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“Sugar is the most important thing in my life…”
The Switch market seems to be going strong. I am surprised to see the prices that some of the "confirmed" pre-orders are fetching. Early reviews in a nutshell, "you're going to fawn over Zelda and be left with nothing to play afterwards...for a long, long time".



The People's Republic of Clogher
Can't remember where I heard this but I think it sums up Nintendo - They're the last of the OG game developers who are still in the hardware business and are still run like a toy company. The forced rarity they place on their products is weird in this day and age.

They're in a tough spot with their hardware decision - They can't compete financially with Microsoft and Sony so have very much distanced themselves from the traditional console crowd. If the Switch is a failure I fully expect them to go the way of Sega and become solely a developer/publisher for other platforms.
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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan



I decided to go ahead and pick up an XBone S (in blue!) this morning. Have only played Sunset Overdrive so far. It has a sort of Saints Row IV vibe to it (which I liked). I pre-ordered the Deluxe edition of Mass Effect Andromeda (since that's the reason why I wanted to jump into the current generation of consoles in the first place), as well as...Vikings: Wolves of Midgard.

It's relevant to my interests, and I know if I don't pre-order it they won't get any copies in store. The guy behind the counter hadn't heard of it, but after I told him it was like a Diablo clone but with Vikings, he was interested as well haha.



After watching me play a mission in Sunset Overdrive where the player is accompanied by a robot dog that slaughters everything if you throw a cat doll in its general vicinity, my room mate wishes he could play that game instead of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (which he picked up on Friday and hasn't really gotten into).



Anyone invested in Star Citizen?
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The older I get, the more I understand Michael Douglas' character in "Falling Down"



there's a frog in my snake oil
Anyone invested in Star Citizen?
I tried a free weekend, but not ready to chuck cash at another big early access just yet. Definitely following with interest, but think it's safer to wait on a launch product. (Some history of over-promise in the game's DNA)

Latest dev diary was pretty meaty, especially the semi-crafted ice planet surface. Best just let it tick away til 2018 and see what the gameplay's actually like

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My sci-fi funds are also tied up in another odd 'early access' already - a lifetime pass in Elite. Which is why I celebrated / commiserated the start of their multicrew features with this...

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here



So, did anyone actually pick up the Switch? Any thoughts?

I didn't, but I'll be picking up Breath of the Wild for the Wii U... when I have the money to spend, that is.



The People's Republic of Clogher
For those who are interested, and I know TUS is counting the seconds, the PS4 4.5 firmware update is coming tomorrow!

I've decided to buy a PS4 Pro. I'm a mad, impetuous fool...



I had zero plans to buy the Switch (love Nintendo, but I don't buy many consoles), but man, the stuff I'm hearing about the new Zelda...I might have to. I gave up non-essential spending for Lent, so it won't be for awhile, but that's probably just as well.

I actually think it might end up being like the Wii, which I enjoyed, but didn't play for years and years or anything. But if the game's that good, well, that would go a long way towards justifying the cost. Twilight Princess was one of the more enjoyable gaming experiences I've ever had, and part of me does like the idea of getting sucked into a console game again (it's been forever; it's all been PC).



A system of cells interlinked
I have been running my PC sort of like a console since installing the new video card. I have the PC piped to my TV in the living room, and the games I am playing (The Witcher 3 and Eliteangerous) both work well with a controller, so i have the DS4 going in that regard. It's like a console, but with even newer graphics tech!
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“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” ― Thomas Sowell



there's a frog in my snake oil
Oo, talking of strange arcady-PC hybrids... (kinda )... the No Man's Sky crew just popped back into this dimension for a bit...



Another pleasantly giant freebie update . Did some cliff notes over here.



The People's Republic of Clogher
PC gaming has spoiled me in terms of framerates, but I'm spending 90% of my gaming time these days on a console. My Destiny PS4 can be sold for damn nearly as much as I paid for it, should I choose to, which would leave me with a significantly more powerful bit of hardware for Ł100 balance.

If I was gonna upgrade my PC this year I'd not see any change from Ł500...



The People's Republic of Clogher
Well, I've reserved my Pro - The next UK bound shipment lands on Tuesday so I can pick it up sometime then.

I was wavering, must admit, but the Digital Foundry test pushed me into it - The new Boost Mode delivers double percentage figures improvements in stable framerates pretty much across the board, which would make the console's more stuttery titles (Until Dawn, I'm looking at you!) more palatable.

In other 4.50 news, the USB hard drive feature is pretty darned good - Games are easily transferred between internal and external drives, with no noticeable loading time differences when playing on the external. Don't know if the mode is as good yet as the Xbone's, where performance on an external drive is frequently better than from the internal.

That might just point to the native Xbone hard drive being a slow-ass beast, however.



there's a frog in my snake oil
I follow game dev too much...

  • added provisional hat re-attachment support to test attaching removed hats to character heads (when the base of a hat collides with the a non-hat wearing characters head from a congruous angle)



I had zero plans to buy the Switch (love Nintendo, but I don't buy many consoles), but man, the stuff I'm hearing about the new Zelda...I might have to.
My room mate was also really excited for the new Zelda, but he got the Wii U version since there aren't any games for him to justify buying a Switch right now. He couldn't get into it at all (and by that I mean he actually started to hate it), and got rid of it earlier this evening while it was still in demand.



He does like certain open-world games. But his problems with Breath of the Wilds went beyond that. One of the biggest issues was that he felt penalized for trying to figure out how things worked on his own, due to how quickly weapons break. He felt like normal enemies were a chore and not rewarding enough to even try to fight, but the first boss he encountered was really the deal-breaker. He has no interest in Dark Souls-type gameplay, and the bosses are apparently like that (will kill you in two hits, requires learning patterns to succeed). He also felt that the puzzles he came across were unintuitive, and since the dungeons and their puzzles were one of the biggest draws to the other Zelda games, that was another nail in the coffin.

I occasionally peaked in to see what the game was like, and it didn't seem like a Zelda game to me at all. It came across, to me, like an imitation of other popular RPGs with a Zelda skin on it. Though that's just an initial impression since I never actually played it or watched for very long. If that's what you want, then you'll probably enjoy it though.



The People's Republic of Clogher
I don't have a dog in this fight (which is a horrifying phrase, when you think about it) but the lauding this new Zelda game is getting mystifies me. No doubt it's a fine example of the action adventure but there's nothing original in the mechanics and the performance seems downright bad, bordering on unacceptable, in places.

I guess a lot of it is down to people who have purchased an expensive bit of hardware only to find only one game worth playing at launch (apart from Snipperclips, natch). We've now also got a generation of reviewers, journalists and 'influencers' *feels sick* who've grown up with an NES being their first console.

Maybe I'm dispassionate because, in Europe, that generation saw a much more even tussle between Nintendo and Sega, with the Mega Drive winning out?



Given how much praise Breath of the Wild has been getting in the media, my room mate felt like there had to be something wrong with him, and he kept trying to figure out what he was missing that everyone else was enjoying. When I started making similar comments to how he felt about the game after just observing it for a little while, he felt a little more justified in his opinion at least.

When he got rid of Zelda last night, he picked up Horizon Zero Dawn instead, but didn't have time to play it because he wanted to watch the Telltale live stream, and then afterwards he was too tired to do anything other than install it. From the trailer, there seems to be some similarities between it and Breath of the Wild, but unlike the new Zelda, Horizon seems to have an interesting, new story to tell, and good world-building and lore really draws him into games. So it'll be interesting to see how he takes to that game.

Also, having a copy in the house means that I could eventually play it as well.