Chris2K

I counted 14 new characters introduced in the film and 3 in the post-credit scenes, which is a huge amount to put on an audience even if it is necessary to both tell the backstory and drive the plot.

I think it is, there just won't be the snowy winter. It's definitely telling me I'm in Spring at the moment.

I didn't think it was a bad movie by any stretch, it just felt very chaotic in terms of introducing so many characters in one film. I know there was no other way of doing it, and they gave it as much time as possible, but I was still left feeling a bit confused by the end of it.

And India are out, which is hilarious given that the "coincidence" that that IPL was moved to the same grounds that the World Cup was due to be held at just one month before the tournament.

I guess there's a bit of repetition, there's a lot of desert for example, but there's also fairly big town areas, a jungle and some mountains including an active volcano. To be fair to Playground, "the UK felt very samey and never really had a wow factor to it." shows that they pretty much nailed the realism of the country. The biggest letdown so far is the server connectivity which has been fairly awful, I don't think they were expecting such a large number of people to buy the 5-day early access version. On the Spotify front, Immigrant Song has just come on, except it's while I'm driving a truck hauling a decrepit VW Beetle for a story mission.

FH5 is as great as expected, a little overwhelming compared to FH4 though as everything gets thrown at you right away. I took @Baddar's advice about playing Spotify in the background, but I chose my work playlist (easy-listening/pop to avoid anything that could be deemed offensive) so I ended up driving a Lambo at 230mph whilst listening to World Of Our Own by Westlife.

For some reason my Xbox consoles seem to download things way faster than any other internet-connected thing, so I was able to get it done in about 14-15 hours last week (compared to the 105 hours it took to download NBA2K22 on my PS5). Still 8-10 MB/s in 2021 is nothing to shout about.

I bought a Series S last week and splashed out on the £85 version of Forza Horizon 5. FH4 is probably my favourite racing game of all time and I'm certain I'll get my money's worth out of FH5 for that price, even if FH4 being based in the UK was a big factor in my enjoyment. Maybe it won't cover the cost of the Series S as well, but there's always the future Forza games to consider too.

Sprint format could become standard approach to grand prix weekend. Including this cracking quote as a fuck you to anyone invested in the sport: [Ross] Brawn admitted the "avid fans have not been convinced yet - they are indifferent - but the majority of our 'normal' fans were positive about the concept".

That's a bit harsh, scoring 9 goals in the Premier League and covering 99km per game is pretty good for a man of his age.

Looks like it's official now. I do feel sorry for him, he seems like a really nice guy who was put in an impossible position with a bunch of key players who evidently don't want to put in the effort.

Well he apologised, said he would take the knee in future, and did indeed do so today. And boy does he look happy to do it. Meanwhile England absolutely demolished the Aussies today, and so far haven't needed to play an innings of over 100 balls in their three wins. Evidently the Hundred was a tactical move to improve T20 performance.

He's said before he won't do it for religious reasons, but as the article says the South African board gave the players alternative actions (fist raised or standing to attention) which he evidently has refused to do as well. Making this stance against any team is foolish, doing it against the West Indies is tantamount to wearing an "I'm a racist" shirt.

Actual secret advert task: And the advert task that was in the first ad break of Thursday's show in case you didn't see it:

James Michael Tyler, aka Gunther from Friends, has passed away from cancer aged 59

The return of the grid walk, along with sassy not-giving-a-fuck-who-you-are Martin Brundle was great, that Michael Masi/Alpine radio conversation may have topped the sassiness though. Also, this:

Well a miss from two yards out is a fine way to celebrate not conceding for 20 minutes.

Things aren't looking too good at the 2015 All-Star Team Lakers, fights on the bench, LeBron giving up on playing offense, Rondo pretending to shoot a fan with his finger... Why do I fear this will turn out with them as champions?

Once again a live task of a completely mad game turns out to be utterly gripping. Lovely darts.

His trade value at this point may be in negative equity.

I'm dating myself, but Sensible World of Soccer is the non-FIFA pinnacle for me.

It's a shame for a series as long as this one not to have its traditional name. What worries me the most though is that this will end up with a huge clusterfuck over individual team licences and we'll be left with 2/3 games, none of which will have a full set of official teams and player likenesses.

Ah, didn't see that it had cut off the top row. It cut off Hungary as well, which wouldn't be a bad idea for the championship either.

Ugh, I didn't realise they were starting in Saudi Arabia now as well. I assume that's another money-related decision.

Just a reminder that not only is Kyrie Irving the VP of the Players' Union, he was elected to that post.