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A screenshot taken from person-level at the entrance of Akila City, during the night. It's got a very wild west sort of feel to it, the ground is dirt and the buildings are cobbled together out of a combination of wood and futuristic-looking metal. It's not very well lit and the lights are quite yellow-coloured. In the centre of the frame is an imposing-looking multi-storey mostly built out of stone, with more yellow lights lighting it up from below.

A wide-angle screenshot taken from above the other end of Akila City at sunrise right before the sun is visible above the horizon. There's a solid wall running around a set of closely-packed metal buildings that look a bit more futuristic than in the previous screenshot, but they're still decidedly not pristine and clean. There's some wispy clouds in the sky and mountains in the distance, and a very yellow glow from where the sun is about to rise.

Another wide-angle screenshot of the main bar in Akila City. It's all rough wooden tables and stone walls, with a set of wooden stairs at the right going up to a second level. A handful of patrons are sitting around, the bartender is behind the bar, and suspending from the ceiling is the skeleton of an ashta, a huge predator native to the planet.

Almost 24 hours into Starfield so far and I'm still enjoying the hell out of it. I know I keep harping on about it, but the amount of detail and care in the environments is so good, it feels like a fully-realised world that you want to spend a bunch of time in. Most of my recent time has been spent in Akila City doing various side-quests and helping out the Freestar Rangers.

Posted on 30 September 2023, 18:49

A screenshot from Starfield of the sunrise over, uh, one of the districts (I forget which one it was) on Jemison in the Alpha Centauri system. It's taken looking over an open public plaza with trees and people walking around, and there's tall, sleek, futuristic buildings as well.

Another screenshot, this one is also Jemison but it's inside The Well which is an underground almost slum. Everything made of metal and it's all brown and industrial-looking, with lots of exposed pipes, girders, and mesh everywhere.

Another screenshot, this one is inside the main control room of the space station "The Eye" that's orbiting Jemison. The room is round and stark white, with rows of "NASA punk"-looking consoles with displays and buttons on them. The roof is clear glass looking out into space where you can see the stars.

Man, I'm enjoying Starfield so much. Tonight was spent mostly wandering around The Well on Alpha Centauri helping figure out what was causing brownouts, and chatting to Denis and Dr. Charlie in Cydonia on Mars (wonderful lines and voice acting for both of them), I didn't even do much of main quest things but I thoroughly enjoyed myself nonetheless. The amount of detail Bethesda put into this game is wonderful, as an example there's a café/not-quite food bank place in The Well, and if you go through the back there's the kitchen with all the things you'd expect to see in there, then upstairs is the living quarters where there's all sorts of stuff scattered around like someone actually LIVES there, there's even a bathroom and everything. The whole thing just feels _lived in_ and it's so good.

screenshot gaming xbox starfield

Posted on 11 September 2023, 23:29

A selfie, I guess, of my character in Starfield. She has dark brown skin and brown eyes and has faint crows feet around the eyes. She has multiple piercings in ears, and her hair is completely shaved up the sides but the top is a big mop of black hair. She looks pretty much exactly like Naomi Nagata from the TV show "The Expanse".

And speaking of Starfield, dear LORD can you spend a lot of time in the character creator! As always I made a Black woman, you can't tell from this shot but I went with the heavy/muscular side of things for the body type, but as soon as I came across that haircut I was like "Oh, I've just made Naomi Nagata." 😅

screenshot gaming xbox starfield

Posted on 9 September 2023, 22:02

Back on my Forza Horizon 5 bullshit again! I'd forgotten I bought the rally expansion and man is it fun to blast around this rally-spec Peugeot 207 without any of the usual breaking lines on and instead just getting the instructions from your co-pilot ("hard left", "medium right into hairpin right", that sort of thing). On asphalt it's pretty much glued to the road and even on dirt it handles extremely nicely.

screenshot gaming xbox forza horizon

Posted on 19 August 2023, 21:29

A screenshot of a dust-covered black hatchback driving along a road with looming sandstone cliffs behind it.

I was a bit sceptical about the new Forza Horizon 5 DLC, it's a whole proper rally thing. By default they recommend you leave the driving line off and they have the full co-driver giving you directions ("medium right into hard left", etc.) and I gave that a go and man is it fun! I've been blasting around in my rally-spec 1990 Nissan Pulsar (the brown is actually dust, it's black underneath all that, haha).

screenshot gaming xbox forza horizon

Posted on 2 April 2023, 22:11

A screenshot from Cities: Skylines, looking down a leafy boulevard. The road has two lanes on each side, one regular and one bus lane, and there's a yellow bendy-bus just pulling into a stop at the left. On the right alongside the road is a train station with a whole bunch of people walking down the street and going into the station. On the other side of the train station is a highway, and there's a pedestrian foot bridge crossing over it.

Apart from doing chores, this weekend has been spent almost entirely playing Cities: Skylines on the Xbox. NO REGRETS. They released a free "remastered" update that brings it in line with the (software) architecture of the PC version, and one of the things that allows is that instead of a maximum of nine 2x2 kilometre tiles in total area, your city can now be a maximum of TWENTY FIVE 2x2 kilometre tiles! Unfortunately the save file format is totally different and so can't be brought from the original game to the remastered version, so I'm having to start from scratch. My biggest city in the old game was about 120k population, I'm at a bit under 19k in my new city now. As always my favourite part is setting up the public transport and watching all the little people go everywhere!

screenshot gaming cities skylines xbox

Posted on 5 March 2023, 20:35

A screenshot showing a hotted-up (pun unintended) red 1970 Datsun 510 driving along a road with rolling sand dunes behind it and clouds in the distance, and the sun blazing down. Just looking at it, it feels HOT.

Another screenshot of the same Datsun 510, this time in a different spot. There a bunch of foliage and palm trees on the side of the road being buffeted by extreme winds, the entire scene is yellow and the visibility is extremely low because I'm in the middle of a huge dust storm.

It's the hot season in Forza Horizon 5, and it feels like I'm driving on Tatooine. And then a dust storm rolled in!

screenshot gaming xbox forza horizon

Posted on 1 January 2023, 22:26

A screenshot from Forza Horizon 5, it's a sunny day with cobblestone streets and obviously-Mexican buildings, and there's a massive Christmas tree in the middle the section where a road is splitting apart. On the other side of the road is a huge yellow building that I think is a church.

Another screenshot from Forza Horizon 5, showing my red Datsun 510 with big rims zooming along the road in the middle of the desert, there's lots of cactii and scrubby bushes on the side of the road.

Haha, Forza Horizon 5 is getting into the Christmas spirit as well: there's a giant Christmas tree in the middle of the city, and various other places have big candy canes lining the side of the road. In related news, still having a ton of fun in my hotted-up Datsun 510.

screenshot gaming xbox forza horizon

Posted on 25 December 2022, 22:34

A photo of the four Magic the Gathering/Warhammer 40,000 cross-over decks, plus a 2TB Xbox Series X expansion card, a box of Space Marine Reivers, and a small pot of bright green paint.

It's a pre-Christmas package bonanza! (I should clarify that none of these are actually Christmas presents... I ordered the Xbox expansion card on the 23rd of November, got a notification on the 7th of December that it'd shipped and would arrive on the 14th, and it only just arrived today. And the Magic decks were ordered when they were up for pre-order back in like JULY and were meant to ship in October but there were stock issues from supplier, and I'd ordered the miniatures and paint in the same order so it all got held up.)

our house darkroom magic the gathering xbox new miniatures

Posted on 22 December 2022, 11:27

My favourite thing to do in the Forza Horizon games is to take an old car and just entirely hot it up. Witness my 1970 Datsun 510 that has an inline four turbocharged rally engine in it, along with full rollbars, weight reduction, and slick racing tyres. In related news, I am absolutely incapable of playing racing games without leaning my entire body to one side or the other as I go around corners.

screenshot gaming xbox forza horizon

Posted on 11 December 2022, 20:41