King Ellis

I for one am looking forward to the 10 minute break where Geoff Keighley dances with a bunch of grandmas.

Or an evil Piplup who is secretly a master criminal.

Wait, I saw the headlines about them keeping FM24 on sale but didn't see that about patching out some licences. Do they normally do that once the old game goes off sale?

As cliche as it is, all the classics that people have already mentioned: It's A Wonderful Life, (the OG) Miracle on 34th Street, Home Alone, Gremlins, Die Hard, How The Grinch Stole Christmas (I even like the 2018 one, the 2000 one can get in the bin though), The Snowman, Rudolph...plus throw some Christmas related horror in there like Silent Night, Deadly Night. Eric Freeman chewing scenery in the sequel is a highlight as well, even if that was a blatant, padded cash grab. But the number one has the be the 1999 version of A Christmas Carol with Sir Patrick Stewart. Every year without fail I have to watch that on Christmas Eve. I've just finished watching Violent Night for the first time as well, I declare it to be a new alternate Christmas classic in the same vein as Die Hard or Lethal Weapon.

I think we might have scared the others off with all of our Dragons talk over the years. Club is made ready for tomorrow. I showed my face in Ultimate Team mode even though I swear I'm not going to get sucked in this year. Got 2 Mega packs for having my Twitch and YT linked, promptly got team of the week Harry Kane in the first one...

Well, if it's anything like that AI Minecraft that came up a few weeks back. Average Twitter user: Huh, that's neat I guess but how are you meant to play when nothing is permanent? 8 million blue ticks: This is the future man, I wouldn't expect someone like you to have the brains to understand that.

I'll sort it tonight and make the club. Did we work out if Larz does have it?

I actually beat Dark Sector on 360 back in the day. Hurray for mediocre 3rd person shooters that have the weapon from Krull. Free is free though I suppose.

I would kind of agree that I probably wont ever need that much room as even though we live in an age where CoD is taking up hundreds of gigs worth of space on people's hard drives, I don't play those sort of things so I imagine the stuff I am going to install is going to top out at maybe 50gb? It'll just be nice not to have to think about it. With all this new found power though, the first thing I did was install the Link to the Past PC port. A great use of space age technology to run a 30+ year old game. But having the music add on really adds to the expeirence. Just walk into an area and the game pans out to show everything in widescreen whilst an orchestral score kicks in...awesome. The Dungeons of Infinity game some made based on LTTP is really awesome to play on there as well, though that was one of the things I was already playing on there before. It's a roguelike experience where you go further and further down a dungeon with the aim to get to Agahnim whilst picking up new weapons and powerups along the way. Looks really cool with various lighting effects and there's a deceptively dark tone throughout with some of the things you run into on the different floors. It is disheartening to me though to get so far, die and then have nothing to show for it. Arguably that might ruin the experience if you were able to buy iterms or upgrades between runs as it would basically turn it into a war of attrition where you'd just eventually win but I think it just triggers something in me that feels like I've wasted my time. I get the same thing with Rogue Legacy where, even though you can buy things, they start to cost so much that you might not even earn enough to buy one thing after a run.

After starting to get low storage space warnings on my OG LCD 64gb Steam Deck despite having little to nothing installed on the main SSD, I finally bit the bullet and ordered a bigger SSD; the AliExpress special 2TB no less. I've touched on it before in here but I always see people talking about how they've had no issue with theres whenever I see the topic come up and if I'm going to get a bigger drive, might as well really push the boat out. In for a penny, in for a pound and all that. Plus, part of me enjoys the element of risk you get from ordering from China. Will I get a working device? Will I get a dud? Will I get a face mask that they've only sent in order to trigger a succesful delivery so they can try and argue any dispute? Who knows! The procedure took maybe 30-45 minutes, I already had a flash drive imaged with the SteamOS which helped save a little bit of time. The first incision was a little fiddly as I neglected to buy any of the guitar pick type things people often use on this sort of thing but it's nothing an old bank card couldn't handle. From there it was all relatively simple. The only other thing that added to the time was the fact I had to go back in after installation. Now, I know enough from seeing tear down/repair videos online that you never truly seal the thing back up until you're confident everything is working so at least I didn't have to unscrew the case again. The major sin I've seen during this procedure from my years lurking on the Steam Deck subreddit is what I'll refer to as the Jim Ross micro SD card where the unsuspecting victim leaves the micro SD in the system whilst opening the case and, sure enough, as God is my witness that micro SD card is broken in half. I planned ahead for that but in all my excitement I instead, like a surgeon getting sued for malpractice after leaving their scalpel in their patient, I left the old SSD just floating around in the system. With that safely extracted though, I'm now left with a whopping 1.8TB of space to fill and the slightly arduous task of re-installing everything like EmuDeck, trying Heroic launcher and just generally filling this thing with every game under the sun.

A lot of horror related stuff here which I have definitely already touched upon in the horror thread over the years: Nightmare on Elm Street 2. Very much derided as 'the gay one', which is something I didn't pick up on initially, this is one of my favourite 'shades of grey/is this actually happening or is the protaganist just crazy' type movies where a young guy moves into Nancy's house from the first movie and gets wrapped up in the mythos of Freddy. It's the example I always use but slashers can get a bit tedious to me when you setup within 5 minutes that Jason is going to stab another bunch of horny teens and proceeds to do so for the next 80 minutes. Instead of doing a sequel that just repeats the first one again, it's more interesting to me how these horrific events can, even subconciously, spawn this copycat killer. Really neat documentary about the main actor, Mark Patton, that came out a few years back that covers his story and has a wider look at the gay panic that was sweeping Hollywood around this time due to the outbreak of aids. Halloween Ends. Much like Elm Street 2 deals with the fallout of the first movie, I loved this most recent trilogy's look at how the events of the original Halloween have shaped Haddonfield and the the ripples are still felt 40 years later, whether that's Laurie herself, the local population as a whole or more specifically individuals like Corey as we see in Ends. It felt like a lot of people's criticims started and ended with 'Not enough Michael' as if we didn't just have Michael going on a rampage in Kills. It's like that old addage of people wanting something new that's exactly the same. You can maybe throw in Halloween 3 as well whilst we're talking about that series but it feels like Halloween 3 already went through it's redemption arc like 20 years ago and is just generally accepted as a good movie now. That was the original 'Where's Michael? movie, it walked so Ends could run. Friday the 13th Part VII. Jason stabs another bunch of kids? Yawn. Jason stabs another bunch of kids but oops, turns out one of them is essentially Carrie? Now you have my attention. Hellraiser Inferno. This probably the best of a bad bunch, certainly when it comes to the direct to video, 'shoehorn Pinhead into someone's script' releases that started here but I think even as early as 2 critical ratings start to take a sharp nose dive. Still, I really liked the detective, police procedural, noir thing this has going on where you have a cop investigating the murders that seem to surround the puzzle box. It's a neat way to keep things fresh and take the series in a slightly different direction. Back to the Future 3. Not horror for once, I think a lot of the derision for this comes down to how out of place it feels taking place in the old west but it's not like the series hasn't taken drastic shifts already. Sure it's a lot grander in terms of them now time travelling 100 years rather than 30 but going forward to flying cars, rehydrated pizzas and hoverboards feels just as big a setting change as cowboys, indians and actual gun fights instead of light guns does. Clara is another big issue and, yes, she is annoying at times but it does allow us to see a different side to Doc Brown and leads to his and Marty's dynamic being reversed. Lots of fan service as well with nods to the other movies or stuff like Marty 'inventing' the Frisbee. Even little things like the scene that takes place the night before they intend to go back to 1985 where Doc and Marty are sleeping under the stars, it's just this quiet, chill moment that I enjoyed whilst also linking back to a similar scene in the first movie where Doc and Marty are sleeping in the living room of Doc's mansion the night Marty first arrives.

I'd be up for that. Sounds like it's 35 on Xbox, just seen it for 31 on Xbox on Cd keys.

A come from behind 3-1 away win against Liechtenstein to go up and, in theory, be in the same tier as Ukraine who are ranked 25th in the world and were in the quarters of the Euros back in 2020.

Went to see Yellowcard, Story of the Year and This Wild Life (The Big 3) last night, Yellowcard being the primary reason as I never saw them before they went on hiatus so this was very much righting that wrong. I had seen William Ryan Key in a co-headline show like 5-6 years ago with This Wild Life where he did some YC songs but actually having the full band is obviously a much better experience. I'd got into TWL from that so seeing that again was a bonus, as was SotY albeit I didn't really keep up with them after their first two albums. This Wild Life are deceptively catchy live, listening to some of their stuff before and after the show and there's a lot of more meloncholic breakup type songs but they still manage to have this upbeat atmosphere during their set. There's obvious outliers that help that like Catie Rae which is very catchy and has an easy chorus to sing along with but Kevin's energy throughout really helps, as exhibited during his bongo solo during their finale before doing the worm. His cheesy thumbs up and 'VERY FUCKING COOL!' after every song was a bit cringey though. No inclusion of Headfirst was a dissapointment as that's probably my favourite song of theirs. Story of the Year, as alluded to, like half of their set was new to me but I still dug those. They played the biggies from Page Avenue, no Razorblades was again a dissapointment as that's one of my favourites from that album but being able to sing along with a crowd full of people to the likes of Sidewalks and Anthem of Our Dying Day was not an experience I knew I was missing until yesterday but was awesome. Shout out to one of the band wearing a shirt that said 'Maga is a facist cult' and Dan acknowlodging a loud 'FUCK TRUMP' shout from the crowd. And I knew that there was a close to 0% chance of happening but I would have marked out if they'd played Just Close Your Eyes but alas no. Yellowcard, singing along to Ocean Avenue with everyone going crazy feels like a bit of a life goal ticked off. They seemed to be having a blast up there, particuarly Sean who just had this permanent smile on his face the entire time as he was being like a hype man in between his violin parts, amping the crowd up or cueing them up for sing along parts. Whilst being a show titled as a 20 year anniversary of Ocean Avenue, they didn't play the whole thing and dotted what they did play around the setlist whilst mixing in songs from different eras. Nothing pre-Ocean Avenue though which yeah I'm not expecting them to play OG punk YC before Ryan joined but something from One For the Kids or The Underdog EP would've been nice, especially to go along with the story they were telling about OA really helped them breakout, it'd be to show how they were plugging away in their early days. Would've loved Gifts and Curses too but that's just me being nitpicky. They alluded to coming back to the UK again in the future so here's hoping. Arguably my favourite part of the night though was inbetween sets when the tech crews were fixing for the next band and the PA system was piping in background music. Stuff you might expecting considering the bands playing and the crowd in attendance, like Blink-182 or Alkaline Trio. But then you'd get these total curveball's like Go West's King of Wishful Thinking which one guy near me was totally vibing to, or Backstreet Boy's I Want it That Way which tons of people were singing along to and actually drew a small ripple of applause when it finished.

Been meaning to update on my save for a while now. You may recall me speculating some time ago in the 24 thread on the prospect of being sacked after relegation, this was with my Burton Albion side who had found themselves with an unlikely promotion to the Premier League. This had originally started with me essentially fixing the game to ensure they were relagated in the first season with the intention of me swooping in and enacting a youth policy to make use of the excellent facilities the club have use of. Things didn't pan out that way as I started out bringing in most established players to steady the ship and would eventually fall into the usual traps of wonderkid hoarding. We managed to go back-to-back-to-back and found ourselves in the Premier League but I was hamstrung by the fact I had given out a few 'match highest earner' clauses to what were ostensibly L1/Championship quality players and I would be damned before I let them suddenly start earning 50k+ a week. As I aluded to in that last update, I wouldn't have been surprised to see us go down with a Derby County esque season or even with zero points as our recruits were either raw potential or people that were really over the hill such as a 36 year old Stuart Dallas. We gave it a decent effort though and, despite finishing 19th, did technically take it to the last day of the season. Albeit it would have taken results going our way and an astronomical goal swing. This meant we ending up losing a large chunk of the youngsters I'd brought in and not questioned giving relegation release clauses, partially out of depseration and partially because part of me believed we'd be able to keep riding our wave of moentum in order to survive. In the fullness of time this hasn't been the worst thing as we made a profit on most of them and, as the first wave of these kind of signings tend to be, they weren't always the best. There were some gems in amongst them though such as this guy who went to Brighton for 2m less than we paid for him before being sold on for 100m to Newcastle a few years later. I was able to arrange loan backs in a few of the sales which, along with using the Prem money to fund the next wave of signings, were able to get us promoted back at the first time of asking. Some steady trading in the years following led us to finish 11th and 15th (though in no danger of being dragged into the relagation battle) before this past year saw us finishing 6th. All I can say is God bless whoever came up with these new European qualification formats because somehow this let us qualify for the Champions League. Man City won the CL whilst winning the Prem and Man U won the Europa whilst finishing 5th so I'm guessing some combination of them and the extra place for coefficents thing meant an extra place passed on to us. We've been bossing it with 6 wins from our 8 league stage games, with a 0-0 against City and a 1-0 loss to Lugano of Switzerland (apparently my reserves weren't up to the job) being our other results which saw us finish 5th. Things are going well in the league as well, currently 4th after 24 games so looking good to retain our place in the CL or at the very least one of the other UEFA competitions. Very much moved into the throwing silly money around phase of the save in an effort to try and cement that top 4 place and even challenge for the league. Chief amongst them is my French defender who could probably play anywhere on the pitch. Guy is such a beast, I don't think I've had anyone with those type of phsyicals before. It did help that I was able to absolutely rinse Man U for 200m (!) for this guy which is easily my biggest ever sale on FM. Granted it was stagged out as 4 50m installments but still. Next step is to try and find a striker to throw a load of money at. I don't know why but I've never been able to get a crazy season out of a striker in these games. In this save I've got all sorts of great looking AF types who, the way people rave about physicals being meta, should be great but they just seem to always slum it with mid to low 6's in the match ratings. Our tactic overall has obviously served us well so I'm wary of changing it purely in the interest of trying to get someone 20/30 goals a season. Maybe it's just because they're young and someone more experieced would work better? The most joy I've had is from one of my former wonderkids who I've been able to bring back on loan (Arsenal snapped him up after our relegation but have don't little with him, he's come back to us 3 times now but I'm not sure about spending the money they'll ask for on him) in a PF role which despite him not being suited to just seems to work. There's no obvious options out there for us as an elite PF though so might have the spend the remainder of the season seeing if some other roles work. The game classes my guy who ended up at Newcastle as a 4.5* as PF so, despite the 8 aggression, it underlines how useful it would have been to have kept him. EDIT: We won the Carabao cup (our first major silverware) and the chickens finally came home to roost on my 'stick in a competition win bonus in lieu of a payrise' contracts. At least winning the CL would actually cover these, we got 100k prize money for the Carabao...