JasonM

Yup...

I think May and Clarkson were. Hammond auditioned but explains in his autobiography that he and Clarkson clicked in the audition when they started ribbing each other. But there's also the fact that the first couple of series tend to be a little dull. The problem is that the new Top Gear probably doesn't have the luxury of time. It's going to get compared to what the last version became rather than what it started with.

That said maybe sending whatever three people they end up with out on one of those epic road trips will speed the process up. Probably a better way of introducing their personalities than studio links.

Also the problem is to find three people that have stellar chemistry. The way Hammond/May/Clarkson got along was magical, and it shows in May/Hammond's solidarity when Clarkson was axed in also refusing to be a part of the new Top Gear without Clarkson.

They had a rough start, but their natural chemistry with eachother made every show special and made Top Gear into not just the best car-show ever, but perhaps the most popular Non-fiction TV-Show ever made. And there's simply no way that anyone could ever emulate that sort of chemistry. Sure Evans and the other two might hit it off just great, but they'll always be compared to the best trio in TV history and no talent or chemistry will ever put them ahead of that.

It truly is simply Top Gear in name now, because people didn't watch for the cars, they watched for the three idiots who were mucking about like a bunch of 12 year olds every week. The cars were simply a vehicle (pun intended) to let them act like a bunch of fools... In truth, Top Gear == Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond.

And i'm not one to torpedo a show before it gets underway, but I am hardpressed to give a shit about the new Top Gear simply because it hasn't got those three in it.

Transfer ai come in 2 shitty forms...

1: Insanely high fees for average players who proceed to rot as reserve... aka, the moneybag teams...

2: Lowball the human player relentlessly until every player hates human manager or manager gets annoyed enough to accept the shit offer...

So I've reached the October International break, and well... I haven't expected this kind of success early on, with this aged squad.

7 league games, 6 wins and 1 draw (draw happened when I accidentally fielded my League Cup side)

2 CL Group Games (Trabzonspor, Roma), 2 wins 2-0 at Trabzon and 3-1 against Roma.

3-0 win against Stoke in the League Cup with a secondary squad.

Next game after the break will be against my old team Forest, and i'm fully going into that game wanting to destroy them. The new manager (Garry Monk) has ruined the side by selling the likes of Macias and wasting huge amounts of money on useless signings. So I have no love lost for that team again.

Being undefeated in the league puts me on top, but City is right behind me and their defense has been disgustingly good.

My team itself is still doing well, lots of goalscorers but Azzaoui is not producing as well as last year in my system. I've made changes, but no bueno as of yet, but hopefully he'll change his fortunes around soon and turn the team scoring into overdrive.

What episode are they up to? I play all the Telltale games when the price drops far enough but last I checked Game of Thrones was on episode four and this was still on two.

2, next week will be the release of episode 3 of 5

Three games in and onto the first international break.

Three games, three wins, and my first Manager of the Month award of the year (second ever).

Norwich 1-2 Liverpool

Liverpool 4-3 Man Utd

Liverpool 4-1 Stoke

The team has buttloads of scoring talent both on offense, and even the defense and midfield too. On the other hand, the Man Utd game was much too close and we should never had let through three goals.

Sterling is an assist machine, and there are 9 players with goals to their name already, with only Bilal getting two.

So basically, keep up the scoring, perhaps not concede more than a goal per game on average either... But three wins including United at home, that's a great tally for August.

It's been a very slow off-season for my Liverpool side. I've been focusing on completely revamping my backroom (signed Stevie G as a coach) and making the training staff and scouting staff top notch like they were at Forest.

Also due to the lack of funds to play with i've been pretty limited in what I could do with new signings, and whilst I would want to get rid of the big earners, they're also easily my best players, and I don't think it would be smart to get rid of them when they have a big job to fulfill.

As a result my only two signings are of the veteran variety (as if the team wasn't old enough already) when I signed Lewis Holtby and Juanfran on a free. Neither will set the world alight, but they'll be useful for tutoring and reserve purposes... I also tried getting Daley Blind after Real Madrid let him go, but he asked too much and Queens Park Moneybags swooped in and got him instead.

So i'll have to play with the hand I got, and hopefully all this experience means we'll have an edge on the teams that aren't ancient like mine. Mentally the team is one of the best teams in the league, so that's nice I guess...

Anyways, here is the team and my starting squad.

Oh, and my youth is pretty shit too beyond one very talented left back, a spot that's pretty stacked so I won't be able to give him PT either...

To be fair, I'd been meaning to give Hahn one because he has a stupid release clause of like £2.1m. He's now got a new one of £23m.

That end of the season trick...I'm going to try that in future. Never even realised that existed and I've played these games for close to a decade. Shows how much attention I pay...

Pretty sure it's new to 15.

Why do I find this out only now... I've been playing for seasons on end and I have never realized I could hold off the start-dates of new contracts to the end of the season, the amount of money I have wasted is staggering now...

Also, to answer your question about Peter Bosz. He had a long and semi-succesfull stint at Vitesse where he won a few league titles and the cup, then went on to Newcastle where he was average, and then Liverpool signed him... And now he's gone to manage the England squad.

Actor, Metal Artist, SAS Agent, Sith Master, One of the inspirations for the Bond character - RIP Christopher Lee

Let's not grieve his death, lets instead celebrate the lives of one of the finest people to have lived these past 93 years. He's been a war hero, he's played more memorable characters than any man ever including and not limited to; Scaramanga (Man with the golden Gun), Dracula, Count Dooku (Star Wars 2-3), Sarumon (Hobbit AND LOTR), Rochefort (Musketeers) and many many more.

Rest easy great man, rest easy because you won't ever be forgotten.

My South Korea team found the best way to shit the bed hard in the East-Asia cup...

4-0 win against China

6-0 win against Japan

0-1 loss against North Korea

North Korea wins the cup by 1 point, despite having 2 g.d. instead of 9...

Thanks team >_>

EDIT: Peter Bosz decided to fuck off to manage England after Rafa got fired for fucking up the EC (par for the course.) So the Liverpool job opened up and they offered me a job, so i'm back in the Premier League after being gone for two months or so. Liverpool is aging and has some insane wages on the books giving me little to no leeway to play with transfers. They're also in the Champions League, so there's that too.

Henderson is still a total stud even though he's 34 years old.

Azzaoui is the best striker in the world right now after he scored 30 last season, so he'll be my main man to get goals...

Ould-Chikh is a phenomenal offensive player who can play any position. He is also one of the main stars of the Dutch team.

Sterling is the runner up for the Ballon d'Or, and he is an absolute beast who could play a Messi-esque role.

Balotelli our favourite Italian madman is also still at Liverpool, and despite being older and the assistant rating him worse... He still scored 21 last season, so he'll stick around for sure unless a good offer comes in and I can offload his 500K a month wage.

Speaking of Messi, he has hung up his boots at 37... Ronaldo is still going.

Well, my arrogance reached a new peak and a low in quick fashion.

With every team hot and heavy trying to woo me for their side (including teams like Inter... And Blackpool?), I decided that I deserved a new deal, they refused, I leaked to the press, moneybags got angry, during the talk I said they couldn't find anyone better than me, and they thought otherwise... They axed me >_>

Well, time to strike out and take some other job... Notts Co looks awfully interesting.

Do it.

Sadly, they are employing the legendiconstar Mark Yates as their manager. But man if the job was there i'd have taken it. I'm now just waiting on good jobs to open up and in the meanwhile I am focusing on the Korean teams to get them through more cups.

Well, my arrogance reached a new peak and a low in quick fashion.

With every team hot and heavy trying to woo me for their side (including teams like Inter... And Blackpool?), I decided that I deserved a new deal, they refused, I leaked to the press, moneybags got angry, during the talk I said they couldn't find anyone better than me, and they thought otherwise... They axed me >_>

Well, time to strike out and take some other job... Notts Co looks awfully interesting.

Jordan Rhodes just scored four goals in his debut. Think he might just settle in here.

See him score none in the next 15 games...

When they last patched the game, were the new CL seeding rules implemented for 15/16?

Somebody answer this for me please!

While I'm here, how does the new TV deal work in terms of transfer budgets ahead of the 2nd season? Are you given more by the board?

I don't know about the CL seeding since I haven't had much CL time in this version, but I do know the board tends to hike budgets in advance. But that's only assured funds like TV revenue, and not prize money.

(Link for Gyazo pics of the respective things, obviously. I found linking to be a bit less cluttered than posting it outright, or using spoiler tags for every single pic... Feedback appreciated)

Alright, finished off 2024 in spectacular fashion by reaching (and losing) the FA Cup Final (against Chelsea), and finishing in 7th place in the league despite being expected to make the drop. Seemingly everything par to the course with my run of success ever since managing in Denmark (something in that food, clearly).

During the season I also picked up a title in the Asian Games, which sounds impressive but basically is an u23 asian tournament... But hey, I won it by managing the team personally, so more trophies for me! Am gearing up to take a shot at the Olympics too, and after that also the East-Asian Cup against China/Japan/North Korea. So there's potential for 2 extra prizes in my international management future.

Continuing back to Forest, last season I made a very tidy sum of 26.7M in pure cash profit, mostly spurred on by the ridiculous TV money, but of course the prize money added a bunch too. It spurred moneybags Al-Fawaz to plan a new stadium for the team... Which is a shame, because I liked The City Ground and it was pretty big at 30K, sure it's no Old Trafford, but why do away with a perfectly good stadium that has served since Victoria was still a monarch...

Well at least the game picked the best name for it. Named it after the biggest Forest manager in history (not me, yet), Brian Clough, fair dues to the game for not calling it "Psycho Pearce Plaza"... However... (eyes editor), nah Brian deserves it.

On the players side, Macias has exploded onto the scene with 23 goals in 44 games, including going 19/35 in the league. He was the Wonderkid I expected him to be and more, he's devastating in front of goal and he terrorized, next season will be even better hopefully.

Hoyt also had a great season with 19 in 27, 14/21 in the league... But the latter part of his season got derailed with a torn hamstring costing him the final three months of the season, and his absence hurt the team a lot, Walcott/Wijnaldum simply didn't have the skill to work well with Macias. Hoyt has been knock-y during the entire season, but before his big injury he had been good despite picking up a lot of knocks, but it was a matter of time before he did and well... When it snapped it snapped hard. His physicals have suffered a bit, and at 28 years of age won't really bounce back to it's old level. He's still quality, but well... A few more of those injuries and he won't be. But still, 14 goals in 21 league games is a great record, and he was arguably more lethal than Macias. But hey, they both were great and hopefully it'll continue next year.

Then again, Macias is being chased by Inter and Liverpool, and his clause is at 17M (unless I give him a ridiculous 250K wage hike to get a new contract without a clause, but fuck that, he'll keep earning 50K and he'll better enjoy it.)

Jordan Campbell and Adam Barrett, the Scot and the Irish kids who I bought for a pittance last season, they continued growing and becoming better. And Barrett got awarded the Young Player of the Year award for his efforts. Keano, eat your heart out!

Despite his status as (old fart) backup, Walcott still impressed in the time he got on the pitch. 6G/5A in 10(7) games is nothing to scoff at, and he seems to still have his edge despite being 35 years old and being well over the hill.

I had also picked up Wijnaldum, (who I have always been a fan off) on a freebie from Villa, he wasn't great but he was more than serviceable for a 33 year old who I brought in as a tutor.

Knowing my weaknesses at the halfway mark, I invested in defenders. Signing Máté Kovács for 1.7M from Videoton, 19 year old Model Pro Hungarian defender who has all the talent in the right places, should become a very good anchor at the back in a few seasons.

Also picked up an English defender from West Ham who was in his last 6 months, so it was a cheapy for 250K to get Adam Mingay, not the best of the bunch, but he's more than solid as a backup defender.

Lastly gave Rennes 6M for Jordane Le Borgne who looks simply spectacular as a defender, and I knew that I had to get one guy that was a surefire top defender to step into the role. Jordane is big, strong, brave, and is a true leader. If the bastard ever decides to learn English he might become the captain too...

Oh, and before the season I also needed a proper left back since I had none that was of any decent ability, so I used my evil powers as South Korea Manager to pick up a kid from the South Korean leagues. And Yoon Jae-Hyung was more than impressive in the first season in the best league in the world.

Going into next season I haven't really started to make new signings yet. But around the time Hoyt got injured I started to realize that my striker depth beyond Macias/Hoyt is lacking sorely, Walcott won't be around for long and Wijnaldum isn't a skilled scorer either. Oh and Luke James, fuck that guy even if he's the team top scorer with 46 league goals... He's been playing shit at Charlton all season, I doubt he'll be anywhere near the starting lineup next season...

Anyways, ignoring that ranty bit, I decided I needed some extra blood at striker position, and luckily my ridiculous scouting system has paid off extremely (have 421 players found with 5* potential or more, including current stars)... And my scouts found a Swiss Superman who is 19 years old, Model Professional, and seems to be a Macias-lite, which kinda works since he's 19... Anyways, I couldn't ignore Boris Davatz so I paid 5M to get him to Forest. He'll provide the perfect support to Hoyt/Macias, and gives me a great talent to put on the field if Hoyt might get another big injury.

So time to prepare for going into Europe, a potential swoop in from big teams to buy Macias, and generally trying to improve an already talented team...

If you wanna see some more pics, ask and I'll deliver

So it's the end of 2023/24, and I don't think Ronaldo has gotten the memo that he's 39 years old and really should be thinking about retiring one of these days...

Yet he's still banging them in like it's nothing...

If Qatar/Russia loses their bids. I'd be pretty happy if Strayla/USofA get the bids in their stead. Australia deserves it because they have never hosted one and are a growing nation in football. USA have hosted in 94 before the MLS even existed, and since 94 they have gone from being a non-factor in football to a team that whooped the shit out of a lazy dutch defense last week.

Football in USA is growing at a wild rate, and with the MLS getting expanded almost every season, the quality has been growing at a pretty crazy pace too. Oh, and they're one big part of Blatter being gone now, so surely they deserve a bid solely for ridding us of Sepp

Personally Deus Ex: Human Revolution has been ingrained in my brain ever since playing the game. If you like Djawadi/Zimmer-esque music it's simply awesome and mind melting. The theme track ''Icarus'' is an epic.

Other than that, I have never truly remembered soundtracks at all.

Also a general tip. If you're around level 5 or so, go back to White Orchard and run through all the question marks and sites of interest, and do the quests too. The reason for it is that you can get a lot of skill points for finding and using places of power (they give 1 skill point at first use), and you can find quite a few nice loot stuffs and collection items there. Some stuff is worse than what you might be using at that point, but they're still worth quite a penny and you can get some good money... If you helped Willis the blacksmith you'll get some nice discounts on crafting your stuff with him.

I'm running through White Orchard before I continue with Velen, and I am having a blast because on that map you won't be underleveled when you're 5 or higher. And the stuff you find will help you a lot in getting potions made, and possibly even forging some nice stuff too.

White Orchard is newbie area, but it's very useful to get back and go through it and clearing it before continuing on in the main story.

EDIT: For people that are further than me, is there such a thing like a loot bank where you can store your more valuable items? I have a few relic items that are nice, but I'm not using right now, but I don't feel like selling them for a pittance or dismantling them either.

Ok have played some more, and got some tips for you guys struggling on higher (and lower) levels.

Biggest tip, whilst it seems nice and useful to invest in combat skills, they aren't the best possible group to invest in. (There is no level cap, so with long enough grinding and playing you can get every skill...)

If you do want to invest in combat, try to invest in either fast or strong and not both, since the skills only work when they're in a slot it'll be useless to invest in more because it'll hamper you with other skills... Parrying arrows looks interesting, but if you play smart you won't need it. You can either rush archers, shoot them with the x-bow, dodge arrows, or just keep a baddie between you and the archer (if you're lucky they'll shoot their own guy in the back.)

Also, Sun and stars looks tasty because it gives you some regen when you're in the sunlight, but it's generally very minute and a waste of a nice slot. Cat/Griffin/Bear schools are nice, but only later on when you decide on what kind of armor sets you're gonna run with.

Delusion is useful, it was the first thing I maxed out to 3 and I use it in combat to stun baddies (can kill overleveled humans instantly when they're stunned), also since it has effect on conversations I felt it neccesary to take it to not hurt my gameplay.

When it comes to mutagens, they're pretty easy to understand. The specific colour buffs the specific colour. Blue mutagens buff signs, green mutgens buff alchemy, red mutagens buff combat, and so forth. Hold onto the mutagens, because you'll be able to improve mutagens into better ones.

Even though bomb-making and potion making looks like a hassle, the developers have been EXTREMELY generous by making alchemy into a once-and-always kind of affair. Basically once you make a single potion, you'll have that potion for life. Once you run out of the potion, you can meditate and it will replenish it using a bottle of alcohol, one bottle for ALL. Basically if you have all the potions, you can use a single bottle to replenish your entire inventory, that's ridiculously useful, the same goes for the bombs, and oils too.

Finally, Alchemy is OP as fuck. Investing into alchemy can make you into an unstoppable maniac with improved attack power, better healing, and better sign casting... And bombs, well they are ridiculously powerful when used on groups.

Spoilered is a bomb in action...

Skilling up alchemy will make your potions more effective and longer lasting. They will even improve vitality whilst swigging other potions (you'll never need Swallow or food again, really). It will increase your crit chances and attack power the more toxic you are. And it will even make potion effects semi-permanent if you have your toxicity above a certain treshold, that means infinite thunderbolt/swallow/cat etc. when you have downed a bunch.

Skilled enough you won't even have to worry about toxicity anymore, you can spam other potions to get max health back and you'll be a walking deathmachine.

Basically, Alchemy is extremely overpowered and can make the harder difficulties much more manageable. The only downside is that Geralt will look like Sidious on meth after downing half a crate of thunderbolt and blizzard.

On reddit.com/r/Witcher a bunch of guys have set up an alchemy guide that explains more about the ridiculous power you can get through potions, and the way to best set up your character to make sure you turn into a dopefiend monsterkiller.

http://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/371pjz/complete_guide_to_alchemy/

The G29 should be releasing sometime (or at least officially announced) around E3.

I'm sure that thing is going to cost an arm and a leg to get. But it has been a while since Logitech has released a new wheel, i'll be interested what'll be different.

Re: Harry Kane.

I've only just bought the game and 8 games in as United, he's scored 11 goals for Spurs who are top after winning 7 and drawing one. Spurs always seem ridiculously overpowered on FM.

In my mates game they were bottom of League 2 in 2023/2024, that was until my mate decided to leave Barcelona to get them back into the league.

Spurs problem is that they tend to overspend hugely on players, and they never seem to consistently reach european spots that pay enough to keep them profitable. Even in the save of my mate they were hugely overspending on bad players despite being in League 2 and having nowhere near the monetary power to even underspend, they went into administration three times in that save and only when my mate came in they start to pay smartly (all in part due to my mate knowing how to pinch pennies)

Have been playing a bit on and off. Somehow got into GT3 after abandoning a shitty Clio Cup season, so that's nice. Now got to drive the McLaren 12C-GT3, and it's a crazy experience to learn the ropes in that car when the first race is Laguna Seca with the ridiculous corkscrew at the top.

Basically the gist is, I spun out a lot, crashed even more, and generally got pissed off enough to just skip Laguna Seca. Now I have been driving around Watkins Glen, and after frustration and being pissed off a lot (especially at the rain), I am finally starting to master the car, and when you're in the zone in the 12C-GT3, it's a crapload of fun to drive around Watkins because it's a pretty smooth track to drive when you finally get down how to properly feather the throttle in the sweeping corners and make sure the backend doesn't slide out.

Turn 1 is still a bit of a terror for me, because for some reason the car just loves to lose itself and smack the inside wall when i'm coming out of that corner with too much throttle (despite having the car straightened out). But it's a damn fun track to drive around. My best result being 6th place in Q1 of the US GT3 cup (100% AI). I could have gotten pole, but I lost the car at one of the last corners and was properly distraught by that.

Project CARS is still iffy for me. The AI is way too ballsy and insane for my tastes, and they simply don't seem to notice you and will push you off the track if you get onto their line. But when you just get into a groove and aren't battling AI Cars, the game is a blast to drive. It's just loads of fun to be able to master tracks lap by lap and feel yourself improve slowly... Then try a different car and realize you gotta learn it all over again. The cars are great, the tracks are a blast too, if they could just fix the AI and the annoying setup bug (Setup not saving when returning to pit), I'd play it constantly.

Is New Vegas just a DLC addon, or is it like a full expansion?

Humble had a sale on them a while ago and I meant to pick it up, but completely forgot.

A bit of a late answer, but generally this...

New Vegas is superior gameplay, MUCH better mod support, and interesting stuff that makes the game simply more awesome to play than F3.

Fallout 3 still has the superior story for me personally.

If you got both games, you can also download the Tales of the Two Wasteland mod which organically places the Fallout 3 game into the Fallout: New Vegas engine. It also rebalances the game a bit so that once you beat one you're not just going to rush through the other one because you're hugely overpowered...

Basically if you want to play Fallout 3 but with better gameplay, TOTTW is a great shout.

So anyone who plays Gwent, they've already found a way to fuck the AI.

Stack up on spy's and just use them times infinity. AI won't know what to do.