Coelacanth

First time watching that clip and making the connection hit like a ton of bricks. Both Matt and Ilka really knocked it out of the park with the acting in that one, too.

Two of my favourite things in AW2 are the grafitti and

spoiler

how all the lines the shades spit at you in the dark place are taken from that one Alan breakdown video.

Pokémon Uranium is supposed to be good, I think.

I was about to bring that one up! That's a great one and the ultimate "best of both worlds" edition for FF 6 imo. Keeps some important Woolsey character while improving the script. I also think this is the best translation of the Opera scene (it's based on the GBA version I think).

You know I'm usually against Australia's insane video game censorships, but this time they may be on to something.

There is a great mod called ACUFixes you should look into.

There is also the American national dish of cereal (frequently meaning lumps of coloured sugar mixed with lumps of different-coloured sugar).

Have tried most of them and none feel as good as Summit.

Shame, I feel like stealth co-op can be a really fun gameplay setup. Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven was the go-to game for me and my childhood friend whenever we went for couch co-op. I also had some fun with Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow back in the day

I've heard about people enjoying the co-op missions in AC: Unity, but unfortunately I personally never had any friends to play that game with, and I don't really want to team up with strangers. But I feel like a co-op Assassin's Creed could be good.

Damn, a Rooks and Kings reference in 2026? You're making me want to go back too. Anatomy of a Fight was always my favourite vid of theirs, personally.

You were pretty much there for its peak, then. Those were the good days. I don't know that I would be up for the time commitment these days, but I still miss those times now and then.

Return of the Obra Dinn would be a good fit, I think. A library setting would be a great reason to get players looking up books on nautical history.

They did bother to check, they are just sloppy. It seems like it's more that one slipped through the cracks. There are plenty of unredacted "don t" in the files. Looks like they did blanket redactions of "Don T" (and other Trump related names) and then went through manually and unredacted false positives to cover their tracks. But they missed one. It's still a smoking gun, though, as there's literally no reason to redact "don t".

Probably. CSAM is CSAM, I'm not sure the law would differentiate. Probably one of the reasons Dataset 9 has taken time to get restored, as I believe it was said it had some accidentally unredacted/uncensored CSAM in it?

Yeah I haven't played it but I heard the stories. I haven't played every year, but in general I would recommend either

FM 2024 The latest "classic" version, has the most support, mods, relevant player database etc. Probably recommended for most players. Most feature-rich while still not being completely fucked like 2026 apparently is.
FM 2017 I have this game still installed, though I haven't played it in over a year now I think. I have my longest running save on this edition. Often comes up on top in votes for which FM has the best match engine. It still has some exploits if you look for them hard enough (every edition does), but for the most part all tactics are viable, the match engine feels good and you're not forced into any one archetype.

Right now he is essentially an untouchable king according to the supreme court, so the only way I see him getting tried for anything is if he happens to die while still in office but before he gets the chance to pardon himself, and the trial goes ahead posthumously.

That's good news. With the amount of people interested in these files and in data preservation it's bound to be only a matter of time until the whole dataset 9 is restored. Someone out there's gotta have the rest of the files.

Does anyone have any ideas for games where you can have shorter or longer term "projects"? Like building a character in an ARPG or building a base in a base builder? Or grinding for something specific? I want to have my brain locked in a project for leisure. Sorry if not the right place to ask, thought I'd throw this in here.

Build a dynasty at a lower leagues club in Football Manager. That'll be the next few months of your life sorted.

I've actually played three games this past week, so I think I will split up my ramblings into spoiler tags to not fill out the entire screen with a wall of text.

The Last Express

I am finished with The Last Express. Note that I didn't say I finished it. I played for a few hours, enjoyed some things immensely and grew frustrated by some other things, and ended up deciding I would rather just watch the rest of the game as a movie on YouTube. Which I ended up not regretting one bit.

There are parts of the game I adore. And it's cheap enough often enough that I still recommend people buying it and giving it a chance, because even if you don't finish it there is a lot of interesting, immersive things to enjoy here. The writing is especially strong - these are not your typical video game characters and for a 1997 title especially they are mind-blowingly human and well realised. I have to make a special mention of the lesbian couple and their tragic love story, which is all completely unrelated to the plot and missable side character content you must snoop around and eavesdrop to put together. But is a beautiful, mature and completely non-sexualized portrayal of homosexuality and its struggles in the early 1900s. Some of the best I've seen in any video game.

The rotoscoped animations are also - I think - gorgeous, although technical limitations of the time mean only certain cutscenes are fully animated and the rest plays out in a sort of stop-motion. It still goes a long way towards making the game timeless. The voice acting is also phenomenal across the board, and the use of native voice actors helps anchor the game georgraphically. It's a really well researched window into a very interesting and somewhat underexplored era.

But at the end of the day I can see why this game flopped commercially. The first hour or so is incredibly strong and immersive, but the lack of direction and guidance can quickly wear you down. There is just a whole lot of randomly wandering around the train with absolutely no idea of what you're supposed to, waiting for something to happen - or even waiting to start to get an idea of even what you're meant to be doing. And also a whole lot of rewinding and replaying sections, something I started to get particularly fed up with.

I found this great blog post about the game, and whether you intend to play it or not it's a fantastic read, and sums up a lot of my thoughts about the game. One part in particular stands out:

I fear that Smoking Car may have violated one of Sid Meier’s principles of game design: that it’s the player who should be the one having the fun, not the programmer or designer.

Chrono Ark

I also started Chrono Ark, which is a roguelike deckbuilder I've heard a lot of good things about. I have played about 6 or so runs, with varying success, and I did manage to make my first "clear" today, only to find that it was... well I will not spoil anything further as I've also heard a lot of good things about the story of this game. Unlike many deckbuilders this is a game that puts the story in a central focus, and so far I am quite liking what I see. It is quite a bit darker than it might seem at first, and I hope it continues to lean into that and continues to throw curve balls. I have only just scratched the surface but I hope the hints I've been seeing so far will pay off in the way I think they might, because there have been some really interesting moments.

Gameplay wise it's just a really solid roguelike deckbuilder. If you've played the genre before you know the drill. Cards, upgrades, boss mechanics, team compositions and synergies etc. It plays really well and every run has been fun and different, with more options opening up with meta progression as you unlock more characters and more items and so on. Would definitely recommend for any fans of the genre.

It also does have an "easy mode" if you just want the story, but I haven't seen enough of it yet to know if I would recommend it solely based on that.

Ninja Gaiden 4

Lastly, I finally pulled the trigger on Ninja Gaiden 4. I was intending on playing it on release last year (I even played the entire Ninja Gaiden series back-to-back to prepare) but at the last moment I got distracted by other things. But after the fairly slow-paced gameplay of The Last Express and Chrono Ark I needed something snappier and so I couldn't resist any longer.

So far I've only played like 2 hours, but I am impressed by what I'm seeing. I was worried that Platinum Games' involvement would dilute the Ninja Gaiden-ness of the game, but it still feels "right". I'm playing on Hard and enemies are good and aggressive, maybe not quite as much as in Ninja Gaiden 2, but still enough to give you that sensation of being pushed to just survive. I love that UTs are back, and On-Landing UTs, and essence orbs dropped by enemies. Combat is more complex than previous games, with stance switching and parrying now. But it's been very fun and satisfying and just exactly what I was looking for.

One thing I am somewhat miffed about however is the simplified combo system, with less focus on fighting game style inputs for combos. Although this could well be just the beginning and those are unlocked later with other weapons and/or upgrades. But I do miss that a bit.

I also needed to install a mod to remove the horrific blue tinted filter, which just doesn't look good to me. Not really sure why so many developers go for that type of heavily stylized filter, I just rarely find it looks good.

I like Team Ninja and the way they do character action, so I'm happy both Ninja Gaiden 4 and Nioh 3 were well reviewed and successful. Probably won't jump into this for a long time due to my backlog (I'm working on Ninja Gaiden 4 at the moment, though!), but will most likely tentatively wishlist this for a future sale.