DE.

Funnily enough after embracing the "boring James Milner" character he actually became quite entertaining

Bennett is the type of player every team needs. A, tireless, reliable, hard working grafter who is versatile and chips in with the odd goal too. He's basically our version of James Milner.

It's totally dependent on the individual. I've never suffered from any form of motion sickness, and similarly in VR nothing has really fazed me. Even playing Wipeout on the fastest speed setting didn't cause me discomfort. In definitely varies from person to person, but normally even if you do experience some discomfort it'll go away in time. Playing Resi 7 in VR initially is ridiculous. Even though I knew I was in my living room in the middle of the day with a headset on, playing the game was one of the scariest things I've done. Again over time the effect lessens. There's a game called Farpoint which has huge acid-spitting spiders jumping at you - the first time I played the game I literally fell over after moving backwards in panic as one of the spiders launched itself at my face. Took a few days before it became 'normal' and from then it was fine.

I've played it in VR. Utterly terrifying. I imagine less so when played flat, but still a decent game imo.

The 32X/Saturn period undoubtedly ruined the company. It destroyed any faith their customers had in them. The sad thing is that the Dreamcast was an awesome machine with a really nice, eclectic library of games. The PS2 absolutely murdered it though.

One of Venky's few positives points is that they, for the most part, have insisted on getting decent market value for our players. Obviously there are some exceptions - N'Zonzi & Cairney for example - but I would expect them to demand a pretty hefty fee for Dack should any interest arise.

Yeah, Shenmue was a huge, multi-year project. It was originally supposed to come out on the Saturn but after SEGA dumped that console development was switched to the Dreamcast. In hindsight definitely for the best as the DC was a much better console. I love the Saturn (as I inexplicably love all failed consoles from that era) but they really @#/? up the architecture on that thing. It was capable of great things but only if you were a top level game designer - and most of those were working on games for the PS1 and N64, as the Saturn had already more or less died by mid-1996. From what I remember Shenmue didn't return much if any profit, so it's a bit of a surprise they were even allowed to make Shenmue II. I think on the original Shenmue there's a Saturn console in your 'house', and you can play Space Harrier and Hang On if you win them at a raffle somewhere. Little touches like that are really cool.

I recently picked up the original on Dreamcast (4 discs!) but haven't played it yet. I'll probably wait until this one comes out and play it on PS4 - graphics will likely be a bit better and saving should be easier. Plus the Dreamcast controller is a stupidly awkward shape which makes it annoying to use for long periods.

For anybody who remembers/is interested in Shenmue, I & II are being rereleased on PS4/XB1. Base currently doing pre-orders for £22.85: https://www.base.com/buy/product/shenmue-i-and-ii-ps4/dgc-shenps4.htm

Agreed, apologies, I should have put a health warning up first!

Yeah, I heard that! Nice feature. I was pretty hyped for Final Fantasy VR... then it was just a fishing game. A bit of a let down.

A lot of their fans appear to be looking forward to being in L1. Hard to blame them considering how many consecutive seasons of depressing football they've had to put up with. Even their "great escape" seasons in the PL were largely miserable campaigns. They had that one glimmer of hope when Allardyce was appointed, only for England to snatch him away (then to add insult to injury he ends up being sacked after a single match anyway). Then they had Moyes in full on 'doom' mode. If we can have a successful season under Venky's (assuming we get promoted this season) then in theory there's no reason Sunderland can't have one next year, even with Short at the helm. We had to extract a lot of poison to get moving in the right direction again, and so will they. The difference is we shifted most of ours (Kean, Murphy, Orr, Etuhu, Agnew, Coyle) in the Championship. They will be trying to get rid of theirs in L1 which might prolong their stay a little.

The boss music on 6, 7 & 8 is all great tbh. My favourite overall music score is 7 by some distance though. An incedible job considering the limitations of the PS1.

There's a notable difference between the enemies in FF8 compared to FF7, they're a lot less fantastical and seem more grounded in real creatures (you fight a lot of soldiers in random battles too). There are still some fantasy-based ones (the GFs, Cactuar, Fake President Deling, some of the monsters at the end of the game) but there's a noticeable shift into a more realistic art style. Also worth a read for anybody who likes FF8: Squall's Dead theory - http://squallsdead.com/ Rinoa/Ultimecia theory - http://www.heartilly.com/rinoa/article_ultimecia.html Spoilers in both links for anybody who hasn't played through the game and intends to! I don't believe either of them were intended as part of the actual plot by the writers, but I love how creative both theories are

In all honesty I'd take promotion this season and survival next. I can't bring myself to dream beyond that with Venky's in charge.

For me we had a couple of turning points in the Championship - firstly when Bowyer was hired after that torrid first season. He was able to hold the ship above water and brought in some very good players on a fairly small budget. The next turning point was when the taps were turned off and we sold all of our best players. That led to Bowyer's sacking, Lambert's brief stint and ultimately the hiring of Coyle and relegation. I think it remains to be seen whether our relegation is a turning point or just evidence of what we can expect going forward. If Venky's fail to invest adequately next season and/or sell the likes of Dack and Mulgrew then we will be back to square one and could end up yo-yoing between the Championship and L1 for a while, as a succession of managers come and go.

Maybe a little harsh there chief! Our first season in the Championship was pretty miserable and chaotic, granted, but the season we finished 7th under Bowyer wasn't too bad. The season we finished 9th was frustrating but I wouldn't call it miserable. The next two seasons were horrendous but we at least had a little hope before Venky's screwed us over again. Sunderland are in a very steep downward spiral which shows no sign of abating. I mean, we had problems, but we never had a Jack Rodwell on £73k pw, for example... We got to see some decent players during our time in the Championship as well. Admittedly some of them never came close to reaching their potential for whatever reasons, but others had arguably the best periods of their careers with us. The likes of Cairney, King, Gestede, Rhodes and Conway (when he was good) gave us some really good moments. No such luck for Sunderland. Even worse for them their owner is trying to give them away for free and nobody wants them (except possibly Niall Quinn, seems to have gone quiet though).

Sunderland almost certainly down now. 6 points adrift with only three games remaining. They need to win all three of their remaining matches (only won 6 all season) and hope pretty much every team above them fails to win.

Back then 1.1m wasn't a huge outlay for a youngster with potential... Nowadays we pay £750k for our tailsman. Venky's

Apparently these were posted around the Stadium of Light at the last home match gotta love a bit of gallows humour.

I pretty much agree with everything you say, my only point is that if you're an ambitious Ipswich fan you shouldn't be happy with Marcus Evans running the club, nor should you expect a change of manager to suddenly make the match day experience more exciting. Whoever comes in will still have no money, a weak squad and will be tasked with defending the owner and deflecting journalists questions about lack of funding. I suppose a relegation battle is in theory more exciting than plodding along in mid table, but I imagine the fans will be booing just as loudly nonetheless.

The fans should be looking to get rid of the owner then, not the manager, else it's just rearranging deckchairs on the titanic.

I get the feeling he'll end up somewhere with far better prospects than Ipswich.

He's been dealing with it for months now, so a little surprising if tonight was the night that broke him. On the other hand, not much point in sticking around if you're going to get abuse even when you win matches. Just a bunch of dead rubbers left at this point anyway.

Didn't expect that. Seems like he was waiting to get at least one more win before leaving.