PWB: March

Cheers. I will have a look into that then, I don't actually have GPu currently, I had been holding out to hopefully get the Xbox Series X deal that is the monthly combo thing, but not sure that is returning.

If you mean the Xbox All Access, that's definitely still available, from either Smyths or GAME. Smyths seem to get stock in more regularly, and are generally less scummy as an organisation, so I'd probably go with them:

https://www.smythstoys.com/uk/en-gb/shop-xaa

If you don't have any Xbox subscriptions currently, there's an even cheaper way of getting GPU. When you subscribe to any amount of GPU they convert your remaining Xbox Live Gold to GPU at a ratio of 1:1. And your first month of GPU is a quid.

So buy 3 years of Live Gold (find a cheap code site, it cost me about 100 quid), then activate your month of GPU. You'll have GPU until 2024, all for about 100 quid.

Yeah, definitely do what MPH said first. My thing is only good for folk who already have GPU. His is better if you don't. :)

You can only stack a max of three years, I think. So don't get greedy.

Still having a blast in Nioh 2. Wouldn't be enjoying it nearly as much if it wasn't for the Fists weapon style I got in the season pass. Unlocking many spinny kick combos and Akira Yuki style elbow counters (The main character from Virtua Fighter, just picture Ryo from Shenmue and you're sorta there). It's sad my Yokai Hunter must kill humans but nothing will stand in the way of my Divine Mission so if I have to roundhouse kick a Samurai's head off I will, I also carry a big ass Odachi with me and nothing has forced me to draw it yet, I fear the consequences should I ever do so, may very will rend heaven and earth in one swing. (Fuck the Kurama Tengu!!!!)

Also bought Ace Combat in a sale so will be trying that later, been probably over a decade since my last Ace Combat game.

EDIT - I'm still thinking about 13 Sentinels too. I got the Platinum and still want to go back for the extra post game mech maps. :thinking:

the extra post game mech maps

There are ten thousand of them.

I'm not sure that'll stop him.

He'll have em finished by tomorrow night, I'm sure.

If you mean the Xbox All Access, that's definitely still available, from either Smyths or GAME. Smyths seem to get stock in more regularly, and are generally less scummy as an organisation, so I'd probably go with them:

https://www.smythstoys.com/uk/en-gb/shop-xaa

Cheers - No surprise I couldn't find it then as been searching for the wrong thing as didn't know that is what is was called! Will have a look to see if that has an impact on credit then, as hopefully buying a house this year now with the recent news, so don't want to impact that due to gaming.

There are ten thousand of them.

What the fuck….

If you do one every night you'll be finished in just 30 years.

Had never heard of 13 sentials but it looks really good what I have seen, slightly put off by the amount of reading in the game, as I like to game to get away from reading things. But will look to try this at some stage most likely.

Additional PLAY:

Queen: Rock Tour - It's a legitimately licensed Queen Rock Band-style game on mobile that's £3. I'll take that.

The Legend of Bum-bo - Had this on my Steam wishlist for ages, but not pulled the trigger due to it being a little half-baked at launch (plus me never using Steam). It got a big update yesterday though, along with new content, so I figured dropping a fiver on it was fine. Now I just need to be bothered to actually play games on my laptop… there's no sign of the previously promised Switch version anywhere.

Had never heard of 13 sentials but it looks really good what I have seen, slightly put off by the amount of reading in the game, as I like to game to get away from reading things.

It is fully voiced with an English dub, if that helps – though I can't speak to the quality of it as I stuck with the Japanese.

I thought the dub was great.

I mean I am currently playing the Shenmue series as I have said, so sure the dub is light years ahead of that!

"Sorry I am too tired now, ask someone else."

Started Tales of Eternia, the Tales playthrough continues now that I know Tales of Arse is actually still coming out!!!!

So far, wow, my first fully 2D Tales game, it feels weird. So far, between the sprites and voice acting the game has way more character than I expected….that's all I can say so far! I still need to beat Ys: Memories of Celceta really but sorta' consider me locked in on the next Tales game?!?

Tales of Arse

Part of me hopes this is a typo…

What the man enjoys in his own home is his business.

Hooray for games you thought might be cool but are actually even better than you thought:

Tales of Eternia: played two of the three characters so far and Farrah, the martial arts girl is really fun to play even with limited moves atm. It's 2D sicescrolling but it's still a Tales so I'm chaining punches and kicks into her machinegun punch Artes or her Iron Palm skills. You can not only run through enemies to get through to the backline and/or escape and set up pincer strats you can jump really high so using her to do a high flying kick feels like Street Fighter 2 Turbo or something. Looks like it's going to be a highly respectable game, let alone Tales game.

Ace Combat 7 is way more fun than I expected so far too, I expected pretty clouds, bright blue skies and nice, shiny planes that blow up at the end of the wispy white lines of a missile (YOU COULD SAY, THE TRAILS IN THE SKY EH?????). Press button, blow up plane. But there's a hilarious drama filled story far that had one of my team mates say "A Predator…the weak get eaten.." really dramatically and then get super panicky and get killed when a craft came in to drop in drones that resembled the mass produced Evas from Neon Genesis. There's been cutscenes with this girl in Prison who hasn't entered the story properly yet but she's been harping on about breaking free or something. I've just been framed for something I didn't do so I'm excited to see what happens next…I'm just saying it's weird.

Gameplay wise it's a lot of fun, I dunno' how they made dogfighting so fun but they did, maybe the relative simplicity of finally nailing an enemy jet/drone or managing to down one by leading the shots of your machinegun? You'll also be doing air to ground bombing runs. There's an errr 'aircraft tree' where you spend points on upgrades and new jets that mix up your approach somewhat. Really good game so far.

New Want

When you are done with Elden Ring can I pls has a Next Gen Armoured Core? Thanks.

Ace Combat 7

I've played a few very old Ace Combat games in the past, has it always been a Metal Gear game?

Mihaly Dumitru Margareta Corneliu Leopold Blanca Karol Aeon Ignatius Raphael Maria Niketas A. Shilage (Very Silly)

I think my favourite thing about that, actually, is that his real name apparently includes just the letter A.

Ace Combat 7 is way more fun than I expected so far too, I expected pretty clouds, bright blue skies and nice, shiny planes that blow up at the end of the wispy white lines of a missile (YOU COULD SAY, THE TRAILS IN THE SKY EH?????). Press button, blow up plane.

I really want to play this but I tried it and couldn't get into it at all. Which control option did you use? I went for Advanced because it looked like it would be similar to other flight-based games I'd played but I just ended up doing loop the loops miles from any other plane. Then I crashed and it put me all the way back to the start of the mission. What am I doing wrong?

Nope, that sounds like Ace Combat

It's also why I haven't gone back to Star Wars: Squadrons. Endless turning and all you're trying to do is line up a cursor with a target. Not my idea of fun.

I don't think flight combat games have ever managed to make a satisfying gameplay loop out of realistic positioning. Elite Dangerous is my biggest recent frame of reference for this, which is also largely about flying in vast arcs trying to find an angle to get three shots off on your opponent as you joust past each other.

Not to say that it isn't satisfying when you manage to get a sustained barrage on a tricky opponent, but are there any games in this space that have been fun to play? Or does high-speed movement in three axes in a wide 3D space just give too many options for your enemies?

I remember trying to play Frontier: Elite II years ago, which took the Elite flight model and added realistic physics to it. Every encounter just ended up with two ships whizzing past each other repeatedly while trying desperately to decelerate. Very clever; no fun whatsoever.

At least Elite Dangerous reverts to a more arcadey type of flight model. I actually find it really fun to play when you're just pootling around planets and space stations, but combat is just awfully intimidating. Like most games of this sort, I end up getting shot and I don't really know why or where from, let alone what I should have done about it.

I think that's just a representation of aerial dogfighting, or at least how it's portrayed in other media because dogfights are now pretty rare.

Crimson Skies did it well from what I recall.

But to do it well isn't to keep doing massive arcs, you're, really, wanting to use less acceleration with more rolls and banking to get your target in your sights. Let them pull away a little and give yourself more "space" to focus on your target. It's not as satisfying as shooting down a craft and flying through the explosion though.

I end up getting shot and I don't really know why or where from, let alone what I should have done about it.

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot you can do to avoid being shot to ribbons in Elite that doesn't boil down to "grind for credits, n00b". You can get better shields, better armour, better defensive modules (chaff, PDCs, etc), but by and large in my experience it's mostly about having a ship that can just take a kicking.

The only flight game I ever remember enjoying was Starlancer on the Dreamcast. I bet if I went back to it now, it'd be shit.

The last flight simulator I really enjoyed was Colony Wars on the PS1.

Actually Heatseeker on PS2 was pretty good too. It was like Burnout in the sky.

I'm on the advanced controls but I started off with the simple ones, the advanced controls give you more…control but they are very disorientating at first and for a while(I still wobble a bit). I also feel like I'm somewhat actually flying a jet now even if I'm still pulling off moves that are probably impossible to do in real life. But if the other controls make you actually enjoy the game I don't think you'll have any issue using them. The only real' hard' thing to do here is evading missiles but that's not too bad either.

I think the simplicity of the gameplay loop is what makes it so good, it's just really satisfying to blow things out of the sky, especially if you fire off 8 locked on missiles at once or something. And they've had a good, decent mix of missions so far, the last one had me assaulting a base and having to get enough points to pass it. It was pretty tough! I used a setup where I had really long range surface-to-air missiles and could 'snipe' SAM launchers and anti airguns. As with blowing things out the sky, slowly swooping in your death from above on ground targets with a machine gun strafe also feels great.

but are there any games in this space that have been fun to play? Or does high-speed movement in three axes in a wide 3D space just give too many options for your enemies?

You're still going to do 720 degree spin turns on the spot to keep up super agile AI Drones here. So this game probably doesn't do anything Elite doesn't do T_T

I really like Squadrons, it's got just the right arcade/sim balance for me. In Fleet Battles, at least; dogfight can fuck off.

I don't think flight combat games have ever managed to make a satisfying gameplay loop out of realistic positioning. Elite Dangerous is my biggest recent frame of reference for this, which is also largely about flying in vast arcs trying to find an angle to get three shots off on your opponent as you joust past each other.

Not to say that it isn't satisfying when you manage to get a sustained barrage on a tricky opponent, but are there any games in this space that have been fun to play? Or does high-speed movement in three axes in a wide 3D space just give too many options for your enemies?

There was the Ace Combat game a while back that tried the first genuinely new thing I'd seen in the sphere (with that sort of Top Gun esque view where it moves into a dogfighting chase cam on rails) - that was interesting. Sort of aircraft combat porn, with fluids and shrapnel spewing all over the place as you flew between sky scrapers….

But, one thing I would say is that these sorts of games are vastly improved in VR or if you can get comfortable with auto headlock on target (and the canopy gives good directional indicators). It's then less about turning battles and more about visualising the fight in 3D and using manoeuvres to predict where your opponent is going to be - like real fighter pilots have to do (or did have to do before you could fire a missile from 70 miles away).

Additional PLAY:

Flinthook - Yesterday's announcement of a new TMNT game from Tribute Games has sent me back to their last game. It's awesome. Fast-paced roguelike with plenty of strategy and skill. Right up my alley. Mercenary Kings was awesome too, I never finished that… will have to go back to it on my Vita at some point.

Memories of Celceta has one of the worst endings I've ever seen in a game, I'll spoil it, but there's really nothing to spoil and that's my entire issue, literally 'and so Adol peaced out, bye'.

And so I finish another Ys game, I really don't want to play another party based Ys game after VIII and this so I won't be buying Ys IX anytime soon, as absurdly fun as the combat was in the demo. Despite that awful ending it's still a good game but man, I'm really chomping at the bit to play the older solo Adol games now, I can continue the other two routes in Ys Origin or buy Ys I and II…or Oath in Felghana. I really shouldn't buy anything now I've started Tales of Eternia….

EDIT: bought Ys I and II Chronicles via the magic PSP store gateway on my phone, not sorry.

Bad endings, huh? Lemme tell you about Coteries of New York sometime.

Ys had a rough start but I'm enjoying it a lot more now, it took a while to get used to bump combat (have I posted this before? I forgot sorry)

but man, when you get the hang of it, there's something so pure about the simplicity, and the effects of Adol cutting them as he drags them across the floor until they fall apart into a blood splatter is actually pretty satisfying. I was having trouble lining up with the analog but the d-pad made it much easier'

It's such a shame it's so obtuse you need a guide (I can see this being a very comfy replay though) and it's quite rough at the start, enemies can range from super tough to managable in one level up (I think the cap is Level 10, so even one is significant) and the first boss felt masterfully crafted to attempt to mke you never want to play the game again, but once I got through tht it was okay though the Shrine dungeon is a bit of an ass.

Additional BUY:

Sinden Lightguns - I bought a couple of these off Indiegogo, after reading an article online about them (well, it was mainly moaning that lightgun games aren't a thing any more, but it did talk about these too). They're lightguns, but they work with modern TVs through a whole bunch of technological magic that doesn't require sensors or other external setup. Just a bit of software and the right emulation, and you're off to the races.

Given my, er, history with lightgun games, I couldn't really resist. They'll be shipped in May, so that should be interested.

Here's a look at them in action:

Beat Ys I and it really is a short game, came in at 5 and half hours for me and after how long Ys VIII was I'm okay with this. I really want to say this was a perfect little RPG but with how obtuse it is and difficult some of the boss fights are it's hard to recommend unless people are willing to have a guide on hand at all times. If you ignore that, I think the game itself is actually really neat

Play
Cricket19 - This is probably not going to appeal to anyone else apart from me, but it's actually a really quite good little cricket game. Batting is perhaps a bit easy, but bowling feels pretty decent. Actual real-world tactics like setting traps for batsmen actually work, so you can bowl three outswingers then swing one in at a batsman's pads, and if you get it right you might get him (or her - this game gives equal weight to the women's game, which is brilliant) out. It has an excellent career mode where you create a player and can choose to only control their actions in the match, so when your player isn't batting or bowling, the game plays itself and time advances. Cricket lends itself really well to this. You can give your player a nickname for the commentators to say, such as Big Cheese or Super Cat. The commentary is actually one of my favorite things about the game. It's not that it's good exactly, it often says things that are bewilderingly out of context, but one of the commentators is Michael Slater, who gets called "Slats" by the co-commentators. One of them says "Morning, Slats" every time she comes on, and her accent makes it sound like she's saying "Morning, Sluts" which to my mind is an amusingly aggressive way to address the cricket-viewing public.

Ambient Guitar - Over lockdown, through having too much time and access to ebay, I have accumulated a collection of cheap second-hand guitar pedals. They're all clones and chinese mass-produced tat, brands like Joyo, Caline, Cuvave, etc. They sound cool though, guitar pedals are one of those things where the increase in quality between the knock-offs and the boutique stuff doesn't seem to justify the tenfold price increase, and it's usually possible to get a good sound out of the cheap stuff if you twiddle the knobs enough. I speak from a position of ignorance of what the actual expensive gear is like, of course, but my Joyo US Dream sounds great - perhaps not exactly like the Suhr Riot it's cloned from, but I got it for £10 and it makes a cool sound. I haven't had a lot of time to play guitar over the last few weeks, but when I do I like to chain a few pedals and make weird drones. It saves having to actually be able to play, so it's very convenient. Enough people do this now for it to have become an actual genre. I suspect that a lot of it's exponents are just twanging a string and turning on a string of delay and reverb pedals (which is all The Edge from U2 does as well) but none of us are going to admit it on youtube.

Want
To go swimming.
To finish my massive painting commission without it all going wrong (I teeter on the edge of this constantly.)

Bin
Our Government's shameless commitment to corruption.

I should mention I've been dabbling with Rocksmith 2014 on Steam.

Charly and the kids got me a bass guitar for Christmas but since then I've only managed about 8 hours on Rocksmith and nothing away from it, this week I've begun to do some exercises (well, a exercise) I found on YouTube to try and help with me being able to navigate the fret board properly and to use two fingers to pluck. I have some picks but it feels a little alien.

I really like Rocksmith. It's very good for when you want to learn a song and play along with it. I have no idea if it's any good for actually learning an instrument from scratch. I imagine it's great. Do remember to prioritise the feedback from your ears over the feedback the game gives you though. It isn't perfect - it gives you credit for notes you've fudged, and sometimes doesn't register notes you have hit. You can skip over sections that require a specific strum-pattern to sound right just by thrashing the chords as fast as you can.

Utilise the Riff Repeater. Learning songs in sections is how people tend to learn songs. I personally find it more useful to turn the difficulty up to 100% and lower the speed, because otherwise the notes that are missing in the lower difficulties just confuse me. As a total beginner that might not work for you.

Does the game keep telling you that your volume is too low when you're playing on bass, by the way? It did with me. If so, you can fix this by finding the Real-time cable amongst the microphones listed in your sound settings on Windows and turning it up.

Incidentally, the game can't seem to handle Smashing Pumpkins' over the top fuzz sound, and the songs off Siamese Dream included in the game sound pretty much broken when you play the guitar parts, like the speakers are blown.

@feltmonkey
I do a similar thing to you, but using a generative ambient bit of equipment (called the NDLR) and a series of pedals like the Strymon Timeline and Big Sky to create evolving soundscape things for no other purpose than escapism. It feels a bit like ASMR for GenX.

I have no other Play to report other than probably the greatest 2 moments of my gaming life (hell, fuck it, life in general, and I include the birth of my children and PhD in that) was finally getting a pair of Aces in Valorant.

An Ace is essentially killing all the members of the enemy team (5 people). You'd have thought this was easy, right? But no. Like CS:GO Valorant is technical, taxing, high skill and brutal. In our playgroup there are a couple of us who had never managed it - and I have 60+ hours in Valorant.

I mainly play a Sentinel class, which is the more defensive style, so my opportunities to even have a shot at it are limited. But I've come close on a few occasions, usually let down by terrible decision making on the last kill, or bad luck or just nerves. One of Valorant's great strengths over CS:GO is kill feedback. When you kill it puts an icon on the screen and plays a chord. As you move through 1-5 kills the pitch of this chord raises slightly and it becomes a more anxious and excited sound. If you kill all five you get a sort of cascading fanfare. The level of stress this always brought always made me make daft decisions on the last kill. But this week I finally popped my ace cherry 2 days ago. A strange calm came over me and my body clearly decided that it was time for me to get the monkey off my back. Doing it was such a weight off my chest. I screenshotted it. Sent it to my kids/partner/mum (everyone was very impressed and certainly not rolling their eyes).

And last night I did it again. In a mode of the game where you're forced to use a weapon I hate (the substandard Marshall sniper rifle). Here I not only got an incredible ace, but also did it literally 1 vs. 5. It was one of the greatest bits of gaming skill I've ever displayed. So comprehensive the outplay it could only have been fuelled by a back without a monkey on it.

I really can't stress enough how fucking satisfying this was. I was looking at my stats over the seasons, and watching my KDA creep towards 1 (which shows an improvement as the general community is far better now than in the early seasons and beta) and now two aces in a week. It feels like an achievement (especially for someone with reaction times based on a mid-forties brain and hands). I'm not sure I've ever had quite this sort of relationship with a game where I have pushed myself to get better at it. But it's great.

I really like Rocksmith. It's very good for when you want to learn a song and play along with it. I have no idea if it's any good for actually learning an instrument from scratch. I imagine it's great. Do remember to prioritise the feedback from your ears over the feedback the game gives you though. It isn't perfect - it gives you credit for notes you've fudged, and sometimes doesn't register notes you have hit. You can skip over sections that require a specific strum-pattern to sound right just by thrashing the chords as fast as you can.

Utilise the Riff Repeater. Learning songs in sections is how people tend to learn songs. I personally find it more useful to turn the difficulty up to 100% and lower the speed, because otherwise the notes that are missing in the lower difficulties just confuse me. As a total beginner that might not work for you.

Does the game keep telling you that your volume is too low when you're playing on bass, by the way? It did with me. If so, you can fix this by finding the Real-time cable amongst the microphones listed in your sound settings on Windows and turning it up.

Incidentally, the game can't seem to handle Smashing Pumpkins' over the top fuzz sound, and the songs off Siamese Dream included in the game sound pretty much broken when you play the guitar parts, like the speakers are blown.

Thanks.

I try to have the in-game volume turned down so I can hear my own inputs as much as possible. I've not long started playing with the Riff Repeater but found it really useful for the Bob Marley song on there. (Three Little Birds) which has been great fun to play along too and I've memorised a bit of Walk This Way

Also, yes! It also really doesn't like the A String when tuning. I can pluck the other three and let the sustain whilst adjusting their key but the A I have to keep hitting to figure out if I need to loosen or tighten it.

@feltmonkey
I do a similar thing to you, but using a generative ambient bit of equipment (called the NDLR) and a series of pedals like the Strymon Timeline and Big Sky to create evolving soundscape things for no other purpose than escapism. It feels a bit like ASMR for GenX.

The NDLR aka the "Noodler?" I hadn't heard of this until your post, so I watched a few videos about it yesterday, and it looks a really cool bit of kit. I now want one. I also want a Strymon Big Sky and a Timeline - those are stunning pedals. You're going to tell me you have a Klon Centaur next. The most expensive pedal I own is the Deluxe Big Muff that I got for Christmas. It's bloody great though.

I have a couple of other interesting pedals, unique ones. A distortion pedal my father-in-law made himself out of bits and pieces he had lying around. It turns out those bits and pieces were germanium and silicone diodes, so I have a pedal that switches between 60s and 90s styles of fuzz. It has no controls, just an on/off footswitch and a switch between the two types of diodes. You control everything with the knobs on your guitar. It's pretty cool. As well as this, I have a Fuzz Box that also seems to be hand-made, which he rescued from a forgotten shelf of random electronic stuff in a dusty store cupboard at the BBC. It's not a pedal as such - it has no footswitch even, more of a box that might be used in a studio. It can make a fuzz sound so extreme you can no longer hear your actual guitar input, just a wall of noise. Hook it up with a reverse reverb and you're My Bloody Valentine.

@wev - do you want some tips on how to set up Rocksmith? Specifically ones from someone who doesn't really know what they're talking about? Well, you're getting some. To boost the input volume of the cable so that the game can "hear" you better, right click on your sound icon on the taskbar and Open Sound Settings. Under Input, somewhere in the drop-down menu you should find Rocksmith USB Guitar Adaptor. Select this and click on Device Properties. There should be a slider for the Volume of it. You can turn it up in there.

To better hear yourself as you play in the game without having to turn the volume down and listen to your own unamplified twangs, you can turn up your own volume in the mix. In the game, go to Tools, then Options, then Mixer. I have no idea why they made this setting quite tricky to find - I reckon it's absolutely crucial. Turn the music down and your own inputs up. I find it much better to do this to better hear myself in the mix than turning everything down and listening to the actual sound of my unamplified guitar. This way you can hear yourself through the mix, but also the way your instrument should sound on the song you're playing. The sound-modelling in Rocksmith is generally great, so why waste it? Also, louder is more better.

@feltmonkey
I do a similar thing to you, but using a generative ambient bit of equipment (called the NDLR) and a series of pedals like the Strymon Timeline and Big Sky to create evolving soundscape things for no other purpose than escapism. It feels a bit like ASMR for GenX.

The NDLR aka the "Noodler?" I hadn't heard of this until your post, so I watched a few videos about it yesterday, and it looks a really cool bit of kit. I now want one. I also want a Strymon Big Sky and a Timeline - those are stunning pedals. You're going to tell me you have a Klon Centaur next. The most expensive pedal I own is the Deluxe Big Muff that I got for Christmas. It's bloody great though.

I have a couple of other interesting pedals, unique ones. A distortion pedal my father-in-law made himself out of bits and pieces he had lying around. It turns out those bits and pieces were germanium and silicone diodes, so I have a pedal that switches between 60s and 90s styles of fuzz. It has no controls, just an on/off footswitch and a switch between the two types of diodes. You control everything with the knobs on your guitar. It's pretty cool. As well as this, I have a Fuzz Box that also seems to be hand-made, which he rescued from a forgotten shelf of random electronic stuff in a dusty store cupboard at the BBC. It's not a pedal as such - it has no footswitch even, more of a box that might be used in a studio. It can make a fuzz sound so extreme you can no longer hear your actual guitar input, just a wall of noise. Hook it up with a reverse reverb and you're My Bloody Valentine.

There was a fuzz preset on the Line 6 POD I used to dial in and pretend I was Mogwai. Nothing finer than a wall of noise to make yourself feel like a rock god.

Indeed, the Noodler NDLR. I bought it off a guy in Bangor who had no idea what it was. I didn't really know what it was either, but I figured I'd buy it anyway. I have a rig for doing non computer stuff and I sometimes use that as the centre (for literal noodling), or an OP-1 or MPC Live (depending on mood). My only issue with the NDLR is it struggles to interface with Ableton, though I keep meaning to update the firmware as that might fix it (I only really use it to generate loops in Ableton tho). I think my favourite bit of gear at the moment is the Waldorf Streichfett. It's all synthwave and porn movies from the 70s. Love it.

The Big Sky is probably the best pedal I've ever used. It is stunning. The Shimmerverbs are just spine tingling. The Timeline is more replaceable, but can do some interesting stuff. I adore guitar pedals and I've owned various ones over the years. My favourite delay pedal was nicked by an engineer I used to work with in Scotland though :( It was green, the brand had scratched off, was covered in grime, but it made the dirtiest dubbiest delays out there (probably why he nicked it when we parted ways). I still miss that pedal. Using them on synths is great fun - and now I want your distortion (plis send). I ended up selling a lot of my rack mounted and more classic gear a while back. No Klon Centaur, but I did have an OSC Oscar and you don't want to know how much I sold that for. I'm about to sell a Wurlitzer EP200 too, which is quite big bank these days.

I'm tempted to go and look in the cupboard now for old pedals.

Oh man, music gear is such a rabbithole. I find myself watching loads of youtube shows that are just about music gear - That Pedal Show, The JHS Show, 60 Cycle Hum - and if I was Jeff Bezos I'd buy every single thing they talk about. Synths are a different branch of the rabbithole. I don't really understand synths, or how you make music with them, and it's probably safer if things stay that way. I have an Arturia Minilab 2 which came with software with a load of emulated and reconstructed synth sounds. They seem to be based on classic synths but like I say, I don't really know much about them. I use it to record keyboard parts into Cakewalk, and that's about the level of complexity I can handle at the moment. I can't play the keyboard or piano at all, so I have to brute force it, training my fingers to hit the right keys in even the simplest parts.

My son has got a Stylophone. It has a headphones output, so my plan is to get an adapter and hook it up to a chain of oddball pedals and see what noises happen.

If you want a really mad velcro-ripping gated fuzz, the Cuvave Fuzz is a bit of a surprise for the price. It used to be about £15-£20 and it sounds pretty mad. I think the price has gone up a bit now. The output is a bit low in my opinion, but that can be fixed with boost pedals. I think the best bit of gear I have (apart from my Telecaster) is my amp though. I got one of those Blackstar ID Core ones. It has effects built in (they're nice, but I don't use them particularly) and a USB out, so you can plug it straight into a PC and record without the need of a microphone or an audio interface. It's the centrepiece of my extremely ghetto set-up. It's also insanely loud (I got a good deal on the 150watt version) so perhaps if I turn it up, you stand in your garden, and the wind is blowing in the right direction, you might be able to hear me demoing the Fuzzes.