JasonM

15 hours ago, METALMAN said:

I’ve watched a few from the F1TV archive but only those that are commonly regarded as “classics”. I don’t know if I could stomach some of these older races - from looking at race and qualifying results the grid spread looks absolutely massive.

It's why I always roll my eyes when there are people complaining that racing 'nowadays' isn't exciting enough, when you can count on one hand the amount of seasons that had true wheel to wheel racing.

Most times it were a handful of drivers or two manufacturers driving into the sunset and the rest being lucky to pick at the scraps.

The biggest difference is that nowadays there's drs and more stringent technical directives to at least keep that semblance of parity. And the reliability of cars is through the roof, meaning those good cars will get results when in the past there was always a chance of engines going poof.

So the best races often were when something freakish happened to throw the grid in disarray or force drivers towards parity like a big crash or monsoon conditions

32 minutes ago, Tall Boi Byrne said:

Can someone explain the thing with Monkey Island to me...is this considered to be the 3rd game, even though there have been several others? Are there only some that are considered 'canon' or something along those lines?

It's mostly regarded as such because Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman were the writers on Return as they were on Secret and LeChuck's revenge.

Curse and Escape were made by different teams, and whilst I don't know enough of things to more deeply explain the lore details, the purists just feel that anything after 2 is the 'Dragonball GT' of the series.

As in, the same franchise but diverging from the original authors' vision.

Imo, 3/4 are good games in their own right, but I can definitely see that people felt those games were lacking compared to what came before, and that return is something of a return to form.

I also do some rewatching sporadically, and I generally stick to watching 'firsts', Alonso's first Championship, Mika in 98, 07/08/09/10 because that's probably the most random F1 ever got in terms of consecutive winners.

Anything after I actively seen.

Also freak races like Panis winning Monaco, and Ayrton lapping the entire field at a drenched donington, stuff like that.

17 hours ago, Colly said:

I've watched the first Welcome to Wrexham on Disney+, feels about the right level if you're in the mood for a sporty one.

Definitely an enjoyable watch, not editorialised to the degree something like drive to survive is, and a lot of it focuses on the community aspects of the club rather than whipped up locker room drama.

It's also made me further envious of Ryan Reynolds and how funny and charming he is and how easy he makes it seem.

Also a mate of mine is born and raised Wrexham, so it's an interesting watch knowing that I already got a lot of the stories first hand from his experience and vision of things.

I think for now I am certainly sticking to Motorsport Manager and even Grand Prix Manager 2 for my racing manager fix.

F1 Manager looks great and has so much potential, but also has some absolute duffers in terms of bugs and just general design choices.

Seeing people get 1-2s with Haas or Alfa in season 1 is a bit too mad for me.

Motorsport Manager is hard to customize outright, but working your way up with a create a team felt like a proper multi year adventure. And in GPM2 just staying solvent as a backmarker was a monumental challenge in its own right.

Every year I have low expectations of the Jets, every year they manage to look even worse than that.

Fortunately i'm a Ravens fan.

3 hours ago, Benji said:

Anyone ever joined a game via Roll20 or something? I'm not above paying for a DM or something if they're the right choice.

Not through Roll20, but I have found a pretty solid group of people through /r/LFG_Europe (since i'm a Euro and all), it can be a hit and miss and it's definitely getting a bit lucky because the demand is so high, but i'd try it there.

Time to go into this release cycle hoping they'll change/add the things I want to add, get frustrated they don't add/change the things I wanted them to, and then still buy it anyways like the mark I am.

9 minutes ago, Lineker said:

Poor Conference League. 

What about poor me, having to waste my time with that competition that barely covers the cost of travel.

You hate to see it

I was vaguely interested in legion around the time it came out because I loved wd2's general vibe, but eventually decided against it because the release was so buggy.

How does the game hold up now @TheGrandAvatar?

Kane and Lynch was super janky on release and I can't imagine having gotten much better in the years since.

I'd suggest googling for a controller fix of sorts. I'm sure you're not the first to run into these issues.

I remember it being a games for Windows live game, which attests of its age, but might also explain its further jankiness.

As @Adam mentioned, here's the rumour from Chris Medland, one of the bigger and more legit sources for paddock news/rumours.

The sport's changed

Absolute shambles from Alpine. Just no words in how much they fucked up their future because they don't know how contracts work.

On 28/08/2022 at 04:00, damhausen said:

The Ravens continue their absurd preseason dominance with their 23rd straight. Though they were not immune to injuries in the preseason again this year as their mascot, Poe, was carted off with an injury.

Pray for Poe

On something of a whim I bought Ghost of Tsushima on Wednesday. I know it'll probably end up on pc eventually but I finally got tired of waiting on it to happen.

So far 30eu well spent because I have been LOVING the game and I'm not even that far out of the prologue.

The setting, the presentation, and of course the gameplay are all exactly what I wanted and more, it's just such a freaking cool game to pick up and play.

I don't think perfect parties into an instant kill counter will ever tire, or mowing someone down during a standoff.

There's a lot of Arkham style of "counter and kill gameplay" games out there, but Tsushima just feels fresh from the word go.

Ok so I found out that there's endless amounts of seasons and the game will generate F3/F2 talent as time goes on. That definitely has me much more interested and i'll be on the lookout to pick it up.

Part of me finds it a bit disappointing there's no 'create a team' option to add a 11th manufacturer onto the grid, but I assume that it's partly because of licensing and a lack of resources during development, I can see it happening in future editions, though.

One neat thing I also saw is that portraits dynamically change the suit depending on what team they drive for, someone I know decided to go crazy and fire Russell/Hamilton from Mercedes and hire Hulkenberg/Sergeant instead, and their portraits were updated. (although unrealistically, there were no teams instantly pouncing on either released talent, but I can see teams hire them at a later point).

Also the presentation looks absolutely top notch, with the ability to check out replays of things happening quite easily and even with a prompt giving you the action to quick switch to an unfolding situation, really cool, and it seems like Frontier went above and beyond on a lot of aspects.

I am intrigued with it, but admittedly will hold out until I see some reviews and other news about the depth of the game itself and its longevity. I want my management sims to be able to go off many many years into the future, so I kind of want to see that in this too.

I haven't played 6, but I have played 1 2 and 4(?) and all I can say is 'maybe'.

If you like your tactical jrpg to be very zany, a little short but with the ability to devolve into extremely deep post game grinding and character building then this game is definitely something you'll have fun with.

You don't need to have to played past games although you'll miss some references.

If you want to spend hours building an unstoppable level 9999 character that has been 'reborn' many times over so that he can do damage numbers into the millions, then this game is definitely worth a play.

Also on the plus side, the actual story mode doesn't need excessive grinding to get through in a reasonable time, which makes it quite user friendly compared to other jrpgs

Just finished Wasteland 2 for the first time, I never played the first one because I wasn't even born when it originally came out and even the remake is too crusty for me to jump into, but I really enjoyed the 50 hours or so it took me to go through the game. I think I pretty much did everything I had to do, and somehow mostly canon too reading back on the divergent endings.

It wasn't perfect, it wasn't mega hard or super thrilling, but I almost never felt frustrated in the game other than my loot goblin tendencies causing the entire party to be overweight a lot of times because I had to pick up every random piece of crap strewn about... But that's more on me, less on the game.

I do feel the adventure itself was more fun than what inevitably became the main plot. Not that it wasn't good, it just didn't grip me and I was more engrossed with the worldbuilding and the people inside of that world, even if a lot of reused portraits took a bit of the luster from the world when there were multiple plot sensitive NPCs with the same picture in different places, but since it was originally a kickstarter game, some jank is to be expected.

I also saw that Wasteland 3 is on game pass, so I might pick that up sooner or later and seeing if that game improves upon 2, there's a few things i'd like improved, so i'm cautiously optimistic.

Videodump of all the F1 Manager videos, and it's definitely super intriguing.

Not a jab, but I am surprised it was still going.

I checked out around season 2/3, but also in general it feels the relevancy of the arrowverse fell off the cliff after the end of Arrow and the inability of the other shows to elevate themselves.

Not that Arrow had been good at the end, but it was still coasting on a lot of early fans the other shows never really got.

Honestly, it's a smart gamble for Alonso who knows that Alpine are kind of stuck in the mud and they're not willing to give him the long term guarantees he wants (which shows his ambition to still be a racing driver long term), and Aston Martin at least gives him the latter with a potential of them at some point figuring it out and producing a decent car.

I have no hopes of Aston Martin as an outfit as long as Lawrence Stroll is the guy that gives his mediocre son a race seat, they've done little to make me believe in their sporting merits going forward either because they've only been going backwards with their only peak year being a literal blueprint copy of Mercedes' car from a few years ago.

But for Alonso, it's the gamble he has to take. He wants to continue, and rather it be at a team that goes places AND wants to go there with him, than one that'll drop him for the young hot star when they no longer deem him useful enough.

And honestly, I don't blame Alpine here either, they have a stonking good talent sitting on the sidelines by the name of Oscar Piastri, and he deserves a seat in this year's F1, so him getting it next year is the second best choice.

I think Binotto is an issue, but he's not the issue with Ferrari. Under Maurizio before they also had this bullshit where they tossed away two years where Vettel had a chance against Hamilton, same under Domenicali who was at the head of Ferrari throwing away Alonso's chances to get a WDC in the Red Bull years.

The entire team right now has an identity of losing. Problems are ignored with a "Shucks, we'll get them next time" attitude and they don't seem to show any real sporting responsibility in the entire system. They seem to go along assuming that next time they won't fuck up, and act surprised when the same approach leads to the same results.

Ferrari needs a heavy overhaul in how it operates, it's needed it for over a decade now but they lucked into Kimi and Massa carrying them to a WDC and WCC they didn't truly deserve, and they're still coasting on the glory that Schumi/Todt/Brawn accomplished in the 00s.

McLaren had this issue, too. Then they took the broom and cleared out the team and built a better one, and whilst this season is a dip, the difference in team mentality gave them new life after they circled the drain.