Julius

If anyone needs to chuckle through the tears of this being announced instead of the Switch 2 this morning: Feels like a missed opportunity on the last one for Reyn Time

Yeah, I wasn't joking about the Activity Log idea, please let it be that Nintendo The other thing I think there's a very small chance it could be, but might make some sense just considering that they're testing it in such a weird way that we haven't seen before – is maybe some form of modern Miiverse equivalent? With Twitter/X uploads being removed from the system a while back, there's an additional barrier to sharing now than there was at launch, and I feel like that's something Nintendo would want resolved ahead of the Switch 2. And that just feels like the sort of thing you'd want to have tested rather than launch cold turkey with a new system? The method of sharing as it is now just kind of sucks

If anyone's interested in being involved in a test for an upcoming Nintendo Switch Online feature, here's your chance – open only to NSO + Expansion Pack members, with applications opening tomorrow at 16:00 BST: Seems like a neat opportunity, wonder what this is all about? Did someone say Activity Log? Seemed a bit weird to put in one of the NSO threads with how those have been split up (seems like it's open to Expansion Pack members for the Playtest, but will be a potential wider NSO feature?) – hence why I'm dropping it in here

Guess they're just waiting for the unlimited power and potential of the Switch 2 in order to cleanly bring over some 25+ year-old PS1 games

Huh, well there's that Siren re-release which showed up a little while back. Assuming this is a new release (considering it has both PS4 and both PS5 versions), I'm curious to see how they treat customers of the game who have it as a PS2 Classic from back in the day? Yeah, the treatment of the games being put up by Capcom on PS+ are so strange. Dino Crisis we've known about forever yet it's taken years to release, the lack of trophy support, etc. – it's October, and yet I'm still scratching my head still as to why the old RE games haven't been released in a classics compilation on modern systems by Capcom themselves, there's absolutely an audience for it

Launch trailer: Sponsors Haas at the F1 in Singapore and then a Radiohead cover in the launch trailer – look, you really can't say they haven't tried to push the boundaries with their marketing

Yeah I found my sunrise alarm clock genuinely fantastic, I still use it now but during lockdowns when I couldn't tell left from right it was one of like four things helping me keep somewhat sane. Can't recommend them enough for anyone who struggles with sleep/waking up

They delayed the Switch 2 not for games or to have millions of units ready for launch, but for the return of the Activity Log, Themes and (actual, can-be-placed-in-the-menu) Folders

So I went to the Birmingham Toy Collectors Fair two Sundays ago, and totally forgot to post pics of my gets, because yes, I guess I'm collecting Pokémon cards again still need to sort out replacement sleeves, toploaders, and a binder, so for now I've left them in their sleeves with the price stickers which refuse to come off without a fight, so sorry if it looks a bit tacky as is Still figuring out the shape me collecting again will take, but I think the focus on characters I like in Trainer and Trainer Gallery cards (well, honestly just there cards in general, think they look ace), my favourite Pokémon designs, and just nice artwork is going to be my general guiding star. To save anyone awkwardly zooming in to tot up the total that's £81.50 I ended up spending on cards – we walked by a few vendors and I flicked through their binders but there was nothing which was really calling to me (though in hindsight the matching Electivire card ft. Magmortar was one I feel I missed out on), and so as I thought would be the case, when a card did call out to me, I ended up flicking through the binders at one seller and taking out card after card without much care to add up how much it was coming to I think there was a bit of a limit I put on my spending just by way of "oh, I really like those cards, but that's a bit rich for my blood" (I'm looking at you, Ralts/Kirlia/Gardevoir aging up trainer set) and so £18.50 was the most I spent on any individual card, being for the Trainer Gallery Umbreon V card ft. Karen, aka one of the coolest Elite Four members going purely off her speech before your showdown with her as the final member you face off against of the Johto Elite Four. I spent so much at one place (the place where I pulled out like 15 cards flicking through quite quickly) that they shaved a bit off for me, which was kind of them As I went to leave the second seller I bought from, I noticed two figures, and not really being sure where to throw them in figured I'd bundle them into this post, even if they aren't related to the cards Steven and Cynthia are two of my favourite Champions, so had to have these, which were £16 together (as opposed to £10 each). The lad managing the stall then said they had more behind the counter but I told him to not bring them out for the sake of my wallet So that was close to £100 at face value that I'd spent on Pokémon in a single day...I really should've just started up Scarlet to feed my appetite, shouldn't I? Then as I went to leave him again (poor guy bad to keep calling his dad over to take payments, my bad), I spotted something I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for as a shelf piece because I wasn't aware it existed and so figured some might here also might be interested: There are Pokémon Scale World sets, and although looking them up now they seem to go for quite a bit (really glad I stopped myself from asking about them), I thought it was gorgeous and had to share. So yeah, I think generally I'll probably try to keep my spending on cards limited to IRL events (keeps it more fun and limits my spending a good bit that way, I think), with the next one probably being Birmingham Comic Con at the end of November/start of December, but it was really fun to pick these up, and I look forward to putting a nice little collection together for myself

So, uh, this was the other hardware we were due to hear about I guess? Retailing at $99 USD. Nintendo going head-to-head with Pokémon Sleep wasn't on my bingo card for the year

New key visual from Bandai Namco:

Reviews for this have gone up in a very weird fashion - IGN seem to be the only ones with a video review? - so I think it kind of got buried in the ReFantazio hype, but they are about as expected. IGN's review and Digital Foundry on the technical aspects: There are some real choice quotes going around from the written reviews, just flicking through. Yeah, yikes. Very curious to see how some of the other rumoured future PS4 remakes/remasters/whatever we're calling these, such as Gravity Rush 2 and Days Gone, land after this.

Tequila Works, the studio behind Rime, has announced layoffs and the cancellation of a game. Per VGC:

While I'll agree that it's shocking that it took this long to come to PC and I'd really love to know the reasoning behind it, but..."stupid?" Hold on, let me reach out to Rockstar for comment. Oh wait, I got them – Come on, I think it's simply a case of Rockstar having other things consistently in the oven for so long, if there was a gap the size of GTA V to Red Dead Redemption II, or Red Dead Redemption II to GTA VI, between Red Dead Redemption and GTA V? I think it would have been ported to PC earlier. Instead, focus switched to GTA V after Red Dead launched. Then GTA Online – then the ridiculous success of GTA Online making GTA V on more platforms more of a focus. Then Red Dead Redemption II. I think it's clear as day to anyone who has played Red Dead II what Rockstar's original plans were for the first game, which I think would have likely included a PC release, but then they went and messed up by getting the GTA Trilogy remade by a mobile dev and it all went a bit sideways, then they probably cancelled whatever plans they had for Red Dead and dumped a barebones remaster on a porting company just to get it out there. Sucks that it's taken this long, but I don't think it's too hard to see why it would have reasonably panned out the way it has

The game and ALL LittleBigPlanet DLC (including DLC released for the first two games on PS3) will be delisted from the PlayStation Store as of October 31st: Going to have a look through the DLC myself as I know there were Final Fantasy and Iconic/Shadow of the Colossus costumes – the LBP games are ones I haven't gone back to since enjoying them at a friend's house back on the PS3, but losing all this content kind of sucks. Really wish when games and DLC were delisted like this they'd slash the prices on some of this stuff.

Confirmed for PC, coming October 29th:

Damn, 10 million units sold – hell of an achievement! Now, the real question: where's the remaster?

Yeah, this is my plan too. There are probably other JRPGs cosier for me to catch up on over Christmas, but it's easily the most free time I'm going to have, so makes sense to dedicate it to the longest game in the backlog of this year's releases Yep, definitely, and 2025 looks to just pick up where this year is going to leave off. Say what we might about first parties outside of Nintendo right now, third parties are seriously carrying a lot of the momentum of this gen at the moment – and I'm loving it which JRPGs are sitting in the backlog at the moment H-o-T? I've written out a rough outline of what I think I can realistically get to between now and the end of the year to "catch up", already been some hard cuts, but it provides a bit of peace of mind just already saying "no" to a couple of them – I'll either get back to them next year or whenever the mood strikes. Three massive JRPGs I'll be catching up on are included in that (those three include Metaphor), and of course my pledge games are on the list of priorities too, but as the temperature's cooled off I'm already playing games a lot more and having a blast doing so again. Think I've finally figured out over the last few months that I'm a bit of a seasonal player in terms of hours I invest, which is great to know and plan going into next year, but not so helpful when it comes to wrapping this one up

Physical release incoming: Love the tweet before it, 14 hours ago:

Can't say this was on my bingo card, but I know the first game has its fans: Kind of hilariously, SEGA also collaborated with Lofi Girl on YouTube for a lofi Alien beats video: A lofi video and a sequel announcement – certainly makes for an interesting 10th anniversary celebration

Reviews and impressions are going live, and it's sounding like a banger: It's early doors for reviews, but after 20+, the game is currently sitting at 94 on Metacritic and 95 on OpenCritic, making it one of the best reviewed games of the year. What a year it's been for JRPGs, seriously. Hope those hopping in now enjoy it!!

I mean it makes sense in that the entire AAA industry seems to have shifted to Unreal Engine over the course of the last decade (outside of proprietary engines), and Halo moving to UE5 is just one in a very long list of very public announcements of developers moving to the engine: there was CDPR after the whole Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco; Respawn I think have said that they're moving to UE5; The Coalition was one of the first big names to put attach themselves to the engine; Valorant recently had a UE5 announcement; the next Tomb Raider was said to be built in UE5 as far back as 2022; and so on. It's a long list and so they're in good company, I think it only makes sense that the AAA space has started to lean on one particular engine - though I'm not saying that it's necessarily good - especially with how learning a new engine at every new job in an industry which seems hellbent on making every dev jobless at some point was never going to work. Ultimately, it is what 343i, now Halo Studios, decide to make of it. Unreal Engine has seen some great games and some absolutely awful ones in equal measure, and I feel like it was undeniable last gen on UE4 that a good number of games certainly ended up with a similar look and feel, which seems to have pivoted into stronger art direction taking centre stage; Arkham Knight on UE3 looks gorgeous to this day and is still my favourite example that new tech coming in means very little without great workers behind it. Halo Infinite was seemingly a mess in development until Staten came onboard to salvage what he could, but was that on the engine, necessarily? Probably not, it was probably down to 343 just not having a strong idea of what they wanted to achieve with the game, or a realistic way in which to bring that idea to fruition. I think this is a move they've made just to have an engine that simply works (ironic considering it doesn't really feel like anyone's done a great job with UE5 yet, at least if you go off what the Digital Foundry guys believe) – does what it says on the tin, Bob's your uncle, and everyone knows and likes him. I'll need to read up on it more because the biggest question on my mind right now is whether this was a 343/Halo Studios decision, or an Xbox decision. And yes I'm thinking that because surely if it were up to Xbox they should be pushing for Bethesda (Game Studios, not id) to do the same, right? Considering that they're effectively running games on a super old engine and *surprise* it's become even more obviously broken with every new release for like a decade. Fallout 76 and Starfield in particular seemed to launch in absolutely atrocious states. So yeah, Elder Scrolls VI on UE...7, I guess?

Cutscene: "THERE'S A HORDE COMING, GET OUT OF THERE!" me: runs away Game: YOU ARE LEAVING THE MISSION AREA me: "oh maybe I went the wrong way, let's try following the waypoint marker again" Game: leads me into the middle of the horde JUST SAY YOU WANT ME TO FIGHT THEM COME ONNNN

These goddamn crows By far the most annoying enemies in the game and not even joking

While this game has issues - a loooooooot of issues - I'm pretty sure I've reached the last act now, and there's something intangible to it which makes it so easy to drop hour after hour into. I'm 20-something hours in at this point, and it's so far proving to be very moreish. Story has been predictable like I said before (and my previous predictions have already kind of come to pass), but there's an earnestness and honesty in how it presents some romantic relationships which I feel like you just don't really see in a lot of games. Swimming in 7s for sure right now, in much stronger waters than the weak rapids I felt I was swimming in after my first session with the game, and while I'll wait until it's wrapped up to see exactly where I land on it and if it tries to set up a sequel or leaves things a bit more open, there's an obvious enough foundation here which could have been built on very comfortably with a sequel. Right now, I honestly still maintain an opinion I had before starting the game, which I've held since news first came out that PlayStation passed on Bend doing a sequel: this should have been a TLOU spin-off, but not an obvious one. You said it before @Hero-of-Time but they already had a zombie property in TLOU, AND it was one with incredible sales and critical acclaim at that, so I think a true spin-off which dropped the name after they'd worked on a spin-off with the name in Uncharted: Golden Abyss would've been a wise step for the studio in building up their confidence. This game has so many freaks but none of them quite match up to their counterparts in TLOU, and the game is constantly hinting at their evolution, so imagine if the game's credits ended with the audio of a Clicker? There's only so much we know about the early days of the Outbreak in TLOU that something like this set closer to the start of it in a different state with its own set of characters and relationships and a totally different dynamic in the open world would make sense: these freaks are much more manageable at this point. I feel like just having it be tied to another property would demand a level of quality not on show here, but I'm not sure if Bend would have gone for it, which is a real shame. Because there's a level of hubris to this game playing through it now which is incredibly apparent to me after seeing the Days Gone creative director blow his fuse over Deacon being in Astro Bot, as a VIP Bot, which screams that Bend stupidly tried to go it entirely alone and thought they knew better – I'll try to seek out some bits and pieces on development after I complete the game but there's just that vibe to it. There are lessons from other PlayStation first-party games launched before this one which feels like they have been entirely ignored, and whereas, for instance, this game has loading screens galore, I played Ghost of Tsushima at launch on a base PS4 around a year after this dropped and the loading screens were some of the shortest I'd ever seen. I can't remember if I've ever played a first-party PlayStation game with a story emphasis whose cutscenes, and thus story, felt so disconnected and disjointed because of the loading screens and fade-to-blacks which run long, hell I had a fade-to-black yesterday which was so long I thought the game had crashed. Still a mixed bag, but so far it's a fun yet ultimately forgettable mixed bag. If I don't finish this up today I'll probably do so tomorrow