wavey

Yep, just to confirm this: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Mario-Kart-Live-Home-Circuit-1832413.html

Yeah it seems to accept the code, then there's a few more screens to click through, before it finally gives a "PUR-conversionblockedcurrencycountrymismatch" error. Maybe it's something special about my account? Reading through a recent thread on hotukdeals most people seemed to get Brazil codes to work, and a handful got this error.

Ah, bollocks. Bought a CDKeys £30 Brazil code to top up my GamePass, but cannot redeem it however I try (VPN to Brazil on PC, on Xbox with location changed, via the mobile app) - it starts to go through, but I get a "currency mismatch" error because I already have GamePass on my account paid for in sterling. So if anyone thinks they can use the code, and wants 6 months GP Ultimate for let's say a £20 donation to Amnesty International, PM me. Gone

Satisfied - the song itself, the concept behind it, the staging, Renée Elise Goldsberry's absolutely phenomenal performance of it - is just... perfect. Proper goosebumps. And then I see things like this, and realise I don't appreciate the half of it.

If you haven't already, take a look at the genius.com annotations for Hamilton - they are pretty exhaustive, for both historical and musical references. Lin-Manuel Miranda himself went through and added a bunch of annotations when the album first came out - https://genius.com/artists/Lin-manuel-miranda and scroll down, they're fascinating. Seeing it live is pretty amazing, and a lot more emotionally overwhelming - I've seen it in London 5 times now, and each time ended up crying a frankly unseemly amount. Jamael Westman was fantastic as Hamilton (he's left the cast now), and I especially also loved Rachelle Ann Go as Eliza. (Here's the original London cast performing the opening number)

No.

Six are doing a drive-in tour later this summer if that's a possibility for you: https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/utilita-live-from-the-drive-in/six-the-musical-presale/ The wife and kids are going to see it at Leeds, I've already seen it a couple of times on the tour and that's enough for me I think. Given the kind of show it is, basically themed like a pop concert, it's one of the shows that might not be terrible to see this way?

Sure, plus you can't really have a £10/month extra subscription as a prerequisite for playing a game. I still think there could've been some fun and interesting things indie/hobbyist devs could've done with the music, even something basic like integrating user-selected tracks into AudioShield or similar, but obviously not legally possible absent written permission.

At least give it the first three songs, I'd say - if it hasn't grabbed you by My Shot, it's probably not for you. (Personally I think it's as close to being a perfect show as any I've seen, not to overhype it or anything!)

Yes, I’m sure the music publishers would have had a thing or two to say about it, hence the restrictions. Still, would’ve been cool to see what game developers could have come up with.

I was thinking more like using specific music at certain points - the game could trigger e.g. a particular Beatles song as a soundtrack to a cutscene for instance, or even have levels designed around / synchronized to songs they wouldn't be able to otherwise license.

Steam sale recommendation: I’m enjoying Tametsi a lot, which is only 65p in the sale. It’s a pleasingly tough Hexcells/Minesweeper-style game, with some interesting twists such as irrregular grids. 160 puzzles, no guesswork involved, the dev reckons it will take 40 hours fo finish. I'm only ~30 puzzles in, but some have been pretty brutal already. John Walker has a review which calls it "one of the best logic puzzle games you can buy on PC". https://store.steampowered.com/app/709920/Tametsi/

I often wondered why indie developers didn't do this - let you log into Spotify, and then use it for in-game music like GTA's radio stations, with a huge library to choose from but with none of the licensing costs. Well I looked it up, and it looks like it's against their developer Ts & Cs:

Overcooked free on Epic https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/overcooked/home

Indeed - apparently the next games to be given away by Epic will be Borderlands: Handsome Collection and ARK. They're going all out to promote their sale (which is very decent btw - you get £10 vouchers to use on each purchase £13.99 or higher, so e.g. I got Control + Season pass for £24).

Civ 6 free on Epic https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/sid-meiers-civilization-vi/home

Ubisoft are giving away the educational Discovery Tour modes of their Assassin's Creed games: Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. These are really good! There are loads of narrated museum-guide style tours you can go through, with extra photos of historical artifacts etc. If you have school kids around to keep occupied, they make a fun history lesson or two.

Now free on the Epic store: Amnesia: The Dark Descent Crashlands

Second this, a really interesting game with a powerful ending. Another recommendation: Eliza, a visual novel about therapy and the implications of AI. Very well written and acted.

Separate things, you need to pay for each. But both are included (plus Xbox Live Gold) in a GamePass Ultimate subscription. There are various tricks to get an Ultimate subscription for cheap if you pay in advance (iirc it works out as under £4/month, for up to 3 years).

The Walking Dead: Season One is one of the best narrative-based games of the last decade. Hexcells is a really good puzzler, like a cleverer Minesweeper.

Exactly, which is why it was so weird - I was changing all sorts of vsync and other GPU settings trying to find the one that had made it slow down. I might email Dan Marshall to let him know what the workaround is in case anyone else comes across the same thing. Anyway, now that's sorted - great game, enjoying it a lot!

Can I ask, how does this perform for everyone? When I'm platforming, the screen scrolling is really jerky, like about 15fps if I had to guess. It doesn't matter what resolution I'm running it in, and CPU and GPU usage is never more than 40% each, so I don't think it's a lack of power. EDIT: oh never mind, found out what the issue was - I have two screens set up in Windows, with the display duplicated (I only ever have one of the displays on at any time). Changing this setting to explicitly disable the screen I'm not using makes everything a lot smoother. Weird, first game where this has been a problem!

Maybe Valve have cracked it somehow, but every time I've tried to use that kind of movement in a game it makes me feel very uncomfortable. Roomscale + teleport generally feels the best imho.