GUEST REVIEW by SUPER BAD ADVICE
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Saying Bethesda are struggling a bit of late (at least quality-wise – financially they’re still lolling about nude in filthy great piles of cash) is an understatement on par with saying questionable perspiration-phobe and unlikely Italian chain restaurant fan Prince Andrew has had ‘a recent dip in popularity’.
 
Their last few games have been, frankly, dire (Bethesda, that is; A. Windsor might be knocking out homebrew indie bangers on Steam on a weekly basis for all I know), and – as shown by the awful ploy to add an outrageously chonky monthly subscription to the already struggling Fallout 76 – even when they do have a userbase, they’re happy to cram them into the contempt-o-tron and set it to ‘rinse the suckers’.
 
Essentially, Bethesda are real big poltroons. And The Outer Worlds, made by former collaborators Obsidian (who helmed the splendid Fallout: New Vegas) just underlines quite how far they’ve slid face-first into the slops bin. Mainly by it being ruddy fab, and reminding you what it is you liked about the pre-crap act Bethesda of old in the first place.

Earlier this year, my wife and I went on a walk.
 
It's not something I do very often, but she loves walking, and every once in a blue moon I'll take one for the team and go on a walk with her. Obviously, I love spending time with my wife, but I find walking - for the sake of walking - a bit sort of, y'know, dull. Regardless, I was determined to prove how devoted I am by doing the walk in full, all the way up to Ivinghoe Beacon, whatever that is, from Tring Station, and back. A distance of just over 10 miles, up and down hills.

I can't say I enjoy the act of climbing a hill, but I do quite like the view from the top of hills. Frankly, it's a shame that escalators are not a natural feature. 

Unfortunately, a mile or two from the end of our walk, something popped in my knees, and I shuffled through the remainder in searing agony, stopping every few steps to wail and shriek, and complain. It must've appeared that I was attempting the equivalent of breaking a dish while doing the washing up, and consequently my wife has sworn off ever going on a walk with me again.

Which I wouldn't be able to do anytime soon anyway, as my knees still haven't recovered.

ANYWAY.

The point of all this is to preface this review of Death Stranding: the new game from heralded "genius" Hideo Kojima. Much has been written about its origins - and it has been fun (for "fun" read: "aggravating") to see games journalists attempting to up their game, and deliver a verdict/thesis that they feel is worthy of this work of high art.

A work of art which is full of product placement for Monster Energy Drink, where the only show on TV is Ride With Norman Reedus, which features a character called Die-Hardman, and co-stars talk show host Conan O'Brien.

Strip away all the eggy guff around Death Stranding - and there's a lot of guff of the eggy variety - and at its heart it's a silly open world game in which you play a sort of postman, who must deliver packages to remote communities in a post-apocalyptic America (which looks like Iceland, and where the only notable company still operating is Monster Energy Drinks). Thus: reconnecting the shattered country.

Yes, it's a walking simulator. And a balancing-packages-on-your-back simulator. And a lot of it isn't even a game at all, but a CGI movie. 

Do you remember the Star Wars films? Do you? Do you remember them? What was your favourite bit of the Star Wars films?

My favourite bit of the Star Wars films was probably all those bits where the characters went sliding down a loooooooong slope. Because that happened a lot in the Star Wars films didn't it? Sometimes it felt like you couldn't go five minutes without Luke Skywalker or one of the other characters sliding down a slope.

They would stand at the top of a loooooooong slope, and then - whoosh! - off they'd go, sliding down it, unable to stop. It happened so often I don't know why they didn't just be done with it and call it Slide Wars!!!!!!

Sometimes though... sometimes in the Star Wars films... there'd also be some big, balloon-like plants, wouldn't there? There would be these plants, and the characters would jump on these plants... and they'd going... BOIIIIINGGGGG!!! And they'd be flung around the place, from one springy alien plant to another, like they were pinballs, or, I dunno... trapped in one of the lesser 3D Sonic the Hedgehog games.

Certainly, these are two of the main things people remember about the Star Wars films: the sliding, and the boing-y plants. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo leaping around, sliding and being catapulted about the place.
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At least... this is what I am led to believe based upon Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. 

ATTENTION, Americans, Canadians and Dutch people... please pity the rest of us: you've got access to Disney+ four months before the rest of the world. Yes, I know the UK has bigger problems at the minute, but c'mon... we just wanted something nice.

Fact is, it means that Star Wars fans elsewhere in the world are seeing The Mandalorian before the rest of us. That sort of thing used to happen a lot when films were released in America months before we'd get them. Generally, we'd be none the wiser.

But then isn't now, and now we have the Internet, which means we've got four months of avoiding spoilers for the first ever live-action Star Wars TV series. What should've been a moment of celebration for Star Wars fans across the planet has instead given a lot of us the runs.

Disney's Bob Iger has made it clear that, post-The Rise of Skywalker, TV is going to be the focus for Star Wars, at least for a few years, and here's where that is meant to begin. So, I hope you'll forgive us for feeling aggrieved. 

Of course, it's not just Star Wars that Disney is pinning its streaming hopes on: it's also expanding its Marvel Cinematic Universe onto Disney+, with big budget shows featuring characters from the films. Those won't start arriving until next year, so for now there's only one of Disney's tentpole, movie spin-off, shows on the service from launch (unless you're a massive High School Musical fan, or desperate to see the tepid hidden camera series, Pixar In Real Life).

Apparently, it's a licensing issue that's preventing Disney launching in more than three countries, though based upon the issues users had connecting to the service on the first day, it might be as much to do with Disney not wanting to take on more than it can handle.

​Which is fine, but doesn't change the fact that Star Wars fans are a rabid bunch, and we live in an age where things need to be released more or less simultaneously around the globe, or they're either going to be spoiled.

​Or they're going to be pirated. 

In today's world, four months is forever, and I'll admit we're a bunch of entitled, spoilt, arseholes. We know what we want, and think we deserve it now.

Guest review by Super Bad Advice

As the famous tag line from the film Alien says, “In space, no one can hear you scream.” Which is true, but then it’s also true that no one could hear you play a kazoo, alarm an ombudsman with a powerful erotic dance involving maracas, or emit a ‘bronx cheer’ either.
 
Obviously, the wording chosen is supposed to evoke a very specific sensation that space is scary, deadly and full of real weird stuff (so essentially, like the middle aisle in Lidl but with fewer discount patio sets) rather than just lacking the requirements to transmit sound. But is space really that scary? It’s basically just full of nothing, and even the titular alien itself is no worse than things you get in Australia – a continent so heaving with lethal fauna it’s a wonder the koala doesn’t have a handgun for an anus. Yet people still happily go there on holiday!
 
I think the real worry it’s trying to impart is this: fear of being alone.
 
What with its lack of air, heat, a floor, and branches of Costa, space is a bit rubbish to live in and so very, very few people do – and those that do have to exist sealed up in space stations: essentially giant orbiting caravans where you have to eat baby food, Velcro yourself into bed and poo into a special hoover (mercifully, not simultaneously). 
 
Should things go awry, having no one around to turn to for help while you float about trapped in a tin box surrounded by literally buggerall is obviously a bit rubbish and scary, and that’s the premise behind Observation; a creepy puzzle solver spewed out by the excellent folks at Devolver.

Ghosts. Unh! What are they good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again! 

I've said it once already. You really should've been listening.

Seriously: if ghosts do exist (they do not) why are people even scared of them anyway? What do ghosts even do? They just float around moaning and groaning. Frankly, that's most people on social media, and we're not scared of them. They're just annoying.

Ghosts aren't even scary to look at; they're just like regular people, only more transparent. Again, like many on social media...

Oh, I'm on fire today!!!!!

Furthermore, the most scary thing a ghost might do is, I dunno, move a glass, or open a cupboard door, or something. In my house, if somebody leaves a cupboard door open, it's irritating, not terrifying. Also, while I'm at it, if you finish the toilet paper, is it really that much effort to replace the roll for the next person? The spare rolls - and the bin - are right next to the toilet! Are you in that much of a hurry that you can't take five seconds to switch them over, and bin the empty roll?

It's an important issue that needs to be dealt with, but I admit it's a digression that you probably didn't need to know about. Let's move on. 

Thing is, while ghosts apparently aren't scary in actuality (or even real in actuality), the idea that they're scary is so ingrained in our consciousness - through movies, and books, and games like Luigi's Mansion 3 - that even the most supernaturally sceptic among us can, if the conditions are right, get a bit freaked out by the unexplained.

For example...

As some of you will know, I got married last year, and we chose to delay our honeymoon until Disney's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge had opened.

My wife, bless her, isn't a die-hard like I am - I mean, she enjoys the films well enough, and I think she has absorbed some of my fandom by osmosis - but she knew that if I was ever going to be able to afford a visit we'd need an excuse to go without the kids. Delaying the honeymoon seemed like the best option.

Sorry, kids, but if it helps you feel better, we felt guilty the whole time, and we nearly died!

Happy now?!?

I make no apologies for being a Star Wars fan. It hit me, like so many, right at that perfect formative age, and I know I'm not exactly unusual in that respect. 

While I don't blindly adore everything Star Wars, I do despair at times at the amount of entitled grief it gets from supposed fans. I'm able to enjoy it on multiple levels; the artistry, the imagination, the world-building... that unique blend of grounded, high-tech, grittiness and mythical fantasy.

​I enjoy how Star Wars is made now by fans for fans; even when decisions are taken which aren't greeted with unanimous positivity, I love how it feels as if it's being made with passion by those who care.

When Galaxy's Edge was announced, it was for me, and many of my ilk, the promise of something we'd yearned for since childhood; being able to truly become part of the Star Wars universe, rather than just running around in a Parka jacket pretending to be Han Solo on Hoth, or waving a stick about and making lightsaber noises. 

I bought my Mega Drive through the Special Reserve mail-order catalogue, for £189 in 1990. It came strapped to Altered Beast, and with it I also ordered Super Thunder Blade. To be honest, neither game was much cop, and nor were the next couple I bought; EA'S risible Budokan and Sword of Sodan (more like "Sods of Sod-off").

Based upon these travesties, there was strong evidence that Sega's Mega Drive, the successor to my beloved Master System, was a proverbial "dirty son". Had I not already spent a great deal of money that I didn't have on it, it's highly likely I'd have propelled the thing into the nearest dog toilet.

It wasn't until I picked up Revenge of Shinobi and Castle of Illusion that I started to think purchasing the Mega Drive might've been worth it. Broadly, they both marked a turning point, and from then onwards *most* of what I bought for the console justified the initial outlay.

Truth is, the Mega Drive always had a much higher tat-to-good ratio than its eventual rival, the Super NES. Sega, by its own admission, was far more relaxed about quality, preferring a noisy, edgy, catalogue where quantity filled the trousers.

During the years of the great 16-bit console wars, this approach obscured many - myself included - to the fact that there were many genuinely great Mega Drive games, It's only now, with the benefit of several decades of hindsight, that Sega's 16-bit homunculoid has become sort of universally beloved, bitter divisions, and frustration with Sega's policies, seeming so unimportant in an era where not a day can unfurl without some new gaming drama.

Given this renaissance, it's inevitable that Sega has finally gotten around to pumping out a proper Mega Drive Mini, in the vein of Nintendo's NES and Super NES nostalg-o-replicas. And get this: it costs just £69 - the rudest price, which also happened to be the exact same RRP Virtua Racing sold for when it was released for the Mega Drive in 1994. 

Hey - who remembers when I did a big, self-indulgent, blog post about being bored of writing about video games, and then the very next day I wrote about video games? No-one - you don't remember, because it's happening now. Yes: right now!

You're reading it as it happens.

Perhaps in the days, weeks, months, and decades to come... you'll look back upon this time, nod to yourself, scurry to 'n' fro across the dirty tunnel where you live like a pig, and mutter: "Yes... yes, that is a memory that I am having..."

In 1995 I bought my first PC purely to play Star Wars: Dark Forces, and it was the best money I ever spent. I was hooked on first-person shooters - or "Doom clones" as your grandmother used to call them - and a Doom clone that cosplayed as Star Wars was irresistible.

I loved Dark Forces in a way that was extreme and unseemly, and the relatively bland mercenary Kyle Katarn was a solid addition to the Star Wars pantheon. Much more so than that smug, shoulder-padded, strutter Dash Render from Shadows of the Empire. 

Honestly, who dresses like that? He looked like he was wearing a padded cell.

GUEST REVIEW by PAUL GANNON

Upfront, I want to just state something to add a little bit of background to where I am at as a person who “casually” enjoys video games: The Binding of Issac has ruined gaming for me forever.

I can’t stop playing it. It has become a genuine problem.

I bought the game a few years ago when I finally managed to get my hands on a cheap Wii-U. I’d seen a few “Let’s Plays” and enjoyed what I’d seen, and wanted to get my hands on it. I was intrigued by the dungeon crawling, the whole “roguelike” thing and the amazing way the power-ups are random and can be stacked to create all kinds of exciting combinations. It was love at first sight.

Except now I am obsessed. When BoI finally came out for the 3DS, I bought it again. When it arrived on the Switch, I once again splashed out on yet another version of the game that, by now, had taken up 1000s of hours of my attention.

I’m no expert at the game, but I love the crap out of it. Here is the problem though; I’ve not given my attention to any other game in my collection. Those games sit there and gather dust, yearning for my time, but I ignore their pleas. Sod ‘em. I can pick up BoI and dive in for about an hour, have a proper good time, and then plop it down again. It was addictive. It was a quick hit of something that brought me a lot of satisfaction, and no other game could compete.

All my DS and 3DS games don’t get my love any more. There are scores of Switch games I’ve bought, spent good money on, and yet can’t face picking up to play. To be fair, I don’t know why I bought “L.A Noire” knowing full well I didn’t want to engage in its plot and game mechanics. It felt a game I had to get for the Switch just so I could feel I had a few “mature” titles in my collection.

Also, please spare a thought for “Doom”, which currently sits on a shelf begging for engagement. It’s a pretty brilliant FPS that I can’t believe they crammed on the Switch, and I’ve had fun with it… BUT. IT’S. NOT. BINDING. OF. ISAAC.

Here is the thing: I don’t think I would love BoI as much as I do were it not for one game from my childhood that changed my view of gaming forever… “Link’s Awakening”.

There are countless essays and YouTube videos on this Game Boy title, but if you know nothing else about the game, just know it’s a classic game as important as (insert some important game here) and of course (Some other game, I dunno. Put your own in).

​The Binding of Isaac is what happens if you took a traditional top down “Legend of Zelda” game and boiled it down to a thick, sweet, powerful reduction of the original dungeon crawling concept. It’s a shot of vodka to Zelda’s pint of frothy ale.

The world isn't perfect. Indeed, in this day and age it feels less perfect than ever. We're locked into an era where we're ruled by blonde egomaniacs, so undeserving of power. Injustice and inequality is rife, teenagers with autism are attacked by those in government, simply for trying to hold them to account, and our planet is choking on mankind's hubris.

We feel so powerless, numbed to the daily shocks.

Cynicism in the face of all this is, perhaps, understandable. Every day brings more bad news; abuses of power, environmental collapse, unsavoury revelations about those we might've once idolised... and we're all feeling battered and worn down. 

It's perhaps best summed up by the word Weltzschmerz - meaning "world pain" - coined by the German author Jean Paul Richter, to describe a weary melancholy at that imperfection of the world. John Steinbeck referred to it in The Winter of Our Discontent, where he called it "Welshrats", for some reason.

Though it'd be easy to think that this was a relatively new term, Richter first used it in 1810, suggesting that - as bad as things might seem now - we're not the first generation to believe that the world could, and should, be better than it is.

Indeed, so coloured have we become by this all-consuming Weltschmerz that it's hard to notice when something comes along that seems to be pretty darn perfect. 

Step forwards Apple Arcade. 

Guest Review by Super Bad Advice

Beep boop…hello, Madam! Mobile phones are both a wonder of the modern world, but also a total pain in the frenulum when you either get a call at the worst possible time or need to make/receive one but can’t. 
 
For example, I once got a really important call about a house we were trying to buy that I absolutely had to take, but with the worst possible timing my phone had rung while I was in the ‘smallest room’. That’s right – I was doing a poo in the airing cupboard! Again!
 
Normally, my phone ringing while I was indisposed wouldn’t be a problem and I’d do what anyone would: send it to voicemail, use the loo, and return the call. But I knew this call was time-sensitive and if I didn’t take it we could lose the house, so it had to be there and then.
 
And of course, it just so happened that ‘there’ and ‘then’ I was getting over a dose of food poisoning, so lavatorial visits were a lot more high-stake events than usual.
 
Thus, I ended up spending a wretched half-hour attempting to discuss my mortgage with a very polite but somewhat bemused solicitor, with me frantically muting things on and off mid-conversation – under the utterly rubbish cover story I’d concocted in a panic of my neighbour doing loud DIY – to spare them hearing as much as possible of what they’d probably have described as someone repeatedly half-filling a balloon with gravy, then the rest air, then letting it ‘razz off’ into a bin. 
 
Still, these days the country is so strewn with mobile masts it’s starting to resemble the face of that bloke from the 1980s horror film Hellraiser. So while calls at a bad time will always happen, at least not getting a signal when you need it is an increasingly unlikely thing.
 
Wander out into the sticks, though, and you can still find yourself in a ‘dead zone’ bereft of reception – usually just when you need it most, too. And that’s essentially the premise of the delightful A Short Hike. 

"GOOSE! How low can you go?"

​When the trailer for Untitled Goose Game dropped however long ago, it created quite a storm.

"It's a lovely morning in the village... and you are a horrible goose" we were told, and it was perfect.

​We all wanted that game. We all wanted to be that goose. 

Because somehow we do think of geese as horrible don't we? The trailer spoke to something primal within all of us. Geese live without consequences. They don't have to pay taxes. They don't have to worry about upsetting someone. They do what they want, when they want.

And somehow we just know that all geese are massive dickheads, and couldn't care less who knows it. I mean, they honk, for pity's sake. What use is honking other than to startle people? That's why car horns honk. They don't trill or chirp. Honking is an aggressive noise, and geese must surely have been given the ability to honk because they are intended to be nature's arseholes. 

Don't we all, on some level, want to live the goose life? 

Well now we can.

Guest review by SUPER BAD ADVICE

There's a widely-held theory that, every so often, it’s healthy for people to get out of their ‘comfort zones’. Challenge yourself. Do something different. Stretch your boundaries.
 
But here’s an alternative take: this idea is a right pile of honking dog eggs. Comfort zones are nice precisely *because* they’re comfortable, and being comfortable is ace. Would you attempt to sleep on a pile of bricks while a clown wearing nothing but a soiled pink leotard does squat thrusts over you and think “ooh, what a lovely change from my comfy bed! I’m really growing as a person!”? 
 
Unless you’re a titanic pervert, clearly this: no.

Anyway, if there are 2 genres of game I really couldn’t care less about, it’s football sims and resource management/world building type sims: they are my own personal ‘squatty the clown’, getting his crotch all up in my comfort zone. I know some people lap them up, but to me the latter have all the appeal and excitement of filling in a tax return. And the former?
 
Well, as far as I’m concerned, the zenith of amusement you could eke from a footie sim was reached in about 2004 – this being the pre-licencing cheapskate days when players in some games came set with stupid fake names such as “Devid Bockham” and “Fronk Lumphard”, but if you wanted you could amend them to correct them all.
 
You know: if you were a colossal dullard.

GUEST REVIEW by SUPER BAD ADVICE

​One of the first games I can still clearly remember playing from when I was young wasn’t one of the all-time early arcade classics like Space Invaders or Donkey Kong.

It wasn’t even a clunky home version of these, like Pac-Man on the Atari 2600, even though I actually had an Atari 2600 and apparently also had the infamously duff 2600 port of Pac-Man as a photo exists of me playing it one Christmas (its shonky awfulness perhaps being the reason why I’ve blotted it out of my memory).
 
No, this was an obscure game on the 48k Speccy called Mutant Monty and the Temple of Doom, one of four games on an allegedly now rare (according to some dude on ebay trying to flog a copy) compilation tape called ‘ASSEMBLAGE’.

​Because, of course, nothing says ‘great new game’ like bundling it on a tape with 3 other unrelated efforts and then giving it an uninspiring collective title that basically means ‘pile of stuff’.