feltmonkey

I do remember the cut scene Gar is talking about, but I don't remember seeing another one after that. I do think the cut-scenes in the game are really well-done. They are something that Blizzard are really good at. The one at the start of the game with the band of adventurers trying to get to some loot is spectacular. After the scene with the cart, the game is not cutscene-heavy, but it is grim. It's a bit of a horror game, really. Some of the quests are pretty nasty, or sometimes pretty sad. I do take issue with the idea that it is supposed to be an exciting action game, though. It's not exciting. It's relaxing. It's a trance game. Press A, A, X, X, X, X, loot, run to next group, press A, A, X, X, X, X, loot… The only deviations from this are when you press the map button and realise that you're heading in slightly the wrong direction and adjust your trajectory accordingly.

Bit of a late start to the month, I admit. I've had a month of bouncing from one thing to the next.

Play
Jedi Survivor - I'm still playing through this. I'm currently getting distracted by sidequests. I think it might be one of the very best soulslike games.

Spiderman Remastered - I have dipped in and out of this, playing it on the ROG Ally. It's throwaway in a good way. It has a nice breezy atmosphere and seems like something you can just drop into without needing to really engage your brain too much. The traversal is the best thing about the game.

Final Fantasy 7 - I've modded up the PC version using something called 7th Heaven, adding in mods that do some really cool visual fixes and quality of life improvements. To my eyes this is the best way to play the original FF7, so I might finally get past the first disk this time.

Diablo 4 - I've never played a Diablo game before. Well, that's not true - I've never played a game in the Diablo series before. I've played Diablo games, such as Grim Dawn and Torchlight 2. Diablo 4 seems to be hated by gamerz, but I'm enjoying it a lot. It's incredibly slick and polished. The pad controls are perfectly-implemented, so again it is a perfect match for the ROG Ally. It has this whole appeal of being a kind of mindless exercise in erasing enemies and repeatedly doing the moves you've picked for your character, collecting loot and xp, and ticking off areas as you explore them. It's a very relaxing, frictionless method of delivering tiny hits of seratonin. It's like eating Haribo.

Splatoon - Yep, the first one. Obviously I'm not playing this now, but I played it a lot up until the servers got shut down, for a very specific reason. My son is autistic and prone to bouts of anxiety and obsessive behaviour, and Splatoon is one of his minor special interests. He knew the servers were going to get shut down, and a few weeks before they did he started to panic that he hadn't unlocked all the weapons. We calculated how many Splatoon coins he would need, and it was half a million. You get somewhere between 100-2000 coins per online match. He was really upset and convinced that it was impossible, he'd never get all the weapons because this was the last chance to do it, etc. So I decided to use it as a way of showing him that if you put your mind to it and put the work in, you can achieve things you thought impossible. And I did it. As luck would have it, I had a gap between commissions, so I played for an hour or so every day, and I got pretty darn good at Splatoon. By the end, I was consistently the player who scored the most ground coverage (the thing that actually wins you the game) and often the one with the most splats too. My team usually won, which was helpful as you get a 2x modifier to the number of coins you get. I persuaded my son to join in and we climbed the mountain together. We had the coins we needed with about a week to spare. We ceremoniously unlocked all the weapons. He turned the Switch off accidentally and panicked that he had lost all the weapons. We turned it back on and they were still there. He played Splatoon with all the weapons for about half an hour total before the servers got shut down. The end.

Want
To be able to just move my arms quicker, in order to paint the huge army I'm currently working on faster.

Bin
A sore throat I've had for what feels like months.

I read that as cavalcade gizzards.

I'm really sorry to read about you having a tough time, Cav. As you know, I was aware of some of it but not everything. It sounds horrendous, and it's really admirable that you still find time to help the small Scottish dogs.

I'm also really embarrased that in all the time you've lived in Aberystwyth I never managed to visit you once. That speaks volumes about how organised I am.

Miles Morales is under £20 on CD Keys.