Julius

E3 is returning in-person and in full force next year, and will be organised by PAX and Star Wars Celebration organisers ReedPop. From VGC: I don't think E3 will ever get back to where it was just 5 or 6 years ago, especially with so many companies now doing their own thing, but if this means Nintendo actually turns up with a proper Direct in mid-June, I'm all for it this means that both E3 and Summer Game Fest will be in-person next year (assuming plans don't change). Christopher Dring, Head of GamesIndustry.biz, will be involved in the Elsa's plans for E3, and has written a piece well worth reading, because he at least seems excited by the possibilities: We'll see how it develops, but hopefully the competition between E3 and SGF is good and leads to better events than we've had in the summers since COVID started.

Updates on SCHiM and Cult of the Lamb too: Yeah, Sea of Stars looks fantastic! Glad it's coming to PS I'm just hoping it doesn't fall into the usual pitfalls of games so heavily influenced by games recognised as masterpieces, where it puts itself into a position where it's hard not to compare it to its influences, as that's always one hell of an uphill battle.

Some new details from IGN and Eurogamer: Eurogamer's update seems especially important Performance on the Switch was not elaborated on in the same detail as other platforms; Sato has just said that there will be "differences" in resolution and FPS on the Switch.

They decided to make a massive kit based on Doug's namesake:

I still can't believe that Mother 3 is going to be added to NSO exclusively for the Switch Pro. Nintend'oh

The creator of Yu-Gi-Oh, Kazuki Takahashi, has passed away at age 60. He was found in snorkeling equipment floating off the coast of Nago, Okinawa, yesterday I haven't been into Yu-Gi-Oh for a long time at this point, but man, those early years of primary school enjoying Yu-Gi-Oh with my friends - trading, battling, getting way too into it - were such a blast, as was waking up early on weekends to tune into CITV and watch the latest episode of the anime. Despite it ending in a very bittersweet way for me, I still look back on my time spent enjoying Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid very fondly. Rest in Peace, Takahashi-san. You made us all hope for a better draw and believe in the Heart of the Cards.

It's so funny to me that few companies do this with their games/films/products, but I love it when they do I swear they knew that with COVID in mind they weren't ever going to make 2021, but aside from the PS5 hype cycle too, I'm sure 2021 was the actual plan pre-COVID, and they wanted to say it anyway because that would be three winters after God of War 2018. And you know what precedes Ragnarök? Fimbulwinter, which is three (successive) winters long! Would've been perfect

Haha wowwwww, if it's releasing on a Wednesday because Wednesday is Odin's Day that's some big brain stuff from SMS

I was going to say it'll probably still ship a few million, but this is Square Enix, so yeah, definitely a flop in their eyes at least I remember them saying that this was aiming to be a new pillar for them akin to Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, and well...yikes. I can't help but wonder what this means for Luminous Productions in the long run. New IP delayed twice in big ways (one down to needing more dev time and the other seemingly because they realised that they'd accidentally positioned the game in the busiest part of the gaming calendar?), likely never going to match S-E's absurd sales figure hopes, using a proprietary engine which they've avoided using in some of their other massive projects (like Final Fantasy VII Remake and Dragon Quest XI using Unreal Engine 4) – I don't want to be too down on it, because the game could still be great, but from the outside looking in, I think the writing has to be on the wall for them, surely?

Delayed again, a further three months this time to January 24th 2023...

Just realised it's releasing on a Wednesday. Huh. Weird. Ah well you see, the spoken word of developers from the studio publicly reaffirming a 2022 release means nothing the sad part is I'm sure we'll see some of those now saying "well, it could still get delayed to 2023!" To whom I say: I am a little surprised that this announcement wasn't attached to a proper trailer or the announcement of a State of Play to show off more, but honestly, they could go dark for all I care until September if there's going to be a Showcase and just show a bit more then. We at least vaguely know the direction the game is at least going to start off in already (from the previous game and the trailer we got last year), and I expect more God of War mechanically (a great thing, but something we already know about), so I can really appreciate their restraint so far with their marketing. Apart from saying that this wouldn't be a trilogy, that would've been a nice surprise at the end of this game

Splatoon 3 will be getting an OLED model releasing 26th August, as well as a Pro Controller and carrying case releasing on 9th September:

November 9th! And a look at the Collector's and Jötnar Editions:

One last Ben Moore review: written, edited and voiced by the Great himself Man, I think Ben leaving and the current state of EZA is going to hit me hard in the coming days. It's really, really weird to think he's been a permanent fixture through Easy Allies content for the entirety of my entire adult life so far. Had a lot of Ben clips pop up in my YouTube feed the last week, and I've been going back and watching highlights of garage streams/moments. Favourite was definitely just seeing him at GT and opening up about his game spending, think we can all somewhat relate And for anyone that missed it, last week was his farewell podcast appearance:

Skull and Bones Ubisoft Forward Spotlight (a Ubisoft Original™) is this Thursday (7th July) at 19:00 BST, and then Ubisoft Forward returns 10th September at 20:00 BST: Ubisoft announcing their Ubisoft Forward over two months out, earlier than anyone announced details of their plans for Not-E3, is hilarious to me

It lives... Livestream this Thursday!

Yeah, I've been thinking the same, and definitely seen a lot of confusion over this and Rebirth getting released in "Winter". Like, just stick a quarter on it, is it Q4 or Q1?! Seeing those American folks get in a tizzy about when winter takes place has been very funny, but I just feel sorry for the Australians in all of this

A custom chainsaw too. In this economy?!

Outrage over the improper use of tools? One-handing a chainsaw seems like a lawsuit in the making if I've ever seen one

Barcelona win the award for weirdest unveiling promo for a new signing that I've seen in a while; I present to you, Christensen by Photoshop. What were they thinking?

You'd think the new PS Plus going live with PS3 games available only through streaming would mean the PS3 emulation on PS5 rumours stopped, at least for a little while...but no, here we go again. From VGC: See you next month for more rumours on PS3 emulation

I guess at least it's in line with the tone of the world of The Last of Us, but yeah, it definitely is! I've looked it up and seen one or two others mention that the time to get kicked might have been shortened in updates over the last few years? I guess this means quitting matches after joining progresses things by a day, though, so that knowledge could come in handy... Yeah, definitely. I'm not using a headset and am playing with complete strangers, so my experience has ranged from "if we were any more out of sync people would think we were a boy band that split and are being forced to play together" to "I feel really sorry for the opposition, because they're getting wrecked", but it's got such unique modes that every match manages to feel fresh and exciting. Would probably be an even better experience playing with people you know, though. Unfortunately, my friends have commitment issues when it comes to multiplayer games; I'll never forgive them for how unceremoniously Monster Hunter World dropped out of our rotation for months after one first 10+ hour session where we all loved it, and then when we were rusty going back to it, the blame was placed on the game Yeah, I get where you're coming from. I'm really excited about it now because Factions has such a strong core which could go so many places, and I'm curious about the potential focus on a multiplayer Naughty Dog story, but it's delay lining up with PlayStation spouting off about the scores of multiplayer games they'll have out over the next few years is definitely a cause for concern. I have no doubt Naughty Dog have ideas for where they want to take it, and I can see it's scale spinning out of control based on that alone, but I feel like things being tacked on by higher-ups is a likely part of it too. I'm also concerned about how it's going to be priced. It could be free-to-play, which would be fine with cosmetic microtransactions only...but I can't see a title from Naughty Dog being F2P. On the opposite end, it could be full price, but after seeing how they wrecked Gran Turismo 7 with its microtransaction economy and how it destroyed the balance of the game, I don't know if going full price really gets us anywhere. A nice middle ground could be a £30 - £40 title, but, well, we know what PlayStation can try to pull with £70 titles. It's such an odd position to be in considering they haven't really got a stream of multiplayer games going yet, but I guess that just shows how much of a shock Gran Turismo 7 was to most with its microtransactions not to mention that the story could easily just be a seasonal thing a la Fortnite

So, the last week or so I've been playing through the Firefly Journey on Factions, and it's been addictively fun -- really surprised at how active it still is, and I think the new Factions that Naughty Dog is working on might be one of the games I'm now most excited about. Interrogation is where it's at for me, at least as someone playing solo, and while I wouldn't say I'm great at it (played mostly with people at Lv. 500 and up so far, though there's been a scattershot of lower levelled players like myself), again, it's just been fun. Sometimes we get a sweep, other times they do, but it's most fun when it's really tight, and I've really enjoyed how much crafting plays into it and trying to figure out a half decent loadout. Anyways, I've just had the most frustrating thing happen - the really frustrating thing; the I'm actually going to tear my hair out frustrating thing. I was aware going in that occasionally there were missions with a 100% risk to your clan, and so I was careful about what I picked in other weeks as my missions to save some of the easier ones for the 100% risk missions. Went off without a hitch, for example some of the missions will be mark X number of players, revive X number of players, get X downs with X weapon, etc., and this is spread across 3 matches. Going into the end of Week 11, the mission I chose for the 100% risk encounter which could wipe out my clan was to get 9 kills with my Burst Rifle across 3 matches. Piece of cake! Last time I did a lower tier and needed to get 6 kills I ended up with 14 or 15, so this should go pretty smoothly. The first two matches were rough, only managed to get 8 of the 9 needed kills, but hey, one last match to go. Well, for some relevant background info here to set up the final phase of the story: I've been whitening my teeth over the last 2 weeks, because I had an accident when I was a kid which left me with about ¼ of one of my front adult teeth, and it's had a resin crown since I left high school (...which has lasted more permanently than the 15 temporary resin crowns which all ended up coming out in various way over a 10 year period, but that's a story for another time). Anyways, because resin is the cheapest material used (over here at least), it's stained horribly close to the gum and looks out of place compared to the rest of my teeth, so the plan was to whiten my teeth, then colour match a new crown to my whitened teeth. Awesome. Two weeks of whitening my teeth at night has left my teeth feeling incredibly sensitive, and today I woke up in a lot of pain due to the sensitivity (I think my current crown isn't as airtight as it's meant to be which could mean the gel is coming into direct contact with my damaged tooth). So anyways, back to Factions: after my last match left me at 8 of the 9 needed kills, my tooth is hurting that much that I decide to go pop some ibuprofen, and so I grab some and then wait a little while for my tap water to get to the point where it's luke warm before taking it, because tooth sensitivity and all that. Probably takes me a minute - at most - and I come back to see that I've been kicked from Factions due to inactivity. No big deal, right? I'll just load up another game and finish this 100% risk mission to head into Week 12 (the final week of the online journey, you need to play 84 matches and at this point I've played 78), that should be fine, right? Haha. Nope. Tried to start a new game and was met with this: The game I got kicked from counted, leaving the 100% risk encounter mission incomplete, meaning everyone died So, now I have debilitating tooth pain and I've lost a week of progress in a game...how's everyone else's Sundays going?

The game is releasing September 22nd in Japan, as confirmed in a dedicated livestream, and a demo is also landing on 10th August (but again, only listed for Japan so far?): This might be the worldwide release date as Steam is also listed below this date in the livestream? But it's not yet confirmed.

Four new SEGA Mega Drive games have been added: Comix Zone, Target Earth, Zero Wing, and Mega Man: The Wily Wars.