Miguel Sanchez

It's actually passed off as "flexibility to meet the needs of the business."

Lego 2K Drive (PS4, 2023) I remember when the PlayStation 2 came out. I got it for Christmas. I got four games. All PS1 games. Two I don't remember offhand. One was Porsche Challenge, which was effectively just an advert for the Porsche Boxter. The other was Lego Racers, a game adequately described by its title and something that was pretty much perfect for a young boy who was really into Lego and racing games. Then came Lego Racers 2. Then came Drome Racers, and all of the real life sets to go along with it. I still have fond memories of all of these, and I still have my copy of the original. Imagine my excitement a few months ago when, seemingly out of nowhere, Lego 2K Drive was announced. The first Lego racing game in over twenty years? Yes please. And it looks fun! All nice and bright colours and wacky personalities and everything you get in a Lego game nowadays. And there's your problem. Outwith the driving games I've listed the only Lego games I've ever played are the original Star Wars games and The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game. I still remember Star Wars, a bit odd, a bit quirky, suitably childish because it's Lego and it's Star Wars and because the characters make suggestive noises instead of speaking. I cared less for The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game. Constant self-referential humour, an endless cacophony of noise, colour and far too much happening on screen with no way of following the plot or any of the endless parade of unbearable 'characters'. Anyway, sorry, enough about some other game, what's 2K Drive like? Constant self-referential humour, an endless cacophony of noise, colour and far too much happening on screen with no way of following the plot or any of the endless parade of unbearable 'characters'. Ah. Oh dear. First things first, this game is just not enjoyable to play. I usually think a game can be saved by its gameplay or its story if it's lacking in other areas. A racing game is easy to salvage if it's fun. 2K Drive constantly feels like something that just never received any refinement. There are three types of vehicle you can drive - street, off-road and boat. It's an open world game so you pick one for each class and switch automatically when you're on each different surface. This can often happen so quickly you don't really feel like you're in control of what's happening, and the dramatic handling shift from surface to surface doesn't help. It's good because there's a decent amount of variety in what you're driving on, but in races and just exploring I often found myself wanting them to be better separated. The game makes use of a drifting mechanic. Unlike most other arcade racers I've played where you tap the brake to turn and start drifting, in 2K Drive you have to hold the brake. This is fine, assuming you're already going full speed. If not you'll have to let go and start the drift again and keep fiddling with it until you're either past the corner or, more likely, you've overshot it entirely, gone off road, then started sliding more than you want because there's so much less grip off road. You have to do this because, oddly, holding on to the brakes slows the car down, so if you don't time it right you'll start losing speed. The whole experience just feels awkward, and in a driving game that's about as big a mistake as you can make. There's a boost mechanic and powerups too. Boosting is weird. It feels like the things on screen around the car move faster but the car doesn't change at all. In fact this is a recurring problem. As you win races and complete events you level up, and as your level increases so does your vehicles' overall ability (each vehicle has its own strengths and weaknesses besides this). But from level 1 to level 30 I noticed very little difference in handling or performance at all. It was as much of a struggle to begin with as it was at the end. And no matter what I did, I would always run out of boost in a race right when I needed it. Weapons are a pain too. Cars are destructible, with bits flying off when they take hits, eventually respawning if they're destroyed. The problem is a race usually lasts 2-3 minutes, and at the rate the AI jumps or dodges your weapons you're barely going to gain an advantage. The best weapon attaches two canisters of fruit to your car and fires ahead of you for a good amount of seconds, but then the canisters block most of the track and your surroundings so you can't see where you're going. Driving is awkward, weapons range from ineffective to a hindrance as much as a help, and the environment often gets in the way too. Fortunately the AI are... pointless. You've heard of rubber banding. You've heard of chasing the rabbit. 2K Drive manages to do both. The entire thing might as well be scripted. In fact it probably is. No matter the race length, no matter your level, or the difficulty rank (each of the 24 races has three different difficulties - you play a certain one as default as you progress through the story, and can go back later), you will start at the back, gradually work your way up, and only ever compete for the win on the last lap or final few corners. I found it quite stressful the first few times until I realised the first 90% of the race didn't matter at all. If this is an attempt to make the game more child-friendly, it's a bad thing. They need to learn, and they learn by spending hours trying to beat Basil the Batlord without any friends or big brothers to help them. Outside of races there are actually lots of things to do. The game is split up into three distinct areas. Each has a range of collectibles and things to find by exploring. There are also lots of 'On-the-Go' events, miscellaneous challenges with a time limit to beat. The variety here is huge and one of the game's few strengths. The thresholds for a gold medal on these can be surprisingly harsh, especially on drift events, but there's a lot to do and they really play into what sense of world building the game has. On a technical level, I'm torn. I played the PS4 version of 2K Drive and it's often quite ugly. Like Lego games nowadays everything except buildings and the environment is destructible. I'd guess the sheer volume of objects plays into performance which is understandable, but you move around so quickly the blurred edges of your car and the things you hit are noticeable. That said, the game's long loading times include the entire world you travel to, and you can drive around at full speed without ever hitting any stutters or problems. My PS4 was also silent throughout, so there's something technically impressive happening here. The worlds are also very bright and as much detail and attention has gone into them as there is in your average Legoland exhibit, so there's some good and some bad. As I've been typing this I've been watching a longplay of the original Lego Racers on youtube. Aside from the obvious nostalgia hit from the introduction and the music I'm mainly wondering what this framerate is. I'm not sure it's getting above 20. Aside from that, the first menu option is "Build." You create your racer and build your first car. I've tried not to compare 2K Drive to any other games but here I'm really going to lament the missed opportunity. It's Lego. If you're a child playing this, you have or have played with Lego. If you're an adult playing it like me you probably just wish you were a child playing with Lego. The idea of extending that to a virtual world where there are no parents or things like money to limit the amount of bricks you have is a dream. 2K Drive has an extensive builder system with a seemingly endless amount of bricks you can use, with lots more to unlock as you progress. It has an extensive, if annoyingly voiced, tutorial about how to get the best out of it. And after you spend an hour putting together your basic little car with some wedges at the front, a wing at the back and some of those grill bits to make it look like an engine you'll start playing and unlock a car shaped like a chicken that you'd need about a month and two university degrees before you could think about trying to build it yourself. Oh and all the vehicles you unlock or can buy from the stores or download from people who've been here first and are smarter than you all have stat boosts too which means if you want to drift, or you want to be fast enough to actually win a race, your painstaking labour of love will be forgotten about immediately. The basic problem with 2K Drive's creation aspect goes back to my comparison between Star Wars and Ninjago. There's too much. I remember getting The Sims 2 on PC because I liked it so much on PS2. But when I played it I was overwhelmed by the amount of extra content and detail in it. The same goes here. Not only is there too much choice and variety on offer for me to make my own car I can be proud of and be attached to, there's pre-built stuff available in-game which looks cooler and goes faster. Maybe there is enjoyment to be had here if I had the time or patience or mental capacity, but I get the feeling I'd just wish I was playing with real Lego instead. The back of the case says "Build and customise brick by brick!" and the picture to go with it looks like some sort of twin-drilled mining vehicle and there's just no way I'm getting near that. While the game's areas are easy to navigate and filled with detail, there's a lot lacking too. Areas where there is Lego are great. There are buildings and characters and it's all very vibrant and engaging. I go back to the Legoland comparison - it's just exciting to see that much Lego built into things that look cool. The problem is that these actually take up very little space. The whole world isn't made of Lego. It's natural surroundings - water, land, rocks, mountains - with bits of Lego dotted on them here and there. And because of how quickly you can drive you can blast through an entire town or city in about five seconds without actually noticing anything. For all the detail in these areas it almost seems like you need to make a concerted effort to take any of it in. When you do that, you realise just how superficial and shallow it all is. I can still remember Sandy Bay in Lego Racers 2 with its four buildings, or the bases on Mars. I barely remember the names of the three places in 2K Drive. Like the sense of scale which ruins the fun of creation, the world itself just seems fleeting and almost redundant because of how small it really is. My final problem - and I promise this is my final problem, because I'm boring myself right now, is the characterisation. That characterisation exists at all. I've already said there's virtually no point in creating a driver or creating a car. I'm going to go back to Lego Racers again. The intro movie sets things up nicely. You see Rocket Racer, the guy on the box, winning a race and being crowned champion. He's mean to his pit crew and he cheats, so he's the bad guy. You see some mild slapstick comedy along the way. Nobody speaks. There's the odd bit of facial movement. There are a few bosses you beat in championships along the way before taking on the big man himself and winning, bringing justice to the world. The childish joy of transplanting your own personality and characterisation onto the silent figures is the same simple joy that's made Lego so popular. You can build what you want, and you can make them do what you want. Anything else is irrelevant. Sadly, if you're reading this you've probably seen the picture I opened with. A screenshot of the head bad guy saying something about jaded Gen-X references nobody gets. And therein lies the problem. There are a lot of characters in this game. There are 24 races dotted around. Each has their own racer you need to listen to, and beat, and each race is themed around them somehow. This is mildly amusing the first couple of times, but when you're done you just forget about them. There's a main guy with a racing team you come back to every now and then and isn't it hilarious, he has an unruly dog! Haha, woof woof, am I right? I'd actually be curious to see the ratio of time spent listening to characters talking or reading their intro messages to total time spent doing the game's core races. I think it would be quite a bit closer than you'd want to believe. I'm thinking about it now and I don't think I can honestly say I enjoyed any part of 2K Drive. It's not fun to play, it's not rewarding to build, it's not inviting to explore and other features like online racing (getting dropped in mid-race is great) or the game's apparently compulsory battle pass and multiple currency microtransactions just seem an inevitably hollow reminder of why games like this are made nowadays. 2K Drive was released in May 2023. I bought it in a Black Friday sale, and the following week it was announced as one of December's free PlayStation Plus games. Despite everything I've said I don't mind this because it was still cheap and I still wanted to play it, but after the time I spent with it I can really see why. How can I play Lego Racers 2 again, and in perpetuity?

Years of staff/budget cuts chasing a bottom line and artificially inflated pension scheme above everything else means full time staff are at a premium if there's any left at all, with fewer layers of in-store management leading to poorly trained, unsupervised staff who have no stake in the business doing most of the day's work at times of shifts which they're most likely to agree to doing, which will be during the day rather than earlies or lates. Cheer up, you can sign up for their data harvesting schemes to get your teabags for only 10p more than they were this time last year.

This was genuinely the case. What a shame.

Heroes are the only tub of chocolate where everything in it is good. Eclairs and "Dinky Deckers" are comfortably at the bottom but still passable.

Frightened Rabbit

Did he really need three pictures?

I've never heard of Jerry Sadowitz outside of P&B and an evening with him sounds like the worst night of my life.

"Oh I've done him already I don't need to add him."

And while I'm here, something I actually thought of before the week's early start - currently the First Blood and Last Gasp rules are a bit vague regarding multiple deaths on the same day. The rule now adds "If more than one death is recorded on the same day, each pick will receive the bonus." I don't think there's a fairer way to do it. I've also just realised I don't know how many points the First Blood/Last Gasp bonus should be, and I will sort that shortly.

Week 1 update Remember last December when nothing happened? Well. Up first this year we have Kate Garraway's husband and professional Covid patient, Derek Draper: Derek Draper obituary | Derek Draper | The Guardian What a lad. Draper died at 56 so he's worth 69 Base Points. He's also the first death of the year so gets a 25 point First Blood bonus. There's a mixture of regular picks and Captaincies, so I'll just list everyone 94 (Base Points) @amnarab, @Arch Stanton, @mozam76, @Ned Nederlander, @psv_killie, @sparky88, @The_Craig, @The DA, @The Naitch, @ThomCat 129 (Vice-Captain) @cdhafc1874, @lichtgilphead 163 (Captain) @lolls, @Moomintroll, @pub car king, @Salvo Montalbano ============== Second death this week was Hutch, David Soul: Starsky & Hutch actor David Soul dies aged 80 | US news | The Guardian Soul died at 80 so he's worth 45 Base Points for @mozam76, with a Solo Shot taking that to 95 points. ============== Third death this week was actor Glynis Johns: Glynis Johns obituary | Film | The Guardian That second bit is a bad example, when I hear Send in the Clowns I just think of the Krusty Komeback Special. Johns died at 100 so she's worth 25 Base Points for @sleazy, @stanton and @Sweaty Morph ============== Final death this week was former Brazil player and manager Mario Zagallo: Mário Zagallo, World Cup-winning player and coach for Brazil, dies aged 92 | Brazil | The Guardian I'll leave you with a picture of his 1958 win: Seems like winning the World Cup feels good. Zagallo died at 92 so he's worth 33 Base Points, with a Deadly Duo taking that to 58 points for @Florentine_Pogen and @tamthebam After that, the standings look like this: 1. mozam76 189 2. lolls, Moomintroll, pub car king, Salvo Montalbano 163 6. cdhafc1874, lichtgilphead 129 8. amnarab, Arch Stanton, Ned Nederlander, psv_killie, sparky88, The_Craig, The DA, The Naitch, ThomCat 94 17. Florentine_Pogen, tamthebam 58 19. sleazy, stanton, Sweaty Morph 25 22. Everyone else 0 The spreadsheet has also been updated with these scores: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CsroU6IlQNJOesOqCc5gsI7SCw8ywBS-PUzQwLTJe4g/edit?usp=sharing

Everything is on the first page of the thread.

The concept of comedy effectively boils down to a deeply obnoxious person trying to make you like them by shouting at you. You'd have a harder time finding one who's tolerable than one you hate.

Hey I still think we should never have let Semyon Varlamov go (I'm right)

And Prosvetov's gone after 4 goals on 13 shots. @Spyro

Nish Kumar just gives me the creeps.

2 goals in 52 seconds to start the 2nd. Now we're cooking. I couldn't think how to post that without sounding mean Watching MacKinnon all the time and knowing the mentality that comes with him I wouldn't swap him for anyone. I'm sure when/if McDavid wins a cup all the questions and criticism will go away but until then, he's not a winner. Although I do unironically think Makar is the best player in the league. Even with his lingering injury issues.

Disney Speedstorm (PS4, 2023) Disney Speedstorm is "the ultimate hero-based battle-racing game, set on circuits inspired by Disney & Pixar worlds." It was released in early access early in 2023 and went free to play in October. I started playing it then and I've played it every day since. There are two reasons for this. The first is that it's an extremely good kart racing game. It's an extremely good racing game. Handling and drifting is easy to pick up and quickly feels intuitive. There's a range of powerups available for both attack and defence which adds a frantic layer of tactics to your racing. Races are short - usually lasting two minutes at most - and rather than feeling superficial or unfair this somehow fits the style of the game. Couple this with bright, rich settings for tracks and an assortment of characters (I think I have 34 unlocked at time of writing), and it's almost impossible to not feel engaged. Obviously the Disney name is a significant part of the game's appeal, and gives it an almost limitless potential for new content added in updates. Since going free to play, Aladdin and Frozen characters have joined Mickey, Toy Story, Hercules, The Jungle Book and others. It's been a long time since I watched any Disney films but lots of these were an integral part of my childhood so if the old frozen head in a jar wants to cash in, why not? Steamboat Mickey also features, but he's not doing some of the other things I've seen him doing online lately. In addition to the standard drift and boost mechanics of a kart racer, there are different types of racer you can play as and a variety in powerups linked to that. There are four different classes - Speedster, Defender, Trickster and Brawler. Each gets a slightly different set of powerups, so controlling a race as one class will require a different focus from the others. This helps keep the gameplay fresh from race to race, and each racer's own unique ability which can eventually be unlocked potentially swings the race in your favour even more. Characters each have a good amount of personality in a number of ways. They're all physically recreated pretty accurately. They even have some of the real voice actors. Robin Williams isn't there obviously and they got Tom Hanks' brother who apparently does voiceover work for him when he can't be bothered, but James Woods! Tim Allen! Well they probably didn't have much else on. Maybe Steve Buscemi and John Goodman were busy. Either way, if there is any part of your inner child left in this jaded, dying world you will raise a smile somewhere if you spend any time with Speedstorm. Racing on the various tracks is also soundtracked by remixes of all your favourite Disney classics - A Whole New World, Bearnecessities, Let it Go - if you wanted a light techno version of any of these, you're in luck. The second reason I've found it so easy to return to this game so much is the structure of it. There are two multiplayer modes, ranked and regulated. Regulated puts everyone at the same level and goes with it. In ranked you use your own unlocked racers and you can rank each of them up by racing, earning rewards along the way. This is fine, although the game had problems when it went free to play because players with a low online rank were being matched against players with a high character rank. This was allegedly addressed in a patch, but I've noticed literally no difference. The notion of levelling up characters is another part of the game's appeal, although it exposes part of my ignorance of modern multiplayer games. The only multiplayer games I've played since even just getting a PS4 have been Rocket League and Gran Turismo. In Rocket League you play Rocket League. You can unlock cosmetics but gameplay doesn't change. In Gran Turismo you buy cars in-game and race them. Easy. Speedstorm has what seems to be every trapping of a modern day free to play game. A Golden Pass, microtransactions, three kinds of currency and multiple time-limited events every day. For a Disney game that's full of Disney characters to have the somewhat aggressive shop this does makes me feel quite uneasy. It's easy for me to ignore this (and the game isn't shy in giving you various rewards), but that's not the point when it comes to games where you can spend real money. Gameloft do listen to feedback regarding the shop and prices, rewards and items for sale have changed for the better over time, but it still doesn't really sit right with me. I checked the main purchasable currency, tokens, once to see what you actually got for them. £16 worth could get you a new outfit for Jafar. You could buy Tokens and spend them on proper upgrade materials too, but a large part of the store is geared towards expensive cosmetics. In a Disney game that's going to be popular with younger players I just don't get how anyone could look at this and go through with it. Single-player content comes in two main forms, Seasonal events and Limited events. The game runs in 60 day long seasons centred around different Disney franchises, with new events becoming available each week. Limited events are races against the AI with varying criteria. Some are one off races, some are time trials, some offer multiple rewards for winning a race multiple times, or for other objectives like stunning opponents or drifting for a certain amount of time. These all offer pretty substantial rewards for improving racers, so there's a strong incentive to keep coming back. The other side of the free to play microtransaction-ridden nonsense comes in here as it pertains to upgrading your characters. Each character has a star rank out of 5, and a level rank out of 50. Their level is limited by their star rank - the highest a 1 star character can go is level 15, a 2 star level 25, and so on. This can be frustrating when a character is stuck at a level which you have upgrade parts for, but not enough shards to raise their star level. Of course, this is the point and is supposed to usher you into buying the resources you need, but I'm not doing that so I often end up abandoning characters until the chance comes up I might get what I need. That said, there is plenty of opportunity to get what you need to upgrade characters. Ranking characters up online gives you resources. There are free boxes and shards you can claim each day, and the Season events offer substantial rewards. So does the Golden Pass, and you can quickly earn enough tokens to upgrade this and earn even more. In addition to characters there are crew members who offer stat boosts to things like each characters speed or acceleration, so there's plenty to upgrade and you will upgrade things frequently if you play frequently. If you do find a limit, due to the game's apparent nature of being something you can dip in and out of you can easily shift your focus somewhere else when this happens. I don't know how much longer I'm going to be playing Speedstorm. According to the game I'm around 40 hours of racing in so far after two months and I'm showing no signs of stopping. If you want a review, there you go. Actually, reading this back I realise I've spent more time describing menus and time-limited events than actual gameplay or content. Why am I still playing this? Stockholm Syndrome? Lack of fulfilment elsewhere in life? Desperately chasing dopamine like a lab rat with a car battery wired to its genitals? Who knows. I still like winning races online when I steal a place with a well-timed powerup at the line. That doesn't get old no matter the game.

You might be waiting a while, the Avalanche don't have any goalies either. Georgiev has one year left after this and will cost too much (and is dung anyway) and we just don't do goalies, so I imagine the hope is that Prosvetov becomes The Guy.

Would you like me to post that clip of Makar and Toews against the Oilers in the playoffs in 2022?

He's covered the puck for the first time tonight and got the first cheer from the crowd. He's not played that much but he still seems very raw. There's times he goes for saves and he doesn't look like he's in complete control of all his limbs.

3-0 3 goals on 4 shots