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I may have already described my slightly pertinent experience with getting Rage 2 up and running. Three hours it took me to try to install the game on my PS4, before I gave up and just bought it via Stadia. I was playing within minutes.

Blah blah blah, and thanks for the backhander, Google. 

No, this isn't another Stadia-just-works polemic, but that does factor into it. This is more about why it's really important to believe, above all others, your own, first-hand, experience. And even then... take what you think you believe with a pinch of salt. 

You see, I'm really enjoying Rage 2. I'd liked the first one quite a bit, though I associate it with an odd time in my life, when I had just come out the other end of a long marriage that hadn't exactly worked, and I appreciated the chance to lose myself in its wasteland. 

I bought Rage 2 upon release, with a view to reviewing it on here, but the other reviews I read put me off. I was busy earlier this year, and fitting a big open world-game that was barely just sort of okay, into my free time wasn't something I found particularly appealing. So I left it in the shrink-wrap, until last week.

​And while I'm glad that the game has gone beyond my (admittedly very low) expectations, thanks to that lowering of this expectations due to others, I'm annoyed I ever allowed opinions to influence me.

I did a review of Google Stadia on Friday, having given my initial impressions over on Twitter. As I wrote in the review, I got a lot of... let's charitably call them "comments", from people who insisted I was either an idiot, or lying, or wrong in some way. People who, broadly, hadn't used Stadia, but who were of the unshakable belief that it doesn't work.

I've issues - quite significant ones - with what Stadia offers at the current time. The selection of games doesn't exactly 'wow', they're overpriced, and it all feels very bare bones. However, the technology - the thing which so many people told me, back in the summer when I first wrote about Stadia, wasn't going to work - does work. It works great. For me, at least. 

Now... it's important to stress that it might be that Stadia doesn't work great for everyone. Certainly, I know that Digi2000 contributor SuperBadAdvice hasn't exactly had a seamless experience with it. However, my first impressions continued to be backed up by my personal experience over the weekend, to a point where I forgot I was streaming the games.

Honestly, I had a sudden moment of realisation while playing Rage 2 (thus far, an underrated game that I can't believe I put off playing for so long) where I remembered, and was stunned. I'd been playing for hours with no noticeable lag, no stuttering, and graphics that, if they aren't 4k (the naysayers insist that Stadia upscales its visuals), as close to 4k as to be irrelevant. 

We can get into the whole not-actually-owning-your-games debate another time. I just want to talk about why so many people are still insisting that Stadia doesn't work, in the face of evidence to the contrary. Why are they trying so hard to convince themselves, without any first-hand, experience, that their belief is right? 

Let's take a look at that.

Biffo and Ashens go down the tubes, sampling some of the weirdest flavours of Pringles from around the world. These may include "egg sandwich flavour"... 

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Kids love video games. Kids also love having their faces painted, for some reason. This gallery of children sporting video game-themed face paint should demonstrate how happy these kids are; their faces should be a picture of joy and excitement.

Instead, for some reason they all look they've been interrupted while having a poo...

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.
​
At least... this is what I am led to believe based upon Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. 

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...

Horace: he's the name on the tip of every retro gamer's tongue these days! But who - or what - was Horace?

Created in 1982 by one William Tang, employee of Aussie software house Beam - the creative arm of publisher Melbourne House - Hungry Horace was something of a short-lived sensation.

Tang's game spawned two sequels, before Horace slithered almost completely off the radar for almost 40 years. Buried beneath layers of sediment, formed by the decaying flesh and bones of better ZX Spectrum characters, Horace is remembered merely as something of a joke - a fundamentally terrible character.

Indeed... possibly the worst games character of all time.

And here is why.