Bobfoc

Casey Hudson is no longer with the company and Bioware is pretty much an entirely different company to the one that started the Mass Effect series. I'm not going to get excited unconditionally.

Has Hayden Christiansen done anything major since Star Wars? I can't say I've heard his name in any other context.

How did I forget about this? I don't think I've heard a cheer like that at Wimbledon ever, even when Andy Murray won. I'm still a bit annoyed that the rain delayed the match until Monday, so I missed it because of school.

Jimmy Glass's last-minute winner for Carlisle to keep them in the Football League. It was such an outpouring of emotion for an unlikely hero. 72 Jimmy Glass Saves Carlisle Utd - YouTube Then there's South Africa winning the Rugby World Cup in 1995. In and of itself, that was a significant moment, but seeing Nelson Mandela present the trophy to a great ovation was such a memorable sight in both a sporting and non-sporting context. Nelson Mandela & Francois Pienaar moment at RWC 1995 - YouTube

Skyrim as well, which is no surprise. All the Bethesda games will no doubt be on the service before long.

Dragon Age has been confirmed as something that will have a presence at the show. The main writer of the series has just left Bioware, though, so who knows how a new game would turn out?

A big factor behind delays is often publishers pushing developers to stick to a particular release window. Cyberpunk was self-published, so CDPR inflicted such pressures on itself. Bethesda may not be a perfect company, but I liked what it did with Fallout 4. That was announced when it was only a few months away from being released, which is an approach I much prefer. Then it went and announced Starfield and Elder Scrolls VI before they'd even been started, so so much for that working formula.

One of the presenters is going to be the Swedish Chef from The Muppets. After interviewing ALF and Miss Piggy over the summer, I think we can say that Geoff Keighley has some strange friends. Hideo Kojima is the strangest, of course.

The Game Awards are tonight (well, midnight tomorrow for GMT folks). I don't really care about the awards themselves, but there will be around a dozen game announcements. Microsoft will have a couple, but have asked fans to keep their expectations low, while Nintendo will be announcing the next Smash Bros. DLC character.

It looks as if someone quickly remade that section in Dreams.

The game has reportedly had over eight million pre-orders. That's what hype culture brings.

It's hard to excuse a company that worked its employees to the bone and still didn't release a properly working product. The argument that its less patchy performance on the new consoles is acceptable doesn't work for me either. They're selling a game that's meant to be compatible with all models of PS4 and Xbox One, so it should run properly on all of them.

Early reports are suggesting that the game runs quite horribly on the PS4. I've seen footage of stuttering frame rates, missing textures and full crashes.

I always have to wait a few years to catch up before I can confidently say what my favourite game released in a specific calendar year was. However, I've actually experienced more new games this year than usual, thanks in part to Game Pass. I'd put down Gears Tactics, OOTP 21, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Wasteland 3, Tell Me Why and Crusader Kings 3 as some of my favourites that I got day one on that service. Beyond that, Dreams, The Last of Us Part II and Final Fantasy VII Remake were enjoyable on the PS4, while Animal Crossing on the Switch has given me a lot of pleasure. The games I'd like to play, but won't be able to yet, include Hades, Crash Bandicoot 4, the Tony Hawk remake, Astro's Playroom and maybe Persona 5 Royal.

You would be able to use it on Xbox, yes. I'm almost certain it would activate straight away. You would have to log in on the Xbox with your account, not a new one with the same e-mail address.

You're right that this isn't anything new. Zelda fans pitch a fit whenever anyone doesn't give the latest game a perfect score too. Carolyn Petit reviewed Cyberpunk for Polygon. For those who don't know, she's a transgender woman who's been reviewing games for over a decade, and so she's very much in the firing line for anything remotely negative she says about the game. You might remember her Gamespot review of LA Noire, which was criticised on the grounds that "The reviewer's a dude lol". I actually remember someone on here saying the same thing at the time. EDIT: I looked back and it was more than one person. I think it's safe to say they've grown since then.

How did you manage that price?

CDPR say it's v1.0 and that the patch will change everything, which is a bold claim. All of the reviewers played the PC version as well, so there's no guarantee that there won't be different bugs on the console versions.

The reviewers almost all had more positive things to say about the game than negative things. They just weren't all calling it the greatest game ever, which is apparently enough to get people riled up. You have to be especially pathetic to harass someone for not confirming your unrealistic expectations of a game they've played and you haven't.

Liana Ruppert, the epilepsy-suffering writer of that article, says she has been sent hundreds of flashing images by angry fans in response. Wow.

That's a video I want to see now.

Also, "This video is sponsored by NordVPN/Raid: Shadow Legends."

I don't care about game scores, but I do pay attention to complaints that pop up in multiple reviews. Certain sites have long been hesitant to criticise big games for fear of being blacklisted by publishers, so negative points are sometimes overlooked or brushed off more liberally than with smaller games. When they're mentioning common issues, it rings a few alarm bells. However, I put more stock in what people are saying about a game, or indeed any form of popular entertainment, in the weeks following its release. A good few games have reviewed very well, but the buzz around them dies very quickly. On the other hand, I've seen games with mediocre reviews that have gained big followings too. If people are still talking about the great things they've discovered in Cyberpunk weeks down the line, that will be a good indication for me that it's worth a look. That said, you'll occasionally get a game like The Last of Us: Part II, for which the post-release chat is dominated by arguments that have nothing to do with the game itself.

It seems so. This is the eighth time England have been in a qualifying group with Poland.

Something that's come up more than once is the impression that the game tries too hard to be edgy. Judging by the brief footage I've seen, I'm not very surprised. The characters have been described in some reviews as especially unlikeable too. For all the bleakness in The Witcher, I did like several of the characters, so that's something that concerns me. What strikes me most is that all the reviews have been for the PC version. With all the reports of the console versions running poorly, that's not a good sign. It's very rare that a multiplatform game isn't reviewed on consoles on at least some sites at the same time as on PC.