Bobfoc

After reaching the final last time, you wouldn't have thought that England beating Argentina would be considered an upset four years on, but here we are.

Luxembourg beat Iceland and are now joint second in their group. They're very much in contention to qualify.

I think New Zealand are there for the taking, especially with the sin bin. France should win this if they maintain their discipline.

Not the start France wanted.

Games like Vampire Survivors and Hades are often mentioned as being great on Steam Deck.

On recent form, France, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa ought to be the four biggest contenders. As they're all in the top section of the draw, however, at least two of them will be eliminated before the semi-finals.

It's largely down to how Bethesda designs its games. Every item's position is permanently tracked in the game world, which is a big drain on processing power. Even the most expensive PC builds are struggling to maintain a constant 60fps with the game. I suspect we're going to be seeing a lot more 30fps games on Series X and PS5 moving forward. A Plague Tale: Requiem and Gotham Knights didn't have 60fps performance modes on either system, while Final Fantasy XVI really struggles to keep a stable 60fps on PS5. Big studios are always likely to prioritise graphical quality over frame rate because it looks good in promotional material. The more they focus on features like ray tracing, the harder it is for the Series X and PS5 processors to cope. I'm always of the opinion that a 60fps option should be offered if possible, but it's sadly going to reach a point where it becomes less and less common this generation. My expectation is that the inevitable mid-generation "Pro" versions of each console will become the 60fps machines, while the current ones settle for 30fps.

The World Cup starts tomorrow. France v New Zealand ought to be a smashing opener.

He has now passed.

This game officially still exists. The Chinese Room, known primarily for Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, has taken over development. The trailer above shows a bit of combat gameplay, which is all well and good, but it's the RPG mechanics, writing and world design that will determine if this is a worthy sequel.

Final Fantasy XVI's PC port has been re-announced. There's no release date, however.

How are you finding the map? It seems to be the most common area of complaint.

I hope Paradise still has its share of cheeseburgers.

My cousin was part of the security team at Harrods in the 1980s. She said that Al-Fayed was a massive misogynist and all-round knob, which led to her departure.

It's sad to think that Johnson will be leaving Forest. He's a homegrown player whose father was a great Forest striker before he broke his leg. I can't blame him for wanting to make the step up and presumably get paid more, though.

Murray and Burrage are out, but Draper, Boulter and Norrie have reached the third round.

Apparently, the Saints Row reboot didn't meet sales expectations. I can't find any actual figures, so it's not clear if that's a case of unrealistic publisher projections or poor sales in general. I wonder if Volition might have been close to the chopping block already after Agents of Mayhem didn't do well, either critically or commercially. Given that Embracer recently lost out on a $2 billion deal with the Saudi PIF, I imagine the people at Volition had been fearing the worst for a while.

He's been doing them every week (other than a week off at Christmas) for the last fifteen years. I still enjoy them, but I got a load of flak for saying so on a stream once, so I'm hesitant to say it again.

I suppose how you find the game will be partly down to what you were expecting. That Forbes quote more or less aligns with what I thought it was going to be. Bethesda games have never had the best main stories and have always had their own brand of clunkiness, but the best ones are still absorbing and fun to explore and muck around with. If you want something revolutionary, this won't be it, but it sounds like another slice of Bethesda, for better or worse.

So much unnecessary emphasis is put on review scores that some publishers will take any mildly negative press as a grave insult. Warner Bros. were apparently especially selective when it came to giving out Hogwarts Legacy review codes - not just in terms of sites, but individual reviewers themselves. Sony recently stopped giving review codes to The Escapist because they don't like the "tone" of Yahtzee's comedic reviews. Sometimes, they're a little more justified. Nintendo blacklisted Kotaku for posting leaks about their games, which seems fair enough.

Generally, yes, it's quite a common practice among publishers to withhold early review codes to outlets they don't trust. Many have specific reviewers they refer to as "wildcards". Forspoken was a recent case. The case of Eurogamer is curious because Bethesda gave a code to Digital Foundry, whose articles appear on Eurogamer, but were specifically told not to share it with Eurogamer itself. Then, after that was reported, Eurogamer was given a review code that wouldn't give them enough time before launch. There was an instance in which Zoe Delahunty-Light and Aoife Wilson were being snarky about the game in the not E3 live reaction stream, so maybe that's something to do with it. Eurogamer has also just started using a five-point review scale (1-5 stars, with no half-stars), so a four-star review can bring down the precious Metascore.

It's been a bad week for studio closures. Mimimi, who just released the critically acclaimed Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, have also had to shut.

It seems that the game takes a long time to get going, which might put some people off. I'm also not surprised at the common complaint that the procedurally generated planets aren't much to write home about. That seems to be the case whenever anyone attempts a big-scale idea that relies on non-curated generation methods. The shipbuilding has got a lot of praise, though. Mods ought to make for some eccentric designs.

Fifteen minutes of Super Mario Bros Wonder will be shown in half an hour.

Unless they start adding the occasional big day one release, I can't see much value in it. With this generation's standard game price increase of £10/$10, which is only the cost of entry when you factor in DLC, microtransactions and tiered collector editions. Meanwhile, publishers are making record profits. The cost of developing games may have increased, at least if you want to put in fancy graphics and motion capture, but so too has the audience size, all while wages are remaining stagnant.