season, in a game in which Haden’s midfield of 12 teamwork was beaten by one of 17. Hull have been similarly affected, with overall values of dipping below 14, to Winston’s 17ish. A cocky DanLikesTrees, up on his perch, claimed ‘My team play for one another. Warriors fight like brothers.’. Drahkon goes for broke in spending spree Amidst rumors that plague Drahkon FC that the manager will be leaving, the man himself has, at the last gasp of the transfer window, been bringing in a number of veterans. In fact today he bought in his strongest player - Cordonnier - on the last day of the window. Has he heeded the advice of the above point?Drahkon could yet provide a key role in how the title race pans out - and will surely be wanting to finish the season in the top 5. DanlLikestrees has been eyeing up the last fixture of the season, and potentially Drahkon’s career, as a stumbling block at the last Hull’s strong season undone by double loss to Winston Old rivalries play with footballers minds. Hull Paragraph have been near faultless this season, clinical once again in an away win to Haden on Friday. Yet 6 points lost and 6 gained by Winston in their head to heads may prove decisive. They were desperately unlucky in the most recent fixtures, in which Winston had only two shots to Hull’s 4, and scored both. Winston said after the match ‘5 years ago I paid an old witch lady to put a curse upon Roger so that he would never finish above me in the league. I believe Djokovic took a tip from me a year or so later. She is great value’. Hull remain only two points below Winston, but with Drahkon, Greeks, and Baggies up next, it will be a hard task keeping up the pressure. All eyes on Angry Greeks vs Hull on Friday Winston, cautiously looking down from top of the table, are viewing the upcoming fixture between Hull and the Greeks as desicive. If Hull win, they will have a good chance of undoing Winston at the top - if The Greeks win, they will have the chance. In the event of a draw, it would looks like Winston’s league to lose. Both teams look strong, with the Greeks on an awesome run of form. Hull outclassed the Greeks in the home fixtures, though they were different times and both teams have overhauled their squads in the weeks since. The key could be in the home advntage - the Angry Greeks and their Angry Fans at the Theodoros Vardinogia... have seen the Greeks gain the strongest home record in the league. Big game for both teams. Lets have it.