WackerJr

I can’t see them pulling out of the console race like this, so I expect that to be all hype. My prediction is like many others, to announce they’ll be publishing some games on other platforms. Possibly a revision to their current hardware, and an update to GamePass. Whatever the case, this is probably the most interest there’s been in an Xbox podcast!

It’s almost as if they have a movie or something similar coming out soon that would have Shadow playing a prominent part… 😁

Oh I haven’t started the 2nd Aussie one yet, but I certainly will! Despite my frustrations over some of the actions of UK contestants in the final episodes, it made for great television! 😁

I LOVE the Rumble, even if it’s let me down on too many occasions. I think Bayley is a strong guess. I can’t see anyone else winning it (Becky Lynch & Bianca seem too obvious) unless Sasha Banks / Mercedes Mone makes a surprise return! I’d love to see Mickie James enter again and get a decent showing. I agree about the Men’s. There aren’t a lot of contenders, but those they have are difficult to pick from. CM Punk seems a strong bet, but would they trust him to headline Wrestlemania when he hasn’t yet had a televised match since returning? Cody again is almost too obvious at this point. Drew is doing some fantastic character work, but he & Cody have both lost in their title matches. Gunther’s had one of the strongest bookings in WWE. After his recent good promo with Seth, is that WWE fooling us? Finally, could we see The Rock enter? He doesn’t need the Rumble to earn his shot though…. Tough to call, but that’s exciting! I’m guessing CM Punk but can’t wait to see this. Oh, and really hoping Kofi nails his spot this year!

The Netflix deal is huge! I agree with eyes on what happens to the WWE Network. I like it for the latest PLEs and access to some of the older ones. It’ll be interesting to see how Netflix handle them, whether they’re all saved or time-limited, whether they have access to any older stuff, etc. Rock vs Roman has been hyped as a theoretical for so long now, with Roman claiming to be ‘Head of the Table’ for so long and the most important member of the family. I’m excited if this finally happens, but after being out of the ring for so long I’m not sure how good the actual match would be. Roman’s style of match suits The Rock (slow and story-lead), but we’ll see. Of course, WWE could be baiting us all as it’s done so often in the past (take Survivor Series a couple years ago dedicated to celebrating The Rock, except there ended up being no appearance by the man himself…).

Sorry to join this with only one week left of the current series, we started watching it late, but at least it meant we could binge most of it! I’m enjoying this again, with enough slight changes from the other series to make it feel different. That funeral trial was dark! 😂 I’m interested to see whether the latest traitor does cause some trouble. I thought the traitors would be a shoe-in at this stage, as the faithful have spotted the signs of the traitors (eg., why was Harry not murdered when he was the obvious choice, earlier on when Paul survived when it was between him and Meg in the dungeon), but they’ve been so sporadic with their guesses that they don’t seem to have faith in each others’ suspicions! Ross hinting at the end that he wants revenge could spice up the finale!

That’s interesting to know. I was assuming they’d get destroyed by Nintendo’s lawyers taking them to town, but would then release all all-new version of the same game but with more original characters and succeed based on the hype that this original obtained. Whereas actually now this has given me hope that they’ll just get royally smacked and the game completely removed (at least as much as it can be now there are so many copies out in the wild).

I agree with the majority it seems. I prefer physical media still, although I’ve seen the positives to digital downloads over the past few years more and more. The subscription services still have so many potential flaws & issues for the future that it’s still a worry now dominantly they’re being used. Watching the speedrunning community tackle older games at Awesome Games Done Quick this week have reminded me that Other things subscription services would spoil the opportunity for games to be enjoyed in alternate ways in the future. Many of these games have to be played on their native consoles, often on cart but of course can be played using the digital version on the host console. Removing games from being played in the future removes these opportunities. Sorry, back to Sea of Stars discussion!

I missed the start, but good to the likes of F-Zero and Tears of the Kingdom in this years’ schedule. Looking forward to this as always.

Nice article & appreciation to those who impact your life (as well as keeping this site afloat). A quick Google search has told me the story of the Faceless Monkey and I’m sorry to hear about that, and pleased to hear that his family have reopened, and hope it continues. It looks like a great place with fun events and I wish there could’ve been a place like that up the road in Devon growing up (or nearby to me nowadays). Here’s to all those who keep our love for gaming thriving, and to you, Josh & the rest of the forum members for 2024!

Ok, so I’d forgotten the other game I completed last year before Tears of the Kingdom started taking up all of my gaming time! Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time (PS4) I was leant this by my sister-in-law so felt the need to play it, despite my less-than-stellar experience with the Crash Trilogy. Thankfully they did a great job of updating the gameplay and addressing many of the issues with the original titles, while still feeling like a Crash game. Better highlighting where you’re going to land, having the camera pan out a little further for those levels you run towards the camera, and forgoing the lives system (as you’ll still die a lot!) all make a dramatic difference! There’s more variety with more characters (even if I didn’t know some of them, having been introduced post-Crash 3) and gameplay styles and it looks lovely. There are bonuses for doing well in levels (dying few times, collecting apples, finding secret gems) although you can complete the game without getting them. These felt fairly rewarding until coming across some levels where I was never going to complete them dying so few times without investing a heavy amount of time to learn those levels. Then finding out that for full completion I’d need to do this for every level TWICE that wasn’t for me. I feel quite satisfied to have beaten the final boss and I’ve no urge to play through it again. Happy to have played it and feel Crash has improved, and I feel quite content to give this back to my sister-in-law.

Please let Nintendo make enough of these. Hopefully they’re anticipating a high demand for this (much larger than the number of people usually interested in Amiibo of course!)

The first game was really good, feeling chaotic but creative and flexible with its solutions. Glad it’s getting a sequel and looking forward to seeing whether they decide to simply expand and add more levels or add new concepts.

Thanks all for tonight, that was fun. The low player count meant I got my highest finish too!

I think I’m more excited that this opens up the possibility of more Rare games on NSO which I hoped for, but realistically didn’t think would happen. I haven’t played JFG for such a long time. I don’t remember having an issue with the controls, just an issue with accidentally decapitating the tribals I was supposed to be saving! Great music and difficult towards the end.

Now you mention it, it did bother me at first, especially where I try to record video at times and worried it was too hard to see what was actually happening. I quickly adapted though and it doesn’t bother my wife or daughter. I agree it must be to accommodate 4 simultaneous players and gives more opportunity for everyone to remain on screen, especially where the camera only follows player one. If there had been combat, or tight platforming then I think it would’ve bothered me more. As it happens, it’s quite generous with jumps and platforming, and the enemies are drawn to clearly show up against the backgrounds, so it hasn’t impacted gameplay for me. I think I know the answer then, but does it regularly zoom out a lot even when playing it with one player?

I’m currently playing through it with my wife and young daughter, and it’s probably the ideal game to play for us all together. We’re about 3/4 through and I agree with @Hero-of-Time’s assessment so far. It’s gotten a little repetitive for me and my wife, and I wish they’d made the different areas stand out from one another a lot more. I like the humour (in keeping with the recent Mickey short shows on Disney+ that have enough humour for grown-ups as well as children) and my daughter is really enjoying it. Oh, and a great inclusion is the ‘hug’ move, where two characters can choose to hug each other and this gives each player an extra temporary heart. In our household this has lead to many occasions where someone’s lost a heart and waits with their character arms outstretched ready for a hug, nobody noticing until one of us yells “hug meeeeeee!” 😂

That was a really fun evening. While I’m still disappointment (in the main) by the choice of tracks in the final wave, they’re definitely better in multiplayer! Still, one of my favourite moments is when a bunch of us all ended up just driving round the roundabout on Daisy Circuit, completely missing the actual exit! It doesn’t take a genius to work out how I finished in such a low placing! 😂 https://x.com/mike_wakely/status/1723459115387642045?s=46&t=u1D72kG-jusZXYg6nCGrTg

You make a good point about the Wii tracks, and this is even after Mario Kart Wii had over half of its tracks already in MK8DX before wave 9 (something I hadn’t even realised!). Your correction at the end there saddened me even more! 😂

Am I ungrateful? I’m excited by many of those new tracks, but I can’t help feel slightly deflated by two Tour tracks when there’s still quite a few tracks I would love to have seen. But that finishes the additional FORTY-EIGHT tracks! That’s an incredible feat and has increased the life-span of the game ten-fold! Suddenly I don’t think I should feel ungrateful anymore!

Has anyone heard when this is likely to drop on any of the streaming services without having to buy or rent it, in the UK? I haven't yet found anything beyond paying for it on Prime.

Crash Bandicoot: N-Sane Trilogy (PS4) I admit I'd never played any of the Crash Bandicoot series before this. As a fan of platform games I went in with high hopes for this and to see what all the fuss was about with one of the PS1's high-profiles series. Boy was I disappointed. It looks great and Vicarious Visions did a great job technically, updating the 32-bit polygons to make it look visually excellent. Sadly there wasn't much more they could do about the gameplay. I wasn't prepared for just how difficult the games were. My main frustration was because of why they were difficult, with you being unable to see hazards until it's too late or the camera angle making it incredibly tough to judge where Crash is landing, especially on the many small ledges with little margin for error. The levels where you run into or out of the screen have the camera just too close to the action, and there's a LOT of memorisation needed for where obstacles will appear. It's a shame, as there are some clever design moments here. For instance, there are times where they really play on the usual timings for when you'd initiate a jump. One example, is where you're waiting for a wall to raise up. We've been trained over the years to dash through it as soon as it raises, but here there are many levels where actually doing this will cause you to die because timing it that way will mean an enemy or obstacle will get you. Rather you have to know this ahead of time, and instead dash past the wall just before it comes back down again. So the usual pattern for me was that I'd die, I'd learn, I'd likely die on the next attempt, and repeat until I got past the obstacles, inevitably losing all of my lives before reaching the end of the level and doing it all again! Crash 2 and 3 are much better, introducing new moves (even if it doesn't tell you about all of the vital techniques) such as the double jump to make things easier. They are still tough though, with their fair share of frustrating rather than difficult levels. I just don't get the love for Crash, or at least the first few games. There are some really clever bits of level design within the games, but I found myself getting way too frustrated throughout to properly appreciate and enjoy it.

Wow it really does seem like an age since we had similar consoles having completely unique takes on the same game. I personally don't miss it, after all it usually transpired that someone felt as though they'd missed out with one version being better than the other. The likes of Aladdin, Batman and Jurassic Park were all very different for example. Nowadays though, we have the likes of Mortal Kombat 1 where the same games are released but are easily compared and it can become VERY evident where one console has the inferior version, so there's still much to be said for releasing different takes on a game! Not to go diverge too much though. Great job @Cube it's really interesting reading up on the many different games in a series, and I certainly didn't realise the TWINE differences back in the day.

Ahh Conker, in those innocent happy-go-lucky days before he discovered alcohol..... He was so much more naive back then. I'd love to see this on NSO, although I'd expect to see the Banjo-Kazooie GBA game before this, which was also a much better game!

I saw this and the other great suggestions made by others and I just assumed there would be plenty of games where this happens, due to how exciting and surprising it would be. I've really struggled to think of any other examples though! The closest I could think of was Eternal Darkness, but in that one: The other game was Donkey Kong Jr, but then facing Mario wasn't exactly a surprise, considering he was advertised as the nemesis from the outset.