Julius

Yeah, it's very funny having played Live A Live over the last week or so and knowing that remake of an incredibly niche JRPG which has been stuck in Japan for nearly 30 years has voice-acting and Pokémon does not. I agree that it's a letdown here like it was in Legends: Arceus, it's odd how they continue to go that way, but I suppose it's just another result of these games needing to be forced into shelves ASAP, I don't think they've got the time for voice-acting and then the localised efforts they'd need too. Totally unrelated, but I forgot to mention: man I hate the faces of the in-game character models. They remind me of mascots I saw at local theme parks when travelling around Europe as a kid, which is to say that they're very unnerving to look at. The only character I think looks okay in-game so far is probably Grusha, but even she he only gets away with it because half of her his face is covered by her his scarf

Caught up on this after the fact as I had a meeting. Like @Dufniall mentions, man that first chunk of the Presents was pretty much a snooze fest in terms of news. Having a massive pop-up Pokémon Centre at World's is pretty sweet for those attending, the first GO and Unite World Championships being at the event will be great, and I'm sure that will be a great time, but it definitely felt like an odd thing to start with. Which isn't at all to say that the updates following with the updates on the mobile games were any more interesting, because while I'm sure they have their fans, it's just a weird vibe where these Presents somehow always feel a bit more smarmy than most Directs are - I know this is a TPCi joint, but if you're going to follow that model, maybe ask for some pointers. We're in this super weird place now where after New Pokémon Snap last year I thought we'd see more spin-offs coming at us at a faster clip, but instead it's radio silence. I did dig the trailer and deep dive for Scarlet & Violet, even if the trailer itself was pretty unexciting with how it was presented, there's some fun stuff in there, so just to reel some stuff off: I'm all about Paldean Wooper (the lines on its belly make it look like its trying to fake a six-pack which is hilarious ), instantly one of my favourite regional forms. Fidough - great name, pretty generic design, but curious to see what they have cooking with its evolution/s (heh, baking joke). Cetitan looks like a Forretress and Palkia lovechild with a little Trapinch somewhere in the family tree, so...yeah. I really couldn't care less about Tera Types, Terastal forms, and Terastallising (they use a "z" but I'm not living in a country which is two and a half centuries old, so I refuse). Since X & Y we have had gimmicks with every generation: Mega Evolutions (in lieu of actually making new evolutions and pre-evolutions, a win), Z-Moves (a massive flop which is now only brought up when speculating for new games based on character art and going "oh, is that guy wearing a Z-bracelet? Or is that a Mega Evolution stone?", and even that is happening less and less now), regional forms (questionable from a lore perspective, but otherwise a win), Dynamax and Gigantamax (look, as someone who hasn't really dived into Raids, the only good thing to really come from this for me is better massive plush designs), and now this. Honestly, I would have been happy with keeping Mega Evolutions and regional forms but doing away with the rest of it (well, maybe one of the options for Raids now that multiplayer is being consistnetly fleshed out). Looks like customisation is going to be pretty limited, which is a massive shame after some fun options in Legends: Arceus. Eight gyms in no set order is a win - I mean, finally, how long have we been asking for this? - and curious to see how they scale (they've got to scale, right? It'd be very funny if they didn't though) and hear what the other two stories are besides the typical path that they teased, as it's very interesting that it seems like we'll get the option to begin with whichever we like. Surely one is going to do with research and observation, probably of the Terestral stuff? But I'm not too sure on the other, probably something to do with the evil organisation we haven't seen yet, or hell, maybe a mini-game where you Terastallise your Pokémon and cut them down into a necklace. Interesting that the legendary Pokémon will seemingly join you pretty early in your adventure? At least that's the feeling I got. I'm actually looking forward to multiplayer seeing as you'll be able to just explore, hopefully we'll have a few groups going when this launches! Overall, a fine Presents, but not one which felt necessary, I really think they could have just dropped the new trailer and the deep dive rather than stretching this out to 20 minutes or however long it was. I'm looking forward Scarlet & Violet a bit more now, as while the exploration side of things seems a bit more surface level like it was in Legends: Arceus (at least from what we've seen so far), it's a step in the direction I want to see them take, and ultimately just getting in some jolly co-op roaming around on my Pokémon's wheels/wings/feet with friends seems like a good time to me. Also, can't go without mentioning Game Freak making a smart move with the legendary Pokémon here, in that they seem to have just nailed the roaming methods to these two legendary Pokémon to reduce the animation and design work they need to do for something which I'm sure could have easily become bloated with the number of Pokémon out there, and just considering how each method required a different Pokémon in Legends: Arceus. My Verdict: 6.0/10 - inoffensive but kind of unnecessary as a presentation. Closing thoughts: it's Wooping Time.

Yeah, pretty much in case you can look at a GIF on Twitter, it's definitely...something:

Today's trailer from the Pokémon Presents: Courtesy of the official site, we also have our first top-down look at the region of Paldea: We also got some more details on version exclusive Pokémon from the site too: Larvitar and Stonjourney will be exclusive to Scarlet, and Bagon and Eiscue will be exclusive to Violet. From launch up until 28th February 2023, it was announced that a Pikachu with the move Fly and a Flying Tera Type would be available through Mystery Gift. There's also a page on the official site which dives into character customisation a bit more, detailing that we'll be able to change eye shape, mouth shape, and more, as well as the more typical stuff like hairtsyle, hair colour, and eyebrows. It unfortunately doesn't sound like there'll be much in the way of clothing customisation, though, as the same page mentions the academy only having four uniforms in total (from short sleeves and shorts to blazers) and an additional variety of accesories to customise your look with. Very much looking forwards to zooming in on the map and speculating a bit once I'm done with work, but for now: Paldean Wooper is life and I'm actually kind of excited for multiplayer in this game

Yeah, unfortunately so. A record-breaking initial few weeks of sale, in January no less for a series typically launching in November, is nothing short of remarkable, but the combination of a lack of a reason to return (very minor updates, unlikely to get a major update with Scarlet & Violet on the horizon, and lack of multiplayer features) and selling after Christmas just two months after the most recent Pokémon games really put this game in a poor position from the start. Again: still sold great, any many would be jealous of these sales. But for the first "open world" Pokémon game? It's very strange how that game was marketed and released. Also the Sun & Moon sales fiasco still bums me out. It's a very linear and easy game but was an excellent celebration of Pokémon, it more than deserved more time to reach the 20+ million mark as Sword & Shield has since. Yeah, if I were Sony, even their hardware sales would be a slight bit concerning to me too. Not to go off on too much of a tangent, but I genuinely think the struggle to get stock on shelves has had this weird side effect where now that there is some stock available pretty consistently (I've seen the Horizon Forbidden West bundle available a whole lot, maybe even more so than the standalone console SKUs), no-one is really aware of it? They're also just struggling to consistently launch first party titles on the thing (for the life of me I can't remember getting anything from them as of late), but I think the latter part of this year, between TLOU Part I and Ragnarök, as well as people saving for Black Friday/Christmas/etc. should see the tide turn there. Hopefully. Maybe. I find myself still in such a weird spot with the Switch and the idea of a successor myself, though maybe that's because I haven't played my Switch as much I would like? I don't know if I'm looking back on the days of the DS a bit too fondly but I just haven't felt like Nintendo have got their hooks into me personally with the Switch software, and so the only reason I actually care for the Switch successor at this point is just because I don't want to play a scuffed version of the Untitled sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild That's a good spot, and I think it's very interesting that every region is comparable except for The Americas, but if anything I think that suggests that there are other socioeconomic and geopolitical factors at play rather than it being down to the games or people growing tired of hardware. I'm more surprised that on the whole the numbers are as comparable as they are with little deviation, because I do think it's worth considering that last year Nintendo had seven different million-sellers for the same period, three of which were new debuts (New Pokémon Snap - 2.07 million; Mario Golf: Super Rush - 1.34 million; Miitopia - 1.04 million), one of which was a hangover from the previous quarter (Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury - 1.09 million), and while the usual suspects were still going strong, this was back when Animal Crossing was also still in the mix (Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 1.69 million; Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 1.26 million; Ring Fit Adventure - 1.15 million) where it's not present here. That slack has clearly been picked up this year in places by games not mentioned in today's report (third- party and indies I guess?). It's weird because, the feeling I get at least, is that it's just been a quiet quarter by comparison across the board compared with last year, to be honest, like @Hero-of-Time mentioned. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the only runaway success that's third-party that I can think of which released this last quarter? Anecdotally, that's also the only new game I bought in Q2; I feel like we're firmly in backlog-tackling country, and have been for these last few months. Again, the crazy part to me is that there's even a comparison to be made, let alone that the figures are so similar outside of The Americas, because I had felt that this last quarter was a pretty quiet one. I'm not sure if it's so much an indication that their money is being spent elsewhere, so much as there's been a lot of stuff going on in the world the last six months, and people tend to clutch their purse strings when there's a reason to be anxious. I don't know, Ring Fit strikes me as the kind of game where you're better off not seeing the credits. Good Ending (footage of someone who has seen the credits in Ring Fit on their morning jog): Due to your newfound, Ring Fit-instilled strength, you are a danger to others, and a simple hug can crush those you love. You may or may not find yourself enlisted into a team where your leader occasionally smirks and teases saying the word "Assemble" a lot. You will never again know human touch. Bad Ending:

Well, it's already that time again: here are the results from Nintendo's latest quarterly report, for the period ending 30th June 2022. This is typically a bit of a quieter one, but there are still some interesting points to take away. The Big Takeaways 3.43 million Switch units have been sold in the last quarter, bringing the Switch's total haul to 111.08 million units to date. This quarter represents a noticeable decline from last year's 4.45 million units sold for the same period, however Nintendo has cited that this is a result of the semiconductor shortage. The forecast for this financial year currently remains at 21 million units. A few major titles launched this quarter, so we have some figures for those: Nintendo Switch Sports has sold 4.84 million units worldwide in its first 10 weeks since release; and Mario Strikes: Battle League has sold 1.91 million units. While Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes was released this quarter, due to the nature of it being published in Japan by Koei Tecmo and in the rest of the world by Nintendo, a sales update for it has not been included in Nintendo's quarterly report, meaning that so far only data for the Japanese market has been shared as of Koei Tecmo's latest quarterly report (held towards the end of July) - hopefully we'll get an update on this from Koei Tecmo if and when it overcomes any major sales thresholds. Having debuted at the tail end of last quarter, Kirby and the Forgotten Land sold an additional 1.88 million units this quarter to bring its total sales to 4.53 million units to date. This means that it has already sold more than the third and fourth best-selling Kirby titles combined, and is likely to surpass the best-selling Kirby title - Kirby's Dream Land at 5.1 million units - in the next quarter. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe rounds out the million-sellers of this quarter with another 1.48 million units sold. Surprisingly, Pokémon Legends: Arceus has still not cracked into the Top 10 Best-sellers list, not even featuring in this quarter's million-sellers list. With the release of Pokémon Scarlet & Violet in November, it seems like if it is going to break into the Top 10 Best-sellers, it will need to do so by the end of Nintendo's next quarterly report (ending 30th September) which will be dropping in early October. Advances Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp is mentioned in the quarterly report and remains on the list of titles with a date which is TBA. Top 10 Best-selling Switch titles as of 30th June 2022 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 46.82 million Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 39,38 million Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 28.82 million The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 27.14 million Pokémon Sword/Pokémon Shield - 24.50 million Super Mario Odyssey - 23.93 million Super Mario Party - 18.06 million Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Pokémon Shining Pearl - 14.79 million Pokémon: Let's Go Pikachu!/Pokémon Let's Go Eevee! - 14.66 million Ring Fit Adventure - 14.54 million

I mean, new ideas take time to implement and, oftentimes, several cracks to refine, so if it's ever going to get better, they'll need a few more tries that Legends: Arceus is the first truly 3D "core series" Pokémon game in 2022, nearly a decade on from when we first jumped into 3D with X & Y, means we could be stuck where we are for a while. Personally, I don't think having the traditional eight Gyms with an Elite Four and a quality open world have to be mutually exclusive, and there are certainly ways that it could be done well (heck, level scaling has been talked about since I was on the playground in primary school) – but unfortunately, I just don't think Game Freak as they are will be the ones to convince open world naysayers otherwise. For some crazy reason or another this game is releasing just 10 months after Legends: Arceus, meaning that, if we're being totally fair, at best this game will realistically have only learned lessons from that game's QA, and at worst they're just walking in the dark (which seems par for the course sometimes with Game Freak at this point!). Not that Pokémon are particularly keen to take criticism onboard and learn from it to begin with, but even as someone who enjoyed Legends: Arceus, I can definitely understand some of the issues people have with it, and I think there are lessons to be learned. It's a huge shame that if Game Freak have bothered to learn anything that it's very unlikely that we see it until whatever the next games are after Scarlet and Violet Also, while I get that not every open world game is great @Glen-i (I'd say on average - if I were to pick up a random open world game off a shelf in GAME - they can be pretty dull and lazily designed, but as always there are exceptions), I refuse to believe that an open world Pokémon game can't be done well. Could you go the Breath of the Wild route? Eh, I honestly don't see why you would at this point, core series Pokémon hasn't been about exploration for arguably over a decade at this point. But something like Xenoblade with massive zones made up of a field and a handful of routes, with the occasional village or town along the way? That seems absolutely doable, and more importantly very suitable, for Pokémon. And if you want a more linear "open world", just look at what Dragon Quest XI achieved. What these games have in common is that they took time, which Game Freak never seems to have. The blame for that likely lies at TPCi's feet as well as probably Nintendo's to an extent, but it's such a shame. I think back to Sugimori's sketches for the original Pokémon games often when we're between generations and it's funny that there's a sense of awe and excitement for exploration that I get from those simple sketches - just from the sense of scale and a sense of actual partnership with your Pokémon - that I just don't think core series Pokémon really strives for. Legends: Arceus was a single step in that direction in some ways...but it was, ultimately, more like Monster Hunter World than an actual open world. It's not like I have this expectation for Pokémon to knock it out of the park with an open world, because of Game Freak and TPCi scheduling, but it's been weird this last generation or two to see them flip-flopping so hard on what their vision is for a Pokémon game; if you told me when we got the incredibly linear Sun & Moon that we'd have an open world Pokémon game just six years later, I would have probably laughed with you, but now here we are waiting for Scarlet & Violet

@darksnowman have you checked out Base? I picked up a copy earlier this year from them for ~£50 when I noticed physical stock of XC2 was getting harder to find, would definitely vouch for them as I've used them a few times now. They're also one of the few retailers left with any semblance of a remaining physical 3DS stock, which is nice too Not sure if you'd also want Torna physically (if you haven't got it already?), but it might be worth hunting down a copy sooner rather than later if you do. I picked up a copy a few months ago at a similar price for what I got XC2, and while it's still available new at a similar price now in some places on eBay and Amazon, given how much it's fluctuated over the last 12 months or so, I imagine that's going to continue skyrocket every time stock gets a little scarce

Damn, great share @Dcubed! Might be worth dropping it over in the Wii U/3DS eShop closure thread too, seeing as the stores close up directly to eShop cards on the 29th (though they should be able to still be added to a linked account until the store properly closes in March I think?), and this is running up until the 31st, making this an excellent time for a discount. I'm not sure how likely it is another one comes along before March, so I'm definitely going to be jumping on that when I get paid later this month and save me some money on my planned eShop expenditure

I can definitely see where you're coming from here, and I think a large part of that is down to poor final entries in a trilogy, like with X-Men Last Stand in 2006 and Spider-Man 3 in 2007, which I think retroactively kind of soured the earlier entries in those trilogies. As in...the Christopher Nolan trilogy? In fairness, only one of those released prior to the start of the MCU (The Dark Knight released in July 2008, after Iron Man released in May), so I'm not sure how much that film might have contributed to that feeling prior to the MCU but, considering that only Batman Begins was out at that time and trilogy openers not always being great, I can kind of see it. I'd heartily recommend revisiting Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, both are fantastic films before you even start to account for the fact that they're superhero films, though I do feel the former is overshadowed unfairly by the latter (The Dark Knight is absolutely the stronger film, but Batman Begins lays the foundation superbly). The Dark Knight Rises is a mess, though, so YMMV there. I really enjoyed The First Avenger too, and I think for me the trilogy of Captain America films is the strongest trilogy in the MCU so far. There's a narrative and thematic throughline there which isn't evident in the other trilogies, it's actually got a sense of musical continuity, and even with Civil War being a team-up, the fact that it is a Captain America film first and foremost isn't lost. Compare that to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness which feels more like a WandaVision sequel than it does a Doctor Strange one Iron Man 2 has its moments but on the whole is terrible, but I found myself coming around somewhat on Iron Man 3 when I rewatched it in the build-up to Infinity War. I went through some personal stuff between my first viewings of the film and that most recent viewing prior to Infinity War, and though the film on the whole is a bit of a mess, Robert Downey Jr's performance is incredibly relatable and underrated in that film, but I think it's so easily missed if you haven't been through some stuff which would cause you to go through some of the things you see him do in his performance on-screen. Yeah, I know we've said this in some of the other MCU threads, but so much this. Unlike with games, which I generally avoid scoring for my own sanity and because I think there's on average a lot more to say and explore with one game versus one movie, I use an app/website called Letterboxd to track films I've watched and how I've rated them on a 10-point scale. It's come in clutch on more than one occasion when I'm talking to my friends about some of my favourite films, I simply look at what I've given a 10 or 5 stars and can start to talk about my subjective favourites (which, more often than not, has some level of alignment with the quality I perceive in those films). When it comes to the MCU, my mindset has always been that a 7 or 3.5 stars is a baseline for what I'd expect - a solid, fun time, eating popcorn while swimming in those sevens. Now, there's a whole other discussion to be had about how impossible this is when I'm comparing something like Ant-Man on the same scale I'm using to score The Godfather, but most of the time it correlates somewhat between where I'd rank the films in a tier list concerning only the MCU and the quality I perceive the film to have. Now, this is of course entirely subjective (what the hell does a score even mean? I interpret it typically as some sort of a likelihood of recommendation, perceived quality, and my likelihood to not flip the channel if I walked into a room and it was on), but so far we're six films into Phase Four, of which I've seen five (sorry, Thor: Love and Thunder). Of those five that I've seen, only two have been at or above the 7/10 I'd expect out of an MCU film: Shang-Chi (8/10) and No Way Home (9/10 - maybe needs another watch, but that's mostly down to its second half being so electric); for comparison, Black Widow I gave a 6/10 (Yelena being that film's saving grace), and Eternals and Multiverse of Madness I both gave a 5/10 (if you've seen the films, you probably have a good idea of why, even if you enjoyed them). The crazy thing is that my scores are pretty much in line with the general consensus based on the average film scores given by other Letterboxd users, so that perception of a dip in quality is being recognised by many. It's funny. Pretty much every time I jump on with my friends for the last 18 months or so, it's almost always becomes talk about MCU burnout, and DC slipping up Just to add, I think this also ties into your following point about not knowing which direction things are taking, because in terms of pure character count, the introduction of the X-Men is going to absolutely swamp the MCU with new characters. I'd be surprised if it's any later than Phase Six (there's no way they'd wait until 2026...right?), but considering that we're heading towards The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars, introducing them in Phase Six could also quite easily rush things along. It reminds me a bit of where we were at after the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, when Adam Warlock was teased and everyone thought he was going to be the deus ex machina to resolve Infinity War/Endgame (which, well, arguably fell to Captain Marvel in Endgame). Funnily, I had the opposite issue where until the post-credits tease of Thanos made him a household name, I knew barely anything about the guy other than what I'd read on a Top Trumps card, whereas probably thanks to the 90's and 2000's animated series for the Fantastic Four, I'm pretty aware of Kang and everything else they bring along (typing this has made me remember that I had a Mega Bloks set based on the Fantastic Four film, the Doctor Doom cape in that set looked phenomenal ). Similar for the X-Men actually, and Spider-Man, just because of those animated series; heck, I'd go so far as to say that if you didn't read comics, people my age probably had very little knowledge of the Avengers prior to the MCU blowing up. I'm really just crossing my fingers for Doctor Doom to be the post-credits tease at the end of Wakanda Forever at this point. Yeah, it's weird, I've definitely grown up on a bit of both but feel that for me DC has done more in terms of giving me principles and something to aspire towards (thanks, Batman), and so similarly I'm appalled at how poor a job WB have done in getting that cinematic universe off the ground. I gave up after watching the first Suicide Squad film, and I haven't actually caught up on the rest yet, though I did check out James Gunn's Suicide Squad (which was enjoyable, but ultimately felt just like an R-rated version of Guardians). Probably not the place to get into it, but this is what happens when you base a solo film (Man of Steel) off the tone of an unrelated trilogy (The Dark Knight trilogy) and then suddenly decide to expand because, uh, money, and without a creative lead. Now I think Man of Steel is a good film, but when that's your Superman, you've already written yourself somewhat into a corner – it's not that you can't do a darker Superman story, but there's a reason that more of his darker stories are told in standalone/alternate timeline comic runs, because especially when you want to play a character like Batman off him, them being from completely different backgrounds tonally is half of the appeal! Kansas-raised god from another planet meeting a billionaire orphan who turned tackling his inner demons into an evening hobby? Come on! Anyways, even though the live-action stuff is of varying quality, I'd definitely recommend checking out the animated DC films, which are no question the best DC films put out over the last decade or so, with some great and oftentimes very faithful adaptations of stories like Under the Red Hood, The Dark Knight Returns, etc. Definitely a couple of weird choices (The Killing Joke should've been an easy win but decided to split the fanbase instead), but on the whole it's got a great cast of voice actors with plenty of great stories realised in animation in awesome ways. Justice League: War was also a template for how it actually is possible to bring everyone together for the first time in one film, even introducing a bunch of these characters, and yet still pull off giving the audience a great time watching the JL assemble, but sadly WB don't pay attention to their own projects

Well, looks like we're finally going to be getting some new Scarlet and Violet news!* *and more, because it's Pokémon, so there's always more. Do we start hoping for a Mystery Dungeon Explorers remake now or..?

New Andor trailer: And a three episode premiere to boot, though the show has now been delayed from the end of August to September 21st:

For anyone who doesn't already own it/have it available through PS+ Extra, Demon's Souls is available physically from Amazon for just £19.99. Seemed too good a deal to not share

I honestly think it's a feeling I've seen in people watching the MCU since Phase Two to be honest – probably Age of Ultron? And I definitely remember people questioning why the Guardians were getting a film as they were nobodies and that it was going to drag things out. But I think it understandably came to a head post-Endgame in 2019, closing the book on an 11 year journey spanning 22 films (I'm just counting everything up to and including Endgame here). As we got closer and closer to Endgame the number of films released per year in the MCU increased from two films per year in 2016 to three films per year in the year's following, which was never a crazy amount to keep up with. That's, what, six hours a year, maybe a bit more? I think what helped is the mess that was the MCU's extended universe for the longest time, and how shaky it's canonicity was at times under the lens of the wider MCU. You could quite simply skip Agents of Shield because it didn't have a tangible impact on the films, in the way that there was very, very, very little content carrying over from the TV shows to the films as a result of the power struggle between Ike Perlmutter and Kevin Feige over Marvel Television (they were very much trying to do their own things which would sometimes get in the way of Feige's plans, such as for The Inhumans). This started calming down in 2015 when Kevin Feige started reporting directly to Alan Horn at Disney, but didn't really go away until Perlmutter stepped away and Feige became the Chief Creative Officer at Marvel in 2019, helped by plans already being made for MCU shows to come to Disney+ as far back as 2018. At this point, I think it is objectively too much, not even for those of us watching, but because VFX artists cannot keep up with this level of output (and there aren't enough of them to begin with), and it's why in the last few years cracks have certainly started to appear in the quality of these productions. I've definitely seen some people say they're just as hooked as they were before (even on here) in light of us getting much more content, and the box office numbers don't lie, the MCU is still by all means a rampant success, but I do wonder just how many of those ticket sales are people watching a film because they want to see the film, or because of sunken cost in the MCU. It's clearly had a massive impact on pretty much every entertainment industry it reasonably could at this point, from how it brings more people into keeping up with and being interested in films to taking up the entire film calendar, to everything needing to be a team-up/be going somewhere/be filled with references, and this is as true for films as it is for TV and, I imagine increasingly so in the next decade (just thanks to the longer production time and thus slower reaction time), video games. I do think there's a wider discussion about choice paralysis and the dangers of having an overwhelming number of choices with something as trivial as your pick of entertainment to be had here which doesn't just apply to Marvel, but just about everything these days. @Happenstance suggested in the Phase Five thread that you can just key in on whatever you want and that there's not a need to keep up with everything - just check out the Cliffnotes if you aren't feeling something and want to know where the connective tissue is in references made, or watch select episodes - and I think he's right, though I know that's not such an easy solution to implement for myself and some others who view the MCU for what it is sold as, which something that you need to remain up-to-date with and have watched every second of, sort of like it's some form of validation of your level of fandom? It's a tricky slope to navigate but I do think more and more emphasis is being placed on what we do and don't consume by other people, and almost like politics or religion, what you choose for entertainment feels like it's heading the way of being some form of validation of character/potential compatibility in some people's eyes. People have always had a tendency to jump to such extremes, but it's very quickly becoming the norm in areas where it really shouldn't be. Picking your battles is going to be key just for keeping up with the MCU itself moving forwards I think in the same way that it is just about every other entertainment medium we may want to indulge in, which is nuts, but also genuinely kind of exhausting to just think about. The crazy thing is that, so far, the MCU is the only one to truly make their model a success; no-one else has come remotely close. And thank goodness – I can't imagine what it would be like if we had two of these juggernauts to keep up with.

Steam with the Oprah energy: everyone with an outstanding Steam Deck reservation will be able to get theirs by the end of the year. Awesome stuff

21.7 million PS5 units have now shipped, per yesterday's quarterly report from Sony, with 2.4 million of those being in the last quarter: Off the back of this, the forecast for units shipped for the year has been lowered to 18 million, anticipating improved shipments as supply chain woes start to ease, and the components shortage having a relatively lesser impact. I also can't help but wonder if the difficulty in tracking down and getting a PS5 for so long has created this fog around the console for some, as I'm definitely starting to notice more availability and the time it takes for stock to sell out increasing (mostly since the Horizon Forbidden West bundle launched, so maybe people just don't want that bundle?). Software sales took a bit of a hit, down by 26% (no doubt due to the lack of any real big hitter over the last quarter). PS Plus subs are up 2%, and monthly active PSN users are down 3%. The count has also officially stopped for PS4 shipments, leaving it at the count reported in May during their EoY of 117 million units.

Turned out to be modders, but certainly one hell of an achievement by the sound of things! Now would be the perfect time for a bit of news on a sequel

Well iPhone users, enjoy: the Backbone One - PlayStation Edition.

I'll have to take a nose around and revive some old threads when I get around to them I think from what I understand and can see on HLTB they're not terribly long games, probably a few weekday nights, so I'm hoping it gets me back to playing some relatively shorter games. I've played a lot of longer games this year, and while I've loved most of them, I haven't exactly put a dent in my wall of backlog games, hopefully they'll be a nice change of pace! I'm hoping to cap off playing these and God of War III Remastered by getting back to God of War (2018), as I never got the Platinum for it. Having now played Red Dead Redemption II I'm really looking forward to reviving the 2018 GOTY debate I won't lie, it can definitely be daunting playing some of these games for the first time, just knowing how much they mean to so many people, especially when I feel I'm fairly entrenched in the gaming landscape now – it's hard to escape how important some of these games are when they're in 'Best of' lists. Playing through Ocarina of Time all the way through for the first time earlier this year was a huge example of this for me, it's hard to not occasionally find yourself wondering "does this still hold up?" It's like watching a classic film from the 60's or 70's today for the first time, things like The Godfather or Apocalypse Now, where you've heard how great it is, and I think it puts a lot of pressure on the film up until that point where you just find yourself sinking into it. Despite some of the intimidation, just getting on with it always immediately quells that feeling, and I do always enjoy going back and having the conversation about these games, whichever side I land on, especially on here with people who are open to having discussions and hearing other thoughts about those games

Vita means life Remote Play on Steam Deck is life Took around 15 minutes to set up through Chiaki with this guide on YouTube, and the results are really nice. I'll probably reserve it for slower or 2D games (though my short test with Astro's Playroom was surprisingly smooth), it'll definitely save me a penny or two moving forwards not needing to buy certain games again/multiple times if I just plan on playing them at home, and I feel could be really great for shorter grinding sessions in JRPGs. I've also hooked up my black Dualsense (as you can see!), love that the UI automatically updates to show the X and O rather than A and B when using it, and had a bit of a play around with Battlefront II, very much looking forward to playing through that campaign again. Also got my Logitech MX stuff hooked up too, so now I'm just going through my list downloading stuff and having a bit of a play around with Steam as someone who isn't really ingrained into the ecosystem, and it's great. The default controller options I got for Battlefront II weren't responsive, so I just went into the store and downloaded someone else's controller configuration, and it was all sorted. This should be a fun summer

First teaser (I guess?) for Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, which Universal have decided to just loop on their channel Still can't believe they got a real nuke for the purpose of filming

First trailer for Blonde, the Marilyn Monroe film based on a not-totally-accurate novel, starring Ana de Armas: Her accent sneaks through a bit and I'm still not quite sure if her casting is the right one (just considering the person she's portraying, I don't know if the message it's sending is quite right), but, with so much of it being in black and white, and especially with the aspect ratio and cinematography being used, I'd say they've done a good job of selling Ana de Armas as Monroe (and a much better job than the colour stills release a month or two back, which looked a bit like she was wearing a Halloween costume).

The second wave of the Booster Course Pass is set to launch next Thursday on 4th August: (YouTube link for your not-compressed-by-Twitter viewing pleasure)

I'd be interested please, as even not-folders are better than no folders!

Steam Deck has arrived in one piece Man, I wonder what I'll buy for it first...