Bobfoc

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is coming to Game Pass on Thursday, along with Outer Wilds (which has been on before). Spelunky 2 joins on 13th January. Windjammers 2 will be a day-one addition on 20th January, along with Pupperazzi, which will obviously be the best of the lot.

OLED Switch is supposed to look nicer, but it doesn't have any advantages when it comes to game performance. It's definitely not essential.

It is a point-and-click game, but not like Fallout. You're a detective and you don't kill people at all. Instead, you have stats that all relate to individual aspects of your personality and thought processes, and these are used to determine what actions you can take and what dialogue options you can choose. It's all based on a dice-roll system, so your stats affect the chances of a decision having the desired outcome. It's possible to "lose" the game by losing health or morale, but generally, losing skill checks is as much a part of the story as succeeding at them is. Two different playthroughs can be very different, depending on which skills you choose to focus on. And if you just want to be all-powerful, there are bound to be third-party trainers that let you max out everything. As an aside, if you're looking for an isometric action game more akin to the old Fallouts, Wasteland 3 is well worth looking at. Given that it was made by a Microsoft-owned studio, it's on Game Pass for both PC and Xbox, and it's got all the fun and humour that you'd expect from the Interplay Fallout efforts.

The creators obviously decided to spread the series across two calendar years just to double their chances of winning this poll.

Seeing Bill Ward playing with that much energy is nice.

Sony has made PS5 upgrades needlessly complicated.

I think slickdeals.net is supposed to be good for US deals in all sorts of categories.

Strikers is also a direct sequel to Persona 5/Royal. As mentioned above, it has Dynasty Warriors-style combat.

There's a small venue in my town where most of the big acts used to play in the 1960s. Experiencing one of those would be interesting. As for specific acts, Dio-era Rainbow springs to mind. I'd also have liked to see The Carpenters and ABBA, if you're looking for something mellower. Seeing a Tom Lehrer concert would have been nice too.

Me too. It always seemed a bit expensive for me, so it's an ideal Plus game.

The Steam sale has started.

Sheffield United and Nottingham Forest are really enjoying the new manager bounce right now.

The Mandalorian didn't have any episodes this year, did it?

All of them.

I haven't thought about Project Zomboid in a long time. It's remarkably still in early access. I remember people talking about the first public build in 2011.

I voted for Sarah Storey, but I can't argue with Raducanu, Daley and Peaty as a top three. I could easily have gone for any of them.

Avoiding combat is recommended early on because you don't have much health. The more shrines you do and the more seeds you find, the more prepared you are for battles.

1. What We Do in the Shadows 2. Midnight Mass 3. The Wheel of Time 4. Squid Game 5. WandaVision I really thought I'd seen more than that. I checked several online databases to find out if I'd missed something, but apparently I hadn't. I don't consider Squid Game or WandaVision to be shows I particularly liked, but they'll simply get points by default.

Add me to the list of people waiting for someone else to make the first move.

The main award goes to the best British sportsperson. Verstappen is eligible for the Overseas award.

Maybe Benitez is the one.

It would feel a bit odd if Emma Raducanu won the main award without being nominated for the junior one. Obviously, they wanted some variety and to give some other people some attention. It's interesting to look back at the previous winners. About half of them managed to break through and become major names in their sports, whereas the rest generally became reasonably good, but not world class in their fields. Golfer Lauren Taylor seems to be the only one who fell off the radar completely.

"Progressive" by social media's standards could mean anything as mild as "I don't think all refugees should be torpedoed in the Channel".

Tyson Fury said he'd sue the BBC if he got on the shortlist because he doesn't want to win, although he also said that he should have won it before. He's just being a clot, as usual. I could happily see any of the others win. I imagine it will go to Raducanu, thanks partly to the relative recency of her US Open victory, and I wouldn't have a problem with that. I am dreading the inevitable media backlash if she doesn't dominate next year and/or says something mildly progressive on Twitter, but that's an issue for the future.

Whatever happens, this is a really bad way for the season to end. A victory for either person will seem tainted now.