GarethRDR

Thinking of pulling the trigger on one of these soon. Chiefly (and I realise this is a bonkers reason) as I have it as this weird aspirational life goal to at some point, own both current consoles. Just the standard disc-drive version for me, unless there's some sub-£400 bundle with a worthwhile game kicking about (and I've not seen one, unless the latest Final Fantasy is particularly worth a go).

If These Trees Could Talk first ever UK show at the always excellent Portals festival next year, for anyone so inclined:

Obligatory "Ticketmaster can get all the way ****". Bastards.

@DeadlyDirk skill up lockpicking ASAP and stock up on lockpicks every time you're at a vendor (they're in frustratingly scant supply in the wild); when you're fully levelled you can start using auto-slots (these regenerate over time) and spending picks to quickly eliminate the unused options, makes it slightly more tolerable but even then it's still a tediously awful, overly time-consuming minigame (and half the time the loot drops from it are a feckin' joke anyway). Genuinely, by the time you get towards end game levels, you're almost better off ignoring anything locked and going with enemy loot drops. And never spend picks to go back steps, if you've messed up a puzzle then back out of it completely as you'll only lose the one pick for retrying the lock completely and the whole puzzle itself will refresh, usually to an easier variant. Also whilst you're at those vendors pick up as much Adhesive and Titanium as they're selling, they tend to be the resources you run out of quickest when trying to upgrade your gear. Seriously, out of all the bad stuff in this game, the lockpicking is the thing that can get absolutely **** the most, by the time you get your head around it (and don't worry, you will get your head around it, it's not particularly taxing) you'll see it for the horribly shite game-padding mechanic it is. I don't think a game has ever respected my time less than Starfield, to be honest.

At the age of 14, the deadliest weapon I owned was this:

I'd be up for any London and/or Brum meet-up.

This is an incredibly long shot, but for anyone Southampton-based-or-adjacent, I've got two tickets going spare to tomorrow night's Garth Marenghi book tour at MAST Mayflower studios (only a ~10 min walk from the central train station), free to a good home and you get the added bonus of meeting me and my wife. What a treat.

If they're not already on your hitlist, can I heartily recommend Callous Daoboys, Karnivool and Vukovi?

It's never lupenreiner.

I could never slate Emi for this, as it's actually the secret-but-not-really-that-secret goalkeeping rule #1 that we just don't actively tell people about. Think we actually need to be doing all those rolls on the floor after dives? But I've already said too much, they'll be sending Harald Schumacher round to take my gloves off me and running-knee me in the face just for typing that.

Just out of Eno and the Baltic Sea Philharmonic at South Bank. Spectacular stuff (although £20 for a CD at the merch desk can get to absolute **** ).

"Manage to survive in the PL"

I have been attempting to cultivate a two-tier social caste system within my team at work; those of us who have the internet, and those of us who have Virgin Media. HR not involved as of yet, but I await their MS Teams call anyday now (or not at all, if they're using Virgin too).

Could have compressed that to "carverys" and "dog shit". I'm yet to experience one that wasn't one of the circles of hell.

My hot take is I genuinely wouldn't care if they had a year where they saved themselves time and didn't touch the gameplay engine itself at all, just updated the superficial stuff (kits etc.) and instead devoted that resource to improving (...fixing) game modes.

Prefer Spirit Of Eden, personally.

Caught the play he wrote a couple years back when it came to London (The End Of Longing). It was largely just alright, but his character had a monologue about their alcohism that was harrowingly brilliant. His turn on Sorkin's underrated Studio 60 was similarly terrific.

Go Can-Cans! Best value for money "hospitality" ticket I ever bought was at Mosset Park. £30 for a open bar for an hour before kick-off (and nice local stuff from the taps, too, not just the cheap bottled shite), a dodgy microwaved pre-game pie and a plate of bourbon biscuits in the "Chairman's Lounge" at halftime. The game was absolutely awful, of course.

Of the 3 venues on that list I've been to: The Bullingdon's a bit naff. Key Club is alright but there's better, similar sized venues in Leeds. That said, its proximity to both Jumbo Records and a comprehensively stocked chilli/hot sauce shop are definitely in its favour. Cluny I only went to the first time this year and I loved it, great vibe albeit a bit of a squeeze, and it's a bit of a pain to get to from the city centre.

In mild defence of the Jack White/Alicia Keys one (very mild, I acknowledge it's largely the thinnest of gruels), I apply almost the same logic as Live And Let Die; the opening guitar riff into the staccato hits is top stuff and it's a goddamn crime that everything outside of that quickly falls apart. I definitely tend towards those Bond themes that have those instantly recognisable quickfire gut punches over the ballads and crooning ones (the Chris Cornell one does nothing for me, for example).

Pah, why bother with so called "Best Ofs" when you can just release a ~£1300 57 x LP collection of everything you've ever shat out? Oh Omar, you mad bastard. Well at least it's still better value for money than most Tool merch.

Ace Of Base's rejected Goldeneye theme, anyone? No? Fair enough. I've not heard the most recent ones but surely nothing is worse than Madonna's "effort". And Live And Let Die is mostly boring but **** me, that big orchestral stab riff is something else.

Just ran into my second game-breaking bug, am now locked out of progressing both the main questline and the one remaining faction questline I had to do. None of the troubleshooting online that has worked for some people seems to be working for me. This game is ass and I would be livid if I'd paid full whack for it.

I would presume (or at least hope) that there's some boilerplate clauses around player loans that if the player, for whatever reason, brings themselves into disrepute through actions of entirely their own doing, then any early termination of the loan on our part would not incur any otherwise associated financial ramifications.