Toomanywires

"I wonder whether a Horizon Festival would be profitable for the hosting locality?" Somewhat distracted by that thought, I overshot a sharp right, lost control of my vehicle and smashed into a Tokyo convenience store. Metal met metal at 120 mph. Fortunately, this was an in-game incident, occurring during a recent Forza Horizon 6 session. I don't think my real-world Honda FIT would get up to 120 mph, and I wouldn't attempt a right turn at that speed even if it did. In the world of Horizon, damage is minimal and everyone walks away, no matter how hard and fast you collide. The inhabitants of this shrunk-down Japan are largely invisible, and when they do appear, they do so as indestructible cheerleaders kept safe behind immovable barriers. They need not concern themselves with vehicular manslaughter. Had this been real life, the metal barriers around the shop would not have halted my luminous green Subaru Impreza. It would have ploughed through the store front, killing d...

Mixtapes are deeply personal things, which partially explains why there has been so much Mixtape discourse over the past week. That's Mixtape the game, not the CD you burned for your school crush that was rammed with slow jams featuring filthy lyrics that soared over your head, or angst-ridden rock songs performed by men with guitars and feelings. Mixtape the game, a coming-of-age adventure that follows a trio of teens on their last day in their hometown, before they head off on their own individual adventures. Each scene is accompanied by a real-world track selected by our protagonist, which she insists perfectly suits the situation in which it must be enjoyed.  Depending on who you ask, Mixtape is either sublime or a bit wank. Maybe a bit of both. Your enjoyment may hinge on how closely the events depicted resemble your late-teen adventures and whether or not the music successfully captures the emotions you felt during the defining moments of your young adulthood. Personally, I d...

Just one more game of Rematch before bed.  Kick off! I pass the ball back to our keeper. I'm not sure if that pass is automatic or if my pressing X is having any effect. Sometimes I get the points for a completed pass, sometimes I don't. Regardless, it's the best thing I do all game. It is also the last. Having rid myself of the ball, I run into space. My generic-looking footballer - tanned, styled hair, moustache; thighs like hams - works little circles around the halfway line, occasionally making an exploratory sprint into the opposition's half, before retreating back because the ball isn't coming our way. It's entirely performative. I'm not sure if I actually want the ball, but I certainly want to appear like I want the ball, and might do something useful if I do get it. Our keeper is far from convinced. His legs are unnaturally long, or at least his shorts are pulled up too high. He has big hair and a tartan hat. He's not a newbie and he's clea...

I have a nasty habit of watching the clock when I play games. I'll check my playtime at the end of each session, either in game or on the console dashboard, and start to calculate how many more days, weeks or months it'll likely take for me to finish, with a bit of help from How Long to Beat. I'm hyper aware of how much time I put into games, but this awareness doesn't usually hamper my enjoyment of them. As I near what I believe to be the end, my mind starts to wander and I consider what I'll play next. I'll peruse my digital library and get something downloaded, or grab a physical copy off the shelf and prop it up somewhere near the TV, where I can see it. Now my mind and my eyes can wander. My attention is split between present and future. I start to wish the hours away, even as I enjoy the game at hand. Not with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, though. I stopped checking the clock after just a few hours and didn't bother to line up my next game. I had no des...

I keep a record of the games I play. It lives on my phone in the Notes app.  It's nothing fancy. No pictures, no sentences; not even scores. Just a plain text note, littered with spelling errors as well as abbreviations that'll only make sense to me.  I love to add a new entry and spend time scrolling through it, mumbling things to myself like "Oh yeah, I played that", "I liked that", "I didn't like that" and "Is that how you spell Veilguard?" It's a simple yet effective solution to tracking my games-played and seeing how my year is shaping up. Despite only being a month and a half into 2025, my list for this year is already looking pretty good. It's got a bit of this, a bit of that. With no big new release to focus on, I've been switching between multiple games, some old and some new, getting through backlogs and revisiting favourites. I've felt very productive, pressing my buttons and rolling credits.  The next fortn...

Nothing makes less sense than the Call of Duty launcher I tried to navigate last night. I wanted to play the Modern Warfare 3 campaign, the latest Call of Duty that had been added to Game Pass that morning. Expecting a sizeable file, and being that I'm very smart, I got the download underway around dinner time, so that it'd be ready for an evening session. Or so I thought. Fast forward to 11 p.m., and I'm freshly showered and in my jimjams. I grabbed my Starfield Xbox controller - an 8/10 game but a 10/10 peripheral - turned on the Xbox and sunk into the sofa. The Call of Duty app was awaiting me on the dashboard but, surprise surprise, it was only partially downloaded. Fortunately, enough progress had been made to be able to launch the game. It's time for murder, I thought. But there would be no killing. The game loaded - so far so good. A mini-intro to Call of Duty played, providing brief glimpses of characters past and present. Some of them I recognised - Price, the ...

Starting a family overseas, or moving your family abroad, is a huge decision. Venba captures the weight of that choice, distilling twenty years of family life into a couple of hours by focusing on a handful of key moments, all of which involve home cooking. It's charming, touching, entertaining, and refreshingly brief. Venba and her husband, Paavalan, have left their home of Tamil, south India, to start a new life in Toronto. In an early scene, we see them agonising over whether this decision to uproot was the right one. They ponder the opportunities and challenges their new life presents, and what it will afford their unborn child, Kavin. They talk about their struggles to find work befitting their experience, the difficulties of mastering a new language, and openly wonder how this will affect their soon-to-be expanded family.  These are conversations I know all too well, as I've had them with my family many times. My wife (Japanese) and I (British) had lived between our two h...

We might be six months away from Forza on GameCube. In the last week, it has been widely reported that Microsoft is on the verge of bringing some of its highest profile Xbox exclusives to other platforms, including Starfield and this year's tentpole title, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Rumours persist that this isn't just a dipping of toes, but a wholesale shift in strategy for Microsoft and the Xbox brand.  MS hasn't denied the rumours, which should tell you plenty, and Xbox head Phil Spencer has said that they'll be addressing future strategies this week. He may or may not wear a PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale t-shirt while doing so. As you would expect, the internet took this news in its stride. Very-online, console monogamists flipped their lid. The PlayStation cultists bragged about their imminent victory in the console war, and some of the Xbox hardcore were so disillusioned that they posted heartfelt messages online detailing their decision to withdraw...

The doors are locked and they'll never open for me. On the street opposite the park, on the ground floor of a nondescript building in a covered shopping street, there's a clothes store where time stands still. One customer, an elderly gentleman, peruses sweaters. I stare through the shop window, but he's oblivious to my presence. In the other corner, a school boy waits patiently, perhaps for his mother to emerge from the changing rooms. He is static; bored rigid? And behind the counter there's a store clerk who will stand there all day and never interact with a paying customer. The easiest and loneliest job in the world. I can look but I'll never set foot inside. No matter how many hours I spend in this town, and no matter how hard Joryu (formerly Kazuma Kiryu) learns to punch, we will never gain access. Off limits forever. This is one of many forbidden spaces you'll come across when wandering the streets of Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, or ...

I already wanted to play Jusant.  It looks pleasant and it's on Game Pass. Two desirable qualities, and almost enough to guarantee that I'd play it. But it wasn't until I learnt that it's only five hours long that it became an absolute must-play. Actually, I shouldn't say "only" five hours long. It gives the impression that it is somehow lacking, that it's limited in length and therefore, as some people would have you believe, value. And that would be very silly. There's only one thing that I love more than a five-hour game, and that's a four-hour game. I can clear a five-hourer in a week. A full and fulfilling experience, all wrapped up before I start fantasizing about the next game that I'm keen to get to. Perfect. Once I've finished Assassin's Creed Mirage - a fifteen-hour game, which is the same length as three five-hour games - I'll fit in Jusant. It'll be something short and sweet to squeeze in before Alan Wake 2, whic...

I've played some excellent games this year. And from what I can gather, I've missed a bunch too. I'm making good progress right now on Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. I'm committed to playing Assassin's Creed Mirage next, as I've already bought it. Then, time dependent, I'll play Jusant and Alan Wake 2, just in time to write my Best & Worst of the year, an annual tradition here since 2010. Even with those accounted for, there's still an absolute shit-tonne of games that I had hoped to play in 2023 but have failed to do so, due to a lack of time. The highest profile of these would be The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Everyone was raving about it earlier this year, though I have noticed that several friends and online acquaintances cooled on it slightly as the months passed. I'm sure it's excellent, but as someone who appreciated but didn't love Breath of the Wild, I think I can afford to put it off. What I may y...

I poured fifty hours into Starfield. Enough to reach an ending, or a new beginning, anyway. In those fifty hours, my feelings towards it shifted countless times. I was bored for stretches, and engrossed for others. At times I found myself adrift, blindly searching for the joy in exploration and rarely finding it. At others, my interest was renewed by gripping Faction Missions. For the first half, the main story missions were among the least interesting, but in the second, they became its finest feature.  In some ways, Starfield might be the most dated AAA blockbuster I've ever played. I was astonished by how little things have changed since Skyrim, yet I found comfort in familiar treats. The universe is a largely empty playground, one which is desperate for your attention yet never quite earns it. However, I came to appreciate its vacuous qualities, where planets are sparsely populated and first contact with intelligent life is still but a fantasy for our space-faring, future-selve...

I was a little unsure about Hi-Fi Rush. I have no nostalgia for Saturday-morning cartoons, am allergic to most things remotely anime-like, and suspected that its pop-culture references would be sailing over my head from start to finish. I can enjoy DMC-like action games, but they're not my favourite, and I'm always a difficulty-spike away from giving up. On the other hand, I couldn't help but be impressed by all those bright colors in the reveal trailer, as well as the comic tone, and was intrigued by the promise of a rhythm-based action game. Also, I'd be lying if I said I didn't get swept up in all the shadowdrop excitement.  I was unsure. But given that it's on Game Pass, I was bound to try it. Well, not only did I try it, but I also finished it. Predictably, it was routinely too anime-y for me, the references flew over my head, and I almost packed it in on several occasions. But I loved the colourful and vibrant art direction, warmed to the characters, and m...

Major Pentiment spoilers ahead! Continue at your own risk Pentiment drops us into the 16th century Bavarian town of Tassing at three key moments that punctuate a 25-year stretch of considerable upheaval: twice as a visitor, artist Andreas Maler, and once as a resident, Magdalene Druckeryn. Crucially, time does not stand still when we leave Tassing - it marches ever on - and we are given the rare opportunity to see the long-term consequences of our actions. Over that quarter century, we experience change both major and minor. Seasons pass, townspeople come and go, apprentices become masters; new buildings sprout up, and old ones are left to ruin. Memories are misshapen and truths forgotten, and new histories are written. Relationships flourish as others wither. The kids grow up. And in those 25 years, life comes and goes. It is here, in its depiction of mortality, that I found Pentiment to be most impactful. I went to great lengths to save sweet, old Brother Piero, desperate to keep him...