Julius

It's funny, this arrives today and I still have no idea if I'm going to end up playing it yet or not based on the comparisons coming out for the console versions. I mean, it looks fine on the PS5 and Series X with backwards compatibility, but yikes at that PS4/One performance, especially on the One S going sub-20 fps. Might find myself saving it until Saturday to see what other comparisons show, because I'm especially interested in what Digital Foundry will have to say. Or I might just boot it up and cross my fingers it's all fine Either way, it's a massive shame, and if ShopTo hadn't started prepping this so early compared to news of the console versions and that shocking news about the potential for the game to cause seizures (?! seriously, the hell were they thinking?!) I would have cancelled my order. I know we expected it to not run as well on the PS4/One consoles, but there's not really an excuse for it running as poorly as it does. Also seen a lot of photos showing off bugs, such as billboards showing 'Debug' during gameplay but then the actual advertisment in Photo Mode. Really on the fence with this for now, but in good news for CDPR: That's pretty insane!

Insomniac you gods. Performance Mode + Fidelity Mode doing a little fusion dance. Probably some in-between with 1080p and some sort of upscaling, but seems a fair trade-off for your rays to be traced and your frames to be coming at you 60 at a time

The Demon Slayer dub is finally releasing on Funimation tonight at 21:00 GMT! It's about time! heartily recommend it for anyone who wants awesome animation, a great soundtrack and OP, and a really well done first season to draw you in. Oh, and a really amicable protagonist. My younger brother got into the show and loved it, so I've been buying him the manga since (which I'm refraining from checking out myself!) and he's loved everything about it so far, which definitely has me excited for Mugen Train and the inevitable second season. Definitely worth your time if you haven't seen it already!

Ghost of Tsushima is the Player's Voice Game of the Year: Very much deserved in my opinion, one of my favourite games of this year for sure, and probably my favourite, realistically styled open world. Sucker Punch smashed it

Yeah, having listened to Ben's thoughts in the Easy Allies Impressions, it's going to be a weird launch. I expected bugs, but some of the ones mentioned in the review...I mean, yikes, having characters T-pose part of the way through a mission and having the male voice applied to the female V sound like such bizarre, immersion shattering things; from the sounds of it, that most recent delay was almost certainly to clean up the Day 1 patch (also agreed with @Cube that the review situation is weird, wonder if this is part of the reason why?). All the reviews/impressions I've seen so far have been on PC, so it'll be interesting to see how much of this applies to the console versions. It's a real shame. I'm still super hyped, but guess I'll be going into this a bit more cautiously than I might have been planning on. I think I'll see how the first 5 hours or so shake out technically before committing to completing the game in its current state (it's not like there aren't other things I'd like to play!). We've waited this long that while I'm happy to give it a shot, I really don't mind waiting some more if it's as bad as it sounds in some of these videos.

Currently at a 90 on Metacritic after 32 reviews. Some reviews and impressions to dig into: Let the hype take over

Had been debating whether I was going to play Demon's Souls and then follow it up with this so close to each other, but not playing games the last two weeks has put Demon's Souls on the backburner for me I'll get to it (eventually), but for now, enjoying something a bit shorter until Thursday now. ShopTo have emailed to say it's already at the warehouse, so all being well, it'll arrive on Thursday and on time Can't wait. Agree with @Ronnie that my preference would be a third person perspective, but fingers crossed this is one of those games where first person is done in a way which doesn't spin my head around! Still kind of sucks from a gear perspective, though...

Chapter 13 and 14 thoughts! Music, sets, et al all up to par as usual, though again, a few instances where it looked a little rough from a CG perspective. Solid pair of episodes, though I'll admit, Favreau and Filoni seem unhinged when it comes to fan service and character returns this time around, and does at times feel like its own beast when compared with how insulated Season 1's plot and characters were. Either way, can't wait until Chapter 15!

Anyone else check out the Season 4 opener for Attack on Titan last night? Huge change of pace and style, but I really enjoyed it. Love the art style MAPPA went with, much closer to the couple of pages I've seen of the manga, and animation quality was generally great, though I'll be the first to admit I don't like the Titans now being fully 3D (much preferred them in 2D, but still, a big step up from the 3D animation we had before) - though, I only think I've had a handful of instances where I've actually appreciated 3D being well in a 2D space. OP kind of feels like a baby gender reveal with all that coloured smoke... but still like it. Not as hyped as the Linked Horizon openings, but given the change of pace, not too surprising that they chose to go with something else, and I dig it. Gave me the chills. Oh, and also loved that they kept the episode panel and a bunch of other smaller details consistent with the earlier seasons. Hadn't been too well last week, so found myself wanting to be away from screens in general, and caught up on the My Hero Academia manga instead; it's probably somewhere towards the end of what I imagine will be Season 6 now after Chapter 293 yesterday, and holy heck, some of the best arcs/moments are still to come to the anime! Got the Vigilantes volumes on the way too... Naturally, catching up with the manga got me watching Heroes Rising, and while I did enjoy it (the hype and soundtrack is like soup for the soul when you're feeling down) and though it was much better than Two Heroes, still think it was a general step down (also I'm not the biggest fan of semi-canon films, wish they'd follow Demon Slayer's example and just adapt the next arc into a film, or, tell a story which could be consistent with the manga/show) and not a great tradeoff for the animation quality in S4 dipping compared to previous seasons. Which leads me onto... Well, so much for Horikoshi not having anything left for films at least Bones have separate dedicated divisions for their series and films now they've restructured a bit, so fingers and toes crossed this won't have an impact on the latter half of Season 5 in particular. This has all resulted me in rewatching the show, about a third of the way through Season 4 again now. Season 1 was much better than I remembered it being, definitely think it only being one cour really helped its pacing; Season 2 is still probably my favourite overall, as the animation quality, plot, and characters all felt like they're the best we've got in the show so far; and Season 3 takes a bit of a dip in animation quality compared to Season 2, but it's still my second favourite by some margin, with probably my joint favourite fight sequence. It's funny not being that far into Season 4 and just how obvious the dip in animation quality is with the number of wider shots of the class they've used, I really do hope Season 5 doesn't get hit by the film's production. Either way, Shoto is still the best. Also, I only realised during my rewatch that Yuki Hayashi is the composer, funny how many tracks sound so similar to his awesome Haikyuu soundtracks!

PS4 Pro and PS5 gameplay (free next gen upgrade still coming next year).

So, I reinstalled the game. I've had speed running on my mind all day! So I'm not getting to Demon's Souls for a few more days Finally got a sub-40 second time on Mountain Run. Ending is still a bit iffy to be honest, and not my smoothest start, but broke the top 1000 at least!

I think it's a weird one for them at the moment with how PlayStation's market in Japan has substantially declined over the last decade or so, and their efforts are definitely being focused overseas these days. I think it's part of their continued attempts to be a worldwide brand vs a Japan-centric one, having it be universal this way means you can buy a PS5 from anywhere and the button configuration will be the same from the start. On the other hand, I don't think it's too much to expect them to at least have the option available. But I don't see them changing it or adding the option either to be honest, as it's going to sell anyways

Honestly, after this launch, I would add Astro's Playroom to that list too. I know most consider it a demo for the DualSense, but so what? For a pack-in, like Wii Sports, it has me completely hooked and demonstrates the controller's capabilities very effectively, it handles great, and is such a blast from beginning to end with its charm and abundance of references. I'm doing speed runs in ways I never imagined I would - not that I ever imagined myself doing speed run attempts for hours on end before today. It has me so hooked that I've had to uninstall the game, because I know I'd play it for another week and let it get in the way of priorities and other hobbies otherwise. Then again, that doesn't sound too bad... As for Demon's Souls, haven't got around to playing it yet, hopefully will start it up in the next few days (I can see myself reinstalling Astro's tomorrow at the moment). Very curious to see how I'll get on with it having not played a From Software game before, but it's always nice to challenge myself and play new types of games, so I'm going to commit to it once I start.

Me playing Mountain Run: just one more turn, I'm so close to a sub-40 second run. Once I've done that, I'll call it a night. Game: *uninstalls*

Heck yeah! It's led me to finding this: Don't think I can ever go back to the original now

Completed this earlier today, genuinely might be the most fun game I've played this year. Awesome music (speaking of, that theme remind anyone else of Starlight by Muse?), precise controls, great level design, and so much humour and heart packed in throughout, but especially with the references to a great legacy of games on PlayStation, the quips in the artefact viewer, and just the interactions amongst the bots themselves. Grabbed the Plat about an hour ago... ...and have since found myself speed running a lot. Some of them aren't so great (that one where you have to use the touchpad especially - my wrist feels much weaker for having completed that!), but I've been having a blast with it for the last hour or so, trying to beat my best times. Can see myself doing this at least for the rest of this evening, if not beyond! Also means I got the add-on trophies too Also, @drahkon I know you aren't the biggest fan of the cards when it comes to showing off trophies, but I think I've found a better way to do it in Astro's case! So, uh, Astro's sequel when please? Man, this really makes me want to pick up a PSVR for Rescue Mission...

Yeah, I still find myself adjusting at the moment to it too. I don't mind the size of the tiles personally, but it'd be great to have the option to have multiple sizes, if nothing else just as an accessibility thing. As for the control centre customisation, you can press Options once you've got it up to customise it a bit, in that there are only six things you can opt in and out of having on there (and can't rearrange), so I guess you could get rid of some of those to get across to it fast, but I agree, it's a bit...weird. Heck, just add the option to press R1 to take us to the right of the menu and L1 to the left, like we had on the PS4, but add it to the control centre too? Especially strange after getting so used to holding down the PS button on the DualShock 4 to bring up the side menu! Basically, I think it needs to be more customisable

Yep, glad you mentioned those because I noticed those too, thought I might have accidentally changed something in my audio settings, but apparently not! Also had it happen a couple of times with the podcasts too. And in my second playthrough, found a couple of occasions where I might have beaten the enemies too quickly? Because their dialogue would continue into and throughout the following cutscene, which was kind of funny very distracting in the final fight especially!

New Game+ complete, which means first PS5 Platinum get! Incidentally, it's my 10th! Agreed with @drahkon that these cards aren't great for screenshots looks much cleaner in the trophy menu but it lacks any details! So have both Had a blast, Performance Mode was a lot of fun, and smooth as heck. So much fun smoothly zipping through these fights with a lot more ease this time around. Had a lot of fun just randomly turning on Photo Mode in my second playthrough too, as it changes over to Fidelity Mode, so I could see where the visual differences were with things like ray tracing and lighting. One heck of a game, Insomniac's Spider-Man offerings are quickly becoming some of my favourite. Now time for lunch, and then to check out Astro's Playroom!

So you're playing them straight from the hard drive? I think that's also known to have been causing some issues. From PushSquare: And there are quite a few other accounts of people having similar issues when using an external HDD, either through playing the game directly from there, or after transferring games across. Just thought I'd mention it just in case, either way, hopefully we see some fixes for this rolled out sooner or later Starting to think my issue with the system powering down was more related to playing Miles than anything else. Just finished NG+ with zero issues in Performance Mode and the issue wasn't as long as some others I've seen, and the software had issues a good 30+ seconds before the hardware went down. Guess we'll have to wait and see

@Happenstance, I think one of the smaller issues being reported from launch in the US and elsewhere a week and a half ago were to do with an external hard drive being used to transfer PS4 games to the PS5, so if you haven't had any issues up until after using the external hard drive, that could be it? Though, I did have an issue with the console on Thursday when it powered itself down without using one, but it was fine shortly after (took less than a minute to have it all back to normal). I've been playing Miles Morales in Performance Mode for NG+ and I've not encountered any issues in this playthrough so far, whereas the power down and three cases of needing to close the app due to the game freezing all occured in Fidelity Mode in my first playthrough. Might be something worth considering too? The major issue if I'm remembering right was to do with using Rest Mode, so I've been using it sparingly and otherwise powering down the console after use for now.

Glad to hear you've come around to it! Agree that the acting can be a bit wooden at times with this show (though I do still think it's finding its feet a bit, it took The Clone Wars and Rebels a few seasons to really dial it in, at least for me), but I tend to look past that where I can when it comes to Star Wars, because while there are some wonderfully acted moments in Star Wars, there are at least just as many awful ones! As long as it's serviceable for me when it comes to Star Wars, I'll gladly take it, so long as the story is interesting and well told, the characters are well written, special effects are up to snuff for what we expect from Star Wars, etc. Something I really need to get off my chest, though... With that out of the way though, we're only half way through with four episodes left, and - if I'm not mistaken - all of the footage from trailers and TV spots has already been used, meaning that we're pretty much completely in the dark from here until the end. Sure, some names slipped out before the season started about who would be turning up (well before the season started, actually), but otherwise, it still amazes me just how good a job they've done of keeping a lid on things. Something Abrams should be envious of, that's for sure.

Yeah that's fair, probably just down to my personal preference for me, the overwhelming majority of the suits unlocked in the first game just didn't look right, or were simply a recolouring of the main suit worn in the game. Don't get me wrong, it's cool that a lot of them are from the comics, but I don't think the majority translated that well, at least in how they were presented in that game. While I think it got much stronger post-launch, I still think if I were to go through that game's catalogue of suits and this game's, I'd gladly play in a higher percentage of suits from Miles than I would from Spider-Man. Then again, I am quite picky with the suits that I would wear while playing anyways

Finished my first playthrough of the story earlier today, what a blast this game was! Just finished wrapping up that first playthrough to 100% completion, seeing as Insomniac really knows how to hook me into those. Doesn't do too much to deviate from what we got last time in Spider-Man, but it doesn't really matter; the combat, swinging across the city, soundtrack, the next-gen stuff like lighting, the ray tracing, and loading times, oh and how the city itself looks, how fun and snappy Venom attacks are, it's all just great. Awesome cinematic set pieces and a great montage sequence. It also takes some of the weaker aspects of Spider-Man and refines them further (or reduces their role; not much stealthing around to be found here), and the game is all the better for it. The story, character progression, and cast, are all surprisingly strong too, and it has me hoping we see a lot of these faces pop back up in Spider-Man 2 in a few years' time. Heck, at the start the game felt slightly off, because there are so many moves from Spider-Man I couldn't use here, as Miles was yet to learn them (thankfully he did over the course of the story). The animations for his swinging go such a long way to fleshing him out as a character, too, and seeing him spin around when jumping off a roof is always fun to see, as is him crashing into the floor if you're too late when trying to swing out of some tricks. I also think the variety and selection of suit designs here are much, much better than what we got in Spider-Man two years ago. Haptic feedback wasn't as noticeable as I imagine it is in Astro's Playroom, but it still added a lot to the table, but the adaptive triggers stole the show for me here, with how it adjusts to the tension of your webs. First playthrough was in Fidelity Mode, and as I hinted at above, this game is pretty stunning visually. Got me playing around with the Photo Mode a lot, which rarely happens, and uh...my storage space is more than 3 GB worse off for it Some of my favourites: Visually stunning, a whole lot of fun to play, and for me, in a way, surprisingly emotionally resonant by the end, Miles Morales was a great time. An awesome way to kick off this gen. Now to try out Performance Mode in New Game+!