Skua

Nailed it

Only one-way? Alright, well I’m gonna go walk Lairig Ghru, a hiking route that I like the look of that is too long for me to do there and back. I’ll walk out however far I want to go and then magically teleport back to the start

Ahhh, Tenerife and Mount Takamagahara were the two I didn’t have some awareness of the story of

Astana, Bishkek, Kuwait City, Nairobi, Tarawa

It’s great fun! So long as you’re on board with the experience it is trying to create, of course. FromSoft are good at what they do and don’t much care for whether or not what they do is everyone’s cup of tea

I’d love to try Bloodborne, because that gameplay combined with a bit of cosmic horror sounds amazing to me. I’ll have to either wait for a PC port or learn about emulation, though

The thing that stuck out to me more than I expected about it is how painterly it often feels. It’s exceptionally good at framing its environments in a spectacular or pleasing way even while the player has full control of the camera. I’m not usually one to worry about visuals too much, but this game’s environments really stuck out to me. And while it is very high-fidelity and nicely rendered, it’s less about the actual graphical performance than it is about the design of the environments

• Elden Ring. Only the base game, and this is my first run. I have been very thorough with it, though. I’m currently trying to beat Malenia, then it’s off to do the last boss

• Victoria 2. Weekly multiplayer session with a couple of friends. It’s 1915, and my people have just elected an anti-military party that is really hampering my efforts to swing a big imperialist stick around

• Lorn’s Lure. PS2 graphics, generous 3D platforming mechanics, and an impossibly vast and desolate megastructure to explore. Well I’m playing the demo of it, anyway. I am going to get the full version, it made a good impression.

I tried it out because I love the setting and we’ve obviously been somewhat starved for anything else Elder Scrolls, but I just couldn’t get into it. It felt like it never rewarded me for exploring like the main series does. There’s never something cool to find that’s just hidden out of the way.

I did also feel a bit miffed that the Northern Elsweyr story (the new one when I played, and the reason I wanted to play) was just the Skyrim civil war again, but without even the interesting idea of the rebel faction being nationalists against an empire. It was very little to do with anything about Elsweyr, and then dragons became the focal point again anyway

Obviously each to their own. I do see the appeal of it. It’s just not for me

I feel like I could suggest most of Salvatore Ganacci’s catalogue here, but I think Take Me To America is probably the winner. Join a determined Bosnian man on his quest to for a better TV signal

being too soft or too rough on the clutch is a matter of millimeters is ridiculous

On this point specifically, don’t think of it as millimetres of distance. You act based on how the car responds, not trying to hit a specific distance of pedal movement. You already do the same thing with your other foot - you don’t think “I need to press the accelerator down 55 mm”, you just press it a bit more or a bit less until the car is going the speed you want it to go at. Same deal with the clutch, there just isn’t a dial on the dashboard that tells you where you currently have it.

You’re right that driving involves processing a lot of information at once that nobody is particularly familiar with absorbing when they start. It is difficult and dangerous. That’s why there are tests and licences. But in much the same way that typing was once completely alien to you and is now something you do with little active thought, you’ll get there soon enough with the clutch too. And if you learn it now, you’ll never be caught out in a situation when there isn’t an automatic option available