Julian Joachim Jr Shabadoo

This week I'm battering the Auto Shop contracts while they're on double pay. The Union Depository one pays out $540k and takes about 25 minutes all in when you know how to approach it, bookend that with 2 of Franklin's Payphone hits and that's $710k for half an hour's work!

A6 into Loughborough is infuriating, so many morons in the wrong lane, doing 35mph in a 50mph zone and then slamming the brakes on when they see the speed camera which is clearly pointed at traffic going the opposite way

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Ahh you getting an electric car? If so yeah you might as well leave the credit in there (unless you need the money back now)

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/energy/energy-supply/claim-back-credit/claim-back-credit-from-your-energy-supplier/ Apparently they must give you a reason if they refuse to give you the total credit back. My guess is it's to safeguard themselves against bankruptcy, but I don't understand why they'd ever "need" more than 1 month's worth of credit - surely if you don't pay they can just cut you off and keep the credit?

I've just had my bill, £61 - but that's the first with the £66 automatic credit (from the £400 grant) and the October cap will kick in next month. So from next month it'll be about 25% higher, then from March it'll be that figure +£66 I'm £530 in credit and now the October price cap is going to be manageable I might contact EOn to claim most of that back

I doubt there'll be any sort of integration (besides maybe menu prompts to switch from V/VI maps at the loading screen if both are installed) - I would imagine they'll keep GTA V's GTAO active for a while but with no new content (probably just a cycle of weekly bonuses for gunrunning/races etc if the player base remains strong), maybe additions to the Community Series at most. GTA VI's online map will probably be entirely standalone - to require both installed would take up so much disk space, and VI will probably be running on a vastly different version of the RAGE engine from what V uses so it'd be much more of a headache to update and integrate V's map alongside VI with little to no reward. I wouldn't be surprised if the map is designed to have additions made to it at later date though (like Cayo Perico, but new areas that you can access at will that aren't separated by a loading screen)

Bloody hope so, then I can finally afford somewhere in Quorn!

Alright Ukraine, I'm just gonna do this, and if you get clobbered, it's your own fault

I wish there was a pill you could take that would guarantee you a fuss-free dump every day. I never know what I'm in for regardless of what I eat I hate that phrase. Isn't "smash" just exactly how burgers were traditionally made before we had preformed stuff? It's just a burger If I order a smash burger, I expect it to contain rehydrated instant mash

Yep, I've had an Oppo Reno4 for a year now with no problems, it was £240 for a 5G phone with a decent screen, incredibly quick charging (30 minutes from flat to 100%) and 8GB of RAM. It's been brilliant and when it dies I'll be getting whatever their latest model is to replace it I've had Chinese Android phones since the days where you had to order them through iffy websites and wait 8 weeks for shipping and have been through lots of brands in that time. Some awful, but Oppo is definitely one of the best - apart from reliability and value/performance, it's the fact that ColorOS is so close to vanilla Android you can barely tell the difference. A lot of Chinese manufacturers butcher the OS for no apparent reason, some to the point where you can't access the app drawer without installing third party launchers first, removing basic Android features, replacing all Google apps with dreadful homemade versions - I even had a Xiaomi once that had adverts on the lockscreen! Oppo bloatware is a minimum, for example you can't uninstall their photo/calculator/clock apps but that's about my only complaint - also takes pretty poor photos in low light but if you need that then you're probably looking at paying £500+ for a phone elsewhere that doesn't offer a lot else

There was a noticeable difference in how it was implemented, and GTA IV definitely had a more realistic feel (particularly on foot) but I like how they dialled it back for GTA V. Niko used to stumble into stuff all the time and while the vehicles felt weightier, all of them slid around like they had cold tyres on a frosty morning. Could never understand the thinking there

Definitely not the case. They never release details until the announcement trailers Personally I hope GTA VI goes back to San Andreas' approach of having more than 1 city. As much as I love GTA V/Online, once you're north of Los Santos it can be a pain in the arse having to drive 10 minutes to find civilisation. Paleto Bay/Sandy Shores are cool locales but neither really have a lot going on and outside of a few missions (unless you have your Online businesses set up there) they're just places for passing through, whereas with San Andreas you had Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturas (as well as the forests, beaches and deserts in between) so there was more diversity of a better sense of exploration There's also some improvements which could be made to the UI (particularly in Online) but yeah by and large there's not a great deal that needs to be improved on. V still looks great, the physics engine holds up incredibly well considering it's 14 years old now, the driving and shooting are tight, things like side-missions/collectibles/vehicle customisation give you nearly endless replayability

I've always been a massive fan of GTA (since the first) and was put off by GTA Online for how rough the launch with GTA V was (lost hours of progress after the accounts kept getting scrubbed early on), by the time I'd tried again it was just a huge grief-fest. But I recently got properly into it and it's brilliant - I tend to play alone or with 1 mate, and if I'm playing on my own I switch it to a closed lobby so I don't come up against anyone else, you just earn your money doing whatever you like in the background so when you do dip into public lobbies you can have earned enough to arm yourself against idiots who are just out to ruin other people's sessions. Playing Online on your own feels almost like GTA V 1.5 - same map, but a completely different set of missions and it's staggering how even to this day with all the dozens of large updates they're still adding variety to the gameplay. It's also funny that while they offer Shark cards so you can buy in-game currency, Rockstar make it so easy for you to make money quickly and they also do promotions all the time that offer big bonuses on top of payouts just for participating in specific missions/businesses Yeah the footage we've seen is from 2019 apparently. I'm annoyed that I watched one of the videos as I always get excited for the announcement trailers and not knowing any details beforehand, but am really looking forward to it. I just hope the writing/gameplay hasn't suffered with the departures of Dan Houser, Lazlow and Leslie Benzies. I was also concerned that the next GTA would only be Online and without a single-player campaign but that's clearly not the case

Just get him gone ffs this is taking the piss now

Yeah, at the time I seem to mainly remember it being popular for being a film game that didn't suck, and the multiplayer was fun mainly because of how unfair it was if someone picked Oddjob, or having slaps-only matches was a laugh - graphics were good for the time but as with pretty much everything from the PS1/Saturn/N64 generation they look ridiculous now. It certainly wasn't the be-all-and-end-all that some people make out these days I do however like the story of its development at Rare (who had never developed an FPS) - started out as a 2D platformer before being canned, then restarted as an on-rails shooter. Apparently it was a very late decision to make it a normal FPS and the multiplayer was chucked together in a very short space of time, they must have had no idea how successful/acclaimed it would become

No you're right, the Xbox version will be local split-screen only It's all very bizarre. GoldenEye remaster was actually completed on the Xbox 360 but apparently Nintendo stepped in and had it pulled just before release claiming they owned the publishing rights to it. Years later and it's just the original version being released on Switch (with what appears to be online enabled split-screen), and a "remaster" for Xbox (which appears to just be the original game upscaled to HD/4K). The 360 remaster had reworked textures and you could switch between the original and remastered graphics on the fly, like the Halo collection. Almost certainly the online exclusivity on Switch being at Nintendo's demand As revolutionary as GoldenEye was when it was released, I think the nostalgia value will quickly wear off for most people. It plays horrifically compared to modern FPSes, with your arm/gun just floating around the place

Still sends shivers done my spine. You never hear a crowd cheer that emphatically outside of a title-winning goal!

Yeah I'm definitely more conscious about usage - especially as I work from home 90% of the time. The trouble is in spring/summer it's pretty easy as you rarely need the heating on or lights on in daytime, but as soon as we hit late October/early November it's dark and cold pretty much all day every day, then your hand is forced unless you live in a really well-insulated house

QoS had a standout gametype, where you'd be like 10vs1, with one person playing as Bond trying to get from one part of the map to the other. You could either stealth it or go all guns blazing but it was so tense. Don't understand why that isn't a staple in most FPS games these days

COD3 was a weird one - from what I remember, COD2 had sold much better than expected so Activision told Infinity Ward that they needed to make 1 COD every year. IW told Activision that wasn't possible, so Activision gave the rights for the additional games (starting with COD3) to Treyarch. Infinity Ward didn't want the engine they'd made being used by other people so Treyarch fudged it, as a result COD3 played like garbage compared to COD2 Since World at War (Treyarch's 2nd COD), IW have let them use the engine, but it's so apparent to me the massive gap in quality between IW and Treyarch. Black Ops was good but the frame rate seemed so rough and the animations were terrible compared to the previous year's Modern Warfare 2. The only COD games that I can think of that are exceptions to this rule are COD: Ghosts (Infinity Ward) and COD Advanced Warfare Ghosts I think was developed at a time of turmoil at IW, and the game was rubbish compared to MW3. The only thing it had going for it was the idea of dynamic multiplayer maps (where a bomb would go off and physically alter the layout of a map during a match, or a bunker opening up etc) Advanced Warfare is the only non-IW COD that I really enjoyed and seemed to have the quality of an Infinity Ward game - but that was developed solely by Sledgehammer Interestingly, Quantum of Solace (game) was also developed by Treyarch and released just before World at War using the IW engine. Because of its release date I think it sold really poorly but I much preferred it to World at War. Played like COD but had some brilliant game types that weren't just deathmatch/capture the flag etc, introduced cover mechanics and a bit of stealth. Some of the maps were pretty cool too

Looking back, it was such a massive leap forwards for console FPSes. The gameplay (by and large) and mechanics used are pretty much still the go-to's that we see today And that menu music was brilliant, really subtle but effective Also while we're doing one offs: I didn't care how long the loading times were with a tune that fresh

It is confusing, but from what I understand they give the figures as typical household bills to make it simpler than giving the actual cost per unit, as that can be tricky to work out for some. I might be wrong, but from what I gather the "typical" house pays just shy of £2,000 p/y since the big April price cap increase, it was due to go up to £3,550 in October - an 80% increase If the reporting is correct and Truss confirms the new cap (for typical houses) will be £2,500, then we're only looking at a circa 25% increase If we go by the £200 per month you're paying, then without Truss' intervention, you'd be looking at paying about £380 a month (on a flexible tariff) Instead, you could be looking at £250 with a bit of luck And before anyone mentions I've said "only", and 25% increase is still a lot - it's looking a hell of a lot less bleak than was predicted. There'll almost certainly be slight tax increases elsewhere, but having the original 80% hike would have thrown so many households into chaos. It can be really hard to live within your means sometimes, so having a small chunk added onto your energy bill (rather than it being almost doubled overnight) will mean people should largely be able to adjust. I for one was absolutely dreading the 80% increase There is talk of new caps for businesses too (that never existed) so that can only be good news for business owners and consumers alike Also - the £400 rebate will still be given out, so you'll get a bit knocked off your bill for the first few months from October

Don't know how it'll work but if Truss' plan unveil later goes as expected, BBC are reporting the new cap for (typical) UK household energy costs will be £2,500 per year, which is a hell of a lot easier to swallow than the £3,500+ rise announced for October. Glad I didn't fix with EOn