The weekend has snuck up like some sort of professional hitman and executed a perfect stealth takedown on my sorry excuse for a body. Still, weekends mean its time to pack in a whole lot of gaming, movies, books and other entertainment. Let’s do it!

I’m going to keep this one relatively brief as my new nephew (he’s four months old) has come to visit this weekend. For the most part, I’ve been putting in the time with Darksiders 3, a game I’ve been eagerly awaiting and was genuinely afraid we’d never see given the IP was in limbo for a long time. It hasn’t blown me away so far and I do sort of miss the loot system from Darksiders 2, but it has been a pretty solid action romp with awesome art design. I’ve seen a lot of negativity surrounding the game but so far I’d say it’s fairly good, though the performance on an Xbox One X could do with a patch.

As I write this I’m also putting the final finishing touches to my review of Spyro: The Reignited Trilogy which is a beautiful remastering of three classic games. Toys for Bob have done an awesome job of rebuilding the games on the Unreal Engine and my God does it look superb running on the PS4 Pro, but more importantly it plays great despite Toys for Bob making relatively little tweaks to he gameplay.

I’ve been continuing my journey into the realms of Playstation VR, and boy am I enjoying it! I just finished playing through I Expect You To Die! and it was a hoot. Basically it puts you in the shoes of a spy in several different situations like making a chemical formula to neutralize poison and driving a car out of a plane, but of course lots of stuff goes wrong, like a bunch of dynamite suddenly popping out of a secret panel. I just love how naturally picking things up feels in VR and it makes solving the puzzles a blast. At one point I casually grabbed my silenced pistol and took pot shots at an inquisitive guard without even looking. It was awesome, and I can’t wait to find some more time to check out other games.

This week saw the launch of the first Elusive Target for Hitman 2 and it was none other than Sean Bean playing a character known for faking his death numerous times. If you don’t already know you only get a single shot at Elusive Targets so the pressure was on to find a cool way to eliminate Ned Stark, but sadly I got a bit carried away and went for an explosive murder in the science lab and killed myself in the process. But I did get Sean Bean, so sort of successful, I suppose. Kinda.

Like a lot of you, I’ve also been following the Bethesda debacle that’s currently got the Internet buzzing. I was considering reviewing Fallout 76 for a time but decided that I already had enough to play and that the ol’ piggy bank just didn’t have enough funds in it, and I’m glad I wound up skipping it because the reaction from those have played it has been far from good. Basically, it seems to be an even buggier mess than normal for a Bethesda game, has naff gameplay, badly implemented multiplayer and a host of other issues that are ruining people’s experience or even making the game unplayable.

Topping off the fact that Fallout 76 doesn’t come close to fulfilling any of the promises Bethesda made is the controversy surrounding the massively expensive Collector’s Edition of the game that was advertised as coming with a canvas bag in which to store the replica helmet that also comes with it. However, what people have actually gotten is a cheap, nylon bag and as a way of “apologising” Bethesda are giving people 500-Atoms which acts as in-game currency, amounting to something like £4.00 in actual money. So, in short Bethesda have falsely advertised their product (and still are) and to say sorry are offering up a tiny bit of digital currency that lets people buy nothing of value within he game. Worst of all, accepting these Atoms means that you cannot take part in the lawsuit that may be heading Bethesda’s way since legally accepting the Atoms counts as you having accepted compensation.

Frankly Bethesda’s actions so far have been atrocious, and they’re quickly burning through the good-will they have with gamers. The poor state of Fallout 76 has led to a lot of people trying to get a refund as they rightfully argue that the game was not released in a state fit for purpose and that it’s nothing like what was advertised. But knocking all that aside Bethesda’s treatment of fans has been pretty poor as they’ve largely ignored them and failed to address the game or the Collector’s Edition properly, aside from some half-hearted words that still managed to come off as bragging.

But on good side there are a lot more countries looking into the concept of loot boxes in games and their links to gambling. Hopefully we might see some more regulation when it comes to real cash being paid for random items.

On the movie front I got around to watching Mission Impossible: Fallout and walked away from it feeling like I had a lot of fun. It has all the usual bonkers stuff, but I respect any movie that’s so deeply commited to performing real stunts rather than going down the CGI route. Although I don’t like Tom Cruise due to his affilitations with Scientology I fully respect the man for his willingness to throw himself off buildings, learn how to pilot helicopters and perform skydives. He commits to his roles and it pays off during the action scenes where you can clearly see that it’s actually him rather than a stuntman.

So that’s what I’ve been playing and watching this week. As always a big thank you to everyone reading this or anything else on my site. You guys are the best, and I’d love to hear what you’re playing this weekend.