The Gaffer

I'd definitely skip the first Final Fantasy. In fact - controversial, perhaps - but unless you actively play and enjoy 16-bit/pixel/retro games I'd probably skip the first six entirely and then go back to them later. 

The progression and battle systems in virtually all the games are so specific as to be marmite - and there's really no way of knowing if you'll dig it or not until you get stuck in - so I'd tend to just go for the aesthetic that takes your fancy the most. FLips is on the money though with VII and X being logical jump in points if you do want to play it safe at all costs. 

VII is the sprawling, cutesy, archetypal 'best game ever' entry of the series. It's full of downtrodden oddballs cheerily trying to scrape by on a dying planet.

VIII hones in more on a human love story. The physical atmosphere is more grounded and military but everything else about it is off the wall. If your favourite entry in most series is the weird, misunderstood, awkward one then here you go! 

IX is kind of like Abbey Road. It's got all the best bits of the earlier albums all jammed into one and functions as both a best-of and send-off to an era. If you like medieval fantasy go with this one. That's not to sell it short. It's essentially a story about a bunch of completely different people banded together figuring out existential dread and death. I think it's comfortably the best written game in the series. 

X is post-apocalyptic Home & Away where some of the characters are religious fundamentalists who play water basketball. 

X-2 is that, but with Charlie's Angels energy. 

XII I really didn't gel with so can't speak too much to it but it's like...tech high fantasy?...with the gameplay being modelled almost like an offline MMO. 

XIII is really linear and the battle system almost sort of plays itself. Not that that's a bad thing. They wanted it to be accessible. I have no idea what the fuck it's about, though. I tapped out here. 

To be honest I think there's less a chance of it not happening at some point in the next few years.

WWE are practically invulnerable financially at the moment and the content can be consumed anywhere, anytime. I don't think the whole fabric of Americana/time zone thing is as sacrosanct an issue as it once was. 

Maybe my thinking is too old school and trapped in what other companies have done, but if you've crowned a new top guy they should be the first thing we see or hear about on the show, even if it's to build up their first appearance as champion much later in the night. 

Swerve strolling out for a TV match in the second segment like any other guy on the roster was a bit deflating. Especially when it became apparent the focus was instead going to be on another inevitable moneybags slide into getting physically involved with on screen angles.

But I'm sure some clever fecker on Reddit with a spreadsheet has clocked that him and Fletcher never wrestled before so this was actually pretty great. 

I don't buy the leak concerns as a reason for Klopp announcing his departure with months left in the season. It feels like it was to do a big narrative push for commercialisation reasons, which you could handily rationalise as "Well the team will give it their all now." 

The kind of hubristic optimism that doesn't bother factoring in "If they blow it in any way that invites jeers, this is going to be proper shit." 

Oh well. North London forever. 

Gotta feel for lovely Ding, crashing out again like that. Delighted for Lisowski though, hopefully he has a great run. With that excellent match and Ronnie coming up today too it feels like the tournament finally has a bit of lift off. This marathon of a thing always tends to take a few days. 

You won't be Toiletside, Mothafucka until you rhyme 'Doing a poo like Mr. Magoo' with 'Vigo The Carpathian from Ghostbusters II'.

Still, it's better than maybe 25% of what goes in the mosher thread. 

Bit of hedge-hop. I love finding channels like this. It's a simple thing, I know, but the fact that people just go out and do this with their spare time purely for the heck of it makes me joyful. 

Back to snooker. 

Well that was a belter of a first day. Gilbert clinches it from Brecel 9-10 and knocks the champ out! 

The 'Don't Hinder Jinder' sign that fan brought is the best thing about his career. 

Exposed was class! I feared it might have just be an excuse to get Ade on the couch with little else going for it but there was plenty of fun insight and - what I never grow tired of - behind the scenes, bloopers and corpsing. 

As usual Bottom keeps revealing new deliveries and idiosyncrasies that I always knew were there but now note as being completely hilarious. 

"Get two."

"Two? Wow man!" 

He's back and he looks like Phil and Grant's long lost, twice-as-hard-as-fuck brother!

A fit, healthy looking Mox should be a lucky rabbit foot in AEW's back pocket. Fully agreed seeing him storm out by himself with a title just feels great. He can keep his BCC membership card in his Bad Motherfucker wallet because honestly I'm not sure what much else there is to get out of the faction. They were always a bit naff, watered down Mox and Danielson, and only really helped the personality challenged Claudio.

I can't imagine the awkward tension Bethesda (hopefully) had in the months and even years leading up to Starfield's release. 

It's so anachronistic, clunky and dated in so many parts of its design that it's almost like the whole game was baked into code pre this age of neverending memes and YouTube analysis on how dog eared Bethesda's open world game model has become, but it was just too late to go back and change any of it. 

I realise it'll have made its money back and then some, which is the bottom line for publishers, I don't think a triple A title has ever arrived so cold and antiquated once the initial glossy friends-with-the-publishers reviews were barged pass. And I say that as someone who still loves their open world design. But that game was a complete wet fart. 

13 hours ago, Cousin Jim Bob said:

If anyone is thinking everyone hates Cyberpunk 2077 I think it is one of the most stunning games of all time and enjoyed over 100 hours on it. Last years DLC Phantom Liberty Is one of the best reviewed DLC packs ever made as well.

 

Choom! Yeah I'm a sucker for it. I'd go so far as to say I'd struggle with thinking it's anything less than simply good - post bug fixes - once all the hype and expectation is removed.

I think if it was somehow a sleeper hit, I don't think it'd get the same kind of backlash. 

I absolutely wish it was deeper, but that's because I think the superficial world they've build is so enticing. Night City does have an extremely strong culture to it - on the surface - it's juts that it's all aesthetic. I'm definitely guilty of tying that into commentaries on the superficiality of the future it depicts admittedly, but I do think it's there. The ceaseless background noise of NPCs and traffic, the constant adverts for legalised amphetamines and clean water, the whole tech jungle feel of it all. It's got some really neat presentation. And the sound design is some of the best in the industry ever, period. 

1 minute ago, Loki said:

We should probably just delete the internet, it's not been a force for good.

I'd be fine with just Wikipedia and UKFF content creators to be honest!

The whole internet/social media thing is another reason the psychological need to get into QAnon and stuff is senseless and just obfuscates actual issues. The truth is more out of control and out to get you than the fiction. 

7 minutes ago, Loki said:

I do wonder where this backlash against modernity will end.

I know it wasn't your intention - but just to pick up on this phrase in general terms - I think it's an oversimplification that would promote some unhealthy dialogue if it were used in a more politicised environment. 

A lot of the outrage we've seen over the last few years has been for issues that - though they've never not been contentious - actually went through somewhat of a purple patch of relative calm and acceptance compared to what it's like now. 

I should clarify that I am not giving genuinely horrible fuckers with genuinely problematic views a pass but how many of us have parents or older relatives who have shared something suspect? Again and again we see that with otherwise decent, ordinary people it's because their hopes and fears are being siphoned off by some rage-for-clicks algorithm. 

That is modernity. And it sucks. So in that sense, I guess I'm in on the backlash against modernity as well.  It's pretty much evil in plain sight - normalised horror - that tech companies poach neuroscientists and put them to task with how best to keep young kids addicted to their products. The modern world is more of a petri dish for psychological issues now than it's ever been and that's not just because they're simply surfacing more. 

Modernity has many, many problems right on its surface, and a lot of them are breeding the kind of backlash you're referring to. 

Full clarification: I'm running from anything solution based, comparisons to the past (we've always had adverts on TV aimed at children), personal responsibility etc. There's a lot of potentially endless debates here I don't want to get stuck in, that phrasing just struck me. You might have another intention with it I've failed to read into so if so, apologies!

tl;dr a lot of the shit we see is a manifestation of growing pains and psychological dislocation due directly to modernity moreso than a conscious rejection of it. 

Yeah awful kitchen sink clash vibes off that. 

The Joe/Swerve one is class. 

5 minutes ago, Loki said:

She's a terrible author, I think that's where a lot of this comes from.  She's lazy, she steals without realising it, and in the latter stages of her career didn't have a decent editor so her books becoming rambling messes.

She pretty much lifted the whole idea of Harry Potter from A Wizard of Earthsea (and then claimed she didn't, which is bollocks).  And it annoys me that Potter became so much more ubiquitous than Earthsea because Le Guin is one of the greatest authors of her generation and her books are fantastically complex and deal with topics like race and sexuality in a properly mature fashion.

I had to read the last two Potter novels when I was working on the games, and it was awful.  They're just bad books.  

 

I can see the films becoming the 'main' medium of the whole thing over time, if they haven't already, which is probably for the best because the universe undoubtedly has some fun elements to it and a whole load of stuff that's just seeped into the public conscious now but it all works better in some goofy films with a load of esteemed stage actors having a ball pretending to be wizard satanists rather than the books which are more up against their rapid-ageing pitfalls of being poorly written, badly edited dirges of tokenism and nostalgia for shit things. 

2024 is the year of ICOPRO. 

It's not like they didn't do brawls all over the buildings during the Dunn era of production but I love the subtle differences in the spontaneity now, exemplified in that Sami entrance. The area's not been preset with those queue belts cordoning the fans off to the sides, you're not getting cuts to hide the actual movement through a bland hall that connects that presentable TV set concourse to the presentable TV set 'arena'. You've got wrestlers literally batting through crowds and the building Raw takes place in is an actual environment, not that weeks shell that a TV set is made inside. 

Love that shit. 

Yeah, not a "That's it! World War 3!" person but this doesn't feel good at all. 

Could do this all day but here's a few favourites. Have tried to stick with imagery I find genuinely impressive or weirdly evocative other than just "Here's the albums I like...:

Hap births! 

I've not looked up any of the reception it has been getting so I'm glad I've not just gone mad in my high opinion of it, because lord knows I don't watch a lot of TV. 

Minor punchline spoiler but episode 4's...