Julius

Just to add to what @Ronnie detailed in his post - honestly, all of which I find myself agreeing with - the fact that there are empty spaces in this game, I feel, is kind of the point? Shadow of the Colossus learned from Ocarina of Time what Breath of the Wild then learned from Shadow of the Colossus: the importance of quiet in the spaces between gameplay. You can tackle it however you want - jumping from shrine to shrine, beelining towards Divine Beasts, chasing quests from one end of the map to the other - but I feel like if you want to get the most out of Breath of the Wild, you really just need to let go and go with the flow of the game. There's so much intricate nuance to the open world's physical design of its terrain (no doubt thanks to MonolithSoft's work) which can lead you from one end of a region to the other just by following the most subtle of design hints - be it a set of trees, a different coloured set of flowers, the way a hill or cliffside strikes you visually, the curvature of a path - that I think is incredibly underrated. For me, there are only two other games that achieve something similar with their open worlds, and those are Red Dead Redemption II (which is much more narrative driven and perhaps what people wanted this game to be more like in that sense?) and Elden Ring (the only other game to lean into the same sense of freedom as Breath of the Wild). I genuinely think back to Persona 5's 'Take Your Time' which showed in the corner every loading screen... ...and think Breath of the Wild should've had 'Go With The Flow' in its loading screens. Now, this approach to gaming isn't going to be for everyone, which is honestly perfectly fine – it's when people try to demerit or criticise the game based on their own final perspective of the game as a which kind of rubs me the wrong way sometimes. You can say and acknowledge good things about a game (or anything, really) without having to love it! This isn't me calling anyone out in this thread, but it's a sentiment I find a lot with BOTW (and well, anything which is considered a masterpiece to be honest): if someone doesn't enjoy it, they almost overcompensate by failing to acknowledge any strengths it may have. I feel like this also harkens back to something mentioned earlier in the thread about people growing up with and expecting certain things out of certain titles. Breath of the Wild was the first Zelda game that I completed, but I'd dabbled with the original Zelda, A Link to the Past, and Ocarina of Time before. I knew of the franchise's prestige and some of its history, but in terms of expectations, I didn't really have any. At least on here it seems like the others who enjoyed the game as much as I did (or maybe even more so) went in open to or wanting change, or just didn't have as much intimate familiarity with the series in a similar way to me. Also, I'm sure I'll think of more, but @Dcubed if we're going to talk about groundbreaking systems in BOTW, alongside the chemistry and physics systems, I feel the amount of freedom you have to climb *almost* anything with the right amount of stamina is crazy. I can't wait to see how they build on that in Tears of the Kingdom, especially if we see some items which add a new flavour to climbing or traversal. Oh, and for the record, I have issues with BOTW. Plenty of them; I've listed them a few times on here over the years. It's one of those few games where I don't envy game reviewers - if I had to critique it as a game and as a product, against what it was aiming to achieve (which really is what I think a review should be doing), I think it's an 8/10, there's just so much room for improvement for me in its myriad of systems and plenty of room to experiment further, but it was an amazingly strong first step for what it was trying to achieve. But as an experience? 10/10. Nothing came remotely close until Elden Ring last year, and in turn I feel like there are some things TOTK could learn from Elden Ring in the same way that Elden Ring clearly learned from BOTW.

So this got a cinematic trailer today: Which leads into my next question two weeks from launch: is anyone planning on picking this anytime soon? I'll be giving it a pass, at least for now – which I don't mind, I'm hoping to be a bit more purposeful with the games I pick up on Day 1 this year. For me, I think I've said it before, but that first trailer when it was unveiled as Project Athia was fantastic before my interest ended up trailing off with each subsequent showing of the game.

There have been a lot of rumours the past few weeks about an upcoming Xbox showcase, and it seems like it might just be around the corner. Courtesy of Windows Central: It's about time in my books. I know there was a discussion here not too long ago about PlayStation needing to show off some new first party stuff sooner rather than later, and we're always chomping at the bit for the next Nintendo Direct, but Xbox have - somehow - managed to escape the expectation of frequent news updates and showcases relatively unscathed; heck, I skipped The Game Awards last month so someone tell me if I'm doing, but weren't they AWOL? Which is kind of mental to me when we consider that it still feels like they're playing catch-up (and will be for some time) when put next to the other two platform holders.

Powerwash Simulator finally arrives on PlayStation on 30th January! Also got half an eye on Season: A letter to the future based on its previous State of Play presence. NeverAwake has piqued my interest a bit too

The indie kick never stops

I don't really think they're going to be in any rush this year to make announcements, to be honest. This could easily be wrong come some surprise State of Play next month but...eh, I'm not holding out for one. For one thing, I feel like the first half of their year is going to be understandably concentrated on a big push for the PSVR2 (launching next month), which I think faces a bit of an uphill battle in the face of everything going on with the global economy – I'm happily letting it and the Edge controller pass me by until things calm down a bit. With that they can push first- and third-party exclusives like Resident Evil 8 VR, Horizon Call of the Mountain, Gran Turismo 7 VR, and plenty more. Outside of that, in terms of software for the PS5 proper, you're right in thinking that it looks a bit thin on the ground, because I think right now there's only the Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores DLC (April) and Spider-Man 2 (Fall) announced to be coming this year from their first-party studios. Oh, and MLB The Show I guess? I think there's the potential for a smattering more this year, like the The Last of Us live service game, potentially something from Bluepoint (this really depends on if the team has been sized up after their acquisition and if their next title is a remake/remaster or something original) as Demon's Souls was 2020 and they've never gone more than three years without releasing a new title, and I would seriously hope something from Asobi for Astro at this point, considering there's literally nothing else for those fine folks to be working on right now and Playroom was a lovely but shorter pack-in title, like you said. I'm sure there's room for a surprise or two throughout the year from them, but as always with PlayStation, their third-party marketing and exclusivity deals definitely takes a bit of the weight off their shoulders from my POV. Forspoken (Jan) is console platform exclusive, Final Fantasy XVI (June) is completely PS5 exclusive at launch, and games which they have marketing deals for like Like A Dragon: Ishin! (Feb) and Resident Evil 4 (March) always sell best on PlayStation. Oh, and there's also potentially Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, though whether that sneaks into Q4 2023 or is instead a Q1 2024 title remains to be seen (thanks for the ambiguous Winter timeframe on that one, S-E!). It looks to be a pretty standard year by their standards set since the launch of the PS5, to be honest – probably a few first-party titles supported by third-party marketing and exclusivity deals, but nowhere near the heights of where we got to with the PS4's release slate. It's a shame, but that's what happens when you close up shop on a talented studio like Japan Studio I guess

So, this just got a VR mode announced for the launch of PSVR2 at CES: Unclear if it's for the full game, but it will be a free upgrade. Nice. I'll probably throw up considering how I drive, but hey, if that doesn't get me onboard for PSVR2, what will? (a new Astro game, that's what)

Some interesting news coming out of CES. Firstly, the PS5 has passed the 30 million mark in total units shipped: I think they were at 20 million for their EOY financials in May 2022? [EDIT: checked my own post earlier on this thread – they were at 21.7 million at the end of June/FYQ1] So that's kind of nuts and shows demand and supply are finally getting to a sustained point. Anyways, much more interesting to me is the announcement of Project Leonardo, PlayStation's own customisable accessibility controller: It's about damn time. They've set the bar for in-game accessibility across their first party titles as of late, but especially in their titles from Naughty Dog, and so it's about time that they caught up on the hardware front. I don't say that to sound impatient, I recognise these things take time and a lot of R&D, but well...finally. I'll be honest, to me it isn't immediately obvious from its design just how functional a design it actually is (to be even more honest, it kind of reminds me of a Bop-It–esque family reaction game), but I trust Sony and their accessibility partners to have got this right. Really looking forward to seeing some reactions from the community looking for a controller like this as we've seen with Xbox's, those videos always put a smile on my face!

Better late than never for my own sanity I'll be referring to the stats I posted in 2021 because PS don't like me enough to compare my stats this year to last year's (which I'm totally not linking here to save future Julius a search...your welcome in advance myself ) Number of Games Played & Most Played Yeah...an interesting year for me in gaming, as this WrapUp will surely make evident. 17 games played is surprisingly up from the 16 I played in 2021 though (a whopping - wait for it - 6.25% increase in games played!), so that's a positive I guess? Perhaps the only increasing number we'll see breaking down these stats Anyways, as for my Top 5 Most Played Games of 2022: Gran Turismo 7 - 196 hours - 26% of total annual playtime | yeah, this one's not much of a surprise at all to me, because despite the incessant microtransaction BS littered into this game...this was one hell of a meaty game that I thoroughly enjoyed. I think I had 130 hours or something logged by the end of May when that Plat finally popped? It's a game I still play with friends, either directly or when we're in chat together and just grinding, and it's even great for mindless grinding while listening to music or a podcast. I think this game is probably the only reason FIFA got squeezed out this year. Elden Ring - 107 hours - 14% of total annual playtime | well..this is wrong considering my final playtime was 102 hours and 56 minutes according to my save file, and I don't remember spending 4 hours in the menu, so anyways, GOTY. Really not much to say for this one. The playtime is totally justified. Just give us that damn DLC already From! The Last of Us Remastered - 98 hours - 13% of total annual playtime | okay, I'm a little miffed that I was 2 hours away from breaking the 100 hour mark with this game in 2022, but whatever! Yeah, this is what a Platinum hunt does to you, and as someone who normally doesn't replay games when it comes to hunting Platinum trophies...this might be one of my favourite Platinums that I've ever gone for. I loved TLOU when I first played it early in the pandemic in 2020, the story was fantastic as was much of the game itself, but my time with it this time spent revisiting the story in Normal+, tracking everything down in Easy++ for the main story and in Easy in Left Behind, and then playing through Left Behind in Survivor and the main game in Grounded+++ really elevated my love for this game and what it achieves as a game alongside what it achieves as a narrative experience. And then there was playing through Factions not twice but three times thanks to being kicked out in one of my final matches on my first run, which in and of itself was one of the most fun online modes I've played in a game, and really sets my expectations high for wherever the standalone Factions lands in the (hopefully not-so-distant) future. Grand Theft Auto Online - 65 hours - 8% of total annual playtime | this one's a little sad to look at stats-wise because, for me, it really just drives home how inconsistent my friend group became in 2022 when it came to playing online multiplayer games together, as we all faced a lot of personal challenges throughout the year. Swear the only reason it's this high is because I still mindlessly loved driving around the airport while we talked, but I was the only one playing FIFA 23 - 54 hours - 7% of total annual playtime | this one's kind of nuts considering that, at the time, 12 of these 54 hours came from a monster session with just one of my friends during which we talked about just about everything. It was also the night we learned that EA didn't include a way to play kick-off (or any other mode really besides Pro Clubs) co-op online, meaning we had to resort to using Share Play, which, uhhhhhhhh...leaves a lot to be desired, let's put it that way So, in total, that's 520 hours across my five most played titles in 2022, averaging 104 hours for a game in my top five. Compare this to 679 hours in 2021 across my top five, meaning an average of 135 hours 48 minutes per game in the top five, and you really start to see just how heavy a weighting FIFA has when it's my most played game in a year (at 311 hours in 2021). My top five games also made up a crazy 68% of my playtime in 2022! Total Time Spent Playing & Misc. Stats Ah, the year my number of hours spent playing PS5 games finally surpassed PS4 games...which seems a little disingenuous, considering that other than The Last of Us Part I, all of the PS5 titles I played have PS4 versions in other news: 733 hours played is down from 895 hours played in 2021, an 18% decrease in total playtime. And because I missed out on catching my 2020 number of 902 hours played, it's a second consecutive year where this number has slipped. Whoops. hours played locally and hours played online were both down from 2021 (581 and 219 hours compared with 676 and 219 hours, respectively). Total days played down from 241 days to 179 days, a 62 day - or two month! - difference. And I still don't have a PSVR headset, so that's still at zero Trophy Haul (or a lack thereof) Overall number of trophies down by 133 from 499 in 2021 to 366 in 2022, a meaty 27% dip. But whatever. I got double the Plats I did last year. Okay so maybe one of those shouldn't count considering I got it for transferring a freshly Plat'd save of Fallen Order from PS4 to PS5...but still Annual Highlights And here are the annual highlights. All in all, for me, a very weird year of gaming, but oh well! Let's see what 2023 has in store

My Astro Nendoroid surprised me by turning up yesterday Pre-ordering something, completely forgetting about it, having it turn up for delivery and being all "oh no, what the hell is this?!" before realising what it is has to be one of the best feelings. Especially on a bad day! Arigato my past self well, apart from for the nightmares from swapping his face plate out...

Well, it's that time of the year again. Time for another Granblue Fantasy: Relink update, courtesy of some details included in a tweet from Cygames (the trailer included is old, but new details - and likely a new trailer - will be releasing 21st January 2023): Great news, and sounds like it's firmly on course for a 2023 release! Between Final Fantasy XVI in June, this potentially in the second half of the year, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth in "winter", and Forspoken next month, it looks like next year is truly going to be a win for anime Action JRPGs

Ronaldo's move to Al Nassr has been made official: The way he's managed to drag his name through the mud the last few months or so, to Messi winning the WC two weeks ago, to this? If you told me this was on the cards when he returned to Manchester I would have laughed you off a cliff. It's a level of self-imposed humiliation for one of the two best players on the planet for the last 15 years that just shows the damage that a toxic ego can do. Crazy the difference just 16 months can make. Will be interested to see how his career's looked back on in 5, 10, or 25 years. At the moment I feel like the last few months could really leave a bitter aftertaste (not to mention how he went about leaving Juve in the first place, and then his reasoning for leaving Madrid, too).

Belated Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all had a nice day

The battery life not being up to snuff is a deal-breaker for me unfortunately, at least when it comes to picking one up at launch. It's a shame, because I was really looking forward to finally having a first party premier controller for PlayStation! The battery life of their controllers for me is one of my few hangups with the PlayStation ecosystem these days, and has been for a while; I remember going into this gen really wanting more than we got with the DS4, and at best we got something comparable, and at worse something, well, worse (YMMV and all that). These days, for heavy gaming sessions, I've got three controllers in rotation on my charging stand to keep me going, but honestly I'd love if I could get away with having just one (I'm also one of those that adores the haptics so turning that feature off in most cases just isn't going to happen). I barely use my Switch these days, but when I do, knowing I can handily get through some 30-40 hours of some gigantic game on one charge brings me some peace of mind, whereas last month the day before Ragnarök released, I had to double check all my controllers were charged and so on for a behemoth of a gaming session. I can't help but wonder if there are ways around this that they're either not looking for or perhaps are simply ignoring for the sake of their bottom line (or because they simply don't care). @Dcubed you mention the physical size of the controller itself needing to be comparable to the base DualSense and thus there's no space for a bigger battery, but considering how this is a customisable controller with a bunch of modular components, why not just release a (probably separate) battery expansion pack that we can plug in and clip on for some extra juice? If this were Nintendo or Xbox I'd maybe give them a pass considering hardware isn't really their sole focus or within the realm of their pedigree, but despite PlayStation being their bread and butter these days, Sony has always been a consumer electronics company at heart – why not put that to use? Also, I agree with @Ashley, it's probably the same battery as the DualSense (for some silly reason) and so with more features comes more energy use. Which, well, just kind of sucks.

Dr. Pez is back with another Pokémon medley (after creating my favourite Pokémon medley with their Ruby & Sapphire work), and of course this time it's for Diamond & Pearl. And it's awesome. Eterna on the erhu Route 210 and that Twinleaf reprise are top tier too Just reminds me how much of a bottle job Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl were in recreating and (failing at) reinvigorating the original OST. Urghhhhhhhhhh.

Square Enix will be keeping us in our toes and making us dance: by the looks of things, the physical editions (both Standard and Collector's) for the Pixel Remaster Collection will be going back and forth between states of being in and out of stock. Because of course they are; of course if they were going to finally release this it would be like this

Mate just pointed out that a 27 year old Mbappé will feature at the 2026 World Cup. I'm 4 days younger than Mbappé. Please send help. Also, my neighbours 100% think I'm Argentinian now. Screamed the place down and almost moved to tears by this match. Given my sister the heads-up that if anyone asks if we're Argentinian to just say "Sí", nod and move on

The. Beautiful. Game. Greatest World Cup final in my lifetime, possibly ever, and a trophy won at last by the greatest player of all time. I struggle to see this as a loss for France. They fought hard, Mbappé gave possibly the best individual performance of a final ever (I'm talking across all team sports here, that was Michael Jordan levels of individual brilliance in a football final) to drag them back into it not only once, but really they gave Messi the send-off he deserved. This is simply a win for football. The. Beautiful. Game. @Hero-of-Time @drahkon

Going to need a bypass after this lmao You stupid stupid turtle, let him win it I can't do pens

The beautiful game

This is stressful Would've loved for it to finish with that Messi strike, just needed to hit one of the top corners, but what a save by Lloris. So end-to-end. Di Maria being subbed off and not going to 5 at the back with that change was a big mistake. Fun, but a very stressful watch. Swear my neighbours think I'm Argentinian after this WC with all the screaming I've been doing during their matches (& considering that I've been mistaken for most South American nationalities, they genuinely just might)

No idea how the ref saw that as a dive, but he got it absolutely spot on.

Going to be end-to-end stuff now. This is going to be a fun but frightening watch!

Clumsy by Otamendi to give away that pen, but he's always been prone to clumsiness. Unlucky for Martinez to not reach that. Argentina had been well on top until about 10 minutes ago, when France started warming up. There's still 10+stoppages to go, just got to play smart and keep things intense. Well before I could finish typing this they've equalised. Crap. Great finish from Mbappé. Argentina could and should have killed this game off – they now need to go again.

France have looked better since the subs, like they're actually playing with 11 players, but it being Giroud and Dembele coming off - and without much complaint? - does suggest to me it's injury or virus related. Interesting. Wouldn't want to be in that French dressing room right now, where I'm sure they're getting a dressing down from Deschamps. They need to come out and go for it, they haven't matched Argentina in any way so far, whether it be intensity, chance creation, or just about anything else, really. Just need Argentina to score again and kill this game off. Keep this intensity going and they'll win it.