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I scoffed at friends who became obsessed with Eurotruck Simulator... It's escapism of a sort I suppose, so it probably won't work for wagon drivers. Much like I can't see pilots firing up Flight Simulator for kicks.

SnowRunner - Everything is wrong with this 'game'. Its endless fetch quests, its progression is glacial, it's buggy, its UI and mechanics are janky. Yet, I can't stop playing it... It is essentially you driving trucks in the most insanely bullshit terrain ever, delivering stuff. It's quite pretty I suppose, and it's certainly fair when it comes to buying and selling the trucks and parts in game (never changes the prices so you can sell everything if you screw up and buy stuff that's more appropriate). You'll definitely have to watch a few guides to get how the game mechanics work as there are loops to jump through to do stuff.

However it's a strangely zen experience to play. Put some music on and the album seemingly finishes in the blink of an eye. It's a time sink like few things I've ever experienced. The daft thing being that you hardly achieve anything in terms of progression. Man it's slow, but the whole thing is slow. In some terrain I found myself mashing the throttle in low range then putting a podcast on while it climbed itself out.

...and yet I keep playing it.

At this rate I can see me enjoying Death Stranding or Euro Truck Simulator.

The Witcher is deeply flawed... I'm sure I've had a mini-rant about this already.


Yup found it: https://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=14046.msg294526#msg294526

Devs - Written and directed by Alex Garland (Annihilation, Ex Machina). Proper thinky concept Sci-Fi. Thoroughly enjoyed it. As with such things sometimes you have to suspend disbelief, but it's very well done.

Played through A Plague Tale. It's an indie and there's a good 8hrs play there I'd say, maybe a little more. I certainly have no issues with it's length. Tonally it's bleak, but it' well written in terms of both story and chars. You'll get annoyed with chars, but then you're supposed to as the character your playing does

I highly recommend it. Put it this way, if this looks like your type of game, it probably is... If you see what I mean...

    PUPPIES!   

? Lady. The ballsiest muff ever.

My work phone ringtone used to be the opening to this at max volume.

I picked up Odyssey, but haven't played it yet. I've finally made the decision to play Witcher 3... I may be here a while.

AC2 and Black Flag (a pirate game in disguise of an AC game) are the best two of the lot.

Some Marshall logos. From what I remember when Luke mopped up all our valve pedals: there's a JCM 800, JTM 48, and Soldano Atomic 16 pre-amps (they have slight modifications to make them work as pedals), and a pair of Big Baby's which are our own thing. Only 4 of those ever made it out into the world, sound engineers in particular seem to love that one. Especially into a DI and then into the desk. That and the Baby Boobtube are easily my favourite valve effects that we made.

This makes me happy. Though we were never a company.

Alan, do you have any thoughts on how it compares with the others in the reboot of Tomb Raider?  I played the first one, expecting Tombs, and puzzles, and stuff like that.  Was disappointed overall - to me it seemed like a first person shooter with lots of 'press button now to dodge crashing airplane' built in.  Which is fine if that's what you want, but I was after puzzles and didn't get them.

Interested to know if they have swung back to more puzzles, or just more of the same shooter+cinematic style.

I'm with you on this. TR was an odd experience. It was trying to ape Uncharted, but ended up a bit more shoot-em-up than TR. She literally goes from scared teen to professional cold-blooded assassin in a blink of the eye too, which was a tad jarring.

IMO Rise of the Tomb Raider for me is when they got the balance right. I genuinely prefer this to Uncharted 3 and 4. Rise is one of my favourite games of it's kind.

Shadow for me feels like a DLC for Rise... It's just missing something I can't put my finger on.

This seems a good and nerdy video...

I did say I was considering it, not actually washing the car... Baby steps.