Liam Deane

Well there's always the sister blades! But this was also my Hades 1 style and it was hard to let go but it was eventually very satisfying to feel like I was playing the game in a way that actually fit instead of always trying to force the dashy dashy dash style that just doesn't *quite* work

It's really about readjusting from the Hades 1 playstyle. When you realise that you don't need to move around as frantically all the time and you have a lot more ability to deploy stronger but slower attacks, often at range, it all starts to fall into place.

I went through this phase but eventually started mainly relying on omega moves with most weapons. Generally one of either the omega attack or special is just way way stronger than any other move and with the right arcana you can spam it as much as you want.

I really struggle to grasp what Meta actually did with that $77bn of metaverse money. Like they didn't *literally* set it on fire, where did it all go?

Such a horror to use a slightly aging device with a micro USB port. All that fiddling about, feeling like something is about to snap off at any moment. How did we live like this?

I think it's this basically. He does still think those are his values but it's doubtful whether they still constitute this most important part of his belief system.

Kind of hard to square this with his apparently sincere agreement with the groypers that Europe has fallen. He remains pro-immigration, at the margin, for America specifically, but the broader worldview is quite cooked at this point.

A big chunk of the year hasn't happened yet! Hold your fire until Christmas at least, come on.

Spotify Wrapped has been a malign influence on the world in so many ways but the worst is definitely establishing the practice of doing "end of year" lists in early December.

Well France have a clear run to the semis so I guess I'd take that with our history, but then they do run straight into South Africa. I wouldn't swap with England's draw - Australia at home is a lot more dangerous than Argentina I think.

Look am I confident about beating Argentina and England? No, but it's better than almost all the alternatives. Am I confident about beating Scotland? lol

Nah, it's a really good draw. Group is relatively hard but beat Scotland and the knockout draw is incredibly kind which is what matters.

It's very much at the better end of what we could've hoped for. The group itself is relatively tough, sure, but beat Scotland and we end up on the opposite side of the draw to SA, NZ and France. And scar tissue aside, Argentina is objectively one of the best QF opponents. Very happy overall.

No surprise that the person arguing the "who needs revenue anyway?" side of this debate is an academic whose job doesn't depend on the commercial success of the industry.

13. Assassin's Creed Shadows

A big, bloated, unwieldy mass of a game but with some real redeeming qualities. The twin playable characters are pleasingly distinct to play and the open world is remarkable, easily one of the best ever made. Overall I'd say it's 2nd best nu-AC game (after Odyssey obv).

I really don't understand how people are happy to have their inbox be an open sewer strewn with thousands of pieces of marketing junk. I got exactly one marketing email today whose list I'm now safely unsubscribed from.

Personally I welcome the opportunity to purge any spammers that have slipped through the net.

A really big and suitably unsurprising number

Did you know that CPDR is one of the most profitable studios in the industry? You need to sell a lot of games for that (few know this)

It is not, in fact, more than I thought

You don't know how many copies I think Cyberpunk has sold

Unfortunately however I am now Back On My Bullshit fiddling with all the graphics settings just when I'd finally given up tweaking them

Haha this has made the game so much more enjoyable. Turns out an extra 20fps is pretty helpful in a game that whose main activity is parrying.

I'm going to nominate The Bear. The first season is one of the best seasons of TV ever made. The most recent is, while I guess far from the worst thing on TV these days, mostly just a meandering pointless mess.

The world's premier PC gaming platform, everyone

Proof That Recent Windows Update Harms Gaming Performance AC Shadows frame-rate drops by 33 to 50 percent.

Huh! I've played this game entirely in the period between the busted Windows update and the hotfix being released and was kind of baffled by the performance which seemed a lot worse than you'd expect and almost totally insenstive to tuning the graphics settings.

Listen up games people

It's every bit as good as you hope but don't get discouraged if doesn't click right away. The feel of the movement especially is a bit different in a way that can be hard to adjust to if you've played a lot of Hades 1 but when it clicks it clicks.

This is a completely insane take from anyone who actually saw the the final seasons of the show. Sorry but those guys do not have a subtle or subtextual bone in their bodies.