Julius

Oh, you sweet summer child. Played up until around the same point I did when I first played the game forever ago, at least according to my trophies, picking up the Honey Bee in Episode 6 and completing all Side-Ops available up to this point. This evening, my outfit of choice was the Sneaking Suit, which paired well with a casually late approach to a 18:00 kick-off. Man oh man, is this game moreish! I'm struggling to put it down at times, and that feeling of just going for "one more" keeps ending up in a good few more hours sunk into the game. There are just so many unique ways to approach these different missions, and the story missions feel like they were fawned over much more than the random command posts and checkpoints dotted around the map you're typically raiding as part of Side-Ops. I think there was more of a flow to this session which really helped – drop in, complete a Side-Op, take D-Horse or the Chopper over to the next Side-Op, call in supplies for the Mission. The story itself, so far...eh. I genuinely forgot Kiefer Sutherland voiced this Snake with how long the game can go without and real dialogue. But the Tactical, the Espionage, and the Action? Awesome! So many moments I've clipped because of close-calls, off-the-cuff tranq darts flying through the air, or diving for cover from an enemy Chopper doing recon. There's such a great tension to the general gameplay which captures the essence of MGS so purely and with such potency that it's a real shame it doesn't feel like part of a truly cohesive package at times. In terms of the feeling of moment-to-moment gameplay, this already feels like it's my favourite MGS. I want to draw attention to one of my biggest things I want to keep an eye on moving forward with MGSV, and that's the objectives, or lack thereof and of the tracking during some Side-Ops and Missions. I 100% understand that this is an MGS, they want things to be ranked, but man is it so easy to end up with an outcome which you don't intend. For example, the Honey Bee mission – I went to this big relay base on the way to secure any intel I could which might help me out when trying to get the Honey Bee. Prisoner spotted who might have potential intel on the Honey Ber's location, okay cool, I clean the place up in 5 to 10 minutes, all comms equipment destroyed, one guy spotted me for a second but I put him to sleep and Fulton'd him out of there, and...wait, where the hell is the prisoner?? Oh he's suddenly now over by the main objective for the Honey Bee, over 1 km away. I guess they move him at some point or maybe it's because someone spotted me briefly and they decided to get him out of there, but I wasn't a fan of was how poor a job the game did of keeping me informed – why isn't Kaz screaming at me that the guy I've gone to this relay base to secure, have ID'd through the Int. Scope and tagged with a marker, to get intel from vital to the main mission is being sped away?! Okay, so I eventually catch up, clear out most of the caves and base around the Honey Bee, next up is freeing the prisoner. It's getting light out, though, and more guards are coming into rotation, and I'm in my all-black Sneaking Suit...I hide in the toilet and smoke a Phantom Cigar to pass the time until it's night-time. Prisoner died. Look, again, I know it's an MGS, Kojima likes his realism and he is a prisoner that could be killed at any point they decide he's worn out his usefulness, but I didn't get the vibe from the game or what Kaz had said - and how little he cared about the prisoner being so hastily transported away before - that there was any great urgency to the situation at hand with the prisoner. Especially so early on in the game, how about a little "Snake, you can pass the time, but I don't think that prisoner is going to make it through the day" from Kaz to just hint that, hey, it's now or never? It's just one of those where this idea of "realism" seems to be brushing up against the actual fun of the game, which is a shame because the game is actually fun. With the time I took to plan out my approach at both bases to then be met with what felt like a bad outcome makes it feel like the rating system is coming first, and that finishing the missions ASAP comes ahead of finding your own fun, completing side objectives you don't know exist, and so on. Same sort of deal at the end of the Honey Bee mission, too. Mist Boys turn up, this is clearly a situation where I'm surrounded and so I should run, right? I CQC the first Mist Boy, break out into a sprint and...am shot down very quickly by other Mist Boys. Okay, cool, Miller said we can use the Honey Bee when he said we shouldn't before, so I go to use it and...it doesn't really do much to improve the situation. I try running again; I die again. "Man, I swear the first time I played this I escaped on my horse..." I call in D-Horse and get the hell out of there, first time. It's just so weird! Game is telling me in the story and with the vibe and being in an MGS game surrounded by enemies to get out of there, Kaz wants me to put up a fight, and the solution was...to call in my D-Horse because I remembered that's how I got away last time? The push and pull of this game so far has been unrelenting Just a couple more smaller nitpicks I've come across while going along in this latest session, then: The time to develop things - especially the hour or so it takes to build out new parts of Mother Base - is going to be a pain, I know it. When interrogating enemies and they offer up details on, say, a specialist and point out where he is on the map...I seriously wish opening the map in a certain window of a few seconds of receiving said intel or being able to cycle through such intel was an option, because I end up needing to zoom in and out on multiple points of interest in a region to try to figure out where they were talking about. And half the time I still can't find what it is they're talking about! Speaking of which, gained intel on a prisoner being stowed away nearby on a Side-Op. Complete the Side-Op, mark the prisoner on my map to run over to next, start going with D-Horse, and... we're clear of the Side Op, mission complete, and dude has now just vanished without a trace from the map? I love the iDroid visually and audibly. I hate that it feels like it's constantly connecting to the internet with the slight delay between some screens. It probably is, too, which honestly makes it even worse.

Game Informer is back, baby! Magazine will be making a return. Website is active again with some reviews already posted for releases from the time they were away. Seems like they were picked up by Gunzilla, who are apparently in the NFT space, but they've granted GI their independence so...all should be good?

According to Insider Gaming, the Switch 2 will release in June, and with it comes a three-phased plan for the remainder of 2025: I've got to imagine that third-party studios getting access to dev kits in June is referring to smaller third-party studios and not big AAA studios, indie wunderkinds and long-time collaborators throughout the life of the Switch. All of this makes sense to me. I'll be honest, I'm not too clear on what the three-phase plan action is from the article, I guess other than perhaps an emphasis on first-party early on – it simply sounds like they're saying that they're curating the first six months of the Switch 2 down to the smallest games, and want these releases staggered rather than an all-at-once approach where one partner might be competing with another or Nintendo's own game, which makes complete sense to me.

Free Title Update 1 drops next Thursday: VOD of the Showcase:

Maybe they just want to say "please note, there will be no updates on the Switch 2 during this Direct" one final time

Just spent last night doing Side-Ops, one of which involved bailing out a sheep, another of which went pretty sideways and so I went against my preferred stealth method to Kratos-level deliverance of death. Yeah...I think I'm just going to go back to the main Missions for now and tackle Side-Ops as and when I feel like I've got something to actually gain from them, or am open to the distraction. They're good fun but already feel just a little bit repetitive, also not helped by the fact that they just keep adding more every time I complete a pair of Side-Ops. The potential for emergent gameplay feels great, but yeah, these early Side-Ops all feel pretty similar, and honestly while I'm impressed with the world visually, there's a lack of interconnectedness to the rest of the open world as soon as you take out their relays/radios and the game feels incredibly narrowed in scope. They feel like Peace Walker Side-Ops spread across an open world, but without much to connect them besides a continuous open space – again, at least so far. Also, have me a good chuckle being referred to during recon for one mission as "the Head Hunter" (funnier yet as at that point I was just putting the guys on a snooze rather than on ice) and hearing that they're considering starting to wear helmets

Yeah, this all but confirms it. He's been on a bit of a hot streak of late, so no real reason to think it's not legit. Can't help but groan about everyone who always comes out of the woodwork to make claims that they knew all along -- "my contact wasn't 100%, but..."; "Now that [legit leak source] has said it, I might as well share..."; "someone messaged me but I wasn't 100%, but now [aforementioned legit leak source] has said it, I think it's a certainty too." Ugh, anyways, a quick wishlist for me outside of the aforementioned Fire Emblem and Kirby: Chrono Trigger port – first big event after the anniversary, I'm tired of this tomfoolery S-E. For the love of Time just give me a straight port at this point. Update on DQ I & II HD-2D – 4½ months removed now from III's HD-2D success, I think an update now makes sense because I think S-E should have bigger DQ-shaped fish to fry come the Switch 2 Direct next week. If not, it'll probably get lost in the shuffle on DQ Day in May or during Not-E3 in June, but this feels like a great chance for it to take centre stage. Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD ports – while there are other Zelda games I want to get to before it, Wind Waker is definitely the one I most want to play for the first time. I have it on Wii U but the prospect of a Switch port has kept me kicking that bucket down the road. Do it, you cowards. Thanks for reminding us of it @S.C.G Where are the rest of the best of the indies?! – indies have been such a massive and defining part of the Switch's success, that it's crazy that some of the best indies which make the most sense on a device like the Switch haven't landed on the system yet. Where the hell are Papers, Please and FTL?! I feel like similar things were said about Skyward Sword HD, particularly concerns about how it would play handheld, but I think it was received just fine? Money is always the answer from a business perspective. From a consumer perspective, why wouldn't we want native ports on modern platforms? I think there's definitely value in both the GameCube releases being made available via NSO and having native ports. Zelda games have sold better on Switch than they have on any other platform, we're looking at an all-but-guaranteed 150m+ unit selling console now so the install base is there for the taking, and there's arguably less to do with Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD than some of the other ports we've already seen on Switch – like you said, if anything, these will end up being stripped back vs the Wii U versions (I do wonder if they'd fix the changes I know some weren't happy with in Wind Waker HD, though? If they don't, if anything, that could be a value-add for the original GameCube version). We've also had it happen before where Nintendo have released a game - Super Mario 64, as part of 3D All-Stars - which went on to come to NSO, so it's not unheard of. If anything, I think our biggest concern shouldn't be whether they're on the way, but rather that they will be making WW and TP – whether sold individually or as a collection; I'd imagine the former because...money – a time limited release like they did 3D All-Stars, for when they eventually come to NSO as part of a potential GC catalogue. Anyways, you want a GameCube game which I'm shocked isn't already on Switch but could absolutely be a visual masterpiece on Switch 2, making it worth saving for the latest console, considering what they managed with 3? A Luigi's Mansion remake. Yeah, I know they put it on 3DS, then decided to bring Dark of the Moon from 3DS to Switch rather hastily...but it has always struck me as odd that you can play the second and third games on Switch, but not the first.

Listings for the game at Canadian chain VGP have been updated with a release date of 25th September: Could totally be a placeholder, but September just seems right for a game like this...

Partner Showcase incoming (I'd rather have nothing so please don't be this I'm begging you Nintendo) I mean, I think it really just depends on how quickly Nintendo plan on closing the book on the OG Switch. If they plan to only support it as far as the end of 2025/the next financial year (March 2026) - and to be clear, by "support" I am referring to first-party releases - then yeah, I could see them probably wanting to just shoot their proverbial OG Switch load in a Direct ahead of the Switch 2, and said games could get focused Directs/events in select cases (Prime 4, Pokémon) or, perhaps more likely for other relatively smaller titles (Fire Emblem remake, Kirby), the Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition treatment of an entire marketing campaign without a Direct appearance, just relying on TV ads, YouTube trailers, and social media teams to keep the marketing ball rolling. Personally, I don't think they're going to want a repeat of the 3DS/Switch sort of split to Directs between the OG Switch/Switch 2 after the Switch 2 has launched, because I think it could get incredibly confusing as a Direct viewer if there's no clear delineation (which would be way tougher considering, well, they'll both be carrying the Switch name), but to play devil's advocate: while we are waiting on the long rumoured Fire Emblem remake that @Hero-of-Time mentioned and the very likely Kirby release to bow out the Switch that @Glen-i mentioned, 3DS titles of similar, relatively smaller fandoms were announced well beyond the release of the Switch, with Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story announced in March 2018 (releasing Dec 2018 for Japan and Jan 2019 elsewhere), and Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn announced in September 2018 (releasing March 2019, 2 years into the life of the Switch). If Nintendo plan to support the Switch beyond the end of 2025/the next financial year, then those games could well be announced at a later point. Like I said, I think a totally unexpected Direct dropping this week would just exponentially ramp up the hype and viewership for the Switch 2 Direct next week, so I'd have no problem with them dropping one, that's for sure

I was reading that Reddit thread last night and it's a strange one, but a lot more people have jumped onboard since, so for other people to have more context on why it seems to be gaining some traction now - from Nintendo Life: I feel like it easily goes both ways, right? Some are going to argue it's going to take attention away from the Switch 2 Direct next Wednesday. Others are going to argue that you get the OG Switch stuff out of the way now ahead of the Switch 2 Direct so that it doesn't take up valuable time there. I think a good example of this would be something like Metroid Prime 4 – if it's releasing on both consoles, any time you commit to it in the Switch 2 Direct, I think, should be focused on any enhancements specific to the Switch 2 version of the game and showcasing the Switch 2, more so than it being an advertisment for Prime 4. I would then make the argument you don't want to show Prime 4, period, because it isn't a Switch 2 exclusive, and if there's a way to talk about it outside of the Switch 2 Direct, I'd do that. Now, I'm going to be honest, I don't think there's anything that can be done to draw attention away from that event, and I think the only way you reach even more people than you do simply posting a Switch 2 video back in Jan and tweeting about it is to remind people in another Direct taking place the week before. I mean, it will have been 2½ months between the Switch 2 Direct announcement come its airtime next Wednesday, and Nintendo Directs regularly dwarf every other showcase this industry puts on in viewership, perhaps the only show coming close being the annual The Game Awards. All this being said, while I'm not going to say that I'm fully onboard with it being legitimate - it was just last month we were being told about a Switch Direct which never came - this sounds like something equally silly and smart enough that it seems like the exact sort of thing Nintendo would do. I've brought it up before but a Switch 2 Direct in April and potential Switch 2 release between the start of May and end of July doesn't really give them much incentive to have a typical Direct in June, so we could well end up with a sizeable gap over the summer between the Switch 2 Direct and a hypothetical September Direct proper – they're in a very different position now compared to where they were with the OG Switch, which released in March and then needed the E3 Spotlight to help build momentum with a whole slew of announcements; next week's Switch 2 Direct should be that show. And, once the proverbial Switch 2 cat is out of the hat, I don't think they'll go back in June to just do a Direct completely focused on the OG Switch. Saying all this, it also totally possible that they're just flushing out rats and fixing up any leaky pipes last minute before the Switch 2 Direct

Official trailer for Andor: Just one month to go! Me rn:

Confirmed for release on PS5 come April 17th, Premium Edition releasing 2 days earlier on the 15th: Welp. I've been looking forward to this for some time, but yeah, I'm not dropping £70 on this when Forza releases the following week. Think I'll save it for the summer and stick it in with a full Indiana Jones rewatch, as I still haven't watched Dial of Destiny. Anyways, speaking of lost relics... Where did I leave it? I swear it was around he– Oh, there it is! Someone out there better be screaming that it belongs in a museum

Towards the end of March 2020 I bought a PS3 as lockdown started to help me finally get into a series I'd wanted to for the longest time, because it wasn't available on modern platforms as its publisher decided to pop out and get milk. Fitting, then, that almost exactly five years later I find myself picking up the fifth and final numbered Metal Gear Solid game in the form of MGSV. This was actually the first Metal Gear Solid game I put some decent time into, checking it out back in 2016 and getting a couple of chapters in purely because of the hype, critical acclaim, and the fact it was the only MGS game I had access to on a relatively modern system (no, we aren't going to count the possibility of playing Twin Snakes through backwards compatibility on the Wii). I've heard good things and bad things about MGSV over the years - the good being the quality of the gameplay, and the bad generally being the story - but I figured it was time to return now that I have the other MGS games under my belt and see how I end up feeling about it; this was actually a game I very strongly considered putting on my Pledge List for the year, but instead I decided to go with The Witcher 3 because this always seemed like a locked in playthrough. I probably should've just stuck this on there anyways...ahem So far I've dusted off the hour-long prologue to open the game, the first few missions of Chapter 1, and a couple of Side-Ops. I just Fulton'd some puppies out. Yeah that prologue was...interesting. I think it's pretty astounding how much of it stuck from my first time around with the game nearly a decade ago, my favourite part probably being the customisation fakeout. That seems about as Kojima as it can get. It's less a tutorial and more the world's longest interactive cutscene. No complaints here, obviously. The game is simply stunning so far, in its visuals, sure, but especially in its audio design. I love the ability to mark something through your binoculars like you do in BOTW/TOTK, guess this is where the Zelda team might've got their inspiration from? Loving the variety of music so far. Kids In America and The Man Who Sold The World? Perfection! Mother Base has me...nervous. Obviously I already knew it was in the game but after the grating nightmare that was unlocking the true ending in Peace Walker? I'll probably need to look up if there's anything particular I should be investing in or know before getting too far in. Love the return of the Fulton system, of course. The guys screaming as they launch up into the sky. It popping if used indoors. Enemies noticing their buddy flying up to the moon....good stuff Already so many minor details I feel like I've uncovered, simple things such as doing something different to what Ocelot asks of you the first time you're at Mother Base, or doing it a different way, prompting what is clearly a unique response. And I thought MGS4 went a bit wild with Kojima's name being everywhere. Credits after everything is probably going to get annoying at some point, but it's fine for now! There's just this great tension and dynamism to every task I've attempted in the game so far which feels perfectly balanced. I'm really looking forward to seeing how far I can push things. So far I've just been doing the main objectives for missions and things I've stumbled across naturally, not sure how much replaying of missions I'll do just yet, think I'll need to see how much I gel with it all first. No doubt I'll be back with more thoughts as the playthrough goes on I do feel like there has been a hint or two story-wise about a certain character maybe not being a certain character, but I'll just need to see how that plays out.

I did start a new game today - well, kind of, I'll necro that thread in a bit - but RE2 wasn't it. I was thinking about it, hence the install, but yeah...that was just a post-install mis-click. Sorry H-o-T

Grubb is talking about what's next for God of War and it is apparently a return to Greece – but not in the way everyone seemed to be expecting (and recently reporting): I'll be honest, this is the first purported leak in a minute I've thought about throwing in a spoiler tag, but he says so little about it and I can't exactly picture what this would mean, so Prequel? Kratos returning home? Atreus visiting his father's old stomping grounds? No idea. If it's Santa Monica Studio, I'm in, no questions asked; if it's not, then I'm not too sure.

20th anniversary video for God of War: 100%. It astounds me how few studios and publishers capitalise on anniversaries in meaningful ways for their games. Taking the time to make the above video, put this effort into new skins for modern God of War games, position God of War as one of your biggest tentpoles, and then to not respect its legacy and origins by bringing back those earlier games for said anniversary? It's madness.

Another trailer, courtesy of last night's Future Games Show:

Kyle Bosman with another interview, and this time it's the one and only Shuhei Yoshida! 70 minutes, that's a big boi. Looking forward to diving in at some point over the weekend

Launch trailer: Quick start guide:

Ken Kutaragi has a Nintendo PlayStation in his closet which is in far better condition than the one which sold for $300,000 a few years back. Does that thing self-clean or...

So what your saying is that I should buy another copy, right?

Makes it genius marketing, though. It looks terrible, so people are talking about it. It clashes horribly, so it'll be impossible to not notice when watching the games. (And yes the logo is still crap)

Most recent thread relating to Persona 4 and probably pertains to Switch 2, too, so uh I'm going to drop this here: a potential web domain for a Persona 4 remake has been registered. Potential Switch 2 Direct attendee, or will it be saved for Not-E3 and probably turn up at Xbox or SGF?

Still remember my first time at Village Bridge in Pokémon White and then just standing there for 15 minutes to soak in the music and the vibes. Reminds me quite a bit of Suikoden II's Secret Village of the Ninja, now that I think about it: Both such excellent tracks

ASL versions of S1 and S2 are in the works, which is awesome! The ASL release of S1 will drop March 31st, giving people time to catch up, before the ASL release of S2 drops day-and-date from S2's premiere on 13th April. Per IndieWire: So great to see that Naughty Dog's best-in-class in-game accessibility is now being applied in some way to its shows, too!