Mr Party Hat

San Andreas, I barely scratched the surface of because I got into a vicious loop of 'go to gym, get lean > deliver drugs on a bike > eat fast food, get fat > sleep' and never went anywhere.

I can see why you didn't have time to play games.

They recently fixed the GTA PS2 Trilogy, and it's 20 quid on PS5 at the moment, so I've been playing through those.

The driving is absolutely perfect, I forgot just how much it nails the joy of police chases, zipping through traffic in a fragile sports car that's liable to explode any second. And of course, then you get a joyful chain reaction with every car in the area. The on-foot stuff is noticeably worse, in fact it's downright terrible. But at least in GTA 3 they seem to know this, and keep you in your car 90 percent of the time.

I've just finished 3 (or rather, given up on the final island, the lack of checkpoints and PS2 difficulty are brutal) and moved on to Vice City. There's a noticeable jump in quality, with a more cohesive story and of course that soundtrack. It's incredible that we got all 3 of these games in the space of 3 or 4 years. It's been 10 years since GTA 5.

No I've come across those, but as far as I can tell they generally only affect one card at a time? So you might play a whole ante plus boss, and as a reward you delete the 7 of Diamonds. The pace just seems glacial.

This is clearly my problem, because Balatro is every game developer's favourite game. I just don't see it.

What am I missing with the deckbuilding aspect? There doesn't seem to be much opportunity to add or remove cards, so I always feel like I'm garnishing a full deck rather than crafting my own.

In Slay the Spire you start with, what, ten cards? And get constant chances to remove, add and upgrade. By starting with 52 in Balatro, the deck is so bloated from the get-go that I never really make a mark on it.

The new Naughty Dog game looks excellent (and was an in-game cutscene by the look of it). Definitely here for Pet Shop Boys in space.

My two 'fuck yeah' moments (if I had those energy levels in me) would have been Okami 2 and Fumito Ueda's new game.