Julius

So, uh, to most people's surprise (including my own), reviews for the game have dropped and it has been received really well! Currently at 87 on Metacritic and 86 on OpenCritic: Some reviews and impressions: Kudos to Bloober and Konami! Very curious to see where the consensus lies after the fog has cleared on whether newcomers should play this or the original.

The game's soundtrack is now up on Spotify! Now to add the jolly vibes of Tite Mites and Marine Serene to my alarm music playlist

Still looking great: Just please don't release that last week of Feb/first week of March, I beg of you!

Shenmue has been on my mind a lot lately, and I'm not really sure why that is. I love the game's soundtrack, and I still listen to this orchestral arrangement on a regular basis: Genuinely one of my favourite non-JRPG OSTs in gaming, which is to say it's one of my favourite OSTs in gaming, period. It's incredibly distinct and just so magical. I loved its vibe, its characters, its earnestness; heck, when I played Shenmue and Shenmue II for the first time, back-to-back with the HD remasters which released back in 2018, I really found some enjoyment in the game's systems and mechanics. There was making the bus on time to get to work, forklift races, spending too much on the gacha machines, standing around waiting for time to pass, waiting out the front of a seedy yakuza office, looking after a cat, hunting down a sailor, brooding over Lan Di. A LOT of brooding over Lan Di. In the second game there was arm wrestling in the docks (my thumb still suffers with the flashbacks!), harassing local kids, hunting down the masters in Hong Kong, making my way through the Kowloon Walled City, which in and of itself feels like an immortal and interactive monument to a city which is no more, and of course, there's that magical meeting and ending. These games are undeniably special, and even with them now feeling like they're somewhat of a proto-Yakuza, to this day there is no experience I've had in gaming which comes close to comparing to the scale and feeling of Shenmue. Despite the fact that I had no nostalgia for the games before playing the remasters in 2018, buoyed on by Shenmue III hype and anticipation, playing Shenmue and Shenmue II back-to-back is one of my favourite experiences in gaming, despite how poorly they've aged in some regards, they're timeless in so many of the others - and most notably, in the intangibles - to me that it's hard to nail down anything more concrete than the feeling that they are special. And yet, I have absolutely no desire to return to Shenmue. It dawned on me eventually the other day that my experience of Shenmue and Shenmue II were so heavily tied into my life at that time – I'd just finished college and was distraught at the prospect of not going to university because of my physical and mental health at the time, and here came along these games, nearly two decades old and just a couple of years younger than me, ready to teleport me away to the cosy vibes of Yokosuka, juxtaposed with the grand adventure I would find myself on in Hong Kong. It was a much-needed escape, like a bowl of soup on a rainy Sunday afternoon, or wrapping yourself in a blanket during the British winter. I just can't bring myself to go back, perhaps in hopes of preserving my appreciation and affinity for my time with those games, but also because they were such an early part of my gaming education that going back to it almost seems unfair and unnecessary. I know deep down that it just won't be the same. So, I ask you N-E: for whatever reasons you may have, are there any games which you love but struggle to return to? Or worse yet, don't think you'll ever return to? Would love to hear your thoughts

I mean, their argument seems sound to me

Started this up tonight as my first themed game for October after agreeing to play it alongside some friends this month a while back (one replaying the game and another also playing for the first time), and, well, yeah, what a mixed bag of a game in these opening 3-4 hours. Regardless of what I say below - and I am coming in straight up with a spicy take and will probably seem a bit harsh on the game, as I feel I always do after a first session - I will be trying my best to see this one through, as I always try to do when I start a game up. While I'm all for giving games a second chance, I feel like I can already see why PlayStation didn't give this one a sequel, because even after all these patches – it's so obviously on a completely different page to the rest of Sony's first-party that I'm honestly shocked that this saw the light of day, and I have to imagine that the reason Bend isn't closed right now is because this game sold incredibly well. I keep thinking this was a 2018 game – this released on 2019?! A year before Part II and Tsushima, and a good bit after the likes of God of War, Spider-Man and Horizon had already hit the PS4. The nicest way I can say this: it feels so much older. I also don't know who thought it was a great idea to name the blonde white female character at the centre of the main character's past in the PlayStation zombie post-ish-kinda-apocalypse game "Sarah", because how stupid can you honestly be to use the EXACT SAME NAME OF A CHARACTER WHO HAS A VERY SIMILAR PURPOSE TO THE STORY FROM THE FREAKING LAST OF US. BEND WHAT ARE YOU DOING. The game's opening was bad – oh cool, it's outbreak day! No wait are these just riots? Did he just say she got stabbed by some random kid? Oh wait no those guys are in hazmat suits I guess it is outbreak day! - and they don't really talk about the Freakers (this world's zombies), like...at all? Which is super bizarre. There was a long-ish loading screen before hitting the home screen, there are these long fade-to-blacks between cutscenes and gameplay and even cutscenes and other cutscenes, and it's all been so weirdly handled so far. I know that it's much better now than it was at launch, supposedly, but I genuinely can't remember the last time I saw so many loading screens - I've seen loading screens BETWEEN cutscenes!!! - in an SIE-published game. Maybe Bloodborne when I played it last year, that game from 2015? The story and characters feel pretty one-note so far, and very predictable, though it's cool to see a protagonist who doesn't mind carrying out some shadier deeds, and I appreciate the sarcasm – being a fan of Sam Witwer before this definitely helps. But anyways, then we have this guy who is supposed to be like a brother to us who I've spent all of 5 minutes with before he's been injured and is now just RPing as a guy from Firewatch, checking in on me while I do all the hard work and he's up in the watchtower? I've had no time to get attached at all to anyone so far. Going into this I'd already been made aware that it does run longer than some other PlayStation first-party games if you're just going through the story, and so it kills me to say this, but 3-4 hours in as I am now...I feel like I've kind of seen most, if not all, of what this game has to offer from a gameplay perspective. Like I said I will be seeing it through and maybe I'm wrong and there's this second map and all this new stuff introduced later on, but so far it is drive from point A to point B, complete mission, refuel; drive from point B to point C, complete mission, refuel; and so on. There's such a lack of variety to the main and side missions so far that it feels incredibly outdated and generic for an open world, you'll get the occasional new thing pop up in the open world to distract you - like getting shot off your bike by a sniper - and then you'll see it again 30 minutes after the first time it happened and just be like "oh, wait, so is this it?" also! Taking out the nests to clear out an area? Very time consuming and I genuinely can't see the benefit, I know it allows for fast travel routes to go through that area and revisiting the area safer, but, uh...just drive around the Freakers? Let's draw some blood from this stone and talk about what I like so far. The recordings coming through the controller is pretty cool? There's some emergent gameplay from time to time, I was getting chased by a small group of zombies and drove off on my bike to guide them towards some guy who had been chasing me for a minute or so; similarly, the wolves also hate noise, so one of the first missions when I was low on ammo I could just aggro enemies into shooting at me and the wolves would chow down on their faces, that was cool. I actually don't mind needing to refuel in and if itself? I think it's there to promote stopping by and doing side activities to get a chance to fill your tank back up, but the problem is I don't think those side activities so far have been particularly interesting. So, yeah, real mixed bag of sorts so far. What's saving this game for me right now is I came in expecting a 7 and it is absolutely swimming in the fact that it's nothing but a 7. And lastly, to put my money where my mouth is on this game being predictable as hell, my predictions:

First sign of a review, per Famitsu and their weird review system: 37/40. This matches Persona 5 Royal (also 37/40), but comes in below the likes of the original Persona 5 (39/40). But yeah that means basically nothing. Of actual interest, though, in line with what we've heard recently about the length of the game, Famitsu are putting this down as 80 hours for the main story and 100 hours including extras. So yeah, a big ol' chunky boi of a game.

Well, seems like the Nintendo case has only made them push even harder, because Krafton have secured a deal with Pocket Pair for the Palworld license to make a mobile game. This news hot off the heels of the PS5 announcement and shadow-drop. They have absolutely zero shame about all of this and it's kind of hilarious

Fast forward to the Switch successor event "...and capable only with the increased power of the Switch 2, we present to you: F-Zero 100"

There's a full list of mods available up on the BG3 mods page, and you can filter by your console or PC to see what's available on your platform of choice. For PS5 so far? A lot of UI stuff, some cool new dice, the Bag of Holding, some new classes and subclasses, plenty more customisation options, weightless gold and other stuff like that, and YOU CAN BE A KUO-TOA Very much hoping to see some more new races and new race appearances added to the mods available on console. Let me finally be my dwarf-sized Dragonborn I wanted to from the start, gosh darn it!

And we finally have a trailer for Music By John Williams: So excited

And, after nearly 52 hours and reaching Level 48, that is a wrap on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Quick and rambled thoughts with no time to sit on how it all wrapped up incoming! Finale and story spoilers For as flawed as I think Rebirth might be - some of the issues with combat from Remake that I had have stuck around, the story elements not from the original can be a bit hit and miss, and the open world I found almost entirely redundant - I've got to say: I had an absolute blast. As for GOTY discussions, well and truly, for me: The music, the characters, the vibe, Cait Sith going from like a D-tier character at best up to a clear and obvious A-tier, the mini-games, the music, the boss fights, the Synergy stuff, the incredibly expensive but also fantastic looking set dressing of an open world, the playability involved when travelling through and from certain areas, just the vast look and feel of this game world and the abundance of people in it and in certain cutscenes, not to mention how well the "camera" is used for some really unique shots and perspectives, and last but not least, let's not forget to mention the music for the third time!! The real winner for me with this game, though, is just how much it has made me want to revisit the original – and so I've got it pencilled in already for a potential replay next year off the back of this. I played this game through once close to a decade ago now and I feel so incredibly strongly about it that I think it's worth a revisit, especially before the final part, because I keenly remember that being the weakest part of it all for me, and where it fell apart in a way some of my other favourite JRPGs haven't. I'm really curious now too to see if they can change my mind about the last act with the final game in the trilogy. Which is all to say: I can't wait for the seemingly inevitable DLC and the third and final entry in this trilogy. It's been a hell of a time, and so for now, until next time, Unknown Journey

Got to acknowledge just how great No Promises to Keep from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth turned out now that I've heard it all in its fully glory: Goes toe-to-toe for me with any of the other vocal FF performances I've heard. The instrumental version you hear bits and pieces of throughout the game is wonderful, too. I'm sure I'll be back with more Rebirth to drop in here when I give everything a listen through track by track, but seriously: when all is said and done, and the trilogy draws to a close, the Final Fantasy VII Remake project as a whole will probably be the greatest collection of songs of any game project. I'm seriously struggling at this point to see how you could make a case for anything else, and I'm also struggling to see how you could one-up what will likely end as a trilogy and two spin-offs (?) packed with music just from a practical production and industry perspective. Just imagine being asked to bring that original Uematsu VII score into a modern game, and not only succeeding, but not putting a single foot wrong and turning some tracks which were already 10s into 11s, injecting new life into the soundscape of VII beyond merely bringing it up-to-date. Freaking insane what they've pulled off so far – "they" of course being Masashi Hamauzu and Mitsuko Suzuki. Deserve their names up in lights

And the monthly Essentials games for October are up:

@drahkon it has arrived: Yeah I have absolutely no idea when I'm getting back to BG3 for a solo run

Bahahahahahahaha Chapter 13 spoils

Yeah, yeah, Call of Duty, we know

So, what's tickling everyone's fancy to pick up for their PlayStation this October? For me, I think this might be the first month in a little while where I don't pick anything up at release. Metaphor ReFantazio I'm saving for Christmas as my big time sink during my time off, whereas for Silent Hill 2 I'm waiting to see how the reviews turn out – and even then I'm weighing up whether I want to play the remake or the original. Maybe Neva? But then there are other indies I want to catch up on which are on sale, too Yeah, between my planned Halloween games and potential going back to indies or making use of PS+, probably a quiet month for me on the pick-ups front!

Completely missed this, but out of TGS the news came that this game would be Uematsu's final OST he works on start to finish (might've been known before? No idea) To me it just makes the decision to include FF music even more bizarre, like a farewell to Uematsu working full-time on an OST by including some of his other great work, but kind of giving a vote of no confidence in his final full OST for a game? Just makes a strange decision even stranger

Started and finished off Chapter 11 on Friday night, which had maybe my favourite boss fight (got them to no HP showing and they dropped a nuke on me first time, so beat them second time), but was a series of highs and lows. Ending up needing to solo an area as certain characters, especially support characters, just kind of sucks – genuinely think the most frustrating battle in the game so far was against a pair of standard enemies as said support character. I will say, it's probably because of not doing side stuff, but I wiped only once in the entire game before the finale of Remake (against Type-0 Behemoth) whereas, probably not doing much of the side content and not getting the better gear, I've wiped a few more times than I did in that game – which I LOVE. This game really feels like it builds on Remake's combat and boss encounters in such unique and interesting ways where I don't mind taking some of them on a few times because of how fun they are to face off against. At the same time, though, the problem Remake had of you sometimes not having a certain spell or ability of a certain element to take advantage of a weakness means that on a second attempt you can re-spec with slotting in a new materia (I think it gets really messy when the party gets split up because you might have a few compositions which cover all bases and then - SURPRISE! - you have a super weird party comp which doesn't and so you need to rejig things a bit), and any extra attempts beyond the first are infinitely once you know what you're doing – one problem I then had resulting from that with a certain boss fight in the following chapter was that I got to the second phase too quickly and without having had my gauges fill up to a point where I could consistently do damage the way the game asks you to. In the latter stages of the game - probably because of the increased speed of attacks - I've definitely had the animation cancel problem (be it through an attack or a mid-battle cutscene) return from Remake against some bosses, where ATB gauges and the like are going to waste because just so happened to use them at just the wrong time? Chapter 12 yesterday...I knew that was coming after we got the game presented at the TGAs last year, but damn, yeah I was fully choked up, as I thought I would be weird difficulty spike starting here with the boss fights where even using Assess they're suddenly so much more about having Limit Breaks and ATB abilities and spells ready to go in the very small window a boss is prepping a certain move/has a certain vulnerability, but once you know what's coming damn is it still great. The 1v1 took a bit of time for me to adjust to (I kept attacking too early on the Reload) but damn was Triple Slash helpful as all heck in this battle. I thought I would be spending loads of time doing mini-games and tracking down Queen's Blood players once the map opened up more here, but nope, I want to see the ending out of excitement and also it seems like some of the stuff back at Gold Saucer is on a higher difficulty which, meh, isn't really what I'm looking for out of those games. Started Chapter 13 and had the exact same issue I mentioned about needing to attack an early boss a certain way when powered up, except the damn thing wouldn't stay still or even allow me to ground it consistently, so that took surprisingly long – Shiva throwing icicles at its face worked a treat. Game is well and truly starting to build up to its climax so I'm very excited to see where it goes, but holy damn @Hero-of-Time you weren't kidding about how long Chapter 13 was, it does kind of grind things to a halt (as much fun as I find it to spam Heatwave as Aerith on horses of Shinra fodder), and at a guess I probably half-ish of the way through before putting it down last night. It's a shame because in the context of the complete VII story having a fully fledged dungeon here makes sense - much more so than the length of Hojo's place in Remake - but in the context of Rebirth in a vacuum, yeah, it's long, and you feel it because you want to see what happens next and how it wraps up. I'm now really curious to see how and where this wraps up, exactly. Will be aiming to wrap this up today in order to start picking away at my spooky or monster-filled picks for Halloween this month imagine I'll be making very liberal use of the spoiler tags!

The Battlefront Collection that Aspyr released earlier this year

Monolith Soft are celebrating their 25th anniversary today, and have released a video in commemoration of this: Think I've played more games that they've supported on than I have games they led development on, but still – from my time with the games they've had some involvement in, it's clear that they're one of the greats Happy 25th Monolith Soft!

Yeah, to clarify what I meant about the whole mannequins thing because it was late when I typed it up and I don't think I really explained it that well reading it back: I think sometimes having Type A/B/C/etc. can be just a bit too nondescript, and I think that extends far beyond just the gender options in some games. I think it seems to be clear enough here what the differences are between the options, but some games have options named like that and swapping between them, zooming in, heck even walking up to my TV, I swear I have no idea what the actual difference is. But yeah, the actual move away from Male/Female to Type A/B I obviously have no problem with, I think it's a simple but effective way to be inclusive, which is a good thing, as is being able to assign a masculine or feminine voice regardless of gender. Really can't wait to see the full range of customisation options, I want my party looking like they're straight out of a 90s anime I mean just to point out the differences with the female warrior here, they literally just gave the her some briefs and an undershirt: I kind of wish they changed more? The first design looks...bizarre, I'm less sure about it being sexualised and more just thinking it looks incredibly uncomfortable and impractical, and so for me the redesign just seems a bit on the lazy side, all things considered. There's so much more you could do to make a more badass-looking female warrior from that base design!

Horii with a pretty direct callout of needing to adhere to pressures from America when making certain production decisions – such as when it comes to the female protag's outfit, or male/female options becoming Types A/B: Also "it's like an absolute god...an evil disguised as good" sounds anime as hell and I love it I can kind of see where Horii is coming from, in the sense that I took have never in my life heard someone complain about the way options are named, has anyone else? It seems extreme to me that we end up treating character designs like they're different types of mannequins? Anyways, all of this conjures up memories for me of IGN's review of Dragon Quest XI by Jared Petty, who talks about some of the skimpier outfit options in the game like just having the outfit in your inventory is going to make you spontaneously combust. Kind of hard to disagree with Horii when the first review you'll find when you search for a Dragon Quest XI review is this one. I do think there are times when anime and games can go completely overboard and oversexualise female characters to a very uncomfortable degree - outfits, angles chosen, how they're treated by and in the story, etc. - but Dragon Quest XI isn't at all one of them. There are dudes built like freaking freight trains walking around shirtless for goodness sake. And don't even get me started on "icky bits". Urgh, yes this review still irks me to this day, how could you tell?

Lore book incoming, and it looks a little familiar Urgh fine I'll take twenty