As you can tell from the above, after cruelly being dismissed from my role as Sunderland boss, I decided to reject the sunny beaches of Brazil, to take over at the canaries, on the Norfolk coast, opting for the fens over copacabana.
This time of year is always busy, time off work, Christmas shopping, getting bits done, as a result I’ve not had much gaming time at all over the last week or so, and what i have had, I’ve been dabbling with the new PS5, and next-gen FIFA 21, odd friendly matches and a bit of FIFA ultimate team, which is a true abomination of the sport, whoever at EA developed that mode and sat back and said “Yeahhh, this is a good representation of football” needs firing.
As a new FUT team, I had mostly mid 60’s rated players, I opted for a Brazilian theme, having players of the same nationality builds team chemistry, and chose to play division rivals.
You play a series of 5 placement matches which takes your performance into account and is used to place you into the right division based on your skill set, these matches are ludicrous and totally pointless.
Every single match i was pitched against a player who had a team full of world superstars, with 100% team chemistry, I was quite obviously overpowered and exploited in every match, and lost all 5 matches and was dumped into division 8.
I thought at least in the lower division, I would get more evenly matched games as they will be full of players who aren’t that great, or new players with relative beginner squads more akin to my own, but no, not the case.
I’ve played 3 Div 8 matches so far, lost all 3, and every team i have faced has had the likes of Chilwell, VVD, Trent Alexander, in defence, Pogba, De Bruyne, Salah and Mane in midfield and MBappe and Neymar up front, pretty much every squad I face is identical with all these world class players.
There ius absolutely no uniquness, or individuality about any team, its so boring so very quickly, and the game play, high tempo, frantic, foul-less with every single shot even from ridiculous angles and distances flying into the net, it’s soul destroying.
I’m looking forward to a FIFA 21 career mode on PS5, but wont be touching FUT again that’s for sure.
Anyway, rant over, back to my current PES21 ML.
After taking over at Norwich I have inherited a decent-ish squad, but as of yet haven’t had time to make signings in order to stamp my own individuality on the team, I did try to sign Kean (CF) from old club Sunderland, but they weren’t letting him go, too important, same with their CB Feeney who is a heading god, have some transfers lined up for January’s win dow but this is my first team squad as it stands:
Pukki is a decent CF, but the other two, Hugill and Grot are hit & miss, several positions will be bolstered if the Jan signings come off.
Our league position shows we are hard to beat, but also don’t win games, too many draws, and since this screenshot was taken, I’ve played 2 more matches, both draws, we need to turn this around and am contemplating trying a different formation, a more attack minded one, but with it of course comes the inevitable team chemistry hit.
So the ML journey continues, for now, am looking forward to facing Sunderland. but i feel my PES21 ML time may be severely limited in the near future, as I’ve just had a text message from DPD saying my copy of Cyberpunk 2077 will be arriving within 2 hours! The very reason the cinema room was built, beyond excited, and looking forward to the PS5 upgraded version.
Will leave you with a short comp of goals from this early season phase with Norwich, and will b e back next Thursday with more, and first impressions on Cyberpunk.
next week’s post will be the last one before xmas, and wont post again until the new year, but will be active in comments all over the christmas period.
FIFAFX.com 
BOOM!!!
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Loved the questions for the new boss, what an arse kisser that journalist is. Don’t know if anyone saw the guy on Twitter who held a full ashes series with himself, filming playing cricket against his patio furniture, then interviewing himself as commentator, coach, star player, etc. Completely insane. He probably started off with a magazine format….it’s a slippery slope.
Will be interested in cyberpunk comments as well, seen mention of bugs, etc as well as all the positive stuff.
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Will do Turf – re Cyberpunk, theres a huge day one patch, which only came out today, official release date, which apparently sorts most if not all the bugs.
Only went for the standard edition but CDPR have been most generous with the retail pakcage, the game is on 2 BluRay discs its that huge, you get several postcars with artwork from the game, stickers, a thankyou note from CDPR, with exclusive DLC codes, a world compendium manual with history about the game, how the in-game world came to be, info on different districts, gangs, things you can do and see in each place etc, like the old manuals you used to get with GTA games, advertising the in game companies etc.
It really is satisfying to have an old school game manual, which is largeley a thing of the past.
You also get a big fold out world-map. pretty impressive.
Just loading it up as the 2 disc install, and patch will no doubt take a while, get it ready for later.
Might wee myself a bit.
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You’ve probably sent werd into a froth. Never mind the game, he will be all over that manual
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I’m just a few minutes in and already love everything about cyberpunk so far. The aesthetic, dialogue, movement, atmosphere. Very curious to see how this will turn out but I’ve got a feeling this is going to be a good one.
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Sounds promising #1. I will fire it up for the first time later tonight. Installed the data disc, all ready to go
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Curious as to how you’ll find it Paul! It reminds me of that old SNES game, shadowrun (same theme of course). So far cyberpunk is what I imagined that game would be in the future (which is now). God I’m getting old
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Never heard of shadowrun #1, but I managed an hour and half on Cyberpunk late last night, pretty much just did the first mission and then completed the training tutorials on combat, stealth and hacking. Will play more later!
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It’s getting absolutely hammered everywhere. No idea how fair that is? Usually anything negative gets piled on regardless – no man’s Sky, etc
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from what I’ve read Cyberpunk runs well on PC but the last gen console versions are shocking in terms of framerate, resolution etc quite apart from the bugs. Presume you’re playing the PS4 version on the PS5 which must look much better Paul?
Good start for your Norwich, liked the curl on those two almost identical goals from Cantwell, the game does look good. Surprised that Sunderland are struggling given that I recall you left them with a pretty decent squad
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Is it getting hammered ? Did not expect that. Runs fine on pc so far though it is a little demanding. I can get 30fps on medium-high with a gtx970 which is an old card now. So not great but not too shabby either…
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I think it’s the frame rate on PS4 – images of blank spaces desperately trying to catch up.
Anyway, thanks to our esteemed leader I’m back in the gaming game. For keen Paul followers I can confirm the spare PS4 from the servants quarters was immaculate. I mean who keeps the box, for that long, and in mint condition?! There was a strange piece of what looked like fluff in one of the ports so I had the university lab check it out – dodo feathers apparently, spun through with gold thread. Presumably came off the robe.
I’ve been hoovering up cex cheap classics ready for a donothing Christmas.
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Haha Turf – classic. That box was actually the PS5 box. Glad you found the ps4 in good condition. I regularly hoovered it out, and I fitted it with a higher spec 2.5 inch HDD than the standard one so should serve you well for a good while.
Hopefully you’ll get some use out of the games I bundled in too.
Have Cyberpunk installed on both the PS4 Pro in cinema room and ps5 in the living room, does run smoother and look better on PS5 obviously, but I haven’t experienced any major bugs so far, except one smallish one where I spent 20 mins walking around a scene trying to figure out why I couldn’t advance, and part of the criteria was to kill all enemies, which I had, but one if them was stuck to a pillar by his face, obviously dead but the game hadn’t recognised the kill. Once I pumped a few more bullets into his lifeless body and he fell to the ground, I was able to progress.
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I suspect the cyberpunk videos, Reddit discussions, etc are part of the usual mass hysteria for any flaws. It’s always negative stuff that seems to get shouted about the loudest, it’s why I tend not to bother with trustpilot, etc reviews – folk are usually keener to post if they are really annoyed.
You do like the tense, horror, movie type genre don’t you! Tbh it’s really not my thing – I didn’t like the early stuff like resident evil or silent hill – and don’t even do zombie games let alone the cinematic experience. But there’s some guaranteed hits in there – and that far cry is the only one I haven’t played, same with uncharted, I re-bought the trilogy to give it a fairer go, but don’t have that one – and the likes of fifa/PES ones I already have can be traded for similar fare. Mind I was looking to get rid of all The Wire dvds I have now it’s on download – worth 10p per series! Unbelievable for the hours of entertainment there.
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Turf – Not into zombie films or games as that genre has been done, done again, rinsed and overdone, theres only so many ways you can do zombies, run, survive, fight, shoot, all very boring, having said that, Days Gone is bundled as a free full game download on PS5 so might give that a bash, as its free.
I’d holly recommend Uncharted, its very linear, not open world free roam, but the story telling, characters and cinematics of it are truly awesome, still my fave ever game franchise and could play the whole series all over again.
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Maybe the cyberpunk farce isn’t misplaced – saw they are offering refunds.
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Its mainly running it on older consoles. Standard passes and xboxes where people have seen bugs.
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Paul – Is a holly recommendation something seasonal?
The Cyberpunk hoohah does seem to be last gen console based, but as always people love a good complain. The BBC researched the story so thoroughly that they included Twitter memes stating they were genuine complaints. I wonder if refunds are being offered as they are unlikely to get a patch out before Christmas.
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Chris – a festive typo.
CDPR are offering refunds, but have stated they are releasing a patch in January to fix the issues. I had my first Cyberpunk crash last night, game just randomly closed and displayed an error code. Reloaded and played through exact same point and it was OK.
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I was getting a lot of crashes with various games a few months back – Sleeping Dogs, Fifa, etc – things that have been out long enough for me to think it was the system not the game. Not had one since their last update.
Having struggled to think of any way of retaining my old game saves while creating a new user profile and giving myself access to my existing games I’ve simply loaded all the disc ones up on the Paul machine, created a new account and am going to run independently of mini upstairs. The basic flaw is that he used my user profile to start playing Fort tw*tting Nite and I can’t separate that from my Skyrims, etc without him losing all his purchases. So a new Fifa adventure beckons, maybe even a PES one, certainly a bit of dungeon roaming.
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ha, that sounds familiar Turf. I had the same problem of needing to swap my PS profile with offspring to enable them to play Fortnite, leaving me with a child profile. As Sony in its wisdom does not allow these to be edited, and I’ve run out of separate email addresses, I’m stuck there. So no online options, need to ask for permission to play my games etc etc annoying. Hope you enjoy getting back into gaming over Christmas
Just coming to the end of attempt 2 season 1 on FIFA20, enjoying it now. Massive unbeaten run from January to May took Ipswich from lower mid table to the league 1 playoffs. And excitingly we are up against Bolton Wanderers in the semis, 20 years after that unforgettable Championship playoff encounter
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Abbeyhill, did you find the long unbeaten run come to a shuddering end against a much lesser team?
In FIFA I always found the DEC-Mid jan period was the ‘Christmas period’ and thats when I’d suffer poor form, poor results and pick up injuries, and any unbeaten run i put together usually ended with a dodgy defeat to a bottom of the table type club.
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Bit of a long one. Best bits of Season 11. Very good season and a first for me in Fifa.
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