Chris Tapsell at SGF
@ChrisTapsell
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Deputy Editor of @Eurogamer . I look after reviews & features. Also a critic, features writer, recovering guides nerd. Opinions mine/my Pokémon's. He/him.
Joined December 2011
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Pinning this one for a bit: latest long-read from me featuring Microsoft, King, CDPR, Undead Labs, Something Wicked and more on how AI is already impacting game development.
Includes unrestrained optimism, careful scepticism, anger, and a song.
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Xbox Game Pass is increasingly looking like the future of gaming - or at least Microsoft’s version of it. But what’s the real impact? Is it really sustainable? And what do the people who make and sell games really think of it?
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I swear Dril vs Musk is like the Ents turning up to fight Saruman. The soul of an ecosystem comes to its defence, against some horrible industrialist and his fucking orcs
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Masuda takes the stage... "Pokémon New Title Announcement Conference"
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One thing I can say... it might not be what you’d expect
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I'm reviewing Starfield! Only I'm not at the moment, because Bethesda has refused to provide Eurogamer, and a select few other outlets, with code. More here:
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Every year I try not to have a public take but not this one. I cannot understand the legitimacy given to TGAs & I find the nominations every year to be a massive indictment of the wider state of games media & how easily we can be wowed by particle physics and a marketing budget.
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Sorry to quote-dunk but just for the sake of stopping patent disinformation: this is an enormously dishonest and disingenuous tweet. It’s the guides section at the very bottom of the page - RPS is one of the few major sites working incredibly hard to bring attention to indies.
Indie developers are screwed. A screengrab of a top PC gaming site. Apparently there are only 2 games for PC right now.The press are NOT going to write about your indie game. Not now, not ever.
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Here's my review of Returnal. If I could only say one thing here it would be please read past the badge
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Hello! I'm on the Diablo 4 review for Eurogamer and we're holding off for a bit. TLDR: no shop, no live public servers, and no chance we'll rush our review because of an artificial deadline means we're going to take a bit longer.
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⠀ ⠀ ⠀ 🤠
🌍🌍🌍
🌍 🌍 🌍
👇 🌍🌍 👇
🌍 🌍
🌍 🌍
👢 👢
Howdy! I'm the Deputy Editor of Eurogamer
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That 2019 core RPG will be "in the style of Pokémon X & Y and Sun and Moon". Presume that's to keep hardcore competitive players happy, as Let's Go! is aimed super broad, targeting everyone.
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I’m in Tokyo and will be live-tweeting some (hopefully) very exciting stuff in the coming minutes... about
@Pokemon
!
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HELLO I AM AT THE E3 GREETINGS FROM EUROGAMER AND MY DOUBLE CHIN!
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Some personal news: I got engaged at the weekend and am *blissfully* happy. She also wanted me to tell you all that it's Extremely Sexy when I share my very serious opinions about Pokémon online, actually, so screw you.
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Er, right then, a few things!
1. This is an entry level role - if you suit it, apply!
2. Definitely feel welcome to ask me if you have any questions - about the job, applying, or just guides writing in general :)
3. Personal news: I'm moving to a new role at EG as Staff Writer!
Eurogamer is looking for a new guides writer! Come and join us, for FAQs' sake
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Starting in 5 (10am Japan time, 2am UK I believe), intros underway now.
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Alright, let's go! [find out if that pun is intended or not]
The whole crew in attendance here,
@Nintendo
,
@Pokemon
Company,
@NianticLabs
,
@Junichi_Masuda
of Game Freak.
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So, I think
@ControlRemedy
is possibly the most I’ve enjoyed a game preview in my (admittedly brief) time doing this. It plays incredibly smoothly but it’s the atmosphere that’s just masterfully done. Stunning. Hands down my game of
#E3
so far.
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Sorry, believe Masuda is coming but it's Mr. Ishihara up first, giving us some Pokémon background. What a tease.
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Three announcements to come: first, Pokémon Quest, a mobile and Switch hybrid, fully controllable by touch. Story up on
@eurogamer
which we'll update with more soon.
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Here's a deep dive into the making of FM21 in this very strange time for football, after a few hours with it and a fun, rangey chat with
@milesSI
. In brief, it's shaping up nicely:
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I have a feeling Niantic's big Pokémon Go announcement today is going to come at 11:59pm and tell us "Something neat is coming in 2019!!!"
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Hello! I am ridiculously excited to say that amongst all the big changes at the site today, I’m stepping up into a new role as Reviews Editor at Eurogamer, taking over from the amazing (now-Editor-in-Chief!) Martin…
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Here's a little heartwarmer for the weekend: I wrote about a reader contact message this week that turned out to be the best email I've ever had.
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Hello! I am back from a lovely holiday and can AT LAST say that I have actually started my new role as a staff writer for
@eurogamer
today and I am very excited about it 🎉
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Most noticeable thing about FIFA is that they're making the absolute MOST of that Champions League license. Expect to hear that music in every FIFA 19 video ever from now to eternity.
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@Ankaman616
While Dean Henderson is out injured/recovering from covid, David De Gea rediscovers his form in the league, saves a penalty, and solidifies number 1 spot.
(He looks even better early on because he's kept extremely busy, thanks to Varane taking time to settle in next to Maguire)
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Me: Farfetch'd, what do you have there?
Farfetch'd: A KNIFE!
Me: NO!
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Everyone likes to talk a big game but when it comes down to it establishment video games have not evolved beyond the emotion of “woah”
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Excited to get about 3 days with it for review
To fully complete Dying Light 2 Stay Human, you'll need at least 500 hours—almost as long as it would take to walk from Warsaw to Madrid!
#DyingLight2
#stayhuman
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My review of Starfield. It’s a mixed one for me. There’s a lot of the usual distinct parts that Bethesda does so brilliantly - systemic stuff, sidequest oddities, bigness - but crucially, zero exploration, the crucial thing it needs to bind it all together
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Seen this article starting to do the rounds. It’s incredible, hugely clear and informative, really recommend reading it.
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Rewatched that Forspoken trailer enough times for it to completely melt my brain now. Every email I open my internal monologue is like SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT, I'm about to play this VIDEO GAME, sent to me by some RANDOM COMPANY, for my JOB?! and I get freakin PAID for this?!
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Logging onto twitter after being away for a big gaming reveal makes you feel like a parent whose kid just had a massive birthday party. You lot have made a real mess in here but I’m very glad you had a nice time
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Alright, here goes. For
@eurogamer
, I went to Shanghai and spoke to developers, publishers, analysts, Valve, and local die-hard gamers about the huge, complex world of video games in China - and what it all means for us:
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Huge amount of announcements, hard to keep up! ANOTHER core RPG is coming to Switch second half 2019 AS WELL AS Let's Go! and Quest.
Quest is free and available NOW on Switch, mobile version coming June 2018 so not long.
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It is indeed Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee for the core RPG. Look fascinating - throwing Pokéballs like Go, with a JoyCon. New device coming too called Pokéball Plus, and connectivity with Go as well.
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Likewise, it (and its replies) also involves a special kind of sneering that’s often reserved exclusively for guides; work that is both enormously demanding on the writers and useful for players, *and* beneficial for developers anyway ny maintaining “engagement” with your games.
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Eurogamer's first 5* review is... er, Pikmin 4?!
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Co-authored with
@Clert
, this is a long-read on the complex, evolving impact of gaming downloads, updates, and cloud streaming on the climate crisis:
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Just discovered this (anonymous) hatchet job is about one of our writers at Eurogamer. Here is some actual advice for new writers, that I learned from one of the kindest and most prolific editors in the industry: never publish a critique you wouldn’t say to someone’s face.
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Today marks exactly THREE YEARS (?!) since I joined Eurogamer. It's a phenomenal site that's full of wonderful people, who've made sure that even at the absolute depths of Sekiro-walkthrough-writing despair I've still absolutely adored every minute of it.
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Also the secret to nailing indies is to stop putting them in a box labelled “indies” and just… treat them like games?
That also goes for indie roundup columns! Indie games = games. Write about them like they are games, & then people will buy, play, & think about them like games
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An opinion piece on The Game Awards. Waking up this morning I was kind of blown away by the strength of the reaction to them from developers on here - although also not hugely surprised. Devs want representation, and TGAs won't ever be that. So what next?
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Hello! I’m BBC World News at about 1:40pm today to talk about the industry and the
@BAFTAGames
Awards. Eek!
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Something I wish I could change about reviews is the way people think a review’s job is to be ‘correct’, where correct = matching the consensus and/or the reader’s opinion (usually the latter formed by the former). Feels especially prevalent in games but maybe that’s perspective.
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At Eurogamer it’s a fair bit more likely, eg:
2018: Tetris Effect
2019: Outer Wilds
2020: Hades
Partially because of how we choose them, partially culture, and partially indies are easier to play quickly on a strong personal rec (often platform agnostic, short, lots of code etc)
I’m curious: do you think we are at the point where among large publications a non-AAA game has AT LEAST an equal chance of winning Game of the Year as a big AAA title?
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Pokéball Plus looks super fun, basically lets you wave a Pokéball about in real-life to do so in-game. More on that to follow. Now for some chat about Pokémon Go and how it communicates with Let's Go! You CAN bring Kanto-region Go Pokémon to Let's Go! on Switch!
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There is a person who has left 33 comments on our High on Life review in the 18 hours since it went live
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Finally, a space game where I can visit an abandoned research facility
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That's the end of the conference. Some photo ops coming, and then expect much more on
@eurogamer
dot net in the coming minutes, hours and days as we wrap this all up. Press are here in Japan for two more days.
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OK, something I’ve been working on for a little while now: new series on Eurogamer!
It’s called Up Close, and it’s about talking in a bit more depth about little things in games - mechanics, themes, etc. The type of things you run out of space to do justice in a review.
Up Close is a new, occasional series on Eurogamer, aiming to talk about the little things in games with the detail they deserve.
Our first is on A Short Hike, Lonely Mountains: Downhill, and how impressionism gets us closer to nature than the photo-real.
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Here's my review of Pokémon Sword and Shield. A tough one to write, given the furore. I loved the new Pokémon and the little tweaks to systems, but I found the dungeonless world shallow, empty and entirely pale in its imitation of former glories:
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Gutted to see
@johnneh
go but absolutely chuffed for him, and chuffed for
@AoifeLockhart
who'll do a smashing job in the new head of video role too.
(also, Johnny's still part of the company so I can still scream weird Oblivion quotes at him every time he enters the room anyway)
Time for some Eurogamer news: this week we say goodbye to
@johnneh
and congratulations to
@AoifeLockhart
!
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Let's Go! is an "all new game" "within the series like X and Y was", so it's not a remake of RBY despite being set in Kanto. "Inspired" by Yellow, not a remake. Will be interesting to dig into what that means.
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So so happy to have this on the site. We’ve had it waiting for a little while for a nice break in discourse to give it some space. A nostalgic read from
@steppinlazer
with quotes from some brilliant devs like
@jesawyer
and
@DanaENight
. Worth a proper sit down with a coffee.
Revisiting the first video game websites from the dark ages - how much has the internet changed?
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Here's my review of Citizen Sleeper. It's out today, and I very much recommend you play it:
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Days without socially awkward workplace accident: one! Absolutely chuffed to have joined the genuinely awesome people at
@eurogamer
today.
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Something a bit different from me: an opinion-y piece on an intriguing exhibition, and how it reminded me of games’ gradual invasion on the time we used to save for rest
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Coming up on three years writing guides for Eurogamer and this is the first time I am properly, properly stuck on a game I need to finish for work. Nightmare. Doom spiral. I have entered hell.
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Eurogamer’s top 50 games of 2023 (with a ranked top 10) is now live. I like this list very much.
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No shade on Devolver’s social media person but I honestly don’t know why you’d convert a 4/5 to an 8/10 when marketing your own game. Surely it looks worse? Like it could’ve got a 9? We don’t have a 9/10! It’s 4 stars! No other medium does this!
“SLUDGE LIFE 2 review - more sly greatness from the masters of the compact open-worlder”
8/10
@Eurogamer
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Need you to know that Donlan brought up Moby Dick in conversation just now, but then proceeded to take a *pristeen copy of a Moby Dick board game* out from his desk drawer - which I've never seen before despite sitting next to him for months - and use it to illustrate his point
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Gamer Network issues come-and-get-me plea
It's the Black Friday offer you didn't expect - Reedpop's websites placed up for sale
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Like a lot of people I have days where I wonder why I do this job, but comments like this (and the many other lovely ones on Christian’s wonderful Advance Wars review) really do make a difference.
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the real Next Gen is platforms having a built-in screenshot function that doesn't also capture the "you just took a screenshot" notification if you grab two in a row
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Flurry of takes on the Sony thing but one that I'm really not buying is that the current triple-A model, of several-hundred-million-dollar games getting bigger, longer, more graphics-hungry than ever to justify a $10 price increase once per decade is the "more sustainable" option
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Here's what I got up to out at the EU Champs in Berlin! Great fun talking to the experts to get a sense of what they wanted from Sword and Shield - and see if people had a point when they called Pokémon's competitive meta "stale" (TLDR: not really, no).
What do professional players want from Pokémon Sword and Shield? We popped over to the European International Championships and asked them:
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This review is so goooddddddd
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I would like:
more Company of Heroes
more Dawn of War
more Age of Empires
just more Relic RTS games in general
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"Special Pokémon" coming to Let's Go! Pikachu and Eevee - that was v briefly teased (just verbally) during the conference - I can confirm is a properly "new Pokémon" not, it seems, just a new form. Makes sense to have just the one given this is a return to Kanto.
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A big thank you to everyone I spoke to here - and to our in-house design team for the very fun illustrations scattered through it!
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me when I’m told the interview’s 30 minutes not 10
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A huge amount of my work has been under embargo for *ages* and it has made me very grumpy. Great to finally have some stuff up on the site again. Here's a hands-on with Pokémon Sword and Shield - much more to come!
Pokémon Sword and Shield's first two hours are both wild and enchanting. Here's what we thought after playing it:
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Keeping a close fuckin eye on the likes here, watch yerselves
Yeah Sekiro might be annoying for you but have you ever sat next to someone who's trying to make a guide for it
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@UtdArena
You'll know this already but worth noting 24 is still very young for a top-flight GK, prob the equivalent of about 20 as an outfielder, so there's still every chance he could take off
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Eurogamer: the Essential badge is about prestige, a-
Me: ctr, ctr, ctr
EG: -bout games that elevate the medium and pu-
Me: CTR. CTR. CTR.
EG: -sh games forward, with something to sa-
Me: C T R !! C T R !! C T R !!
(sorry
@vics_viper
)
We've all got together and unanimously decided CTR is OBJECTIVELY the best kart racer ever, the end.
(no but really it's actually very good - here's our Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled review)
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magnanimously explaining to my wife (glamorous, works in beauty) and the friend she's hosting (chic, fashion designer) that I (shameful, malodorous, orc) am going to graciously "leave them to it" now so I can scuttle off to another room and play Football Manager in the dark
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Adore my job but always surprised by how much I *hate* writing negative reviews. Sometimes you get a real stinker & it briefly feels like it might be quite fun to get the gloves off, but it’s really not, it’s incredibly rare that savaging something feels good. It’s just miserable
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My brain just absolutely cannot parse this tweet. Is it actually CGI? How does anyone know? And also: why?!
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Taking a break to write things up - keep an eye on
@eurogamer
and the site itself for more detail as it comes.
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Also a thing I'm very proud we're adding: a small boxout will now feature in every Eurogamer review, summarising a game's accessibility options. We've been desperate to find a way to include accessibility in our reviews *somehow* for ages. A tiny step, but chuffed we're doing it.
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This was a very odd but very special one to write, about one of my very favourite games and a very strange time in my life.
I was in Football Manager - and I don't know how to feel about it.
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It sounds silly but I’ve got to say, the comments on that masuda interview are some of the best I’ve seen in ages - even the negative ones are long and thoughtful (and polite). Nice one, pokénerds 👏
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I’m reviewing Pokémon BDSP for Eurogamer but, like a lot of outlets, we’re not publishing our review until Friday at the earliest. Two and a half working days is not enough to play that game and write a fair / accurate review. For context, I had two full weeks with SWSH.
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Realised I just passed 4 years at Eurogamer - nothing on
@wyp100
’s decade but the time’s definitely flown by since
@Crazyreyn
was guiding me through a hectic summer of Pokémon Go. Feeling extremely lucky/grateful! 💕
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May be the gamescom beers talking, but I think Razor is a formative concept in a very specific kind of British collective memory (ie just mine). One of the all time coolest objects to ever be created by a human being.
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Nintendo's Mr. Takahashi up on stage now, to talk about the new control features. Again updates will hit
@eurogamer
ASAP.
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I don’t like to rt negative shit but my partner lost close to £1000 of work when she had to isolate for 10 days after I got it, but she did, obviously, because she’s actually a good and normal person
.
@BorisJohnson
and
@RishiSunak
have both been told by NHS Test and Trace to isolate. But both are using the “daily testing pilot” to continue to work. It may rankle among the hundreds of thousands also pinged and ordered to stay home that this pilot is not available to all.
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@JoeMerrick
Obviously he was deliberately non-committal but yeah, that Mario analogy is a good one - I think if LG does well then we can probably expect/hope for that.
Would also be interesting, though, to see if there's any cross-over from Go, to Let's Go, to main series in the future too.
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my girlfriend bought this scent diffuser for our flat and it looks like something
@HamillHimself
would milk
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Didn’t really enjoy writing this one. I have immense sympathy for BioWare and those that worked directly on Anthem, but the mess of that game speaks to a wider industry rot. There’s a post-fall of Rome vibe to flying around that empty world.
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Publishing games reviews in 2023 feels like being a chef at a small coastal restaurant that changes its menu with the catch of the day, and 4 of your 8 tables are perpetually furious that your food isn't as rapid or globally uniform as McDonalds. (The upside is cooking is fun)
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This gaaaaaaaaaaame. I miss working on BOTW so much.
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