Julius

Obi-Wan Kenobi: A Jedi's Return, the BTS documentary for Obi-Wan Kenobi, starts streaming 8th September: My feelings for the show aside, I'm excited for this – it's been a long, long time since we've had Ewan and Hayden in BTS stuff, and the prequels haven't exactly been given the exhaustive treatment that the original trilogy has in the time since they released. Also, poster:

Ah cool, yeah that sounds about right. Over here it's 70 mph, pretty sure there are places across Europe (and much of the world) where there are going to be exceptions (such as the Autobahn in Germany), but was trying to get a general idea if that was also true over in Portugal (and Spain). Oh yeah, for sure, there are pleeeeeeenty of cars which can go faster than that (I mean, I'm pretty sure they have to in order to be road legal, kind of have to if 70 mph is going to be the general maximum legal speed limit on motorways and the like!). I don't know if it still stands, but last I checked an American company called SSC had a car (the Tuatara) which broke the speed record for a road legal car at 330 mph (which a quick Google search tells me is around 530 km/h). It's nuts and extremely excessive, but I love it (especially seeing as I've been reading about that car in magazines since I was a kid ) The main reason I was curious was just to feed into my hypothesis of Cyclizar's (man that's such a great name!) maximum speed being in line with a generally accepted maximum legal speed limit of 70 mph, kind of goes out the window a little if Portugal and Spain are on a mad one with some 90 mph roads but 70 mph seemingly being the limit over there as it is in much of the world means my hypothesis can still fly. Yeah okay, the Pokémon world isn't exactly 1:1 with our own, but we know there are cars and pretty much every other real life vehicle in there, and especially given that this is a Pokémon with a wheel in its chest and which people ride around on, I'd guess that the 70 mph speed it can achieve wasn't plucked out of thin air and is more for Cyclizar to be comparable - and perhaps even used in the place of - cars and other vehicles in that fictional world. Will it impact gameplay? I kind of doubt it. But, it would be kind of cool though if Koraidon had a lower max speed but a greater rate of acceleration (feeding into being untamed) compared with Cyclizar, who could offer a smoother ride!

Meanwhile, us Chelsea fans after losing 3-0 to Leeds: Outfought and out-thought. Mendy howler aside - and for the love of all that is good stop messing around at the back like that - Leeds thoroughly deserved the win. It's games like this where it's so plainly obvious (and has been the case since our last league win some 5 years ago to be fair) that we simply aren't going to be challenging for the title like we used to be, with all the finals we reach and occasional wins we get in those I'm reminded a bit of the early 2010s Real Madrid. Yeah, I know we've got a new owner now and obviously it'll take time to transition to a new structure, so I can't be too harsh, but Tuchel saying in an interview before the Spurs game last week that he didn't even know what the objective for the season really was doesn't exactly fill me with confidence

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Cyclizar too, an instant team member for sure! As for the connection, I think the official site gives us a couple of hints; the following is from Cyclizar's page: I'm not sure if this is a legendary per se, because there are just a few things which make it seem like an everyday Pokémon to me: in the way they showed it off, the way it's talked about on the official site, and not hiding details for it like they are still doing for Koraidon and Miraidon. But I think it's the modern day incarnation of those Pokémon, if Koraidon is indeed a past variant/form and Miraidon is a future variant/form, and I think their relationship with humans is key to trying to figure out the relationship between these three. Koraidon seems very much untamed, though seemingly is tamed by humans at some point, considering its rideable; Cyclizar, I would guess, is what Koraidon evolved into (not in the literal Pokémon sense) after forming a relationship with humans over a long time. To make it clear and more along the lines of "survival of the fittest" rather than going the Lamarck transmutation route (i.e. "the genetic variants/creatures with longer necks can reach taller trees with fruit on and so can remain nourished, whereas ones with shorter necks can't and die off" vs "we've been stretching our necks for generations trying to get to these damn fruit on these darn tall trees, and thus have evolved to have longer necks"), I imagine Cyclizar is a domesticated branch of Koraidon, and either the Koraidon died off, were hunted to extinction, went into hiding, whatever. I don't think it's a coincidence at all that they've chosen to highlight that it lives with humans, and also just so happens to be capable of attaining a speed - 70 mph - which is typically towards the top end of what you'd expect any human-controlled vehicle to be going legally (obviously there are exceptions, would be curious to know what the top speed allowed by the roads and law is in Portugal and Spain on roads which enable it). As for Miraidon, I would guess it necessitates a future need to go faster than even a Cyclizar can on a regular basis (don't think it's a coincidence that it clearly has some design quirks inspired by jets), potentially due to the globalisation of high speed air travel (or the future being a hellscape). Regardless, I think it's interesting that they seem to be going down the route with these three Pokémon of more directly commenting on the evolving relationship between creatures and humans. That's been the case in Pokémon in the past, sure, but if they are all linked - and I agree with Glen, I imagine they are - I'd like to think it's Game Freak and TPCi starting to crank up the heat a bit and start talking a bit more about things like extinction, symbiotic relationships, etc., in their games. Also, assuming those three are connected, I feel like this all but confirms what I think everyone thought: that Koraidon and Miraidon are Dragon types? Which would be neat, considering we haven't had a Dragon type on a main series cover since Gen V (well, outside of remakes -- thanks for ruining the streak BDSP!)! And also because it's the best/coolest type

A new Pokémon, Cyclizar, has been revealed in a trailer highlighting the game's competitive play (to tie in with World's):

Trophy list has leaked and looks very doable, nothing related to difficulty but I think would take at least two playthroughs from what I can remember of the game (mainly thinking about leaving Ellie hanging and that being a conversation/interaction in the original). Just a couple of weeks to go

8 minutes of gameplay were shared earlier today through Nvidia: Additionally, an in-game cutscene was release via the game's own channel, and it's pretty dazzling with its use of cinematography: They also released the OST from the in-game cutscene. Continues to look great, but the long wait continues for anything concrete on it. At least they're taking their time and continuing to show off the game in awesome ways during the wait!

Can't not post the comunicado oficial: Nutty transfer. No idea if it'll pay off - it's still absolutely nuts that the reaction to United signing objectively world class players these days is seriously questioning if it'll actually even work - but that sure is one hell of a signing, the best CDM around at the moment and arguably has been the best to come through and stick around in the last decade. I still can't believe a few days ago it was going to be Rabiot they were going for as their main midfield target with De Jong not wanting to leave Barça. It's absolutely barmy.

Anniversary Update with NG+ dropping 27th September.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is coming to Steam and the Epic Game Store on 27th September 2022: The new Anniversary Update (also coming to PS4 and PS5) which includes New Game+ and new abilities, will also be dropping the same day.

A new novel, Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars, is set to release 7th March 2023 to help bridge the gap between Fallen Order and Survivor.

It's looking more and more like United might actually sign Casemiro; I think there were some rumours a few weeks ago going around that he was going to get a pay bump from Real, but United are reportedly ready to double his salary. Considering he's won all there is to win at Real, I honestly can't blame him. Worst case, they continue losing, but he experiences a new league and culture; best case, they actually turn things around, though I think plenty more is needed than this I think it could help sort out their spine more than any of the other recent signings they've made. Even more than the Ronaldo signing last year, this one seems like it could be scary just considering it should break up the hilarious duo of McFred, and especially seeing as United have needed a proper DM for 5+ years. Pretty funny that they make a move like this after Pogba leaves when one of the things he needed most was a DM to let him roam more freely at United. It'd also be a great chance for Fred and Casemiro to warm up their partnership ahead of the World Cup in November. The scarier part to me is that they were being linked so heavily with Rabiot before this and now they seem to seriously be trying to get one of the best defensive mids of the last decade (and he's only 30!).

The GOTY-elect still killing it: 16.6 million units shipped as of the end of June.

Yeah I wouldn't say the control scheme bothered me, so much as it was a point of curiosity as, at least from the PS2 games I've played, it felt like most of the curiosities with controls were hashed out in those earlier years in the generation. This game's controls just felt positionally older than the game is? I think right stick to dodge was just odd because of the camera angle compared to a lot of other games I feel use it, which I think normally have a higher positioned camera (it's definitely a little odd to be using it when the camera swings down to be behind or around Kratos), and jamming R2 for QTEs was odd I think just because of the range of the thing on the DualShock 3 compared to the DualShock 2? I think I was over it in the sense that I could play the game by my second session without really needing to think about it, but those two things stood out – there are definitely some other games with odd control schemes from that generation which have taken some time to adjust to, I think it's just God of War's age relative to them which made it really stick out to me and make it feel older than it is. Never a big issue but more of a "huh, right stick to dodge? Jam R2 to open a chest? That's certainly a choice." The camera bothered me though, I hope and expect that gets better in God of War II. I wasn't too surprised by that to be fair, there's definitely a scale of camera quality and control which fluctuates a fair bit in that generation (probably a hangover from PS1 titles in the case of many sequels), and in all fairness God of War does some really cool cinematic stuff with its camera in cutscenes to compensate for that a little bit. It's pretty crazy to contrast cameras in 3D games and realise that some of the earliest big examples, like Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, hold up much better in my opinion than in games that followed them; think that just retroactively justifies Nintendo's approach to game feel helping some of their games age more gracefully. Speaking of today's standardised controls in games (and just trends of nuances which carry over a lot in general), I do wonder if/when things change up, how some of today's games are going to feel in the future for people who will be coming back and playing them for the first time. I can already imagine the over-the-shoulder third-person camera in games like God of War and The Last of Us being considered as making the game feel sluggish or slow, or the patched in lock-on for Ghost of Tsushima is Up on the D-pad and that's definitely an oddity for a game like that I feel. Now I'm going to spend the rest of the day thinking of more examples

GamesIndustry.biz have just released an interview with Nicolas Doucet, Studio and Creative Director at Team Asobi (Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, Astro's Playroom), that's well worth a read: Some takeaways: Studio is currently at 60 employees, up from 35 when they were part of Japan Studio. Fully expect to grow beyond 100 employees. Their next title will be a full-blown commercial title, and their biggest to date. Some of what Doucet has to say about their design ethos - their five pillars of Magic, Innovation, Playful, Universal and Quality; their desire to keep finding new ways to play resulting from new tech; and a focus on game feel being what's at the core of the idea of being a Japanese title - really sounds very Nintendo-like. I love it. Astro's Playroom was absolutely a culmination of that and was so much better for it. Most employees are still working from home, but they all get together every two weeks in the office to get together in order to pass around the controller and go hands-on with what everyone has been working on. This has amusingly meant there being more office space devoted to gaming than, well, being an office! Can't wait to see what they've got in store for us next

The Disney & Marvel Games Showcase was announced yesterday, and is scheduled for 21:00 BST/13:00 PT on Friday 9th September during Disney's D23 Expo.

MAXIMUM POWERRRRRR! Wave Race 64 arrives next on the service this Friday (19th August):

A free demo is going to be available on Saturday 27th August ahead of the game's full release next month; a tutorial and some other features will be available from the 25th in order to get ready.

PlayStation have released an animated video recapping 2018's God of War journey as the build-up to release continues: A bit under three months to go...

Tuchel to Conte:

Yeah, I'd happily take the draw going into this, any point from Conte is a point I'll gladly take shame Romero is a grade-A twonk leading up to that second though, but I gave up on these refs a long time ago Loved seeing the heat between Conte and Tuchel, just the cherry on top! Mou vs Wenger vibes, post-match interviews should be fun...

Defenders FC returns, what a volley that was by Koulibaly. Just in time too considering Lukaku and Timo got on the score sheet yesterday... Yeah, I'd be surprised if the score stays as it is now, that's for sure, I think Spurs are a seriously scary proposition for this season (I'd say this about any team Conte takes on and is actually supported to have success with), but fingers crossed we score another and can nip it in the bud. We haven't really had a game plan to commit to all summer - hell, I have no idea what our target for this season is meant to be, and I don't think Tuchel does yet either other than to qualify for the UCL again - meanwhile Spurs got their business finished before most clubs even started talking about their summer plans and Conte is a deadly serious coach when it comes to training, they're going to run laps - in a very literal sense - around most teams this season. Hopefully that works in our favour come the World Cup in November

I mean, I did say there was good stuff! I guess to clarify what I mean: when a track stands out to me in a game I'll normally go out of my way to look it up. The only track I looked during my playthrough was Deliverance from God of War (2018), and that was just to compare it with the Hades track. It has good tracks, just nothing which made me pull out my phone and look them up. I think that's where my bar is these days for standout tracks, hopefully II makes me pull out my phone and go music hunting I'm not planning to right now, just because if I did I'd probably end up committing to going for the Platinum, and I'm trying to wean myself off the Plat/completionist mentality at the moment and just enjoy games a bit more and play more. Obviously not to say that they're mutually exclusive, but my desire to do that comes and goes I guess, and I definitely found myself feeling a bit exhausted by it after getting the Platinum for TLOU last month. I think I've got more Platinums than I ever have before by this point in the year, not counting upgrades I think I'm at 5? 3 of which were 100+ hour endeavours, and while I'm sure there'll be a couple more I might Plat before the year is up I definitely need a rest from it where I feel I can get it. So basically: not for now, but if/when I ever come back to Plat this game, I'll be checking it out for sure!

Well, that's a wrap on God of War. God of War? More like God of QTEs or God of Puzzles, amirite? (Yeah I'm right but it was still good fun ) I put a fair chunk of time into it yesterday (not sure what else you're really meant to do in this heat!), and probably could have beaten it last night...but it was late once I got to the final stretch of Hades, so I finished it off this morning. I had a lot of fun to with this game, from it's fluid combat, to learning fun combos (yeah, Square, Square, Triangle is reliable, but it's not the most fun and stylish way to go about playing), and using new weapons and powers as you get deeper into the game; I really enjoyed using Poseidon's Rage early on, but once I got my hands on Army of Hades, that quickly became my default magic of choice when I felt I needed to use something reliable (I ended up maxing it out, alongside the Blades of Chaos). I also really enjoyed swinging around the much bulkier and harder-hitting Blade of Artemis, to the point that the Blades of Chaos definitely took a backseat in the second half of the game or so. The music was good - nothing stood out too much, other than a part of the Hades music sounding like it was halfway to Baldur's Theme, which was almost certainly a coincidence but a weirdly nice thing to spot - and well, while the story wasn't a strong point, it was functional, but what I really enjoyed about it was the presentation you'd get with the flashbacks having something unique or interesting going on. I've said it before, but I also liked the scale of the game, it felt big, but never too big. Also, while I'm sure this is more down to sharing influences from something like The Legend of Zelda, I definitely got Dark Souls and ICO vibes from the game at times, whether it be it's interconnectedness (a few times I audibly went "oh, okay, we're doing this?" Escaping Hades and Amphitrite's Chamber were probably the best examples of this), it's atmosphere, and especially in its creature design (the Minotaur boss reminded me a whole lot of the Capra Demon) and some of its architecture (Mount Olympus and Athens definitely went to the same school as Anor Londo's design philosophy) when compared with Dark Souls. I loved that Minotaur boss fight, I think it's pretty easily the best one in the game from both a design and gameplay perspective, took me a couple of attempts! I definitely came away genuinely understanding why no-one ever got to Pandora's Box between the puzzles, bosses, and the traps also, that reminds me, before I forget: this game has a load of great and fun puzzles, and many of them felt unique! I think there's a really fine line to ride with puzzles in games like this where you need to balance a player knowing what the game is asking of them, and then knowing how to execute said ask (which becomes more complex the more tools are at their disposal), which is a really hard balance to strike I find, so kudos to the folks at Santa Monica back in the day who worked on some of these puzzles. I mean, just as a quick point of comparison: I mentioned Zelda before and actually played Ocarina of Time earlier this year, and while I'll probably get around to talking about it in a bit more depth at some point, my problem with some of the puzzles in that game is not that they were difficult, but that I found myself with so many tools at my disposal that I found myself overthinking the puzzle a lot of the time, only to then realise more often than not that the simplest solution was what the game was asking me execute. Hell, sometimes I didn't even know what the game was asking me to do. For me, I think that's one of the tougher parts of that game to understand going back to it for the first time today: whereas Breath of the Wild gives you a bunch of tools and you're free to experiment and probably find a few ways to complete a puzzle, Ocarina of Time has a few too many tools for the number of solutions it's ready for (which is normally just the one). Anyways, that was a slight detour, so back to God of War: as for the not-so-good, I'll double down on the camera being pretty woeful at times, especially any time you find yourself platforming towards the camera (which is both a camera and design failing I guess). Some parts of Hades were a nightmare because of this, not in the sense of it being hard or even that frustrating, but it just slowed the game down unnecessarily. Talking of slowing the game down unnecessarily, I don't get why some 70% of enemies have i) nearly as much health as they do and ii) respawn, I get that the game is a hack-and-slash, but it really just makes the game a bit long in the tooth at times. There are definitely exceptions to this where it's asking for more than just going on a killing spree (I really liked the Cerberus fight at the start of the Challenge of Poseidon, needing to learn to manage the pups so that they don't Digivolve into full-on beasts), but most of the time it just wants you to kind of aimlessly kill, which just becomes a bit boring - despite a fun combat system! - when some standard weaker enemies take a while to defeat and can then respawn(/are replaced?). As a minor and unrelated nitpick, there were a couple of times where the sound mixing was way off and the music made the in-game sounds or dialogue virtually inaudible despite being fine the rest of the time, and the worst case of this for me was down in the Floor of Spears™ puzzle room where the sound of the spears winding up to destroy your feet is supposed to give you an idea of how long you've got left before they, well, do that and kill you. Lastly: I thought the final boss fight section was pretty weird, and, for me, a big step down from the highs of the Minotaur, especially given that the entire game has been building up to this confrontation. The first phase with Ares was so laughable I had to check if I'd put the difficulty down by accident, because just summoning the Army of Hades and using a spin attack had him down in the space of about 10-15 seconds. The second phase taking on your past was fine, but the third phase of the fight - and the second phase of actually fighting Ares - was just weird in that you're stripped of your weapons, all of the abilities you've earned, and instead you're slowly swinging around this heavy sword. The camera is different for this fight than all of the other fights you've been in throughout the game pretty much, and the game becomes a 3D arena fighter with health bars? Maybe it's just me but I hate when games do things like this, trying to go for some epic sense of scale to serve the story, but at the cost of sacrificing the game in the way you've been playing for 8 hours up until this point! Just...I'm sure there are those who are fans of this, but doesn't get a pass from me This game was good dumb fun, with some great puzzles, boss fights, and combat, aged now a good bit by its camera and things like enemies having too much health/respawning which just stretched some standard encounters out a bit too long for my liking. I enjoyed it, but hopefully I'll see how its sequel improved at some time in the next few weeks

First post in this thread in a bit over 12 years? Well, guess this calls for a slam more than it does a bump! I've outlined this elsewhere, but one of my gaming goals for the year is to play through all of the God of War series (well, the stuff that matters, so no, not the text-based Facebook Messenger game which was apparently a thing) in preparation for Ragnarök's arrival in November. With us getting the solid release date for that game early last month and me picking up everything I needed to play through the series last month, earlier today I booted up the first God of War. I played 15 minutes or so of this a few months ago testing out how PlayStation Now was on PS5 (which was fine, but I'd rather just play the game from the console or disc rather than stream it), which definitely set my expectations somewhat for the game, and today I've put in a few hours, and have just arrived at the Temple of the Oracle in Athens. As always, before jumping in: I'll probably have more middling and negative stuff to list off in this first post. I almost always do. It's very hard to not notice these things playing through some games for the first time! Let's start with the positives: this game feels fantastic. I love how fluid the combat is (even if, a lot of the time, I think it boils down to ye olde classic Square, Square, Triangle – at least it has so far), I'm a big fan of the variety of animations Kratos uses in combat, and I'm really enjoying stringing together long combos (I've not really played too many character action or combo-based games like this for a long time, maybe since I had a PS2? So it's definitely hitting that nostalgia spot for me). I have no real idea what's going on story wise, but hey, that's fine by me, because I'm just here to have fun and see what still holds up about this game. I wasn't expecting a skills-based "magic" system in this game, so I've had a lot of fun using those in general combat as I've picked them up, especially on the few occasions where it's been called for in puzzles so far. I also just really like the architecture and design ethos of the game, there have been a few times already where I feel like I've had a few options on which way to go, but I'm not really going out of my way to do and see as much as I can in this game (trying to take a break from that mindset...for now), and I think every single time I've come to some fork in the road, my gut instinct - clearly informed by some subtle design decisions - has pointed me in the right direction without fail. I also really enjoyed the first boss fight (even if it did take me a moment to clock onto what it wanted me to do because I don't think the framing of the battle does a great job of really setting you odd in the right direction), though similar to most enemies in the game so far, it definitely felt like more of a sponge than it needed to be. Now, there are some negatives, but I don't think they're necessarily bad things about the game itself, but just ways it's showing its age. Like it's camera. Man, I hate some cameras in games, especially fixed perspective cameras like the ones you got in MGS2, but at least those were consistent; this game jumps pretty freely from behind-the-back to fixed angle to another fixed angle to swinging around to another fixed angle to a wide shot and...man, it's super disorienting, not in the sense that I'm getting lost, but in the sense that it's making me physically feel uneasy at times (in fairness, it's super hot - I wonder what Kratos would do if the Greek Gods were pushing humanity off the brink through global warming? - which is definitely compounding that feeling, but I think it would still be there regardless). Aside from the general uneasiness of jumping between angles at this game's every whim, the camera just creates inconsistencies in how you approach things, for instance the age-old "you're tiptoeing across a ledge/beam/whatever, so let's change the angle while you're doing that and have you need to actually adjust your character's movement based on the angle we go to, and no you can't continue with the input you were using before", one of my absolute biggest pet peeves in gaming. I'll adjust, I'm sure, but it's stuff like this which I thinks makes some 3D games so much harder to go back to (I actually thought this game was older than it was before booting it up, so it's funny that this approach was taken in a game released towards the end of the generation where I feel it was mostly figured out?). And then there are just some general curiosities to the game, decisions which aren't really negatives to the game, but are certainly decisions made at the time which I'm not sure they'd stand by today. Such as the sex mini-game – that sure was a choice, and that sure was a thing, and I'm not really sure what to make of it, though I did find it hilarious that the top halves of these women in the cutscene prior to the mini-game being made accessible made them look like they were a generation ahead of Kratos on a purely technical perspective, you can see where the priorities were for that short moment in the game more curiously: R2 to interact with and open things, but even weirder than that, mashing R2 to lift heavy doors/gates – this has to be one of the weirdest feeling QTE-style inputs ever, especially with just how much the DualShock 3's triggers can travel when compared with the triggers of the DualShock 2. And also, right stick to dodge/roll? Man, again, just feels super weird, and definitely took some getting used to! Anyways, looking forward to putting some more time into the game tomorrow, hopefully I'll get to take on some more bosses and adjust to the camera a bit more! Maybe? Possibly? Who am I kidding, probably not