Jesse

9 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

I reckon you mention your girlfriend every other post. She definitely doesn't exist.

The evidence is damning

I want to like AEW so badly, but they just love setting rakes down and stepping on them. Every time I open myself up to it they do something that completely puts me off again - Hangman wins the title, but Jay Lethal debuts; Sting has an amazing final run, and they bring Ric Flair in to put a cloud over it; the Continental Classic feels like a return to the pre-Punk drama days but it turns out they can't move past it and now they're airing shit security footage on their primetime show.

AEW's history for me has been one of a continuous erosion of trust to the point that now even when it seems like something's hitting for them I'm hesitant to start getting back into it because I don't trust they won't make me feel like a prick for being a fan.

I can't stand the type that go on for ages, with doctors coming out etc. It absolutely kills the match dead for me, with a minute or two effectively waiting, you move from the immediate emotional reaction/shock and into a kind of standby that I find it really hard to be drawn back out of. So the reaction it gets isn't "Oh what a dastardly prick that fooled me" so much as an "Oh, it was an act and now the match is happening again"

I'd far prefer a much faster version of it, begging off with an injury to get the ref to intervene and then within 20-30s using that to get in a cheap shot or just break the momentum. It fits more with the fair narrative of a match too, you're telling me that the ref has called the doctors out for what they believe is a real injury but they haven't called off the match?

Can't recall one like this that has hit for me, even beyond the idea of it being in bad taste.

I can't get over how slow that 3 minutes felt. Like rather than have a three-minute sprint they tried to condense a longer match format down into that time. No sense of urgency and pace from either of them.

I think there's something to be said for harsher action early in the career like this. I don't doubt what you said about the UFC letting someone off if they're a bigger name making them money pack of hyenas that they are. But it would be a different situation between young fighter on his debut doing something like this, showing themselves to be a massive liability, to be told to hop on their bike and maybe re-considered in the future if they've got their head straight. Versus someone with more history in the company, with a lot of sensible fights behind them, where maybe it is more fair to give them the benefit of the doubt that it was a break in conscious action.

Again, you've probably got the right of it and it would come down to how much money you're currently making them. I don't think they've made a harsh decision by cutting him but I am a massive softie and he seems genuinely contrite since so I'd love to see him redeem himself somewhere and build a career back up.

34 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

IIRC you guys are up north right?

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/find-a-skills-bootcamp/north-west

If she's on UC, she could also ask the JCP about their employability programmes or SWAPs (Sector based Work Academy Programmes- proper shit sounding isn't it?) which are similar in a way that its designed with an employer in mind. https://jobhelp.campaign.gov.uk/skills-sector-based-work-academies-swaps/

If you need any advice or anything, let me know. Best of luck to her. 

Thanks, she's here on a spouse visa from America so no UC/JCP, but looking at the eligibility criteria this doesn't fall under 'no recourse to public funds' and she's past the 3 years mark so I can't see anything disqualifying there. Have passed it on to her to have a look and see if anything strikes her fancy.

Thanks for the heads up, my wife has been out of work since Christmas. Will take a look and see if there's anything there that might suit her for a career pivot away from shopfloor retail.

21 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Fucking hell.

So anyway, that vodka picture eh....

Can't help but feel like I'm missing another 20 games that could easily make this list, but if I think too long I'll never choose. Sorry but I had to write a few sentences about each one, revisiting these in my head has been a delight.

Goldeneye - 1 point
When I think about growing up, this is the game that comes to mind. One of the few happy memories I have of my brother & my dad are the hours we wasted playing Goldeneye multiplayer. Great local co-op, difficulty settings that give you more objectives to do, and in-game times to beat still make this the ideal of a first-person shooter to me.

Final Fantasy XI - 2 points
I've played a lot of MMO's but this was the one that really started it for me. I don't disagree that Final Fantasy XIV is the smoother playing experience but the slow awkwardness of this game, learning to navigate the world, needing to be grouped up to fight even one enemy, losing experience on death - the sharp edges hook this into my mind so much more strongly.

Dota 2 - 3 points
This is one that established a lot of adult friendships to me. I was working in esports already when I got into this, and despite the popularity of things like League of Legends and the other also-rans surrounding it Dota 2 is the only one that's ever felt remotely interesting to play.

The Longest Journey - 4 points
I loved this one as a kid, and I loved revisiting it as an adult. Probably my first brush with magical realism, a kind of genre that is still among my favourites, and it's a game series I stuck with right through to the end. Also dragons are cool.

Metal Gear Solid - 5 points
Synonymous with the Playstation for me, I replayed this just last month and it's still so good. For all the criticisms of Kojima as 'wanting to make movies' his games are some of the most videogamey of them all. Swapping controller ports, reading the back of the box to get a codec number, having a torture minigame where the explicit punishment from the villain is being sent back to your last save that was ages ago. Fantastic.

Halo 3 - 6 points
Halo 2 was the online multiplayer explosion for me, but Halo 3 was that plus a single-player campaign that wasn't arse. Still the best multiplayer arenas in the business, and not even Infinite matches that Halo 3 feeling of "See that huge battle going on int he skybox? You're about to go there and be in it.

Soul Reaver - 7 points
I call this the game that made me want to make games. The appeal to me is an incredible story set-up, full of high drama and voice actors giving it their all, but it's dimension-shifting platforming gimmick blew my mind. My first look into an incredible series of games, absolutely atrocious that in this world of constant remakes and reboots that all we've had is a rubbish multiplayer-only game out of this world.

Final Fantasy 8 - 8 points
Just go watch the intro cutscene, or the one where you're racing away from a giant mechanical spider while your teacher guns it to death. I was a few years away from knowing what anime was andf this was the coolest thing I had ever seen. I grew up wanting to look like Squall and have a cool girlfriend like Rinoa to the point my first ever girlfriend was a thin, fairly pale girl with long dark hair. Going back as an adult this is still cool as hell, and the junction system is much more fun to play with than the other systems they were trying out at the time.

Elden Ring - 9 points
Debated this one, I've tried to avoid recency bias (so no Death Stranding) but there was no way I could put Ocarina of Time on the list over this. The absolute pinnacle of what From has been playing with for years, this took over my life (and my friend's lives) for months after it launched. Has that same sense I had as a kid playing OoT of exploring this incredible, vast, unfamiliar world, and it has at least two moments that rival hitting the time-shift of Ocarina in making my brain go "What the fuck?" Probably the best game ever made.

Starcraft 2 - 10 points
No question really. I was a rubbish wrestler and a not much better ring announcer, destined for a life of working at Morrisons and growing bitter at my lack of success compared to the people I trained with. Then Starcraft 2 came out and I started playing it, then I started watching Day9, then I attended a 'barcraft' evening in Manchester - watching a tournament broadcast from America with a group of people in the Kyoto Lounge - and my life was never the same again. I helped organise events, became a moderately successful Starcrft 2 commentator, attended the Insomnia Gaming Festival first as press, then as a Starcraft 2 tournament organiser and then they hired me to work full-time and suddenly I was at the start of a career that now sees me working on a hugely popular video game as the head of a department. Starcraft 2 literally changed my life, and it's still an absolute blast to play.

33 minutes ago, Frankie Crisp said:

I know the internet can always be the grenade under the bed, but hopefully forum users have enough trust in me that I’ll never share the data nor use it for anything other than the collective results.

Between Facebook, TikTok, and no doubt being followed intensely by whoever mans the central hub for CCTV when I visit London that's three countries who have more data on me than they'd ever need. Think you'll have more fun with my survey answers than any of them will.

35 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

Expeditions: A MudRunner Game

 

Well what the fuck happened here then? They took out the best thing about the previous games, being able to traverse the entire maps however you like, very slowly getting further in and hauling better cargo with bigger, badder trucks and replaced all that with pre-made missions that just send you back to a menu after completion. You can unlock the whole map at points but there's nothing really to do in them.

 

It feels like they made this for a more mainstream audience but didn't take the time to advertise it that way, the only people buying it are fans of the previous games.

That's disappointing, I've been jonesing for some MudRunner recently but not sure how I feel about having to start over now I have to buy the game again so Expeditions seemed like it might be a great re-jumping on point.

36 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

Yeah, makes absolute sense to me. And yet I'll never do it. Same with books. I am weak.

I almost impulse bought a PS5 in January so I could play FF7R on launch instead of waiting for the PC port so I'm not immune to it. If my wife hadn't become unemployed that month I'm not confident I'd have avoided it.

10 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

If I told myself I'd get through my backlog of stuff first, I'd never buy anything new ever again.

I actually did that as a money saving project, took me about 18 months to get through everything but I saved a boat load of money and it's made my spending habits much better now I only buy a game if I'm planning to play it in the next month or two.

Doesn't do anything to cure feeling like I'm missing out by not playing all the latest releases but does mean I buy most things when they're on sale or at reduced price since I'm 6-12 months behind on new releases.

Nothing as scary as the heart, but the last few years I've decided to have a real good go at my health. I've always been fat, but used to be fit with it and then I got sick early in 2020; felt like I bounced back pretty quickly in terms of feeling sick, but my body just couldn't hack exercise in the same way. It felt so demoralising to go from someone who could have a good run at completing a deck of cards workout to not being able to string ten push-ups together. I even tried doing yoga and I couldn't get through a whole one of those without my body just giving in.

With all that came fatigue, and the chronic shoulder/neck pain I had started flaring up a lot more regularly off the back of it and my exercising dropped to zero. And then I was so out of shape that I stopped wanting to leave the house, because I was embarassed to be the friend that couldn't keep up with everyone, so I just walked between the same three rooms for a couple of years.

We decided to move house, meaning we're up near a city and near friends & fun things to go to, so I decided it was time to sort my shit out. I'm now on medicine for my depression/anxiety, can leave the house (though my heart hammers hard enough that my watch thinks I'm doing exercise even though I'm just sat on the bus) and I've started doing daily stretches & low impact exercise this month. My body still hurts, but I have more control of it thanks to a physio giving me a set of stretches to do, and I've got a small stationary bike that I'm doing one minute more of each day. 20 days in and I can now bike for 20mins at low tension without needing to pause. It's a small start, but I already feel better getting about the house.

35 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Nowadays, the only way that story works for me is if they keep unconsciously bringing back bits of the gimmick in their attempted super-cereal match, and keep getting frustrated and angry when that happens. Culminating in a big match where the only way they can get the win is by going for their previous, super-gimmicky finish..

I don't watch wrestling any more, but what I've gathered from here & Twitter is that this is Daniel Garcia and dancing

If you want a positive coming out of this then it encouraged me to throw a tenner at Moo to keep it going. I've been coming to this forum in some form for 20 years now (my original account now lost to the void) and it's always a nice little mental break through otherwise stressful days. 

I've had the word discourse muted on Twitter since 2021, so it's been around a little while. I think largely confined to the game dev side of things, which only has about four topics they endlessly cycle through and I can't be arsed with.

14 hours ago, Nexus said:

Went to see Hadestown this afternoon. My wife bought tickets and I attempted to listen to the soundtrack a month or so ago, but wasn't able to focus on it. I'm glad I didn't - watching it blind was phenomenal. Fun staging, good story and great singing. 

 

Highly recommend it! 

 

Edit: Also the actor who played Hades (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_James) reminded me simultaneously of both Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson. 

My wife got me a ticket to see this next month for my birthday last year, been really looking forward to it. I've seen parts of it before because I love Patrick Page, but I'm excited to see the whole thing together with a cast that's pretty much completely new to me.

2 hours ago, westlondonmist said:

Blast Corps is quite fun, I'm not quite sure what the plot is. You smash shit snd have fun. I think it probably would have thought a rip off 20 years ago though.

Battletoads isn't bad either. I'll get round to Killer Instinct.

Blast Corps was one of my favourite N64 games as a kid, something about those fully destructible environments I found really fulfilling. Haven't looked at it since then, but I also remember it being really hard, so I got good value for money out of it.

From memory it's like a nuke is being transported but it's out of control so you have to demolish all the buildings in its path so it doesn't hit one and destroy America or wherever you are.

Bought Balatro on Steam today and that's all my spare time gone. It's a poker roguelike - get dealt cards and try to make poker hands to score chips. Better hands score more points, beating stages gets you money to spend in the shop on more cards, cards that improve the scoring of your cards, or Jokers - cards that modify your score when you fulfil specific objectives (like multiplying it by 3 when you score the same hand two times in a row). Bosses, one every three stages, each come with a unique ability to fuck with you - forcing you to discard two cards every time you play, dealing some cards face down, and removing scoring from specific suits are some I played against today.

I've played it for 90 minutes after work and I can already feel the next thousand hours creeping up on me. 
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2379780/Balatro/

He's correct, but from the read of that this wasn't announced, it's another wrestler backstage leaking it to reporters. If we're saying they should stop leaking shit, I'm with you, but announced makes it sound like AEW shared this publicly.

I used to occasionally take part in a speedrunning league where on the night you'd race a couple of games, one you'd had a week to practice and the other as a surprise game where it was revealed on the night and you had 30mins to practise a set level and then 30mins of attempts to set the fastest time completing it.

Little Nemo: The Dream Master was a mystery game for one of my earlier appearances and the only time I came close to rage quitting. Really fun game, and makes you feel like you should be better at it than you are, which made it embarassing when I struggled to even set a time in my 30mins.

I really liked their description for it:

Every year, the Golden Raspberry Awards (a.k.a. the Razzies) honor the “worst” in contemporary cinema. Yet in doing so, they have often inadvertently shed light on films so out-there, so uncompromising, so beyond the bounds of accepted “good” taste that they demand attention. While some infamous Razzie winners like Xanadu, Barb Wire, and Gigli live on as classics of camp and cult, others, like Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, Elaine May’s Ishtar, and Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls have been reclaimed as fearlessly ambitious expressions of personal vision. In a topsy-turvy way, this program pays tribute to those divisive films that continue to fascinate and provoke debate, while calling into question the very line that separates high and low culture.

4 hours ago, Just Some Guy said:

Are they still only allowed to show the BBFC version? Patricia Arquette should shoot & kill one of the cops in the final shoot-out.

The BBFC insisted the scene was re-cut so that the cop was killed by one of the gangsters.

Oh interesting! I'm not sure what specific version we watched, they're usually running off blu-rays, but that scene was defintiely the BBFC cut where one of the gangsters takes him out. Just watched the original cut of that scene on youtube and it's definitely a better moment.

True Romance was my pick for this month's trip to the local small-screen cinema. Never seen it before and had a blast with it for the most part. It's very written by Quentin Tarantino both complimentary (memorable characters & funny dialogue) and derogatory (bafflingly racist at points) but the movie is just jam-packed full of different guys you love to see. Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, and James Gandolfini all pop in for a cup of coffee as well as Val Kilmer (who I didn't clock until the credits) playing an imaginary Elvis Presley.

Only seen Christian Slater & Patricia Arquette in a couple of things before this but they're both fantastic fun. I've only seen a couple of Tony Scott movies before this (Top Gun and The Taking of Pelham 123) and I really need to get on watching a bunch more because it's always a great time.