forameus

I wouldn't be surprised if Clarke gives certain assurances that certain players will be rested in the far less important Nations League games. We play Israel on Thursday night, and I'd expect Clarke to resist any stupid call-offs to the best of his ability for that. But then we play in the Nations League groups again on Sunday night, and I expect to see a much changed team there.

Rivals placement games completed, and I got an absolute do-ing in most of them. Should have won the last but I still can't deserve for shit, so got a draw. Also nice to see that the most effective tactic still remains to dribble to the byline and cut-back. I'd say vast majority of my goals conceded were that. So infuriating in the cases where you can't do anything about them.

As opposed to a lot of our players who just have 30 odd rotten appearances?

Didn't find a topic for it, but finally completed Death Stranding after, apparently, 58 hours, and....wow. It's a really fucking hard game to categorise. At times it's utterly infuriating, and a lot of the time - particularly towards the end - you're getting the full force of Kojima's "creative control". But, despite this being something that really, really shouldn't work, it...really, really does. Gameplay wise it has issues. The whole point of the game will absolutely not be everyone, and I could see people getting really bored pretty quickly and leaving it behind. But I'd encourage people to persist, because I think they do a remarkable job of building things up to keep it fresh. If anyone doesn't know, the whole gameplay loop is that you're delivering packages. That's...about it. But as time goes on, you get asked more and more, you have to start making decisions. I don't have the stamina to get over that river, or the battery to go around it, so what do I do? Then you start getting different equipment, and it builds up from there. Outside of the gameplay, the sound design is incredible, and it looks utterly gorgeous in points. The set-pieces are incredible. It's extremely polished. Cons-wise, there's plenty. The game has been built for the exploration part, so when combat comes in, it's a bit janky. The boss battles are interesting and well put together, but a lot of the time the 3rd person and controls aren't up to scratch. Inventory-wise, it's a bit bloated, and often not explained. Think the sort of detail MGS5 had at points, but worse. I will also say that the way the story is told is often long-winded and typically smug. Stuff gets thrown at you hard and fast, and it often doesn't explain terms it's using. I expect there's some extra stuff you could find that fills in the blanks, but it could definitely have been told better. It's also paced a bit weird - early in the game a lot of cutscenes, then hours and hours and hours of nothing, then at the end you're getting true Kojima levels of cutscenes. But again, without spoiling it too much, in the final minutes of the game, after being beaten to death with cutscenes, there was one of the most harrowing and beautiful scenes I've experienced in a game. All in all, it's far, far better than I thought it would be. If you want a game that, at points, is one of those nice, slow-paced exploration-with-story games that you can delve into the universe and spend hours and hours, you'll probably enjoy it.

Also pish. Thank Shaqiri was the best. Transfer market still locked so I'll fire up the EA play trial thing tonight and see if I can unlock it. That stadium stuff looked promising initially, but just looks like gimmicky pish. I'll be raging if I can't just use the plainest stadium all year round given you never fucking see it.

Web App due to come online tonight, with EA Access/Play for 10 hours starting tomorrow, Early Access on pre-order next week before the release...Friday I think? Of course, content creators got it yesterday, and have spent the time since opening packs while dribbling simpletons watch along. Am I the only one that has no interest in watching other people open packs? Saw Royal Blood on it, but that's about the only one I recognise. It's always borderline unlistenable to me, but then there isn't a fucking chance I'd ever get a soundtrack I enjoyed on FIFA. Game'll be getting muted on day 1 and podcasts/music filling the void. Cheers Geoff.

Also can't see him, with the work ethic he clearly has for films, to sacrifice that much time just to get in the ring again. Imagine it'd be a match working around his filming, or not at all. So the latter.

Midfield can be our strongest area, and still be lacking. Just like most of the players we pick are the best we could get, while we'd still tear our arms off for something better. The midfield thing is overplayed anyway. On paper, the sheer number of talented midfielders we have would suggest we should be fine there, but there's little evidence that we can mould the best of them together into a good unit. We don't have the best forwards, and the midfielders struggle to get forward to support whatever jobber we have up there, and we don't have the best defenders, and our midfielders struggle to give them the cover they need. Makes you wonder what they are actually doing.

I wouldn't necessarily say he'd need to go over. I think Rock's enough of a veteran to not go all Hogan and demand it. I could easily see them either properly cementing Reigns as a heel in winning, or have him go kind of tweener and embrace at the end and shit. But yeah, the big thing is the risk involved. If they're going to run WM as it should be, in a massive stadium full of people, then I could see him being interested, but can you imagine they managed to persuade him, the insurers, and everyone involved and it ended up being in THE THUNDERDOME with polite canned applause?

Just can't ever see Rock realistically coming back for a proper match. The work ethic he has, the number of films he does, there's no way he risks getting himself seriously injured. I imagine he'd be really keen on it, he clearly still loves the business. His insurers and the people with stakes in movies and not Vince's Big House of Beef? Nah.

Fairly enjoyable show that, nothing really jumping out as being bad, everything solid enough. Ladder match was fucking brutal. Three guys going out to end their own careers for entertainment, and a fairly inventive ending too. That fall Hardy took where he managed to take bumps off of most of the scenery and then get trapped inside a ladder looked utterly miserable to take. Hats off to them. Ambulance match was alright, but made McIntyre look a bit shit that there can be three people doing run-ins and he still only just wins. Enjoyable enough though. Reigns is just brilliant now. He seems comfortable in what he's doing, rather than the forced gee whizz stuff they used to have him doing. Would like to see him drop the Shield music so he can completely shed that side of things, but the change in gear is doing wonders when he stands there looking like a fucking adonis. Ooft. xI'm getting that too. Gone are the longing, hungry looks at Brock, now he does look like he's a bit submissive to him at times. I expect at some point we might see a split, and maybe - if they're wanting big Brock back - that's going to be the way they go. Paul on a Pole match. For me though I just can't see it happening. I just can't see this version meshing with Lesnar that well. When Lesnar can be arsed he can put on a great show, but I just can't see them putting on a WWE-style match where Lesnar is a "face" against heel Roman. If they just went out and had 20 minutes of leathering f**k out of each other though, and Lesnar brings it, could be persuaded otherwise.

Cannae beat slapping a bit of Rouge on.

I always find it best to completely ignore most reviews anyway. If someone reviews something and says it's an absolute turd and 1/10 or something, then they're probably onto something, but anything above that and you're into completely subjective territory. I wouldn't trust anyone - professional or otherwise - to tell me whether I'm going to like a game, as some that have been truly critically acclaimed I've found it hard to get into (Dark Souls, Breath of the Wild, any of the newer Batman ones) and others that have been more meh I've absolutely loved (Death Stranding, No Man's Sky, both of which hover around that 7 mark). Actually, I may be too harsh on critic reviews, as you can still find some incredibly well-written pieces that are pretty fair and well-balanced, but unfortunately sites like metacritic can take that well-thought-out review, and drown it out with 400 people shitting all over it because there was a woman as a main character.

Yeah, compared to release it's very, very different. After their first big update I loaded up an existing save and had to chuck it through the sheer weight of new stuff. If you fancy starting over, it'll probably feel like something completely alien.

I got that email from Game last night, but couldn't log in when they advised you should check that. Tried this morning, and I'm now in a queue of "more than an hour" just to log in. Jesus fucking Christ. So that "more than an hour" ended up being over 3. And with 30 minutes to go they're sold out again.

I can see with (albeit personal) 99% certainty that in a 2 week window, we won't get to the point where the Scottish Government decides that getting any pissed up Scotland fans into Hampden is a good idea. And that's not even taking into account UEFA's decision.

To be fair, we get relegated when we're pessimistic too.

I have no idea what profits HG are still running on...That is an absolutely maaaaassive update. Hats off to them. Once I'm done with Death Stranding I'll go back to this as my relaxation game.

Good mention for Death Stranding which is approaching top tier for me. It really shouldn't, it should be shite, but...its just not. Finding it fascinating.

So after I thought Currys completely shat the bed with their preorders, I got an email about an hour ago saying that I'd secured one, with a preorder number and everything. Although I can't see any money having left my account... Wit are the Currys daein Tom?! EDIT: an update email with a jocular "sorry lads, mistake". Seething.

I always worry with games that get so super-hyped, as it's almost inevitable they won't meet it. I trust that CDPR will do a great job, and I put Witcher 3 as probably my favourite game ever, but nothing that has come out about the game itself is suggesting it's going to be this massive leap forward. I saw a video on the vehicle stuff and it looked rank. 7 out of 10 seems about right, and there's not really anything wrong with that. But I expect a lot of piss-babies are going to be acting like it's the worst thing ever because it hasn't met their pointlessly high expectations.

f**k it, I'm going to bat for you on Zelda at least. When I got the Switch, everyone was absolutely raving about Breath of the Wild that I kind of had to get it. But after putting maybe 10 or so hours into it, I just didn't...get it. Can see it's a very polished game (as every single first-party Nintendo game seems to be to their credit) but the game didn't grab me and suck me in like I expected it to. I intend to get back to it some point and give it another go, but it's pretty far down the list. Wouldn't agree on Mario though. Mario Odyssey was a fucking delight, and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise. I'll probably lose, but I'll try at least.

As a developer, this is a massive warning sign. I hope I'm proved wrong, but going against what they've always done suggests they're either way behind on where they want to be, or that they're really not happy with what they've got. Neither is good for us. Hopefully it's just a general sense that they don't see the benefit in the demo, but...well it doesn't sound good.

IT WOULD BE A TERRIBLE SHAME IF YOU WERE TO STEAL AND BURN THESE FLAGS, LADS Unfortunately, given their thought of "no-one likes us, we don't care", they'd probably see some kind of kinship with the sentiment. Urgh.

I only read the Bleacher Report recaps, and even that feels like WWE has violated me. Sounds like a fucking awful RAW top to bottom. Can only assume they've just sacked off doing anything of note in the Covid months in the hope that they can kick-start things in Wrestlemania season. Everything has been hopelessly half-arsed.