Miguel Sanchez

I don't think I'd seen any before. I don't think I'll be rushing to the cinema.

Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) The world's most charisma-free man and the world's most boring woman fail to build any chemistry for an hour before lots of shooting, rubber masks and extremely drawn out roundhouse kicks. Nonsense, but boring nonsense.

WRC 8 (PS4, 2019) Last year I spent six months playing WRC 7. I didn't write it up for two reasons. The first is that I finished everything the game had to offer after around 200 stages. The following 800 I drove were to finish all the in-game accomplishments for the trophies. By the time I was done after driving the same stage 800 times I never wanted to think about it again. The other reason is that, hideous compulsion towards completionism aside, there wasn't really much to write about. I don't have that much to say about WRC 8 either, but I enjoyed every aspect of it a lot more than 7, so I want to tell you anyway. WRC 8 is the official game of the 2019 World Rally Championship season. For some reason the older WRC games get reduced to very cheap prices when there are sales on the PS Store nowadays. I definitely approve. Rallying is something I've always enjoyed more in video game format than the televised competition itself, but on a week by week basis I can feel my interest in Formula 1 drifting, so I might need something new to fill that motorsport void. Either way, the fact this is a seasons old game doesn't matter because it's still fantastic to drive. Career mode feels properly involving, if a little sterile. You start out picking a team to drive for at Junior WRC level. You don't just drive though, you're your own team manager too. Competing in rallies and optional events unlocks points you can spend improving your R&D department. It earns you money to pay for your repairs and hire new staff members, like a better mechanic to perform repairs faster or a better agent to have a better range of events to take part in. From Junior level up through WRC 2, WRC 2 Pro and eventually full WRC the career expansion definitely enhances the experience. The sterile aspect comes from a lack of an actual human interface. I've just realised the voice of the tutorial woman telling you what each part of the menu does is the only human communication all game. The rest of your team's headquarters is seen through a top down view that looks like a slightly more boring version of The Sims. Even after several seasons there are parts of the Crew I never understood. You can hire a Meteorologist to tell you weather forecasts. You can unlock upgrades so you can see the full three parts of a forecast for each stage you drive. Can't you just check the weather on the internet? Like the other Crew members they can be tired and need time to rest after rallies, why? They're looking at a screen and telling you what they see. Maybe they're holding their hand out of the window to see if it's raining. Ultimately it's all a waste of time anyway, because I'm pretty sure at least 80% of every forecast ever made was wrong. Not even a little bit wrong, I'm talking Biblical storms when it was apparently 0% chance of rain. While the game's faults become more apparent the more time you spend with it, they're only ever minor inconveniences, and things which only stand out after spending several seasons with the Career mode. The driving itself does more than enough to make up for it. I played with a gamepad and every class of car is the perfect blend of intuitively controllable yet ferocious, barely tameable beast. Moving up through the classes I had to really adjust from front wheel drive to four wheel drive, properly adapting the way I approached each stage. After spending a bit of time grinding mileage out on one stage at the end of my time with the game you can really see how you can push the limits. As with real rallying (or any motorsport I suppose) there's a fine line, a limit you can push to and then the inevitable punishment when you go a bit too far. If I ever get around to writing a review of Dirt Rally 2 there will be screeds of me telling you how much I hate the co-driver, Phil Mills, but here all the actual rallying details are perfect. The game looks and sounds great too. Visually it does the big and the small things well. Seeing the weather turn over the course of a stage is dramatic and almost makes up for the terrible crew member who didn't warn you of it. Night stages are as terrifying as they should be. Even small details like having to turn your wipers on every now and then because of dust even in the dry just makes it feel like the struggle against the elements it should. The cars all sound great to me, and even the sound of the weather and the brief flashes of cheering crowds as you blast through a forest add life to the game and make it all an experience. The biggest criticism I have is probably a symptom of playing six seasons through the various categories back to back. The fourteen locations of the WRC are here. At WRC level a rally consists of six stages. The actual choice of stages per location isn't very large though, so it can get repetitive quickly. You might have Stage A, Stage B, Stage A and B combined, Stage B reverse, a shorter closed circuit SSS then Stage A and B combined reverse. I think some locations have more options than others, and I understand why this limitation exists, but the lack of variety is really apparent at times. Each location brings extremely unique challenges which is good, you might just tune it out a bit as you're doing it. I ended up saying more than I was expecting. I think I just wanted to complain about the weather forecasts. If you're looking at sales and fancy a bit of off-roading, this is an extremely good place to start.

There follows the first post in a series: Mission: Impossible (1998) Televisual nonsense with extremely 1998 CGI. The hacking scene was very tense though.

Given by S3 it had things like a budget and an audience it would be interesting to see how it would have been different if Chris Langham hadn't been given the boot.

You have trouble thinking the thinkable.

Visions of Steven Thompson putting out a Come And Get Me Plea to the EFL on ITV.

I have no interest in the thread or the arguments in it but this made me laugh a lot.

My manager is an idiot, a coward and I remain convinced he's a plant from a competitor trying to get us shut down.

People who queue up for the first day of Wimbledon. Indistinguishable from the royalist oddballs.

Ahem.

I'll shove a fucking magnet down your throat and watch your fucking face implode.

At least there's no history of the UK waving its missiles around for a few islands somewhere.

"the unbaked gingerbread man there"

I think if I was on the radio complaining about being intimidated I'd have a moment of realisation and bring the car into the pits and retire out of sheer embarrassment.

Ted actually made a good point for once. If I didn't want a track limits penalty I simply wouldn't go over the track limits.

Lots of grasses in F1 nowadays.

I blocked Elon on Twitter years ago because I was fed up seeing him. He was getting pushed by it long before he bought it.

We're at the halfway point and @JustOneCornetto is on course for a record breaking points haul. Can anyone catch him or will we have our first repeat winner in over a decade?

Week 26 update Three deaths this week. Up first, former Scotland manager Craig Brown: Craig Brown obituary | Football | The Guardian The P&B thread about him is also worth reading: Universally liked, successful with the national team and won something with Dundee. Is there a rarer combination in football? Broon died at 82 so he's worth 43 Base Points for @doulikefish and @Willie adie, with a Deadly Duo bonus giving willie 68 and a Captain bonus given the would-be fishmonger 111 points. ============= Second death this week was the actor Alan Arkin: Alan Arkin, Oscar winning actor in Little Miss Sunshine, dies aged 89 | Film | The Guardian Arkin died at 89 so he's worth 36 Base Points for @ThomCat, with a Solo Shot taking him up to 86 points. ============= Our actual final death this week is one I missed, journalist Ann Leslie: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jun/27/dame-ann-leslie-obituary It seems unfair that I'm only adding someone like this after the update not realising they had died or that someone had picked them. Hmm. Leslie died at 82 so she's worth 43 Base Points - @sophia also gets a Captain bonus for a total of 93 points. After all of this, the standings now look like this: 1. JustOneCornetto 405 2. psv_killie 318 3. The Naitch 240 4. gkneil 234 5. Arbroathlegend36-0 230 6. Arabdownunder 228 7. buddiepaul 226 8. qos_75 221 9. peasy23 220 10. Desp 206 11. Miguel Sanchez 199 12. LoonsYouthTeam 187 13. Billy Jean King 167 14. D.V.T., Mark Connolly, microdave, throbber, weirdcal 166 19. chomp my root 161 20. The DA 153 21. Ned Nederlander 151 22. sophia 148 23. Karpaty Lviv 145 24. Sweaty Morph 140 25. alta-pete 139 26. get_the_subbies_on 138 27. Bully Wee Villa, cdhafc1874, Frosty, HK Hibee 134 31. Ludo*1 133 32. lolls 122 33. Donathan 121 34. Shotgun 112 35. Bert Raccoon, doulikefish, Savage Henry, tamthebam 111 39. Melanius Mullarkay 110 40. Arch Stanton, mozam76 101 42. Lofarl, Michael W, pub car king, The_Craig 99 46. Aim Here, Oystercatcher, weemac 97 49. Ray Patterson 96 50. djchapsticks 94 51. Moomintroll 93 52. dagane, Scorge 87 54. ParsJake, ThomCat 86 56. Indale Winton, sparky88 84 58. blackislekillie, Herc 74 60. ICTJohnboy 69 61. paulathame, Willie adie 68 63. atfccfc, DG.Roma, Fuctifano, HI HAT, lichtgilphead, thistledo 67 69. HTG 66 70. Dunning1874, sleazy 55 72. Empty It, The Hologram 48 74. DeeTillEhDeh, Jimmy Baker 42 76. Oceanlineayr, Salvo Montalbano, Shipa, statts1976uk 39 80. 10menwent2mow, dee_62, Enigma, mizfit, parxyz, scottsdad, senorsoupe, superwell87, Suspect Device 32 89. amnarab, choirbairn, Derry Alli, expatowner, stanton 31 94. BillyAnchor, German Jag, superbigal 29 97. Everyone else 0 The spreadsheet has also been updated with these scores: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RxCIfczRUmrRrW79tUQ0vJ5KaHZpYENsTKmDqW4X3W4/edit?usp=sharing

Bring back RSS feeds.

I live in a tenement in Glasgow. My recycling bins have in the past month contained various kinds of food, kettles, bicycle tyres and glass bottles (they're not glass recycling bins, we don't have any). People who live here are a combination of ignorant, uncaring or non-English speaking so nobody cares. We got a food recycling bin a few years ago. It lasted about two months before they were taken away and replaced with one on the street. It's a bin on a street. People who live here aren't taking out food and separating everything and taking it out on to the street, and people walking down the street are seeing a bin. Given the amount of rubbish people throw on the street maybe I'm being cynical on this one. This is all redundant because I've never seen it actually be emptied. Asda up the road used to have glass recycling bins in the car park. Last year when the strikes were on they piled up and then the bins got taken away and now they're gone. I don't know where they are now (I've looked at the online map, the nearest ones aren't there). Recycling is a waste of time. Paying a private company lots of money to make shopping more expensive and recycling less convenient feels like something from Kafka, and that's before you realise 99% of everything involved is going to be burned in a Chinese landfill.

It's a fucking newspaper office! Not a fucking sanatorium for the fucking deaf!

Am I the only one who doesn't see what the big deal is? The black on the sleeves is ugly and the hoops are a bit weird. Who cares?

It's a shame The Computer has decided that Celtic are only playing away games. I hope they can manage.