NooBTooB Forum

God of War (PS4): I'm a secret fan of the series, mostly, and while 1 was its highpoint, I thought Chains of Olympus was well done, 3 was familiar but still also well done in scope, and featured the typical smooth if gruesome combat. I guess a lot of the complaints about Kratos being angry murder man were legit, I mostly just found him getting more tired than actually upset with his characterization, we all kill 1000s of people in video games, Kratos just wore it on his sleeve, and he was at least more interesting than Gears of Battlefield Warfare Man. I'm not sure I like him in this new one, because he feels more personally mean! Oh well. As for the game itself, it's presented well, it looks good, sounds good, the ambience is fantastic, but it feels a bit more tired. It's settling into an open world stat and equipment marathon. I don't inherently have a problem with that genre, hell there was a long time in my life I said I loved it, but dear lord it feels overused at this point. I just feel the game opening up and becoming a constant menu digging adventure as I place my stats and craft gear and level up and eh. It doesn't help that the text is so, so incredibly small I literally have to physically get up and move close to my TV to read it. I already don't have great eye sight and this is brutal. Apparently they just (or are about to) deploy a patch to fix this since it was unchangeable in game. Anyways, to make a long story short, I feel mostly unattached to how familiar this game now plays to other games, and we are so awash in big ass games like this. It's not that they can't be different, or done well, but the field is so crowded that you're going up against a lot of competition that just makes me think "if only they did this..."

(PS3) FIFA16 Good for a mindless bit of down time to de-stress at the end of a long day.  Playing on a slightly harder but not impossible difficulty has made this feel like way more of a Roy of the Rovers fantasy than the slightly unrealistic domination that I enjoyed with my Blackpool team in FIFA14.  I mean, Notts County are still in the process of establishing themselves as an English football powerhouse, but I'm not winning leagues and am still getting knocked out of cup competitions fairly regularly.

In the last few weeks I got ditched out of the League Cup, which wouldn't have been a problem but one of the targets the board had set for the team was to make it to at least a quarter final in a domestic cup competition.  That meant I had to prioritise the FA Cup, but I got a series of fortunate draws that meant I was fairly easily able to make it to the Final.  Once there, I got beaten fair and square by Aston Villa, who struck two early goals and then defended doggedly, clinging on to win despite me scoring a late consolation.

In the league I was up at nose bleed height for a long time, sitting at second for ages before injuries and needing to spread the squad across three competitions meant that I just had a few too many draws to stay competitive.  I started the final day of the season in second but was fourth by the end of it :-( .  Still, my league target for the season had been to qualify for the second-tier European competition the Euro League, but fourth was enough to get me into the more lucrative Champion's Cup for the second season in a row.

Meanwhile, in this season's Champion's Cup Notts County went on an unbelievable run, scraping two very lucky wins in the quarter- and semi-finals against teams that I had no right to beat.  At this point, it actually felt like real-life football with the less talented team having to defend staunchly, hoping to nick a cheeky goal and occasionally surviving on some incredible goal-keeping displays.  

In the final, it was County v Bayern Munich and I pretty much accepted I was going to lose, but it ended up being a really exciting game.  They scored, then we scored, then they scored again and it looked like all was lost. Bayern were peppering our goal and our goalie (who came through the youth team) put in a stunning performance to keep them out.  Then Gabriel Jesus (Man City player in real life) popped up with a last-minute equaliser to take us into extra time.  Both teams were out on their legs at that point and the game went to penalties, which were equal between the teams shot-for-shot, save-for-save.  Then, in sudden death, Javi Martinez inexplicably missed his shot for Bayern, making Notts County the most unlikely European champions!

I've now rolled into a new season's transfer window, cheating a little to save some budget from the previous season into this year.  But looking around, I honestly can't see who I would buy to improve the squad who isn't available for silly money.  I've not been entirely convinced by Julian Draxler at left wing, but the only players who would improve on him would cost even more than I currently have available.  

Another potential mega-star has just come through from the youth team and I was just thinking about whether he might eventually replace Christian Erikssen as my attacking midfielder (the kid's currently 16, but rated at 79 already!), but just as I was about to shut down for the night Chelsea put in an offer for Erikssen.  I went back to them with what I thought was a crazy counter offer (£55M after they'd initially bid £35M) and they accepted and are now negotiating with him about whether he will join them.  As gutted as I would be to lose one of my best players, he was already getting a little old (I think it's 2021 in the game now) and this new guy has already really impressed in pre--season matches.  Maybe I'll be able to use the income from that sale and do a player-and-cash deal to swap Draxler for Neymar from Barcelona.  Sounds suitably bonkers...

Cripes, that's a lot of text.  Sorry for going on!