GarethRDR

Christ is this ever true. At the "height" of the mid-aughts' New Rave craze, bar maybe two songs I found Klaxons to be utterly dull, but I would have absolutely gone to bat for, say, White Rose Movement, who it turns out in hindsight some years on were also just a bit shit (again save for maybe one track).

The annual surge of desperate mugs buying shitty-and-not-actually-any-cheaper-than-usual Chinese flatscreens has brought HSBC's online banking functionality crashing down. This has left me unable to send the £3.50 I owe for yesterday's weekly kickabout, thus I am being tarred and feathered by my peers. So **** you, Black Friday.

Puma size-wise and quality would be an improvement, but it can be a real crapshoot when it comes to kit design. They seem to either nail it or have a horror-show, with little in between.

A modern take on Dante's Inferno, truly.

Reign Of Fire deserved way better then it got. Think it was Frailty that had me realising McConaughey was more than just "that guy in the terrible movies".

Guessing I can't cheat and say Manchester Orchestra?

Pounding is genuinely one of my top 20 all time tracks. Absolutely love it. Martin Rebelski's solo stuff is also a treat if you like your downtempo vibes.

Niiiiiiiiice.

Netrunner builds essentially put the game on easy mode if you just want to have a laugh, and it's never not funny to stand across the street from a building teeming with enemies, hit one of them with contagion and watch them all take turns toppling over like spontaneously combustable dominoes.

Try and get hold of a copy that actually includes When Love Is Gone. Think I read they finally found the footage and it's been restored to recent versions. Truly one of the most boneheaded cutting room decisions of all time.

Well, I've had about an hour with Astro's Playroom... and you're telling me that's just the free tech demo? Wowzers. And that first moment when you're pulling the claw machine handle and the left trigger just hard locks before juddering into motion, yeah that felt really cool.

At this point, Carew's Newcastle penalty has a more legitimate claim as a space faring endeavour.

I've got some particularly spicy paella in the fridge that works along similar lines.

Ooh, and one last piece of advice from the PS5 owners; do I need to start looking for better sticks for the controller now or are they actually decent this time round? The cheap rubbery sticks on my PS4 controllers came apart within a matter of months and I wound up having to replace them both with third party ones.

I thought I saw @lapal_fan once, but turns out it was just CBeebies on the telly.

Deed is done, found a deal at the Smyth's round the corner from me, £380 for the console plus a copy of Lego Star Wars, will be picking it up later. So, apart from the obvious ones (GOW Ragnarok, Spiderman 2), what are the other console exclusives I need to be looking at (excluding Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3, the latter I'm holding out for the physical release and the former, well, as a card-carrying filthy casual I do not get on well with Soulsborne games)?

Still a no-go sadly, I suspect they're out of stock in central warehouses and only have in-store stuff. No biggy, I've got a mountain of stuff to trade in at CEX that'll I'll likely use to cherry pick the games I'm after.

Good shout but I can't find that bundle in stock anywhere online sadly. Unless I'm willing to drive 50 miles to a specific Argos, which... nah.

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.