Julius

I started The Boys on Sunday, and finished up Season 3 last night. Loved it. It's easily the best live-action superhero show I've watched, no question, just great writing and an excellent cast of characters, with Antony Starr as Homelander giving my favourite performance in a superhero anything since Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight. He'd be my pick to be the MCU's Doctor Doom. I could talk about this show until I'm blue in the face, but instead, I'll just highlight a few things. It's very openly a deconstruction of the genre and some very specific superheroes, but what makes it a great deconstruction in my opinion is that, even though it's an adaptation, it's not afraid to change things from the source material (note: I haven't read the source material myself, but needed to check something about the first season because I don't think the show did the best job with that scene, and the differences I read between the show and source material seemed like great changes to me) while winking and nodding at the source material, and in my opinion these changes are for the better. Compare this to the MCU, which has a very "will-they-won't-they" relationship with adapting its source material. I also think the deconstruction just shows a mastery and understanding of the genre which is incredibly rare, because it does such a good job at it, to the point I think the folks over at DC should be on their hands and knees begging the folks working on The Boys to handle some of their properties, as they've exhibited a thorough understanding of their properties in an unrelated show. Something else I want to highlight is just the great sense of humour, they do a great job of bringing people into the joke. It reminds me a lot of Rick and Morty to be honest, which I think does a great job of making people feel smarter than they are with smartly written jokes about very complex subjects, whereas The Boys understands it's audience and how hooked they are on films and film news that it feels like an in-joke when they joke about them indirectly. For me, it was getting a joke about the production troubles faced by a certain Star Wars film, I had to pause I was laughing so hard In short: if you haven't, watch it. If anything I'm gutted I didn't watch it sooner (my friends didn't sell it nearly hard enough!), but I'm also gutted that I'm now caught up. I still have to check out Diabolical, but yeah, that's some damn good television, and live-action superhero television at that

Yeah, I think that's the best way to view it to be honest: not for you and a great start for others. Not only that, if/when you're ever in the mood to go back, it seems likely it'll be on PS+ within 12 - 18 months, so unfortunately I think we'll still see people arguing back and forth about whether this game needed a remake long after it releases. Personally, I'm just screwed because I'm already in the mood to play the game again, even though I've played it three times in the last month

Hey, as a kid raised in the 2000's, Josh Peck is a treasure for what he did in Drake & Josh (and also HIMYF just wasn't great across the board). Drake Bell on the other hand?

Do we dare hope? The game appears to be listed for late Feb/early March of next year: Think this would be in line with the whispers surrounding the game's supposed internal delay from late this year to next.

Is that an American thing? I feel like I plaster commas all over the place based on how I was taught to write growing up by teachers over here (for pauses), and because I like to write sentences with a lot of clauses and pause a lot, I use them pretty liberally. I mean, I also just like throwing in loads of punctuation because it's fun; case in point: that semicolon For writing numbers it would depend on the situation for me: in a more casual setting I tend to use commas for legibility, but in a more formal setting (such as in a Maths class or STEM subject exam), I would rarely use commas outside of lists.

Today Fighter's History and Kirby's Avalanche are being added to SNES Online, and Daiva Story 6: Imperial of Nirsartia is being added to NES online:

This is super weird: here's a 10 minute long video on the game's features and our first official look at gameplay in the middle of the night in Europe, afternoon/evening in America, and early on in Japan. If you haven't played the game before, I'd recommend giving this video a skip and just reading the PS Blog stuff below, because they show and talk about a lot more than I think they needed to in terms of story elements. From the PS Blog: I can't think of the last time they dropped something like this at this sort of time – can't help if they're throwing it out randomly in the wake of the recent leaks, or if they're halfheartedly burying it amongst them a little. Either way, I find it super strange. EDIT: alright, I've watched it, it definitely looks and feels like the timing of it makes it a response to the leaks. While I think it reads and looks like the definitive version to play the game, based on previous wording used about "modernising gameplay", I can see why some might be disappointed by the lack of new things added in Part II, such as going prone or dodging. That being said, I think the game would have needed a much larger scale overhaul if those elements were to be included here (the example I've mentioned before of a certain fight likely being broken by those being added kind of highlights that). I'm a little nervous honestly about how it looks, it's already a very different vibe to the original, just looking at things like particle dispersion and density (the nail bomb explosion, the smoke cloud from a fired gun, the explosion of the sack thrown by the Bloater). I can understand why they changed Tess (she looked late 20's/early 30's in the original in my opinion, definitely not as close to Joel's age as I think she was meant to be), but personally, I much prefer the gruffer look of Joel in the original game compared with how he's looked in trailers and stills so far; ditto for Ellie, actually, there's just a timeless stylisation that's been lost I think (in my mind no doubt a result of working backwards from Part II for those assets rather than revisiting Part I's). I also just think there's a lot of lens flare going on and some of the muddiness of the original being lost can give the game a bit too clean and manufactured a look, we'll have to wait and see of course, but like I said recently after beating the game a bunch of times, they art directed the absolute crap of the original game, and some changes here just seem...a little odd, I feel, again just giving it a different vibe. To be positive though, I will say that things like customisation for those repeat runs is going to be good fun, I love (and hate!) the idea of a speedrun clock in the corner if I so choose to stick it there, the AI seems to be a huge step up (which is the only actual reason I can give for really wanting this, playing the original on Grounded definitely showed how busted some of that AI is now), and the additions made in the accessibility department are freaking awesome, Part II is still best in class in that regard and it's only right that it's carried over to this game. Oh, and the more in-depth Photo Mode looks great (I love a good Photo Mode!), and the idea of new workbench animations and weapon details inspired by the work they did in Part II is fantastic too. There's also a lot of talk about everything being seamless now, and while it's handled pretty well in the original, there are definitely some spots where it felt rough (there's a hard cut to black from cutscene to in-game in the original that lasts like a second at the end of the hotel sequence after the ladder skirmish which feels completely out of place, so hopefully that's gone, it might've been a directing choice but I don't think it was a great one). I think I'm still going to bite, but after this, even more than before, I can totally see why some might be willing to skip it. I don't think I should be nervous at all, yet here I am concerned about the art direction and environment design changes made to "modernise" the game potentially having a drastic impact on the vibe of some scenes and locations, which I don't think I should be nervous about in a remake as 1:1 as this is. Will just have to wait and see I guess, Endure and Survive and all that

Or this kid I like to think Christopher Nolan is a hardcore Nickelodeon fan with some of the casting choices for Oppenheimer

Mixing for theaters and not going back in (properly) for a home release is simultaneously the most and least Nolan thing possible. Every single time I watch one of his films at home I need to keep the remote in hand and be ready to go from 30 up to 70 and back again at the drop of a hat

Maybe the Unobtainium was the friends we made along the way? Either way, the game's been delayed Shocker.

August 30th:

Great looking poster for Christopher Nolan's next film, Oppenheimer, which has been announced to be coming out 21st July 2023: If you thought the cast for Dune was nuts, the cast for this film really gives it a run for its money. It's absolutely stacked.

Early review scores are up, and they are looking good!

I'm not much of a PC player, but isn't picking apart the requirements for Minimum settings absolutely sidestepping the question of the port's quality? God of War had a GPU requirement of a GTX 960 for the same Minimum settings of 720p @ 30fps, but by all accounts that I've read and heard, it's a great way to play the game, and has been since launch. Ditto for the job that's been done fixing other PlayStation ports on PC (which weren't necessarily as well received at launch). More importantly, to address your first question: Remastered is the PS5 remaster of the game, with the bells and whistles that should entail (higher quality assets, etc.). It's not a PS4 game, so it's not missing out on matching PS4 settings, it's running a PS5 game on lower settings. This is not at all to speak to the quality of the port, mind you, because I don't think we really have an idea on that yet, but again, PlayStation have definitely been getting better the more of these they've churned out. God of War on PC had pretty widely known involvement from SSM, though, and I have no idea how much Insomniac is involved with the port of Spider-Man, so On the upside, there's only 3 weeks or so until it releases, so we won't need to wait long to find out

PC features trailer for Spider-Man Remastered: Looks pretty damn great! Required specs from the PS Blog:

The English version of the meaty 8 minute overview trailer which Japan got a couple of weeks ago:

I saw in the Gaming Diary thread that you've recently played Yakuza 0, so I will just suggest what I think is the best advice I think to give with these games: take your time, Persona 5 style. That doesn't mean you need to do everything (lord knows I still haven't learnt how to play mahjong, and I've played 8 of RGG's offerings now), but the best parts of Yakuza are definitely hidden amongst the weeds once you've got a few games in, and you get a grasp on what to expect from the main story. Things like the substories and mini-games are easily some of the best parts of these games, they're definitely worth taking the time to do!

Record got broken again in Coningsby, Lincolnshire, reaching 40.3°C. Just seen about the fires in Wenington, East London, too, several houses burnt to a cinder. It's shocking stuff to see. But don't worry, we still have people in power who deny climate change or are halting drastic changes needed around climate change. Well, at least we've made it through the last 36 hours I guess. Locally, we've got a thunderstorm forecast to start in the next hour which is going to plummet the temperature from 33°C to 23°C before it climbs up a bit again before the sun goes down, so I'm keeping half an eye on the window to open it up and get some cooler air in.

First free update arrives this Friday, and a further two free updates are planned for 2022:

Well, out of the blue, but by no means unexpected, a first look at the game has come courtesy of fighter Mikuru Asakura. From Famitsu: The video from Mikuru Asakura touring the RGG offices:

Anyway you cut it going over 40°C for the first time on record isn't good news

A reminder from Nintendo on the key dates to remember as the eShop winds down, as well as sharing that the sale of the Fire Emblem Fates games will end one month earlier (28th February 2023) than the final purchasing date (27th March 2023): I'm probably going to spend the next few weeks narrowing down my list a bit further before I start picking things up. Still planning on getting a lot, but there are definitely some games I feeli can give a pass.

Echoshift is also coming to the service within the next 24 hours: Interesting strategy to throw this out in July outside of the previous announcement for this month's update, I've got to say. Doesn't exactly scream "we have a rollout plan", that's for sure

Yeah, I thought Season 3 was a bit of a step down from Season 2 too, though it's still very good, definitely been a shift from where I feel like the first season was 90% comedy and 10% serious/romance, to the second season which felt like 70% comedy and 30% serious/romance (which I think is a good sweet spot), whereas the third season felt like it was closer to a 50/50 split. That being said, still had some great references and moments of animation, and some of the funniest moments of the show so far all in one episode... Honestly, the show reminds me a lot of my feelings on Spy x Family. It doesn't do anything wrong - in fact, it does almost everything right - but I see it topping the all-time chart on MAL and it's just tough for me to put the show in the same category as some of the other shows close to the top of the pile; then again, it is nice to see a comedy getting its dues for a change, because it's still must-watch anime if you like to laugh at all when watching TV

Early review scores are looking very solid!