Still stuck in limbo, awaiting the Data Pack end of October with all the summer transfers fixed, before I can start a Master League, so found myself downloading the new 2K remastered Mafia: definitive Edition.
Its a new 4k remake of the original Mafia game from years back, with some added extra content and sharp crisp graphics, I never played the original but this is superb, a GTA style story based open world shooter, set during the 1950’s US prohibition era, with the backdrop of being a new recruit into a local mafia family, and having to complete missions to work your way up the ranks.
The game looks beautiful, and the voice acting is really good, missions feel tense and I’m enjoying playing, will be nice to have a side game available whilst waiting for the footy game season to kick off.
I have put together a few clips from actual live gameplay below. WARNING: Contains spoilers, so don’t watch if you plan to play the game yourselves.
Meanwhile, I’ve also been playing more pointless friendly matches in PES21, trying different teams to gauge which one I fancy taking through a Master League campaign.
After watching the Sunderland ’til I die documentary on Netflix, I fancied using them, but as they’re now in League One, they don’t appear in PES, and the All-in-one mod I’m using on PC doesn’t allow you to edit teams names or kits, so am looking for a workaround, if I can find one then possibly Sunderland will be the team I use.
For testing I’ve been playing as Luton Town, a local-ish team, using the Holland v5 gameplay exe, along with a different dt18 file I found on a forum that frees up dribbling, introduces more AI error, and makes the game a bit more responsive, really liking it so far.
For those unaware of the PC modding side of PES, certain code to do with game play is stored in the actual exe program file and other things are stored within the dt18_all.cpk file in the data folder, so you can mix and match these to get different combos of modded gameplay.
I also imported Klashman’s tactics, which assigns custom real life tactics to pretty much every team in the main leagues, England, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Holland etc, in both divisions, so teams play much more varied and true to life, much better then the default version, or PS4 version in which pretty much every single team use the deep defensive line tactic, meaning as soon as you get the ball, the whole team drops back into the penalty box to form a Mourinho style wall, which is boring and frustrating to play against.
I have posted a short compilation of clips from a few Luton Town matches, just showing some nice moments that happened during matches, I also love seeing Luton’s Kenilworth Road stadium in the game, part of the 500+ stadiums pack I downloaded, nice to play at a small, gritty, lower league ground, these stadiums used to make master league, but obviously have been removed in recent years.
I haven’t mentioned FIFA 21 in this post because I am not actively playing it, I have the full game downloaded on PS4 as part of my EA Play 10 hr trial, but don’t plan to play on PS4 at all, as and when, or if, mods become available for the PC version then a FIFA 21 career mode will definitely be on the cards.
Clocks go back next weekend, so we will all lose an hour (NG’s fabric of time frustration) nights will be colder, darker, and Christmas will soon be here, would like to say its been a strange old year and will be glad to see it end, but the way things are going, we will be spending much of next year the same way.
With cases rising and more hospitalisations, the end is nowhere in sight, so hope you and your families stay safe and well.
FIFAFX.com 
And the same to you Paul. I agree with your pessimistic tone but would like to point out that we all GAIN an hour next weekend, just not in the evenings
On the topic of non-footy games I at long long last finished Metal Gear Solid 5 last night. At least I think I did. Darryl, you’ve completed the game, how would you define ‘finished’ in MGS5? Anyway, it was an amazing game. After the boring linear missions of Red Dead it was great to play a more freeform game where there are dozens of different ways to complete a mission
FIFA19 also in its final act, the last half of season 15. Inexplicably we got one point from the first five matches but have clawed Spurs back to a 4 point lead, and still in all the cups – would be tremendous to sign off with a quadruple
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Thanks Abbeyhill.
That would be a grand way to finish the 15 season career kimit in FIFA, definitely keep us posted on the progress.
If you capture any key moments, footage etc, then save it up, we could do a guest post on here at the end of the season, let everyone know how it went!
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Spring forward, fall back. Except we have autumn, not ‘fall’ so do we gain an hour? Also I was thinking if Sunday becomes a 25 hour day, don’t we simply adjust Monday to be 23 hours and then Tuesday, Wednesday, etc are the regular 24 hours. Or can I take that extra hour at Christmas?
Finally got the kitchen finished to within a few tiles and some paint of done. As Mrs turf remarked it has effectively been rebuilt. The people who built the extension it is housed in back In the 80s make a simple cowboy reference look hugely inadequate. Floor sloping 3inches due to no support in the foundations, walls out of alignment, kitchen not actually attached to wall with any effort, windows bolted wrongly, etc etc. Every single thing was wrong and putting one bit right only highlighted another failure. Fortunately I got someone I know and trust to manage it otherwise I’d have been a wreck. It did serve to highlight how useless I am at practical tasks like joinery and plastering, but weirdly every single one of them said the job they really hate is gardening. Abbeyhill there’s a gap in the market for us if you fancy a Turf n pond business?!
Now all the shit is out of the back room I can play some games again.
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Sounds like a right hassle Turf. When we bought this house we rented it out, then when we moved in, we stripped every room back to the bare bricks and started again.
Some of the work that had been done was unbelievable, the kitchen was ungodly, black lino, white chipboard worktops, dark grey almost black cabinets, the back door had tiles blu tacked over it, the ‘conservatory’ was an eyesore, old wooden structure, sagging floor, leaky plastic roof, gaps in window frames….
Took me years to persuade the wife to knock it down, and once lockdown broke in March,thats what we did. Knocked the hole thing down, hads the back of the house rendered, painted, plumbing pipes reappointed, drain filled over, on the footprint of the old conservatory, we have just built new decking, with countersunken lights, had the electrics from the old conservatory changed over, with weatherproof boxes on the outside of the house, new downlighters iver the patio doors and decking, hot tub installed, only job that is left is lay the artifical turf, just waiting on a few dry days to be able to do that, then a 6 month project will be finished, just in time for winter, the cold and no chance to sit out and appreciate the new garden!!! Typical.
Seems every f*cker had the same idea during lockdown as fence and decking paint, specifically slate grey, was sold out for months, it wa shard to get decking boards, and supplies, hot tub took 3 months to arrrive and that had to be in before we could do anything else.
Had to take part of the back wall down and build double opening gates in order to get the hot tub in.
be glad when its all done and finished.
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Yep, that sounds exactly the same experience Paul. Apparently this is the only time he’s done a job this big with people living in it. With hindsight we would have done all this when we moved in but we were less wise, no mini turf and used to spend every weekend going away. We tried to get things moving in June but even the bloke who runs a company doing it couldn’t secure all the folk till September – all that holiday refund money seems to have gone on home improvements and raw material costs have exploded. Had to return some lights and thought they’d object but when I said the electrician had finally turned up and said they were no good she launched into a moan about waiting for months to get her bathroom done and gave me my cash back as she was yakking. Unlike you when my neighbour asked how it was going and I said the hot tub arrives next week she pissed herself laughing. I guess north east weather and my physique didn’t convince.
Think I might look a bit more at LMA. I’ve got a few rpgs for the ps2 now but a low maintenance footy management thing might be a nice diversion. Spending too long on laptop creating Qualtrics surveys to dig out FM and the like.
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Turf – The colder it is, the nicer the hot tub is!!! 😉
I spent a goo few hours the other night on the macbook just playing aorund on here: https://www.retrogames.cz/?language=EN
some classics on there, brought back some fond childhood memories!
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For another childhood memory try https://torinak.com/qaop#!manager
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And one for the hardcore only… https://www.everygamegoing.com/litem/Grendel/63287/
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So you’re the person that had an Oric.
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Bloody hello Chris!!! That is a blast from the past. The very first footy game I ever had on the spectrum 48k. Will have to send that on to my dad. Great find.
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And a bloody hello to you too Paul! It’s been available to play in the browser for over ten years, I’m surprised you haven’t come across it before. Geek warning : You could break into the game and view the Spectrum Basic code.
Have you tried playing https://www.googlefeud.com/ It’s a bit US biased, but quite funny.
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I used to break into the Toms game to insert a line or two that identified the scorer of your goals from a random selection of player. I’d then keep a tally of who were my leading goalgetters. It took about five mins and tbh he could have included it quite easily himself. Fair play to him for being such a pioneer but others quickly overtook it. (That was the end of my programming career).
Chris99 – nope,don’t even know what an Oric was, but that game is the masterpiece of a fellow contributor. Someone who was actually cracking on with work while I was no doubt dossing my way round some country. The kind of bloke who digs ponds with his bare hands.
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Cheers Turf, and what a great idea for a joint business – beautifully contoured lawns and shrubs combined with a perfect pond at the end, we would absolutely clean up. I do semi-seriously fancy doing some gardening related job once the emerging markets funds gig is up. Seems to be a chronic shortage of gardeners up here too
The Oric Atmos was an excellent machine, just as good as a ZX Spectrum and with a proper keyboard and decent sound chip. We even got our own version of Kevin Toms Football Manager. Just played one game on the simulator, Ipswich 1 Blackpool 3, that match engine is not quite as good as I remember it from 37 years ago
Paul – sure, will put some footage together once I remember how to capture and share on PS4 and try a guest post to mark season 15, thanks for the invitation!
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Abbeyhill – I really didn’t like the ending of MGS5 as it all gets a bit messy in my opinion. After the final story episode there are a further 4 more missions, which are just replays of previous episodes but harder. For example you replay a previous episode but have to do it by total stealth. Other missions are at a harder difficulty. Not my way of ending a game but finished it all nevertheless.
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Darryl – yep, there was the epic episode 30 battle against the giant robot which seemed to bring the story to a satisfactory end, but then a lot of stuff beyond that as well as those repeated missions. Such as episode 45 A Quiet Exit when you said goodbye to your trusty sniper and then 46 which showed what really happened in the hospital prologue. As you say, a bit messy, but still some decent extra content. Death Stranding up next
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Abbeyhill – Very jealous as I would love to be back in that place when I first started Death Stranding and knew nothing about it. I finished the game just before the world went to shit.
Not played any games for months now. The little one taking over the Playstation helped. Not even thought about one of the footy games this year. In the past I would have caved in by now. I shall head back to my cave.
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Hey guys, just catching up on comments, as have been busy over the weekend:
Chris99 – Never seen that old Football manager spectrum website before, but used to buy the spectrum magazines that had like 20 pages of basic code in, and at the end when you pressed run and enter, it drew a circle! fun times haha.
Turf – that’s bordering on WERD levels of nerdery, breaking into speccy code to give you ‘extended’ stats!!!
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Abbeyhill – do it!!! just hit the share button on your PS4 conbtroller, depending how you have it set up of course, to record the last 30 secs of live game play, you can change the length in the ps4 broadcast settings, or double press to invoke manual recording.
Similarly, a longer press of the share button will capture a screenshot, I’m sure you probably remembver it all by now, be great to get your words and footage up on here to celebrate an epic 15 year campaign.
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Darryl – Just seen Death Stranding PC version up on one of the ‘hooky’ websites for free download, weighing in at 65GB.
I did consider, but don’t have time for it, Im balls deep in Mafia Definitive edition at the mo which is superb. very gritty, and am enmbarking on producing and creating assets for my upcoming ‘Roker Rebuild’ Master League project.
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I bought mortal kombat xl this weekend. Can’t really say why – there’s just something about mortal kombat that to someone who had come through that way of the exploding fist, street fighter, tekken etc lineage was mind blowing. Might have been the odd cinematic style of the chars or ridiculous controls and insane finishes but it’s always been a hook for me. Probably won’t get much chance to play it but for a tenner worth the punt.
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I remember being amazed by Tekken in Japanese arcades in the 90s. The version there was about two versions newer than the UK. Never really any good at it though.
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Turf – I always preferred Mortal Kombat over Streetfighter, MKXI does look good, but I really cant be assed with all the multi button bashing combos, down, left, up, left, right, right, left,down, hold L1, tap R2, press square, to throw a punch kinda thing, same reason I rarely use skills in FIFA or PES, never remember the multitude of movements and presses per skill.
Playing a fihgting game for me just ends up being a button mashing exercise and hoping something good happens, not really that enjoyable.
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New Post will be up a bit later today.
Just downloaded the latest DP for PES that was released today, have some mass editing to do in prep for starting a ML.
Firstd etails coming up later today.
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Gave up on the PS2 last night. I’d bought it to play Shadow of Rome, one of my all time faves. After that I just can’t get away with the various Pes’s and RPGs. They may play better than more recent titles but there’s still a feeling of ‘ah, back then you couldn’t..’ such as initiating runs or controlling players off the ball, and the standard of graphics is by today’s levels, let’s face it, shoddy. I don’t think it matters when you don’t know what you’re missing – I never remember PES3 as being blocky and without detail – but actually seeing it just reminds me of old arcade machines. Mortal Kombat on the PS4 only brings that into huge comparison. (But I know what you’re saying about fighting games Paul – I wouldn’t have paid more than a tenner).
So it will be stolen moments on the mini turf PS4 from now on, and maybe a bit more work.
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TURF – a bit like PES5? Crap graphics, limited movement and an average game, overhyped by whimsical memories ?
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Paul – even the latest one I have, PES 2011, looks very basic. No way would someone ever come in and say ‘who’s playing’? And the speed is insane.
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