Bobfoc

It's this Saturday, so there's not much time to cancel now.

John Fury headbutted the smallest member of Usyk's entourage and cut his own head. The person he headbutted completely no sold it.

Ireland and Croatia were my top two, but I won't complain.

It seems that GB News spent the evening cheering on Israel and despising Olly Alexander, to nobody's surprise.

Disaster averted, sort of.

Solihull lost a Wembley final on penalties for the second week in a row, this time falling to Gateshead in the FA Trophy. While it's nice that Gateshead salvaged something from a season that ended in disappointment beyond the players' control, Solihull fans must be gutted.

Those virtual ABBA characters clearly weren't meant to be seen that close up.

48 minutes ago, Colly said:

Not surprising at all, the pro Israel vote goes to Israel, the anti Israel  vote gets spread between 20 odd countries.

And many anti-Israel people probably won't vote at all.

1 minute ago, METALMAN said:

Can I still boycott Eurovision if I haven't watched it for about 20 years?

Of course. Making a big song and dance about not doing something you never do anyway is the ultimate expression of protest.

The whole build-up to the competition has been deflating. There are some fun acts in there, but nobody is having fun. I think Israel will do better than it should in the televote because of the "Stick it to the protestors" factor. The Italian televote leak as of a couple of days ago had Israel miles in the lead.

I suppose, at the very least, this event has been used as a means to amplify the concerns people have, but there's also an ugly side to some of the vitriol directed at Eden Golan personally. It epitomises the discussions around the whole conflict, really.

Burnley dominated the Championship last season, but didn't bring in better players over the summer. Their fans can only be disappointed in how it's gone.

Ghost of Tsushima's PC release requires a PSN account to play. Normally, that would be a minor inconvenience, but there are several countries in which PSN isn't available, meaning that people who live there can't buy the game. There was a similar issue with Helldivers 2 until Sony backtracked, so perhaps they'll do it again here, but it's bad PR. It hasn't been a good week for console manufacturers making frustrating decisions.

It looks as though the relegation battle is over. As it stands, Luton need to win their last game with a massive goal swing from Forest. Forest just need to avoid getting thrashed in their last two matches.

I think they need to scrap the tradition of the winning nation hosting the following year's event. It would avoid the potential problem of repeat winners having to shoulder the financial burden and, more importantly, prevent problematic hosts.

If Israel win tonight, and there's a decent chance they will, the calls for a boycott will be increased massively. It could be very difficult for the contest itself to survive.

Oh, dear.

On 06/05/2024 at 18:41, Bobfoc said:

Doncaster seem like a good bet for the playoff final now.

Perhaps I spoke too soon.

I look forward to the Israeli broadcasters releasing silent footage of the incident in a few months when they need a ratings boost.

I can imagine people working at Ninja Theory, Obsidian and Machine Games might be looking over their shoulders for their games later in the year. Hellblade II comes out in a couple of weeks and doesn't seem to have been promoted to the extent you would expect it to be at this stage. If it's a good game that sells badly, blaming the developers would be terribly unfair.

As for Hi-Fi Rush, it seemed to be a great success. The game sold over 700,000 copies on Steam, which is impressive for a quirky game that was also on Game Pass at launch. From what I can tell, it was a fairly cheap side project for Tango, not unlike Pentiment was for Obsidian, so I don't know what more Microsoft could have hoped for. I think Shinji Mikami's recent departure from the studio might have had something to do with Microsoft's decision not to keep going with it, but Mikami didn't have much to do with Hi-Fi Rush anyway. It's all rather sad.

I wasn't sure about this one from what I had seen on the RTE qualifiers, but the stage show here was so much better.

9 minutes ago, michgcs said:

Does it integrate with the Steam library or is it like Epic Games? I only play on the SteamDeck and don't know how to use non-Steam launchers but those two games have been on my radar.

You get Steam keys, so they will be part of your Steam library.

While we're in the mood, I found a decent browser game based on the Eurovision Song Contest. How well can you do?

The latest Humble Monthly Bundle has Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Hi-Fi Rush in it. Definitely worth a look if you don't have either of them.

Microsoft have closed Tango Gameworks (The Evil Within and Hi-Fi Rush) and Arkane Austin (Prey and Redfall), as well as Alpha Dog, who made the Doom mobile game. This is despite a reported $21.9 billion net income during the last financial quarter.

5-0 down on aggregate to Crystal Palace this season can't be good.

It hasn't been a particularly high-quality tournament, and that's going to happen sometimes, but Kyren Wilson is a deserving winner. His fist-pump to win does remind me of when he criticised Shaun Murphy for doing the same thing in the 2021 semi-finals, but I like to think he's matured since then.

Doncaster seem like a good bet for the playoff final now.