Cappuccino Kid

I agree that Ellie's arc is tragic, but not in the sense of being mishandled, and not without a final act of redemption. For me, everything that happens is completely consistent with the first game, and the flashbacks we see. Abby is someone who had a caring, honourable father who tried to show her how to be good in a terrible world. Ellie's real father was completely absent, and her replacement father figure was a mentally unstable murderer. Of course Abby is the better person. The fundamental question in part 2 is not which of them is right, it's whether Ellie can escape Joel's influence, and start to find a better way in the world. And, at the last, she does.

I find all the arguments that run along the lines of "Oh, so you wanted me to kill all those other people/dogs, and that was fine, but now I'm supposed to feel guilty about this particular one just because they get a cutscene?" a bit disingenuous. It's like watching Saving Private Ryan and coming out complaining you can't be expected to care about Private Ryan, because what about all the soldiers that die during the film but don't have their names in the title? The idea is that you take a particular event that you have more detailed personal knowledge and experience of, and then use your imagination to extrapolate it and apply it to the situations that you have less context on. It's only one step up from complaining that you can't be expected to care about fiction because someone just made it all up.

Me before playing this: “There’s no way I’ll kill the dogs, that’d just be awful”. Me as soon as I encounter a dog now:

In contrast to everyone else, I'm finding this significantly tougher than the first game, even on normal. On a few of the bigger areas, I've felt like I'm getting through more by a combination of luck and perseverance than anything else. But loving it, nonetheless.

I think this article merits a mild spoiler warning. It doesn’t give away any specific details, but it does hint at a couple of things regarding the broad shape & structure of the narrative that I haven’t seen mentioned in any of the previews.

The first game I ever bought with my own money (rather than a compilation of stuff my cousin copied for me) was Batman on the Spectrum. From Boots the Chemist, natch. I often think about this game when playing the Arkham games, and how amazingly far we've come. 7 year-old me would be very, very excited.

I'm in the process of moving all my islanders to a new layout, starting with my least favourite, so naturally Huck was first. I put his house right next to the campsite, hopefully the stink of the campsite toilet will drift into his back garden.

Capcom: "We're going to remake Resident Evil 4!" Rllmuk: "Make sure you remove all the fun!"

Horizon Zero Dawn. I finally finished God of War last month, and I loved it. "Hmm", I thought, "a lot of my favourite games this generation (except BOTW, natch) have been Sony exclusives. God of War, Spider-man, Bloodborne, Uncharted 4, The Last of Us Remastered... but I've not given Horizon Zero Dawn a go. I should probably play that, I might love it." Spoiler: I did not love it. It just seemed to be littered with bad design decisions, or out-and-out bugginess that I thought was a thing of the past. I can't remember them all, but off the top of my head: - Rubbish autosave mechanism, that more than once would respawn me in a position where I'd have to immediately leg it in the opposite direction as fast as possible, otherwise I'd be immediately killed by the thing that just killed me - Rubbish autosave mechanism (2), that left me stuck in an underground base thing with not enough supplies, and no way out other than past a massive boss I had to beat before I could escape (and that there had been no warning of before I went in) - Dramatic loud music that would kick in whenever a robot spotted me, then continue playing over whispered plot-critical dialog that was triggered moments later, and was therefore impossible to hear - An overworld that was tedious to navigate, because every 30 seconds there'd be a herd of robo-dinosaurs that needed avoiding or killing - Really unclear levelling & difficulty. Yes, I know the missions are marked with a recommended level, but their actual difficulty regularly seemed wildly out of whack with that. I often found myself completely unsure whether I had the right equipment or the right level of that equipment. And despite the fact the tutorial/intro seemed to go on for ages, it still managed to explain very few of the things you need to know once you hit the main game. - Awful facial animations - Even worse voice acting Robot dinosaours are cool, obviously. But Horizon Zero Dawn is not a good game.

It's on Xbox GamePass if you have that and want to try it out. I've played it for an hour or so, and the combat is very XCom-y, but I haven't got as far as the non-combat stuff yet to know how that works.

The people who write for DF seem nice, and are undoubtedly very knowledgeable, but they really do produce some of the most dreary old bollocks ever to have been published. Letting them affect your enjoyment of games is like letting an audiophile who insists you should spend 500 quid on speaker cables stop you enjoying your favourite album.

I remember people making pretty much the same argument about the PS2->PS3/360 generation. "Oh, it's only HD, it doesn't really make much difference. The games will be the same". Then PS3/360->PS4. "The last generation had the SD->HD jump, what's the equivalent this time? Just slightly shinier graphics. The games will be the same". PS4 was the first time in 30+ years of gaming I've been able to afford a console on launch day, and even though there were hardly any games, and most of them were rubbish, it was brilliant fun and I have every intention of being there day one this time as well.

What are the creation tools in this like if you're using a DualShock? Most of the videos I've seen have people using Move controllers to do all the editing, which makes me suspicious that it's incredibly clunky if you just have a standard controller.

Rockstar are painted into a corner at this point, and it's very difficult to see them going any way but down. They desperately need to break out of the GTA/RDR cycle, but the money at stake is so huge that I can't see how they do that. Why would any talented up and coming creators go there now? They have a terrible reputation for working conditions, you only get to release one game per generation, and it's always going to be a story-led open world game with an online component. The last meaningful new IP they produced was Bully, and that was nearly 15 years ago. I'm sure we'll keep seeing GTAs, but just like the latest FIFA or Coldplay album they'll only be the inevitable output of a creatively bankrupt bohemoth consuming everything before it and excreting the inevitable outcome on an audience gratefully smothering themselves in the resulting faeces. Woah, that last paragraph did not end up where I thought it would.

Loading. Not quick loading, just reliable loading full-stop, rather than: - Put in the tape - Adjust the volume wheel to the level that (you think) worked for this game previously. Extra points if your volume wheel has special marks tippexed on based on previous success. - Type 'Load""'. - Wait 10 minutes. - Loading fails 9 minutes 50 seconds in. - Analyse why loading failed. Was it the volume? Was it because you typed 'Load""' rather than 'Load "nameofgame"'? Was it because you turned away from the tv for a couple of minutes? - Repeat 2-5 times. - When game eventually loads, play it for 2 minutes, remember you don't like it, and start process again with a new game.