Julius

Sentient Mario Maker for the win! I, for one, welcome our new AI (and future robot) overlords

Scoooooop! According to this leak, Horizon Forbidden West might be coming to PS+ Extra/Premium this month, roughly a year after launch! Wonder if a similar window will be implemented with new first party titles moving forwards? Would be smart to get people in to buy the DLC I guess? I didn't pick Forbidden West up last year, mainly because while I loved fighting Machines in Zero Dawn and the story of the machine uprising, everything else was...pretty meh to me about that game. Would gladly take this in the PS+ Catalog and wait as long as I can before picking it up physically just to have it on my shelf

Netflix have released the first sneak peek of Pluto, which will be coming to Netflix exclusively later this year: Not too keen on the CG, but the character and background art looks solid! Also liking the sound of the soundtrack, assuming this is a hint of what's to come with the show!

I've seen things. A whole lot of things. I've taken lengthy notes for a meaty update, but as I don't have time to sit down for that just yet, for now, I'll just say: I'm 12 hours in, and I think this might be my favourite From Soft game, and an instant favourite of all time. Everything about this game is speaking to me. Sorry, Elden Ring, your reign was short-lived For anyone wondering where I'm up to without me giving a meaty update on bosses (I finally died to one! – well, actually two!) and areas... Freaking loving this game man

Not related to this particular game, but related to the Theatrhythm series – per GoNintendo, the Theatrhythm team would be open to a Nintendo-themed installment. It's been said before, but yep, that would be awesome – and seems like the devs agree. As for this particular game, I think I'll wait until all the DLC is out before picking up a copy, but I'm definitely interested in giving it a whirl!

Digital Foundry's take on Metroid Prime Remastered: The game really does look incredible. Just another two and a half weeks until I can get my hands on that physical edition!

I mean, on the one hand, just because the game has reportedly been sitting on a shelf waiting to launch for some years now, it doesn't mean it couldn't be updated. Actually, your argument that they wouldn't have known GBA NSO would be a thing at the time is kind of it's own argument for it not being datamined – it could be on the backburner to be added in an update whenever Fusion comes to GBA NSO. Plus, we all know how datamining goes these days - I have no doubts that there'd be a list of other GBA NSO games in there for some silly reason, and so leaving it out until it's actually needed would make sense. But honestly, I do agree with you that it's probably not going to be a thing. I think the most damning argument against suits being added from a GBA NSO game is simply because it wasn't advertised in the Direct when announcing Prime Remastered (which they did right after the GBA NSO section, so it was primed - heh - for it being announced if it were a thing), and that the physical version (which, if anything, should hopefully be shipping feature complete and ideally be the game in its final form) is releasing a matter of weeks after the digital release, with no word yet of when Fusion will be coming to GBA NSO. Any functionality like that just seems like it should be on the back of the box. It would be neat, but yeah, I'm not holding out hope. Has there even been a precedent set at this point of NSO games adding unlockable functionality to other games or NSO games? I could be blanking on an example of this, but nothing immediately springs to mind.

I mean, to make it sound even worse and twist the knife a bit because that's always fun: The Flash (TV show) premiered on 7th October 2014, and The Flash movie was announced on 15th October 2014, meaning the show was just two episodes in before a big budget blockbuster movie with a new Flash was announced. Y'know, just in case the last decade wasn't evidence enough of how poorly WB has handled the DCEU

Which cameo do you feel it spoiled? I'm pretty sure most of the characters in the trailer had been officially announced recently...and probably aren't cameos, but more fully fledged or supporting roles. As for showing off the story... I think WB have long been in a very weird position with this film, from the originally slated 2018 Flash film to now, there have been dozens of writers attached to the project. There's the whole Ezra Miller controversy. And instead of being a solo outing, it's adapting Flashpoint, probably the best known Flash arc, to soft reset the DCEU and lead into the new DCU alongside the new Aquaman movie and close up shop on the mess of the last 10 years of DCEU projects. Way I see it, they're in the final stretch of a school project but have no idea how to conclude yet want desperately for it to be over...so naturally the conclusion is to just throw the kitchen sink at us with the trailer I'm more surprised that the film is even seeing a release if I'm honest, yes it's a $200M+ film but given the mess of its production and surrounding controversies, and the fact that the HBO Max Batgirl movie (with a reported $90M budget) got cancelled kind of compounds my surprise that this has somehow stayed above water all these years. Reports also say it's tested well with audiences, but that means almost nothing these days

New trailer for GOTG Vol. 3:

Hnnnnnnnng when that Elfman Batman theme kicks in

Great breakdown of the most recent trailer by Zeltik: Didn't clock the three-headed dragon or green goop at all!

Hemwick Charnel Lane kind of sucks, and the Witches of Hemwick boss fight really sucks. That might be one of the weakest boss fights in a From game that I've played, right down there with Pinwheel? That's all, think I'll leave it there for today I went up and down the tower I mentioned before and came to a locked door at the top (with some cagey platforming to get to the bottom!), and similarly, it turns out the door I was trying to open by BSB is just straight up not accessible from that side. Mentally noted those for later before I went to the left of the Grand Cathedral and did the Hemwick stuff. That means my next port of call tomorrow will be whatever's to the right of the Grand Cathedral!

Spent a few more hours with the game just, and I'll probably get back to it later, just got a few errands to run (woo). Started off by climbing on up to and opening the Oedon Chapel, meeting some creepy-looking but seemingly kind-souled dude who wants me to send people there if they're looking for a place to stay. Prepping mentally for a classic From betrayal at some point but sure, I'll send people over. Walked around a bit, got to the elevated area overlooking the bridge where I faced the Cleric Beast, wandered around some more and found a sealed gate with a huge cathedral behind it – I'm guessing that's unlocked by the item costing 10,000 Blood Echoes in the Hunter's Dream. Whatever, can't afford it right now, mentally noted it and went another way and started a rather elaborate descent through Old Yharnham which saw some dude threaten me and then try to gun me down, probably the closest thing I've experienced to a cinematic setpiece in one of these games so far? Bunch of beasts about, always fun, guys scaring the crap out of me jumping through and breaking doors, wooden boards, etc. Not a fun time. Nice to be playing a From Soft game where I'm fast enough to attack and use a torch, though, whereas in Dark Souls it feels like I'm putting my entire guard down when I swap a shield out for a torch (speaking of, did find a wooden shield...which I found very amusing ). Anyways, eventually got to the bottom of the area and came to what obviously looked like a boss arena, a huge cathedral-looking thing. I spotted what I thought was a spectre by the staircase on my way down, so I ran over and activated it before the text popped up (couldn't see anyone around so was curious how they died)...and accidentally summoned Alfred, some dude I met a little while back. Okay, definitely a boss arena then, and kind of sucks that I accidentally summoned someone before I knew what was going on, but whatever I'm not one of those that thinks summoning is wrong in these games (I love the challenge of bosses solo, sure, but it's nice to have the option for particularly challenging bosses – I'm sure I would've used Solaire against O&S in Dark Souls if I'd done what I needed to for him to turn up!), I think I'm more irked at myself that I activated it before I knew what was going on! Anyways, approached the doorway, could see some sort of beast chilling in the back, so walked in with my new buddy Alf and we had a whole back and forth for 5 minutes with the thing before the Blood-starved Beast was down. Feel a little robbed that I accidentally invited Alfred along with me to the fight (I continued because I figured I'd die and could just use this attempt to scope the fight out to take it on solo, as I unlocked a bunch of shortcuts that I'd never get to use now!), but whatever, the guy died when it had about a third of its health left and I regretted it a little less when I saw how much it was poisoning me – thankfully, the area leading up to this was filled with Antidote-giving enemies, and so they were already in my Quick Items ready to be used (also nice to be able to have Quick Items and be able to heal separate to that!). I found and tested a Beast Blood Pellet not long before this fight and it seemed helpful, so had that in my Quick Menu, as well as the Fire Paper that Alfred gave me earlier, and both came in very handy during the fight. As someone who hasn't used stat-boosting items specifically for fights in other From games before this (lack of them being around and just not knowing what to do with them), I'm really enjoying how they're pretty plentiful on Bloodborne (if you fully explore), reading the item descriptions for everything I get has been a great way to figure out what's helpful and what's not so far, and so I'm going to save them for bosses and the like moving forwards (and try to remember to use them). Oh, and finished the thing off with a visceral because, once again, completely forgot to parry until the very end, but it was a fun and cool way to finish it off! Anyways, after that, back to the Hunter's Dream, where I acquired the item I figured I needed to access the Grand Cathedral. Got back to the gate and unlocked it, ran around the area, bunch of loops and shortcuts to love, found a summon close to the Cathedral for someone called Henriett (who I don't think I've met?) which I knew meant a boss was bound to be in the area but I actively chose not to bring her along – not after the whole fiasco with Alfred. Eventually made my way to the entrance of the Grand Cathedral (after finally figuring out how to parry the guys with three-pronged wooden spears outside, man the window is super early on those dudes!), ascended, and came out to a huge room with a woman praying. Cutscene played out and, hey, wouldn't you know it, there's the boss fight! Vicar Amelia totally didn't give me flashbacks to Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood or anything threw an oil urn at her (I finally hit someone with one! I'd whiffed all my other attempts to this point) and followed up with some molotovs (if the game has taught me anything so far I think it's fire is bad for beasts, or at least that's the logic I've chosen to roll with!) before we had a bit of back and forth, I backed up a few times to heal, eventually got my Fire Paper and Beast Blood Pellet equipped and went to town. Love that Amelia has moves to make sure I don't just hide behind her legs (what I normally do after my experience with bigger enemies in other From games, probably starting with those big ass knights in Dark Souls?) and it was a bit of a pain that she had a heal, but whatever. Finished her off with a visceral too! Think I bonked her on the head or something to open that up, I'm not too sure, similar to my experience with Cleric Beast tbh and not knowing how I triggered the visceral opening...but I'll take it! Got a cool cutscene after by grabbing the item at the altar...interesting. So yeah, a solid two hours or so with the game, another two bosses down, and 0 deaths my entire session. I'm sure my luck will run out against a boss soon, but it's not something I care about retaining too much, because dying in these games is inevitable; love how much I didn't care when I died during my first session getting swamped by dudes or when trying to learn parry windows, such a stark contrast to my days with Demon's Souls a couple of years ago. Really feel like Artorias of the Abyss was a decent warm-up for this game, if only to contrast how slow Dark Souls is compared to Bloodborne! Only allowing myself to hit Gwyn with parry and ripostes to see credits again definitely came in handy. Not really sure where I'm going to head next. There's an area to the left of the Grand Cathedral, an area to the right of the Grand Cathedral, there's that door I didn't go back to at the bottom of Old Yharnham near the Blood-starved Beast, and there was a tower and a short bridge I decided against climbing to explore other parts of Cathedral Ward. Curious to see which direction I'll choose! Oh, and also – there's 1000% something weird going on in this game. I'm not quite sure what, but reading the Chalice I got after beating BSB and learning about the existence of Pthumerians (what a Lovecraftian name that is! And Byrgenwerth), and then that time some portal or something turned up by Cathedral Ward when I grabbed that dead guy's top hat... ...or how about the fact that these statue dudes have very alien-looking heads on the staircase leading up Vicar Amelia? Curious. Love it. Also have no idea what Insight is/does, but seeing that there's a way to increase it with items (Mad Man's Knowledge)...there's definitely something going on that it links into design-wise or mechanic-wise, I just don't know what and I love not knowing what, but based on the mentions of Pthumerians in some loading screens (also - finally a From game which loads slowly enough for me to read item descriptions!) being some superhuman being (or something to that effect)...this is 100% rhetorical, but in my head I'm questioning: are we doing some Eldritch horror stuff or something? Because I both love and hate that stuff, it creeps the hell out of me, I thought I was just signing up for werewolves and other Gothic horror crap think I also saw some tentacle-bearded kind of dude with a crow out of reach in Cathedral Ward too... Anywho, some more pics because I didn't know where to put these, but just...vibes. urgh. I love it. Lastly! Got to shout out just how overtly heavy on lore this game has been so far, from actual notes in the game filling in blanks, to cutscenes giving context, it's a lot more direct with giving you an idea about the different characters and factions that have been at play in this world and I'm all for it. I'm loving it so far, long may that feeling continue Would love to! Any suggestions on what I could use outside Twitter? I don't beat the bosses fast enough to keep it within the 2 mins 20 secs or whatever that's the limit for non-paying accounts

Introducing: Big Boy Bokoblin™ (idk if we saw it in one of the trailers but this is nice look and art if we haven't) Giving me rancor vibes. I love it

Per the Japanese site, it seems like each new wave from here on will include a returning character:

Stream next week for the grand opening:

It's that time of the year where Star Wars takes over Empire:

Oh yeah don't get me wrong, I'd totally be for it, and like you say, I think the vast majority would be too. I think it would be a great and very natural way to shake things up with us returning to a Hyrule we already know – I've said it before, but playing as Zelda and maybe having a skill tree for her magic, helping rebuild (well, hard to say after this latest trailer...seems like we're kind of heading towards a post-post-apocalypse kind of deal ), and having her journey be the main focus at ground level, with Link's focus in the skies and underground, would be the smartest way I think to make Hyrule feel fresh: by changing the eyes we experience it through. I guess it's the very vocal minority I was talking about, because they're the same folks that had issues when it happened in other games previously (can't exactly name them even all these years removed because I wouldn't want to spoil them!) So I think it looks like a nice CE, but it's pretty crazy to me just how much of a step down it is compared to the CE for Breath of the Wild (and even then, over here didn't we get a totally borked CE for BOTW anyways?). There seems to be a lot of that these days, unfortunately. I was looking at the Deluxe Edition for Jedi: Survivor the other day and other than having what I think is a much cleaner aesthetic to its case, the only differences for £20 are...some in-game skins? Compare that to Fallen Order which came with behind-the-scenes content, which I was totally in for, and it's another big step down. Kind of tempted by the Deluxe Edition for Final Fantasy XVI though, I won't lie. That black box with the silver Phoenix and Ifrit looks clean as hell!

Collector's Edition back in stock at GAME: @Ronnie EDIT: in case that Twitter link is as broken for me as it is everyone else: https://www.game.co.uk/en/m/zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-collectors-edition-2732228

Would be neat if this were a tease for playable Zelda... (also Jon's response ) I'm leaning towards the side that they're hiding something about TOTK, and something like playable Zelda would make a lot of sense to keep hidden away until launch. That'd be a mic drop moment for sure. I also think if we do get a playable Zelda that they're absolutely setting themselves up for a hell of a lot of backlash unfortunately, as it wouldn't be the first time people got upset over playing as someone not in the marketing for a game

To quote the Chosen One himself: Oh absolutely, don't get me wrong, I love a lot of the side content in Ragnarök, especially the challenging stuff, and even more so as someone who didn't touch much of the side content in GoW 2018! I haven't really spoken to my experience with the game yet (I'm sure I will at some point), but the fact that there were moments where I doubted - even if only for moments - that Elden Ring was my GOTY last year is a testament to how fantastic that game turned out. There's just a lot about it to me, at times, that remind me of The Last of Us Part II, which I think also suffers from scope creep, bloat, and pacing problems, and I feel like the three are kind of a vicious cycle to get caught in and hard to escape from. Things like the wider open areas, the story pacing (I won't get into it too much as you're still playing the game, but I remember voicing some concern over the potential pacing of this game after it was announced that it would bring to an end out Nordic journey rather than being a trilogy, and think it was somewhat earned), it's just not as lean and as purposeful, I guess, as it's predecessor. Which is how I felt with The Last of Us Part II, kind of one of the reasons I haven't picked up Forbidden West yet, and a big part of why I'm a little cautious going into Survivor. Don't think it will make the game bad by any means if it does have some bloat, it's just something I'm noticing in a lot of sequels these days, and I'm not a huge fan of that direction

Oof, that's got to be the worst - and probably the only bad - take I've ever seen from Linneman. I don't think he's put a foot wrong in terms of content creation or social media presence for DF before, so that seems like a huge swing and a miss for me. I get the general sentiment that it's not for him and he sounds more than a bit wound up over having to cover it for his job - Harry Potter isn't for me either, totally get it - but play what you want to play and enjoy what you want to enjoy, I don't think throwing out a bit of a hysterical take publicly slamming the IP (and, by the standards of what you could slam Harry Potter for, it's for pretty petty reasons all things considered) and an entire design ethos in open worlds helps anyone. It comes across as slamming the people that do enjoy this - either the game, or IP, or both - which is never a good look. Sounds like something he should have aired out with his bosses, not the internet. If he did tweet that, it's incredibly unprofessional from one of the best technically-focused minds in gaming journalism who is normally anything but.

Yeah, the only animation that bothered me in Fallen Order was his run, and maybe "bothered" is too harsh a way to put it...but it would send me howling every time I was running away from a fight The other day I was thinking about how it feels like it's been so long since Fallen Order released, and...it will have released just 3 ½ years ago by the time this comes out. Nice to know the COVID era is still warping my perception of time! I'm a big fan of sequels being more fit for purpose these days and just reusing assets as and where possible: if I want a sequel, it's normally a sign that I want more of the same! Sure, there are some that have taken a little while even when trying to do this (Ragnarök and Tears of the Kingdom come to mind), but then again, the examples that come to mind are GOTY contenders whereas I don't feel like Survivor is under such an obligation. Something I've noticed lately with video game sequels is an increasing sense of scope creep and bloat (I loved Ragnarök, but it's one that comes to mind despite me loving it!), so I do hope Survivor finds a way to keep itself somewhat lean in the face of that seemingly becoming a trend. I replayed Fallen Order last year on a lower difficulty and just following the crit path after finally completing what I needed to get the Platinum, and the game and story just flows so, so, so much better without looking around for things to collect. With wider open areas in some of the footage we've seen I am a little nervous that it'll be more of the same here for those drawn to the completionist mentality (which I feel is most of us!), so I might immediately dive back in after completing it this time on a lower difficulty and just sprint through the story to solidify it in my mind and focus on it a little more than the video game aspects of it all. I will always be happy when prequel/Clone Wars era stuff pops up so I'm a happy chap

Also @Ronnie and anyone else looking out for the Collector's Edition, it looks like Amazon UK have just added their page for it here, though it's not available for purchase just yet. It does have a Spanish main image, mind you...but it's also the only such listing on Amazon UK atm. Worth keeping an eye on for sure, because if that is the page they'll be using, got to imagine it'll be on sale in the next few days, if not today