Julius

That art style is immense... ...and it looks intense More details March 1st 2024 at the Inside Wicked Showcase.

Announced before, but now we have a name and a trailer to put to the thought: A Hideo Kojima horror game published by Xbox Game Studios. That face tech is getting insane. Jordan Peele is a collaborator on this project, as are others, and Kojima has dubbed them "the Avengers". Please don't be good enough for me to grab an Xbox, think of my wallet Hideo!

Well, the year of JRPGs just got more...JRPGier? Shown at the TGAs, this arrives in 2024: Surprised this isn't coming to Switch, but then, I guess it's a lock for a Switch 2 announcement.

Coming 22nd March 2024! Yep, this'll do me for a bit to stave off the Tsushima cravings

Welp, poor Dragon's Dogma II...yeah, I'll take the Ronin game, please and thank you And just like that, the number of SIE-published pieces of content (including Ragnarök DLC) in the next 3½ months has doubled. Awesome!

That art style... ...hnnnnnnggg

...and it's 2.5D/3D?! Announced as part of the Power Surge trailer alongside four other games (and more!)

From the TGAs, announced as part of the Power Surge trailer alongside four other games (and more!). Can't wait to see how excited some of you are going to be when you wake up! What an announcement. Damn. Don't know where to put this, but as no platforms yet – sticking it here in Other Consoles for now.

Holy damn SEGA were right to hype people up for that FIVE game announcements dropped in ONE trailer?!

Trailer from tonight's TGAs: Best trailer yet, I think. Finally get a taste for the gameplay loop and a better sense of the vibe and characters!

Leaked ahead of the TGAs, but it's official now: arriving January 18th, with a free demo dropping January 11th.

This might get moved at some point when consoles are announced, but for now: Great website FAQs, too:

Fall 2024 it is, folks: I've only played Persona 5, but I've listened to quite a few of his other soundtracks – is this the first time we're hearing Meguro take on an entire game with epic orchestral music? Because it sounds awesome!

Another Game Awards, and all we're getting is "it's still 2024" oh well, let it cook I guess Cool trailer, though!

Everyone getting played off jeez, guys, chill already. I know you don't want another Christopher Judge-length speech, but this is ridiculous. I tuned in like 15 minutes ago and that's twice already, really?

With their combat and bosses?! And imagine weapons with slots, or multiple uses, and the trick weapons! AND THE MODIFIERS?! AND THEN YOU ADD MULTIPLAYER?!?!?! scrap Armored Core VII, I want this (okay don't scrap it but y'know make a rogue-something already!)

A really, really smart way to get some more content out for single player games that might otherwise just gather dust, and a great way to reuse assets. Makes complete sense to me! Now watch Shadow of the Erdtree be a roguelike/te and the world implode (would LOVE a From roguelike in all seriousness)

Okay, that's one of the five, keep going...

Valhalla – free DLC coming December 12th

Harvest Moon 64, 1080° Snowboarding and Jet Force Gemini arrive on the service – today!

The penultimate and 199th episode of Frame Trap is up, and sees the return of Ben Starr (who was an awesome guest in his last Frame Trap appearance)! Brad mentioned that lately he's been checking out WoW Classic's latest stuff along with Ben Moore, and also teased that the last episode of Frame Trap will come with guests – that's right, plural. Kyle and Jones are on the main podcast tonight following TGAs (Kyle in town to help Keighley, and Jones is always around), so maybe they're the final guests, but for the 200th and final episode of Frame Trap? Do we dare hope for Ben Moore to turn up one last time in the podcast he kicked off all those years ago? We can only hope That makes sense to me, for sure – and I do appreciate more genuine hype (man, you can just tell when it's not, and I hate it; I think it's what EZA overall is and has easily been the best at, just being honest with their reactions). Not really knowing the ins and outs of what he's dealt with or much about the guy (think I caught him on Kinda Funny here and there before everything went down, remember him way back on IGN here and there too, but obviously all before I was consistently checking in with gaming) - but being able to relate in a very broad sense - I can see how depression would factor into his general vibe, but I definitely appreciate you mentioning him being open about it and his counselling, because I think these are always important things to talk about Absolutely – the echo chamber is a bit of a killer in just about every sense imaginable these days, whether it be gaming, modelling, law-making, water-providing, etc., and so many are very quick to pick up an opinion and run with it at face value, without any context or nuance; without any further consideration for others; and without any consideration for themselves. Problem is, these days, so little of the content being put out there is about the content, especially on platforms with a social aspect built in (like YouTube or Instagram or TikTok): it's (seen as) a reflection of who we are, in our totality. People's characters are often being defined by the thoughts and opinions they put out there, and while in some extreme cases that may be valid, I think it's very dangerous. That film isn't just a film by X, it's a film by X who committed this atrocity 10 years ago by saying XYZ on X, formerly known as Twitter (). That video on that game by X is made by the same X who went off and did this or said that, or who before said they hated this game and now they like it and I can no longer trust them! And so on. By putting people in a very 2D box they're immediately more accessible and relatable because so much of their personality is dragged out of the equation, and so much of ours is dragged in and projected onto them. And this you end up with diehard keyboard warriors who have formed toxic parasocial relationships with people they don't even know, who are willing to jump higher than they ask, and stoop lower, too; and, obviously, the level of loneliness these days doesn't help that in the slightest. I find this stuff absolutely fascinating. Abso-freaking-lutely terrifying, but fascinating nonetheless. A very apt comparison, I think, yeah. It's funny, too, because even though I still enjoy Kyle's stuff the same way I can still enjoy the Grand Tour...it is undeniably, wholeheartedly, not the same. It really is. I feel like I can respect it, but the parasocial part of me definitely just wants to know that he's okay (even if relayed by the guys at EZA), if only because they've mentioned once or twice that they've not heard back from him, etc., since he left, and he left so abruptly that it did give off the vibe that maybe everything wasn't okay (I think more because of the exhaustion of the COVID era than anything else). I do still find it really funny that Ben leaving social media wasn't planned, his Twitter got hacked and he was itching to get it back but then it kind of just faded as time went on and he left it? And seemed in a much healthier place by the end of it. I think everything can be healthy in certain doses, but yeah, social media generally I'd vote in favour of leaving. Did produce my favourite tweet of all time, which I don't think will ever change, though: You've got to be one cool ass dude to type something this aggressively in all caps while drunk at your own bachelor party AND SPREAD A MESSAGE ABOUT PEACE AND LOVE You guys are on fire with these apt comparisons. Okay, maybe Don is the one on fire It's funny you say that about GVG, because it's only after seeing you mentioning it that I've noticed that I feel the exact same way: excellent individual content, maybe not best served as a combo? MinnMax I've been following since the start simply because of watching Ben Hanson (Hanson, an excellent podcast host forever without a consistently decent podcast panel) for years on The Game Informer Show, but it's just never had the same vibe for me; whereas Kyle and maybe Damiani would stay on top of leaks and news at EZA, they speak to people excited abd knowledgeable about the industry, so it drives conversation, but over at MM, with the wrong panel, you can hear a pin drop. I do still need to go back and listen to those Kyle-hosted episodes from earlier in the summer, though, think I only got half way through the first one Weird recommendation if you use gaming podcasts to stay on top of the news, as they'd be super outdated, but if you want something fresh-to-you that actually gets somewhat close to EZA from time to time, I genuinely think the GI Show when hosted by Hanson was up there. It would just really depend on the panel, but because they'd have the GI cover stories and such, there are some really interesting conversations had and tidbits to squeeze out of them; I'd say, on average quality-wise, it's falling flat in the middle between mid-2010s IGN podcasts and EZA.

Screw it, I might be falling asleep at a random time tonight, but for now I have a bit of energy and time to kill, so I'm going to briefly talk about the five (/six?/seven??) things I want most out of tonight's Game Awards; in a rough order of what I think is most to least likely (the last two being tied), from top to bottom: • more details on Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree – announced nearly 10 months ago now, which was over 12 months after Elden Ring's release (now putting us at close to 22 months since Elden Ring launched!), surely it's a safe bet that this shows up here with a trailer at least, and maybe a release date to boot? Keighley has a history of showing From stuff off at his shows - the Shadows Die Twice teaser at TGAs, the Elden Ring release date trailer at SGF 2021, and Armored Core VI's announcement at TGAs 2022 - and it's DLC for a game that won GOTY at the TGAs last year, so...maybe? • a substantial announcement from PlayStation Studios – as things stand, only two SIE published games have release dates going into 2024, let alone windows: The Last of Us Part II Remastered and Helldivers II. Beyond those two games, there is currently only one other first party PlayStation Studios game that we know is in the works, and that's Insomniac's Wolverine. Honestly? I think this is getting a little absurd. I think there's a good chance we see an update for Spider-Man 2 announced tonight - seeing as we're waiting on NG+, which they've said they're aiming to release by the end of the year...a year which is quickly coming to an end - but I want something more substantial: I'm talking DLC, a spin-off (I'm thinking along the lines of Lost Legacy or Miles Morales here), or a whole new announcement specifically for a first party PlayStation Studios title. It's possible that could be for Spider-Man 2, but seeing as they haven't released any DLC since Spider-Man back in 2018 and that DLC was also announced prior to release, it would seem a bit soon to do so. Something for Astro, finally? God of War DLC/spin-off? Something on whatever Bluepoint has got going on, now that we're 3+ years without seeing anything new come from them? • a port, remaster, or remake of one of my favourites – my Top 10 Games of All-time list is more of a Top 7 & Friends than it is a Top 10, and currently, only 4 of those 7 are available to play on modern consoles. One of these (Pokémon) is almost certainly not going to turn up here, but give me a port, remaster, or remake of Chrono Trigger, Star Wars Battlefront II (2005, by Pandemic), or Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky. Please and thank you. • anything on Fumito Ueda and genDESIGN's next game – okay, seriously, where the hell is it? The Last Guardian released at the end of 2016, Epic Games picked the game up for publishing in March 2020, and we saw a potential character from the game on a New Year's postcard back at the start of 2021. Another game that Epic picked up and announced in March 2020 was a game by Remedy, which we now know to be Alan Wake II, so is it time that we see one of the other two games they announced as backing back then? And that's right, there were two others, not just Ueda's game; speaking of which... • anything on Playdead's next game – ahem, okay, seriously, where the hell is it? INSIDE released back in 2016, we saw concept art for it back in 2019, and Epic Games picked the game up for publishing in March 2020. Surely one of these two games turns up tonight, and it's not just Alan Wake II turning up for NG+ to be announced... right? I will consider it an acceptable event if we get 1 of those; a solid event if we get 2; a great event if we get 3; maybe the best show of the year if we get 4; and a genuine contender for all-time favourite show if we get all 5. And you know we ain't getting all 5 This isn't to say that other things turning up won't be exciting - a new Rebirth trailer? XVI DLC? Some more on indies like Sword of the Sea? - but I want some new, big, exciting announcements out of tonight. The sad thing is that I think the TGAs are next to worthless without them.

Did...did you just transition from talking about Pandemic's Battlefront II to EA's Battlefront II in the same sentence? I was and still am a bit ho-hum on the story in the game, to be honest, but I think part of that is down to me loving the original Battlefront II's campaign so much. That and the AI being stupid. Totally agree that it was awesome how they tied it into TLJ, especially when you remember that Resurrection dropped just mere days before the film. I really hope we see more of that moving forwards, not even just in Star Wars, but elsewhere too now that other big fictional universes or going to start dabbling in shared lore with their games (like the current plans for DC) Yeah, campaign aside, there's so much fun to be had in the online multiplayer! I've dipped back in here and there over the years (most recently about a month or two ago, actually!) and I love how active the community is, how much DICE stuck with it to see 90% of their vision release (even if some of their key staff, like Dennis Brännwall, have since left ) because of all the outfits we ended up with, and just how much dumb fun it is. Having played Factions last year, it really gives me that vibe, similar to the original Battlefront II, where things get down to the wire in the last minute and it becomes a total bumrush and it's just plain old fun. Genuinely can't remember the last time I played online multiplayer which was unashamedly dumb fun! Glad to hear you enjoyed Starfighter Assault so much – I think I remember you picking Squadrons up but can't remember for the life of me how you got on with it? I wasn't the biggest fan (much prefer third-person dogfighting to first-!) Checks trophies left Welp, it's just combat and a rank grind. Guess I might dip in here and there over my Christmas break to finish the fight Absolutely – honestly, it's been more or less at this point since the regular updates stopped after TROS released back at the end of 2019. In a very weird way, I think the controversy did the game massive favours, in that it pulled the rug up from under EA specifically as a publisher and basically gave DICE free roam over executing on their vision, because EA simply weren't allowed to go back and plug the microtransactions stuff back in. And after a while, it did also just level the playing field as people looking to pay-to-win simply couldn't. ...do I dare ask what other Star Wars games you've played this year?