I've got to be honest, the leaked Sims: Town Stories doesn't look good. And the Google Play URL is no longer available (at least in Canada). Is there demand for another free Sims mobile? But I know a paid full Sims game for the mobile platform will work.

It's ironic how a free to play game doesn't sound fun over a paid one. That's because you expect a paid game to be fully supported and QoL managed from the start.

The Sims: Town Stories was leaked as both a town and home builder. You will meet familiar Sims NPCs like Bella Goth and Bob Pancakes. However, the game feels like an outdated and a redundant concept for its other Sim siblings on mobile. But it's similar to the MySims IP where you're tasked to "build a town and decorate the interiors". And then insert the possible microtransactions.

The graphics look underwhelming. The characters don't have the Sims charm on them. You'll be time gated on energy. And then, viola on two currencies. Perhaps they want to resurrect The Sims Social but even The Sims Social was fun at the start.

The Sims: Town Stories is another spin-off to the Sims franchise on the mobile platform being developed by The Sims Labs. The Sims Freeplay and The Sims Mobile are other spin-off mobile titles. They are all free but monetized through microtransactions. There's this growing feeling that Sims: Town Stories is not ripe yet. Perhaps the collective feeling that it doesn't look fun is the reason why it got pulled back to the drawing board.

After many months of leaks, (and even deferring the announcement to a supposed Switch 2 announcement) Nintendo finally reveals its next console, the Nintendo Switch 2.

The Switch 2 has a larger body and screen than the original Switch as if staring off against the competition brought by the hulking handheld PC gaming. Honestly, I am relieved that Nintendo finally revealed the Switch 2. Nintendo had to officially reveal the Switch 2 so that the leaks can go away. However, Nintendo hasn't revealed the specs and prices yet on their trailer. But hey maybe those will be leaked too. Yet perhaps Nintendo wants to keep some sort of suspense -- however that feels at this point since Nintendo has also been reportedly upset about the leaks.

What has been confirmed is that the Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with the previous Switch physical cartridges, not to mention the digital games. It's amazing how it will stick to the current physical cartridge. But I don't know if that backwards compatibility will translate to more fps on the Switch 2. I'm keeping a healthy skepticism as to how powerful the Switch 2 will actually be. But the Switch 2 simply HAS to be running at least at PS4 level at this point.

The Nintendo Switch 2 will release this year most likely during the 2025 holidays. Pricing and specs will be officially disclosed on April 2 at the Nintendo Direct event. My eyes are open for a Switch 2 lite.

Justin Trudeau announced that he intends to resign as the Liberal Party Leader, and the Prime Minister of Canada today after the party selects its next leader. Trudeau's resignation has been streamed by various platforms such as: CBC, CTV News, Global News, CPAC, Radio-Canada.

His decision comes after months of criticisms including within the Liberal Party and the resignation of Chrystia Freeland, Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Canada since 2019. Justin Trudeau will remain as the Prime Minister for now until the Liberal Party finds a new leader.

Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative Leader Opposition, posts his reaction saying that Trudeau's resignation came only due to his unpopularity for the upcoming Federal election. And that the Liberal Party is looking for a new candidate to resume the same agenda emphasizing his call for a Carbon Tax Election and dump the NDP-Liberal Party coalition. Jagmeet Singh, NDP Leader, stated that Justin Trudeau has let Canadians down with the increased cost of living saying that the Liberal Party are more interested in themselves. Jagmeet adds that Pierre Poilievre is a threat to the middle class of Canada.

The new Prime Minister will be dealing with woes of increased cost of living; furthermore, providing affordable housing in a midst of a housing crisis; cracking down on crimes and drugs; tackling on the illegal immigration issue with remark from Donald Trump's imposed tariffs; and bolstering the defense budget to meet NATO target. In summary, restoring Canada's image at home and on the world stage.

And just like that, the 2024 Steam Winter sale is live. The sale will last until January 2, 2025. Personally, I don't have anything specific in mind; maybe a couple of cozy games or an RPG; but GOG is also having a similar sale. Oh, better buy those winter themed Steam profile icons from the points shop.

Maybe get Palworld in time for their major update.

GOG is hosting its 2024 Winter Sale until January 2. GOG is slowly getting popular due to reassuring and explaining to customers what it means to buy games from them. GOG provides you with the installer for your purchased games.

While Steam has made it clear that players purchase a license to play the game, some are concerned about the "license" keyword. That is, some players interpret it as not "really" owning the game. In addition Steam has to be normally tethered to the Internet to play games. Not to mention connecting to Steam first and then being able to download the game.

Whereas GOG states that if you bought your game, you own it. And reassuring you with an offline installer to your game. GOG is formerly known as Good Old Games.

Palworld will release its next major update on December 23 dubbed as Palworld: Feybreak. The major update will add another island that is 6x bigger than Sakurajima Island. Feybreak will also host a new faction leader (boss?), new set of weapons to craft, and new Pals to capture. Other new things to expect are new items, and new themed building sets. The new Pals have not been named yet but I don't mind as the update will drop in 10 days. It's also fun to have players discover the new things themselves.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will cease its online server today to make way for the (paid) complete version of the game today. The game will no longer be playable on Nov. 28, 2024 3:00 PM (UTC) which is 9:00 AM, central time.

Two things:

I haven't delved into the Pocket Camp much because I was much more invested on the mainline entries. Which would have been Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Plus I wasn't too keen on the microtransactions. But farewells are bittersweet with players posting their first day and last day in their camp. With about 7 years of content, I'm getting this game on my devices for sure. The discounted price is really a no-brainer. The only thing that would be missed is the online play, where you visit your friend's camp.

(Image by Steam)

Steam's Autumn Sale for 2024 is live and will run until December 4. Now's the time to get some games at discount for December break. Or to add onto your ever growing backlog.

It's ironic to say but if you currently don't have funds for this sale period, the Steam Winter Sale is not too far away (December 19, 2024 to January 2, 2025). I DO hope that you have are well this year.

Turkulon, the giant turkey boss, will spawn on Wednesday as a world boss in time for New World's Thanksgiving event. Turkululu, Turk Turk Turk, Turkinator, X Turk, however you call it, Turkulon is one of the beloved bosses in New World since 2022. Turkulon shoots eye-beams, drops egg bombs, and pecks a mighty AOE damage. Some notable loot include a turkey leg warhammer, a feast trophy to boost duration of food buffs, and a disgruntled fowl pet.

Maybe Turkulon can drop the New World roadmap while it's live.

As I'm still having an identity crisis in Throne and Liberty-- that is, I still don't know what I will do in the game-- I'm back playing in Aeternum (for a while). There are two artifacts this season and I think I can reach level 100 on January for the fisherman campsite skin. New World: Aeternum will be down tonight, November 18, to prep for the Turkulon event. My other favorite event will follow which is the Winter Convergence Festival.

Steam implements its bult-in screen record feature to capture those insane or clutch moments in your game. This will give Steam Deck its own screen capture ability but will include the PC as well. It makes PC gaming simpler. It's a win to make things easier instead of frisking for other third party screen capture software.

Go to Steam -> Settings -> Game Recording to find all of this fun stuff. What will make it easier is you can start the recording through a hotkey. Or set it to record in the background. You can also change the folder where to save your videos locally.

Nintendo Switch can take screenshots and record 30 second gameplay videos. Xbox can also do the same but you can record longer videos. Playstation also had the same feature when they added the share button. Although having this on the PC will do wonders since the video file can be exported as mp4 format. Which can be edited further. And there is no set limit to the length of recording you can manually capture.

Other software to screen record would be Xbox Live bar, the GeForce experience app, or a paid screen recording software. There were workarounds but these weren't obvious initially. It's worth mentioning that Windows 11 has its own screen recording function.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will no longer be a free-to-play (with subscription service) mobile game. Instead it will become a standalone full single-player mobile game. Its live online service model will cease on November 28, 2024. It will become a complete paid app afterward which is a good way to end things off to this 7 year old mobile game.

There had been numerous content added to Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp that it's ironic that it has about 7 years worth of added content compared to the main entry of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. New Horizons 2.0 was released on September 2021. But it would be an utter shame to have all of Pocket Camp content cease to exist, right? So Nintendo will make it a paid game instead for the mobile platforms -- which is honestly a good move despite a last ditch effort for some revenue. A welcome move, even. With absence of network play of course.

I'll buy Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete. I've been a late adopter of the game in 2020 since I've been playing New Leaf around the time it released. I haven't subscribed though. But I welcome the game as a solid and full game for my mobile. Oh the irony again, the reason why I staved off from it is I'm not much of F2P mobile spin-offs for my Nintendo game. And now it has become a paid game instead. Full circle.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete pre-order is live. Early discounted price is at $9.99 with planned release on December 3, 2024. The discounted preorder price will apply until January 5, 2025. The app will then be set on its regular price of $19.99 on February 2025. Read more details on its official page.

Back 4 Blood is on and it's 90% off on Steam right now. Back 4 Blood is (considered) the spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead, although it received mixed reviews. The 4-player coop game did not make a significant impact compared to the Left 4 Dead IP perhaps due to the competing identity crisis attributed to the game that it should be a Left 4 Dead game instead of being Back 4 Blood. However 90% off is a huge discount and B4B is still worth your collection with 90% off.

The largest downer would be that Turtle Rock Studios has announced that they will no longer release more content to Back 4 Blood. But frankly this all suggests a Back 4 Blood 2 to me. I'm also suspicious that Back 4 Blood will soon be free on Epic.

I still feel stupid buying World War Z at full price on Epic only for it to be free after a few days.

The Provincial Government of Manitoba announces that the provincial minimum wage increase is in effect today from $15.30 to $15.80 as of October 1, 2024.

PlayStation 5 Pro will be priced at $959.99 CAD and pre-order is live today, September 26. PS5 Pro will be released on November 7, 2024. Note that the PS5 Pro will not possess a disc drive and will be digital on this release. A separate PlayStation 5 disc drive is available and will need to be purchased to play your physical discs. I bought mine at $699.99 on May 2022 (which was $783.99 with tax). I didn't even want the bundle version but this is when the PS5 supply was still short, so I went ahead and bought it from Best Buy while it was in stock.

Although $959.99 for a console without a disc drive? How much ACTUAL fps gain are we talking about? It is possible to build a 4k gaming PC under $1000, but would they compare with a PS5 Pro? Point is: we're going back to the olden days when consoles were expensive. PS4 Pro was released with $499 CAD retail. Sony, throw in the disc and MAYBE PS5 Pro would be worth it.