Josh64

I will add that I've got into 'Achievement hunting' lately and have happily been in the top 3 the last few months but can never quite beat you lol.

I love the Xbox UI for the exact reasons you hate it lol. I think the PS4 and Switch ones are /so/ simple and boring. I like being able to mindlessly check things out on Mixer and being notified in the corner when there are new deals. Different strokes though. They should definitely let you customise those things in case you do want a simplistic look. im pumped for them OG Xbox games, especially Conker and it looks so beautiful and is hopefully a bit less clunky than the N64 one in Rare Replay. How are you all finding GamePass? I liked it before but this month it has been even better. I don’t have enough time to play all the games I’m downloading. I’ve forced myself to stop for at least a few weeks and work my way through lol. I’ve sunk about 15 hours into Cities this month and dabbled in a few others, started up Portal Knights which I’ll be getting knee deep into and been pulling my hair out on Cluster Truck. Though I’m glad there has been plenty on offer because it’s done wonders to take my mind off the very underwhelming Sea of Thieves which I was massively pumped for.

How do people find installing discs? My internet connection is typically quite bad so I mostly get physical games on PS4, download the odd update and I’m ready to go. On Xbox, with the disc it seems to hold about 1gb of data or less and the rest is downloaded from the internet. Is that right?? Happened with Super Lucky a couple months back where it said something ludicrous like ‘disc 300mb/300mb, download 200mb/8gb’ But because it was only 8gb didn’t seem too bad. Just got Doom and the same again, about 800mb downloaded off disc and now it says I need to download a further 55gb from the internet?? Is it labelled wrong? Because if this is the case then the discs are pretty useless right?

That is a shocking statistic! I can’t remember it being so low so maybe the availability of it on GamePass has screwed the percentages more - I first played on disc. hope you go for 100%! There’s something very relaxing about rinsing the levels of all their collectibles

I'm loving the new world but it's gnarly! The base game is quite chill and relaxing but some of the puzzles and especially the last boss in this DLC are Crash 1 levels of hard.

Omg I had a Birmingham game shop follow me recently - it was you??

Received a letter saying I can attend a leaving work interview but its up to me. I think I will attend and just say something along the lines of I tried my best to be accommodating but there was no help in changing my shifts and I might mention how they were being all snarky back in November when I mentioned having anxiety. They accused me of not disclosing it before they found my application and hey ho, it was there. I think I might write a bunch of stuff down so if I forget in the moment I can just read from the paper. I don't want to make a big deal, I just want to make it clear that I tried various things before handing in my notice and I was not intentionally being awkward about my hours.

All I know about Knack is that it outsold Super Mario 3D World lol. I'll give it a whirl

I've always wanted to try Rime so this is cool

I was all for buying Sea of Thieves but as my job situation recently changed, game pass will do me nicely for now. I think what they're trying to do with gamepass is a great idea, I just hope it doesn't affect game sales too much as SOT is make or break for Rare. I managed to bag Forza Storm Island DLC for £4! FOUR! Glad I held off on buying it full price now because what a bargain. I really love it, it's the most 'Excite Truck' Forza has been yet. As the island is smaller scale I also plan to 100% it, something that seems impossible for the full game haha. I finally got around to trying out Back to the Future telltale from Gold last month. I'm not sure what to think - I enjoyed it for the most part but the soup section dragged on a bit. I'll give episode 2 a crack soon.

And always online is a right jip. I recorded a video, trimmed it and uploaded, when I went back to the game is had to start ALL OVER again

I'm trying to enjoy this game but it's a struggle. I really like the actual events but hate traversing the overworld, I can't seem to fast travel many places so don't know how to get back up the mountain lol. And half the stuff is locked behind some damn need to look through bonoculars? More than anything that Mountain overview is just horrific man, what an awful way to display the game and different events. I just wanna play not trapse around ugh. Also seems buggy as hell in places, I finished and crashed just after the finish line clipping me into some scenery so I couldn't move.

TBH I barely ever play games online so whether I get this will depend entirely on if they have a decent free games service. I can't remember the last time I played online on my Playstation but I still have Plus because I like the free games (only had the system a year so have lots of catching up to do) and the sales are really good, I get quite a few discount indie games a month. Same applies to Xbox with GOLD though they have hooked me on Forza recently. One game that would make me buy Switch online either way is Smash Bros. I grow tired of Mario Kart and stuff after a while but always have time in my life to play some Smash. I just hope they can really nail the online this time. Wii U friend battles were fantastic, no lag at all, but I pretty much didn't bother with random match up's after day 1.

You know me so well haha. And yeah I should start to focus on something while in-between things. As cliché as it is, one of the first will be losing weight as I've erected some timber in the last 6 months lol - certain t-shirts are a no-go atm but I guess that's what late night binge eating Simpsons does to you. Glad to hear you have your regulars at work! Anything that can perk up the day is a good thing! And yeah to be honest it always feels like I put a lot in for no return, I certainly hope I can find something slightly less customer orientated in the future!

I started my current job in August which was advertised as 6 hour evening shifts but when I got the job they said it'd be 10 hour shifts on the weekend, 2pm till midnight on Saturday Sunday every week. With how my anxiety is, I'm much better on shorter shifts, hence why I applied thinking of the 6 hours but with a view to getting my foot in the door and perhaps changing hours later down the line I took the job. How it works is it's a normal operation 9 till5 (a housing trust) with a big team of engineers out on the road and an office full of people answering phones and inputting jobs. In the OOH service we run, because there's less demands at these times it's a lone working job. You're theo nly person in the office, taking the calls and then inputting them in the planner and sorting the route for the appropriate trade. The only problem is, while the evening weekday shifts aren't too bad, the weekends progressively got worse and worse as I guess tenants don't see why the normal working hours of a weekend are any different to those of a week day. Long story short, with far fewer engineers and just me alone in the office on the weeknd it is fucking mayhem, jobs get backed up for hours on end resulting in super angry customers giving me hell, there's masses of different contracts that can get confusing at times and not only that but the new contracts have our trades going miles out. There's one gas engineer of a weekend and at times I have to send them to a job that's an hours drive from their current location which obviously messes up everything else that comes in. Anyway I persevered and first mentioned in October that I'd like to change my hours as it's a really busy shift and it's not great for my anxiety, I said obviously I haven't been here long so I don't expect any changes in the short term but if you could change them for me some time in the forseeable future that'd be great. I then asked again in Novemeber and again in Decemeber to which they said there's currently no scope to change hours. The manager made me see occupational health as I had to go home early on two occassions (after I sorted cover for the rest of my shift) due to anxiety. Occupational Health suggested they change my hours too, to which they said they'd note it but there's nothing they can do currently. End of January and I'd had enough, a nightmare shift where I'd been 'condemned to hell', sworn at, told I'm being 'taken to court' and all manner of other things. I appreciate these are just empty insults from angry customers, but it was caused by us having even less trades than usual that day and the managers deciding to not get cover for a sick engineer and instead just 'see how it goes'. Anyway, I went to hand in my notice last week after that debacle but just before the meeting I'd set up with my manager, the regional manager came over and told me to hold off as they're having a review of our department later in the week and things such as hours and rotas might change. He said he'll ring me on the Friday to let me know of the changes. He didn't ring lol. So I did another weekend shift that was just as bad and was due a monthly 1 to 1 on Wednesday just gone. I went to it, asked the usual, asked about whether the service had changed after their review and their responses were no, we can't change your hours, and no, nothing is changing with the service. And so I said I'll have to hand in my notice as I need my hours changed at this point and I feel bad for my (literal saviour) colleague who comes in occassionally to take over my shift when I'm overwhelmed. What is perhaps more annoying is that one person (in our department of 6) left in late Novemeber and his shifts were Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evening. They didn't tell me about this and offered the hours to everyone in the department bar me because they knew they wouldn't be able to get cover for my weekend if I did those hours instead. This is possibly the most boring thing you have ever read, but yeah, I have a month left and then it's time to find another job lol. In my personal life my anxiety has improved immensly since having therapy last year but I noticed all the signs of it coming back due to this job so I knew it's something I had to do. But it's just like ughhhhhh, will I ever settle lol. I remember having fears I'd be stuck in my old job forever as I'd been there a few years but since then it's been the literal opposite as this is my 5th job since 2014 >.>

Interesting but yeah, given the wording I won’t get my hopes up. It’d be cool if it was QOL but I’m sure I heard recently they’ve shelved it

Tropical Freeze is an amazing game so it's great news that's being ported over - It also literally just had a blank screen on the GamePad when playing on Wii U so they won't be losing anything in the jump to Switch. I wasn't too impressed by the Switch initially as a home console but I like it a lot more now I view it as and mainly use it as a handheld. It's nice being able to play my favourite games like MineCraft and Yooka-Laylee on the go so I can now add Donkey Kong to that list! I wasn't buying into the hype as January directs generally have good reveals but nothing crazy. I thought it was decent. Hopefully they can really deliver the new goods at E3.

Damn, I didn't realise! I actually thought it was a January release but I guess that's just when I got around to buying it haha

Yeah man, we can have some races on Nuts n Bolts!

Yeah I think that was the problem, I wish they had turned some moons into a collectible for special outfits or something, or made them blue coins that you can put toward a single moon (because I know how much everyone loved blue coins in Sunshine lol) And yeah Yooka-Laylee came out in March on PS/XB

I love that game! Does it have online?

We both have Forza!

1.) Yooka-Laylee: The Banjo-Kazooie sequel I always wanted. Amazing cast of characters, really fun worlds full of treasures to find, amazing music and humour from pretty much the same team from 1998 - Just fun from start to finish and one of the few 'collectathon' type games I've ever 100% completed. I left my job very suddenly the day after this came out, and I also lost my dog (coincidentally called Banjo) on the same day, so for a good few weeks I literally LIVED in this game, so while it was great, I also have rose tinted glasses at the escapism it offered me. 2.) Mario Odyssey: I have a lot of problems with this game but they mostly come after the main game itself. I keep reminding myself how fantastic it was at the start going from world to world and that explosive ending and then think "yeah this was a great game". It's the post-game that kinda put me off, just full of pointless moons to collect - Weird I know, considering I loved exploring and collecting stuff in Yooka. 3.) Super Lucky's Tale: Like a fusion of Crash and Mario 3D World, this cute platformer came out of nowhere and really took me by surprise. Really cute characters, fun settings and classic 3D platforming, I loved it from start to finish (though the last boss annoyed me) 4.) Paper Mario Color Splash: Really fun and original game, not like Thousand Year Door but enjoyable in its own right, with the kind of music and humour you WOULD expect from TTYD and graphics that are probably the best I've seen in any title - If you want an argument for art style, this one wins it. I loved collecting the realistic items and using them in battle and the gamepad use was really good. I felt kinda sad the whole time I was playing it though as it was an end of an era for Wii U and also the fact that pretty much no one had given this game a chance. 5) Snake Pass: Fantastic puzzle game with beautiful music by David Wise, really engrossing and each level ramps up the difficulty without somehow becoming too frustrating despite having to replay areas over and over and over. Though I didn't get all the coins in the end because honestly, I think it's impossible 6.) Crash Bandicoot Trilogy: I've only played the original on this but had a great time doing so. I never owned the original Crash so it was fun to finally play it properly after all these years. I slogged and got every single gem but I'm currently stuck trying to get all of the time trials done, hence why I haven't properly played 2 and 3 yet. 7.) Parappa the Rapper: You Gotta do what? I gotta believe! - Fantastic from start to finish (though granted that time frame is about 40 mins lol) with surprising amount of Replay value and considerably better than its sequel. ______________ As I only got my Xbox One this year, there's a bunch of games that I'd have loved to put in my list that I couldn't, as they're from 2015 and 2016 - The same applies to PSN games, I've played so many really fun and interesting titles that I just got on a whim in the many sales throughout the year. So here's my non-2017 top 5 1.) Rare Replay - Cheating really as its a collection of many great games but this is truly fantastic. This one disc probably provided me with more quality entertainment than the last 5 years of Virtual Console. Highlights being able to replay the original Banjo (which I 100% completed for the first time), Banjo-Nuts and bolts that I obsessively put hours and hours into and completed from start to finish, loving the vehicle customisation stuff all over again (and buying the DLC lol) and Viva Pinata which was a revelation and joy to play - honestly I wish I'd have known about that in 2008. Elsewhere I dabbled in a bunch of different games and really enjoyed them and got a special kick out of the retro challenges which play like NES Remix and the bonus videos which have so many great behind the scenes insights and those lovely old Silicon Graphics renders. 2) Forza - I got Forza 5 for free when I got my xbox and wasn't fussed about it, I was bored one night so decided to have a quick go and quite enjoyed it. Then I had another quick go. Then a medium go. Then a long go. Then I was playing entire championships, buying all sorts of cars, spending ages putting ridiculous and awesome paint jobs on them and generally having a fantastic time. Then I got Forza Horizon 2 as I quite enjoyed 5 and man, that blew my MIND. What a fantastic racer, I haven't had this much fun with racing games since Excite Truck. The open roads, the arcade feel, the amazing music, I adored every second of that game. So literally last week I got Horizon 3 and I plan to play the pants off it for the rest of this year. Of all the series to really take me by surprise, this is up there. 3) Grow Up/Grow Home: This cute little game has you playing as a robot with odd controls, like a walking Snake Pass, collecting crystals and fertilising massive plants until you can make it back to your mother ship. I got the second game first as it was on sale and looked cute and loved every second so got the original at full price. I'd highly recommend both as when you get the glider wings it plays like a super chilled out PilotWings game (reminded me a lot of the 3DS title) 4) ABZU - Short but sweet, there's not much gameplay here apart from swimming around and finding stuff but that's what makes it so great, the stuff you're swimming around and finding is masses of different species of awesome fish, ancient ruins and crazy lights. And it has one of the best videogame endings ever, honestly I was nearly crying lol Disappointments of the year. I should pre-face this with the fact that I know these are actually fantastic games, possibly the best in their respective genres, they just weren't up my alley. 1.) Zelda - It took me a long time to not be bitter about them ripping out all the GamePad features, after that it took me a good while to get engrossed as the frame drops and blank GamePad screen made it feel like a rushed Third Party port. The bits I did play were great though and it's clear the world is a spectacular piece of software, I'm just not into the open world feel and wanted a classic 3D Zelda with yknow, actual music and not feeling constantly lost. 2.) Persona 5 - Just like Zelda, I probably didn't give this a fair chance as I was judging it for what it isn't instead of what it is. Coming off from a mega high that is Tokyo Mirage Sessions I was hoping for something similar, and while the gameplay is similar I just felt too bogged down in what seemed like a pretty dark and depressing story. I wanted my crazy music videos and colourful dancing combos.

Any one know of a good cheap mic I can get? I haven't used voice chat on games for ages (apart from Minecraft as that's chill) because I get kinda distracted from the game itself lol. But I'm willing to give it a whirl as our @Animalwants some hardcore online action with me

Forza Horizon 3 is on the store for 19.99 so you can bet I started downloading it! Should be ready by Christmas! I'm already 20gb installed, even with my awful internet I don't think the extra 30gb over 24 hours is asking much. Also super tempted to get one of those ballin' controllers with my Christmas money to be in the same league as Aneres ;D I've just gotta decide if I'm gonna update my xbox Live gamertag before I do it, to match my new twitter and instagram handles. I've been rid of the mass number combination (josh64128) on most platforms for years now