Play
Mobile phone games, mostly – Isle of Arrows and Honkai: Star Rail.
The kid and I finished Portal on the Xbox the other week, and he's harrassed me enough that I started a Portal 2 playthrough on PC. He made it through most of the regular test chambers in the first one himself, but keyboard-and-mouse is a bit too much so this is a spectator game for him.
I also threw Overlord on to check the disc (and the suitability of content for playing around a 7yo); I'm not sure it's gonna work as a family game, which is disappointing as I think he'd get a kick out of sending the minions around to wreck up the place.
Want
A holiday. We're off to my parents for a couple of weeks over the summer, so I'm hoping to totally switch off for at least part of that.
Bin
I would say Twitter, but it looks like Elon Musk is way ahead of me on that front.
Overlord has some gross monsters and at least one bit where you get to choose your sexy demon wife. That's about it though. I guess your goblins are quite violent…
Play
Tears of the Kingdom - I'm having a great time with this. Still haven't figured out how to build vehicles I can steer though.
Want
I'm good. I'm about to got to France for a few weeks and I'm not taking any games or even the controller for my phone. I'm going to catch up on 2000ad and read some books. I've got The Elusive Shift, Monster of the Weak and Wingspan of Severed Hands ready to go.
Play
Continuing with Spider-Man Miles Morales. It's very good, but I'm a bit Spider-Manned out, so hopefully I'll get it finished before long and cleanse the palette with some more Horizon Forbidden West, and…
Want
Stray Gods. I didn't think the demo for this was particularly strong (presumably a side effect of having to choose songs from the start of the game and not give too much away), but I'm sold enough on the concept that I'd have preordered it already if the PlayStation Store would let me.
Farther off, AC Mirage, Star Wars Outlaws, FFVII Rebirth**… and a bunch of "maybe"s, depending on how they look closer to the time.
Bin
As mentioned elsewhere, Final Fantasy Remake is as done as it's going to get.
My GamePass PC subscription, which I maintained for 18 months on Microsoft Rewards points after a £1 free trial, has lapsed today (Fs in chat). I just wasn't using it, especially since I got the PS5, and gaining having to remember to jump through all the silly little hoops every day to accumulate the points to convert it was just getting draining.
I continue to be vaguely amused by the slow-motion clown-car implosion of Twitter, but social media generally is getting to be a bit much effort. 60% or more of what I see on basically any platform is promoted advertising shite (on Facebook it's even worse, all I fucking see on there any more is woodworking videos and bakery tutorials, for some reason!?). The Fediverse seems better on that score (for now?), but it seems to require more effort engaging with it to find people and interesting conversations, so… honestly, I'm half-tempted to just bin the lot (for personal use, at least).
Play
Tears of the Kingdom. About 80 hours in now, still one dungeon to go, still feel like I've just started. Astounding considering I spent 100 hours on Breath of the Wild, and this is essentially set in the same world.
LotRO. Made it out of Moria, currently fannying around with elves in Lothlorien.
Wingspan. The PC version of this is great, and it's lovely having a computer work out all of the turn actions for you.
Broken Sword 5. This is ropey, but I had a hankering for some old-school point and click.
Want
Starfield, Fable (lol), that new 2D Mario.
Bin
London. Moved back to Yorkshire after 12 years. I never became jaded with London like most people seem to – it's clearly the best city in the world – but it's nice being around people who pronounce grass properly.
Although my first pint back up North was £6.80, so that bullshit has clearly travelled beyond London.
I am like 99 percent sure London isn't even the best city in South East England, let alone the world.
Crazy talk.
Add Spider-Man Miles Morales to Bin. It was really good, and there's a ton of side content and map icons I could go back and do… but I won't. Hopefully I remember how to play Horizon.
I am like 99 percent sure London isn't even the best city in South East England, let alone the world.
Crazy talk.
"Catch the train to London, stopping at Rejection, Disappointment, Backstabbing Central and Shattered Dreams Parkway.”
Play
Judgment. I thought this spin-off from the Yakuza series would be a shorter side-story between main series instalments, maybe because it's the first game in a long while to focus on a single main character and a single city. In actual fact it's absolutely enormous in the way these games always are, with loads of distractions and a twisty-turny main plot that's shaping up to be one of the best in the series. New lead Yagami is a bit savvier than Kiryu, and there's a real focus on fleshing out the grotty underlife of Kamurocho, with many more of the city's bars and shops coming into play. I really like this, I mean I like all these games but this is a lot better than I was expecting it to be.
Want
Starfield is starting to look interesting. I fear it will fall into the No Man's Sky trap of having way too much stuff and too little reason to interact with it, but I'm intrigued to see where it goes.
The boy is looking forward to Cities Skylines II.
I still need to find time to try Tears of the Kingdom. That won't take long to get through, right?
Bin
Horrible life stuff. My Dad died unexpectedly at the start of last month and the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of shock, grief and funeral arrangements. We had the funeral yesterday and it actually went really well, I'm starting to see why people say the whole process is cathartic. I now need to get everything else back on track, not least the new job I started just before all this stuff elbowed everything else out of the way. Stress levels still running at 99/100 pretty much all day every day.
That's horrible Gar, sorry for your loss.
Play
Metroid Prime Remaster - This is so very good, I didn't play it last night due to work and was actually annoyed about that. There is so much about it I don't remember or have completely forgotten.
Super Smash Ultimate - Still really enjoying this and play a couple of games each night prior to the little ones' bed time. I need to get her coached up though as she still can't grasp the jumping/flying mechanic to stay on the maps (no idea what it's actually called) but is otherwise solid at the game.
Far Cry 5 Finally near the end of this after an extremely long playthrough that started in August 21 from the looks of my first achievement. I've dipped in and out of this and decided to come back to it as I knew I was presumably close to the end, although I have only just discovered the Fishing in this is actually pretty decent as a side distraction which has caused me to lose focus.
Want
More Xbox 360s for work, if you are out there in Sheffield Charity Shops, I will find you, and I will buy you…
Going to make a return to making and uploading videos to YouTube. I get it's a dying format that needs LESS content, but I previously started a series where I play through old football management sims and nerd out and make crap gags, and have decided I need to commit and actually do it as I only made one episode before, but it's just actually something I want to do and know I need that in life.
Bin
Working - am two and a bit weeks from the summer holidays and desperately need them. It's been a terrible couple of months at my work and I just need some time away.
Sorry to hear that Gar. 😞
Sorry for your loss, Gar.
Thanks for the kind wishes, everyone.
In other news - I've started Tears of the Kingdom!
So far it is very much Breath of the Wild DLC (Belch of the Wild?), with more interesting but also more fiddly powers to play around with. I managed to screw up Tutorial Island by essentially going round it in the wrong direction, so by the time I found things like the cooking tutorial I'd already had to work stuff out for myself ages before. Some of the Zonai stuff confuses me a bit still so either I've missed a tutorial or it'll all make sense in the end.
I did spend absolutely ages making axes and chopping down trees and strapping big mechanical fans to bits of wood and essentially making a totally over-engineered raft though so it is definitely doing something right.
It looks a bit rough, going back to the Switch always takes some adjusting to. This thing felt underpowered in 2016, in 2023 it's basically a relic. I'll adjust to it as long as I don't play anything on the Xbox for the foreseeable future.
Made it down to Hyrule proper though so just sort of ambling around now, it's fun although I'm still not sure I really want a Zelda game's principal quality to be "aimless plodding". I'm sure at some point I will get to witness why everyone thinks this is the best thing ever - but I am having fun.
Not playing anything particularly right now because Pikmin 4 is out on Friday. Already played it a load for work, but looking forward to enjoying it on my own time.
Play
Tears of the Kingdom - I'm having a great time with this. Still haven't figured out how to build vehicles I can steer though.
Want
I'm good. I'm about to got to France for a few weeks and I'm not taking any games or even the controller for my phone. I'm going to catch up on 2000ad and read some books. I've got The Elusive Shift, Monster of the Weak and Wingspan of Severed Hands ready to go.
Two weeks on and this has been a great success. I have read about 30 issues of 2000ad and The Wingspan of Severed Hands and a bunch of RPG stuff. I've even done some touristy stuff.
I am really missing Zelda though.
Additional PLAY:
AEW Fight Forever - Folks at work very kindly got me this for my birthday, so I started playing it today. It's janky as hell (that seems to be across the board, though I have the Switch version), and everything surrounding the in-ring action is downright poor. But the actual wrestling? It's actually great fun in an old-school No Mercy way. Everything flows, you've got lots of options, it feels chunky and fast, and the general feel is nice. It's absolutely a 'pick it up when it's cheap' game and it really needs some modern updates given the roster is already massively outdated but it definitely delivers what it promised. Good clean stupid punchy man fun.
Additional PLAY:
Pikmin 4 - It's wonderful and lovely. 
A couple of updates:
Tears of the Kingdom - it's the Crackdown 2 of Zelda games. In all honesty I am finding it rather boring.
The Last of Us Part 2 - it works weirdly well playing this after watching the TV show: it feels at times like someone's made the second season of the show but now it's interactive. The game characters are blander than their TV counterparts - Game Ellie in particular misses the spikiness that Bella Ramsay brought to the role, and very obviously has a middle-aged woman's voice - but it's surprisingly easy to adjust.
The game itself looks unbelievably good, even running on a PS4 Pro rather than a PS5, and it's instantly compelling. In fact I don't think we talk enough about how relentlessly bleak this is - especially given that it's the last major first-party PS4 exclusive, from a studio best known for snappy Indiana Jones knock-offs - it's really quite the uncompromising thing from the off and I'm led to believe it gets more intense as it goes on. I'm interested to see how this one goes.
It gets fucking grim.
I think I've said before that I have never wanted to do anything in any game less than I wanted to do the last encounter in TLoU2. I was sitting on my own in the dark at about 1am, literally begging the game to let me stop.
It's so good.
EDIT: Because I think it's worth mentioning, as dark as it gets, there are also some moments of hope and optimism. As much as it's a story about vengeance and hate and rage, it's also about redemption and self-realisation.
Additional PLAY:
Antstream Arcade - Not sure how I didn't know this existed until fairly recently, but it looks like a legal emulation platform has been added to the Xbox store (previously, it was PC and mobile only). I've had a look over the game list and honestly, even though I have plenty of emulation options, I'm going to grab this with both hands just to play a bunch of games I've missed playing for years. All of the Bitmap Bros stuff alone, plus all of the Metal Slug games and a bunch of other titles I love (Smash TV and Total Carnage!) has me sold on it. Gimme please.
I have been playing emulators too!
Dolphin emulator runs beautifully on my Android (Pixel 6a I think). It runs both Gamecube and Wii games and so far they have all been running better than I remember them running on my TV.
I didn't have my controller while I was in France so I was looking for something which worked well with touchscreen controls. Both Pikmin and Xenoblade Chronicles were surprisingly playable. I played a bit of Skies of Arcadia but it was a little too fiddly. I ended up playing Mario Golf on a GBA emulator though. It's still great.
When I got home and back to my bluetooth controller I loaded up Ikaruga which is still incredible and it works really well in longscreen mode and on the PPSSPP emulator I have gotten totally hooked on Gripshift again - still some of the best level design I have ever seen.
I have got as far as finding the Master Sword in Tears.
I meant I was in tears.
That's the only failing of TotK for me, the completely freeform story. I found the Master Sword fairly early on and had zero clue what was going on. It would have been much more impactful if the story cutscenes unlocked chronologically, very odd decision to have each cutscene fixed to a certain puddle.
It would have been much more impactful if the story cutscenes unlocked chronologically, very odd decision to have each cutscene fixed to a certain puddle.
I can’t decide if I want that to be a typo or not.
