girlofprey

Playstation 5 all set up, PS3 and 4 relegated to a bed in a spare bedroom, wiped down the games and installed Valhalla. I decided to do it without setting up my internet first, because a lot of people these days on game podcasts like to claim there's no such thing as installing games from a disc anymore, a disc is just an activation device to download it from the internet. And one of my nephews wants a PS5, and is saving up money for it, but the place he's currently in doesn't give him individual internet, so I wanted to see if it was true, and so there was no point in him getting a console. I loaded up the Valhalla disc with no wired connection and no password for our wireless hub, and it copied it from a disc and let me start playing it. So I have no idea what those people - video game sort-of experts - are talking about.

Then, afterwards, I set up the internet and tried to log into my Playstation account. But it has two-step verification, so after logging in they send a code to your phone and you have to wait and input that. I waited about 15 minutes for my code, turned it off and on again and tried again, and got nothing. Then when I finally gave up in frustration and turned it off, I got about five texts with verification codes at once. So that was annoying. But hopefully a problem that will be easily sorted out tomorrow.

I have my PS5. I've wiped it down. I've got some games too, but I can deal with them later. I've not installed it yet. The size of the box suggests to me that I really won't be able to keep all the consoles I currently have in the console spot on there, so I'll have to decide what to do about them. But I have to set it up first. Yay.

Happy news for me - my games shop have been in contact and said they will be opening as a 'Click and Collect' point on November 19th, and as I've pre-ordered the PS5 already I can just come and pick it up, and any games I requested, that day. Apparently any shop can open as a Click and Collect point, but then my dad said something about how he'd seen Click and Collect wasn't allowed, but so far as far as I know my games shop is all good, for that one specific day.

I can't even bear to watch the election, especially knowing we probably won't know anything for sure even by the end of the day, or perhaps the week. So I'm barely paying attention to it.

My games shop called me today and said they can get me a PS5 day one \o/ I actually called them yesterday to pre-order a game and just asked a bit more about the situation, and they said they thought they'd definitely get enough PS5s to sell me one, they just didn't know if it would be on launch day. Which I was happy with to be honest, launch day would be nice but just knowing I'd get one in the launch window was good. But now they've confirmed day one. And I can go pay off the full amount right away, since I have it, and get the money out of my account so I don't accidentally spend it. Hurrah! Now I just need to figure out where to put it, since apparently the PS5 is massive, and given the size of the hard drive and the fact you can't transfer your progress from PS4 games to PS5, I feel like I would like to keep my PS4 as well. We'll see.

Xbox has bought Bethesda though, a games studio which makes the Elder Scrolls series (ie Skyrim), Fallout, and publishes a bunch of others. Bethesda games are some of my favourites really - although the company has gone a little bit odd recently - and it will be a bummer if they're now going to make those series exclusive to Xbox. Everyone seems to think it's wicked and shows Xbox are now investing in exclusives, but really they're just doing what they did before and buying up studios and sequels to already popular games, and kind of restricting access. Which I don't think is that great, or on a level with what Playstation is doing. But I'm a Playstation fangirl. And they didn't make Minecraft exclusive to Xbox when they bought that, and a popular Bethesda spokesman is still saying things about 'bringing games to everyone' which doesn't sound very exclusive, and they'll probably still be on PC anyway. But if they do make them exclusive, despite all this, it will suck.

I'm finding the idea of a lockdown Christmas a lot harder than the idea of a lockdown spring/summer, to be honest. It feels weird, but you could still go outside in the nice weather during lockdown, and who wanted to be at work anyway? Having time off really just felt like the summer holidays when I was a kid. But during winter, I really look forward to a lot more indoor activities. The idea that I won't be able to casually go to see films, or go Christmas shopping, or go to a favourite cafe for a nice warm meal, or Pizza Hut for a night out - feels a lot more jarring than just being told to stay home for 23 hours of the day in the spring, for some reason. I have to think very hard about whether I want to go to a local farmshop for some pumpkin pie, like I do every Halloween. If I'm even allowed to, depending on how many more restrictions come in. And I get the feeling Christmas trade in the shops this year will not be what it usually is. But it's what we've got to do I guess. And hopefully only for one year. So I guess we'll just have to see how it goes.

They had the Playstation conference last night, and they announced the release date and price, and there had been a lot of talk about pre-orders and the fact Playstation would give us notice before they went up, and blah blah blah. I didn't pay a lot of attention to it, because I was always planning to get one from my local games shop, and had already registered my interest there long ago.

The date when pre-orders would go open wasn't in the conference last night, and then afterwards some games presenter guy tweeted out they would go live today. Which wasn't much notice. But then they didn't go out today, some of them went out last night. Today a bunch of places have already sold out of their pre-orders. But here's the thing - I'm still planning to get mine from my games shop, and I called them yesterday to see what I needed to do to get everything confirmed. They told me they'd need to call their warehouse today, and I should call tomorrow to see how everything's going to play out. But I called them today, because everything seemed to be happening pretty fast. And they told me that their Playstation supplier had literally told them that they should advertise the Playstation 5, and put out requests for pre-orders on Facebook, but that the warehouse weren't willing to allocate them an actual number of Playstation 5s until, I don't know, a later date. So they might not get any. Or they might take 20 pre-orders, and get 3 Playstation 5s to sell in November. And the guy at my games shop said that this was what they were telling every supplier in England - so Game, and Amazon, weren't getting any particular allocation of units either, even if they were putting up pre-orders.

Which is kind of crap. I mean, I get why they're doing it given how popular Playstations are and how many people want to game during the current pandemic and how uncertain shipping is going to be this winter, also because of the pandemic. But it's kind of like getting everyone as hyped up and desperate as possible, while knowing you won't be able to give units to all of the people you've now encouraged to be interested in getting one. It's just a pain. Given everything that's been happening lately, I just wanted to be relatively sure I'd be getting the thing day one, given that I've been saving up for it and asking about it for months. But I guess there will not be any certainty for a while yet. Perhaps not at all until I actually get a Playstation 5 in my hands. Which is a shame. I've been going on a few sites and signing up for notifications if they get any more stock - the games shop guy basically encouraged me to try to secure one elsewhere, as I could always cancel it if they could get me one later and I wanted to buy from them - but I don't think I have the energy. I mean, who cares really? If I get one in November, or January, or next year? It would have been cool, but I don't think I care enough to be clicking and clicking and clicking on websites, that are down because everyone else is clicking on them, just for the possible chance that pre-orders will be up, on the possible chance that that will translate eventually to an actual unit delivered by Sony. It's fucking annoying though.

My mum had her last shift at the hospital on Friday, after something like 37 years. I feel like it's the end of an era, but mum doesn't seem that bothered by it. I guess she thinks it's time, and she just says she feels free. I'm guessing the coronavirus is probably adding to that at the moment. She did get exposed to quite a few suspected cases, despite all the procedures in place. Anyway, the house is filled with flowers now from her co-workers saying goodbye, and she is done with it. Unless she gets called back in during another crisis, I guess.

I have been playing a lot of Crusader Kings 3. It's weird how invested you can get in when you can have your next feast (it reduces stress and makes my vassals like me more? get in). Currently I'm trying to achieve the game's suggested goal of using my Irish queen to reclaim Brittania, and make it all Celtic again. I don't think I'm going to achieve it given the amount of time left in the middle ages, given the year we're at in the game, but it's been fun. The game's full of bugs though. You get obese, seemingly out of nowhere, and the decision to try to lose weight doesn't seem to do anything but make you stressed out. Lots of people are having the same issue. So then your ruler might just die out of nowhere, before you're ready to pass things on to their kids, and there's not much you can do about it except risk giving them a heart attack. Hopefully they'll sort that stuff out soon.

And Playstation are having another conference tomorrow night. Presumably where they're going to announce the release date and price for the PS5s (barring the gold one), and also where they're going to talk about games, so maybe some new announcements? I'm hoping for Wild to make a return, and maybe Silent Hill to be announced, but that's much more of a longshot. Mostly at this point I just want them to open pre-orders, so I can have some idea of if I'm even going to get one this holiday. I'm confident that my local games shop will put my name down for one of the first ones they get, but I'm not confident of how many units my local independent games shop will get. But things are moving on! I will be unavailable for 40 minutes tomorrow at 9pm. I am excite.

Last night's Playstation showcase was perfect. Perfect. Such a great variety of games - indie games, big games, sports games, racing games, horror games, family games, their games, other companies' games. And every game looked amazing, tech-wise, and every game looked amazing gameplay-wise. Like, no matter how small it was, it looked like something you could immerse yourself in and enjoy. And a lot of stuff about their history, and a lot of stuff about the people in their company and who they're partnering with, and then they showed the box! Which no-one was sure they were going to do! And it looks like a spaceship. And then they showed the other version, which doesn't have a disc drive and will therefore be cheaper. It reminded me how ardently, irrationally devoted I am to Playstation, but because of the things they do. My big concern now - ridiculous and petty in terms of what's going on in the world - is that they're not going to be able to keep the price down for the tech they've put into the machine, and it's going to launch super-pricey in a world that's going through a recession. But there's not much else to be done. I just hope they're okay and can go on making amazing games for us for many years to come.

And then that makes me sad, in a real world sense, because the PS5 is out in 'holiday 2020', which is the end of the year, and so I'm thinking about the time - and thinking about how that's when it will be cold again, and no-one will want to spend much time outside, and it'll be flu season again, and if this virus isn't largely taken care of by then - and signs suggest it won't be - it'll probably come back again and we'll all be locked in our houses. I mean it's all we can do, no-one can control when a massive pandemic hits the world, but it's still bizarre and scary to think about. What will this Christmas look like? People won't be able to go to pantomimes, crammed into theatres together. The shops being chock-full of Christmas shoppers can't really be a thing. I mean, we'll manage, but. It's going to be weird. And you can kind of see it coming.

New Zealand is just fucking amazing.

Next week I have to go pick up a prescription again, and I'm probably going to swing by town and see if my local games shop has reopened again, along with all the other shops. For all I know it has closed forever, which one cafe in my town did weeks ago, but I'll have to see. I don't know if I'm going to want to risk going in, but I can talk to them, and see if I can figure out a way to buy from them with the lowest risk. I'm happy to mail them cheques if they'll accept that. I got paid today - still no word from work, except an automatic email telling me my payslip has gone through - so I've got more money than I really know what to do with at the moment. I'd love to support more charities and local businesses, but there's just so many I tend to give up just trying to decide. But it'd be nice to do something with it.

I have my new Spiderman PS4 Pro, and I have been setting it up which includes transferring my 2tb hard drive I put into my old PS4 into the new PS4 Pro, and I am bricking it. Have I ruined my console and essentially turned it into an incredibly expensive paperweight? Have I accidentally put the 1TB hard drive it already had back into it, instead of the new 2TB one, so I have to do it all over again? I wonder.

They are making a VR experience of The Last Guardian for free, and that is good enough for me.

Well that was amazing.