Julius

Ah damn, that's a shame to hear! I probably won't be catching Suzume until it releases on blu-ray, but I had a feeling it might be a case of that after Weathering With You – while I enjoyed it, I view it similarly to how you described Suzume. I caught a showing of Your Name at a small and cosy independent cinema last month, and it just reminded me how much Shinkai and his team nailed it with that film, but having also watched a film or two of his from before the success of Your Name...yeah, it seems like he's a bit of a one trick pony (I haven't watched Children Who Chased Lost Voices, yet, mind you, which does look to stray from his norm, but that film doesn't seem like it set the world alight). Then again, I thought 5 Centimetres Per was a lovely little film, even if it did tackle similar themes of love backed by great Japanese songs. His films obviously look great, and the soundtracks are fantastic, I just wish he'd tackle something new, because he nailed so much with Your Name that, for me, any project of his tackling similar themes is pretty much guaranteed to fall short. Heck, I love Garden of Words, and I think for many in the medium that would be a career high, so that takes some doing! At this point I can't tell whether it's a case of production companies wanting the guaranteed money of a Your Name-lite film, Shinkai realising he struck gold with a niche (at least in the animated movie space) in a market which he has built a massive fanbase in and is still growing exponentially and so is guaranteed success for him, or if he is genuinely a one trick pony. My guess would be it's a combination of the two former, I seriously don't think you can produce something like Your Name and creatively pigeonhole yourself because you have no ideas. Maybe it's just because we're getting like a fifth final hurrah from Hayao Miyazaki this year, and these types of films seem all but guaranteed to go away with him, but I'd love to see Shinkai tackle something much more mundane and almost slice-of-life just to freshen things up, like the day-to-day of an office job, or a taxi driver, or a farmer in Japan; Garden of Words and 5 Centimetres Per Second are evidence enough that he's interested enough in that kind of low stakes storytelling and can deliver. If he wants to infuse that with fantasy or sci-fi? Well, we've had a film with a protag as a shoemaker (Garden of Words), and another where one's studying to be an architect (Your Name), so how about one about a storyteller, writing or drawing something sci-fi or fantasy? Seems perfect for the medium and his style of storytelling. Heck, on the flip side of that, just go all-out with sci-fi and give us anime's take on 2001, it feels like it's been a good while since we've had a truly original sci-fi story in the medium in a film, and certainly nothing that looks quite like a Shinkai film. I feel like he's one of the few anime film directors actually positioned to make virtually whatever he wants and so it does seem, from the outside, like a bit of a waste of talent to retread familiar ground as often as he does. But yeah, long and short of it: would love to see him tackle something new, even though I still want to see Suzume for myself at some point. Fingers crossed, eh?

Zeltik has put out an hour long lore recap for Breath of the Wild as we're now just six (!) days from Tears of the Kingdom's release! Well, there's another way to get yourself an hour closer to having the game in your hands

The original interview was with MinnMaxx, who deserve some more love, so check them out if you want to watch the interview "How are you so confident pronouncing Kurukuru Kururin?" busts out some Japanese Still need to play Kurukuru Kururin...

It has been announced that Pixelopus (Concrete Genie, Entwined) is being closed down. From their Twitter: Following this, IGN reached out for comment, to which PlayStation responded: A huge shame, especially seeing as they had reportedly been working on a game in collaboration with Sony Pictures Animation. After Japan Studio, this really hurts – feels like yet another smaller and very creative studio being pushed out. I've had Concrete Genie sitting on my shelf for a year or two now. Think this is a sign to dive in and give Pixelopus their due.

Special livestream and Treehouse: Live leading up to the midnight launch this Thursday (local)/Friday (UK time) starting at 02:45 BST, showing some gameplay: Yeah, I'll give this a pass I think

Maybe it's just something I've got used to in other games, but then again, it was an issue I had with Fallen Order when I first played it and that was before I played some of the games I point to as examples of why I'd want it (which, again, are also the same games that the Jedi games are pretty obviously drawing inspiration from) I mean...in only one of the five stances, sure Something I forgot to mention, another problem for me that sprouts from the inability to animation cancel is that you end up getting staggered, but being staggered doesn't immediately cancel Cal being in an animated state, and so trying to dodge after being staggered and knocked out of an attack animation feels delayed (because it is) or, sometimes, doesn't work altogether (I encountered a few instances where I would repeatedly try to dodge or jump away from a flurry of attacks after being staggered out of my own attack animation, and find myself just watching Cal decide he wants to be hit a few more times )

I mean, whether it's intentional or not, for me the combat suffers for it, in terms the type of combat the game seems to be trying to achieve. It just makes what you want - and what the game seems to want - to be fluid and responsive combat feel, well, unresponsive and clunky It makes it a strange thing to have tied to an upgrade in just one of the stances, but even stranger is that I feel like that makes it clear that the intention to have that available here was an afterthought ("what would make a cool upgrade to fill out the skill tree?") rather than an initial design focus ("we should have an upgrade to animation cancel that you have to earn").

I finished the game on Tuesday night after ~30 hours, been chipping away at it to chase the Platinum since, which - unless anything comes up - I'll probably have cleaned up by the end of the weekend. Overall, I really enjoyed it! So let's throw a healthy smattering of the positives out there. The story hooked me much, much earlier than Fallen Order's (which didn't really grab me until the end of it's second act, everything from the end of Dathomir onwards), even if I feel it did struggle with a bit of a slow start – it didn't really grab me until probably towards the end of the first act? I love some of the character work they've done in this game, there are some great emotional and epic beats throughout, a slew of new and fun characters (shout-out to Turgle and Pili, the former is silly and the latter delivered an emotional punch I didn't expect in a completely missable and throwaway line in the post-game), and it felt so good to *FINALLY* see and hear some stuff about the High Republic in this game. I thought that the antagonists in this game were probably some of the best we've had in Star Wars video games (which, uh, I'll admit is not a remarkably high bar to rise above tbf), and Gordy Haab and Stephen Barton once again killed it with the game's soundtrack, building on the solid musical foundation they built in 2019 with Fallen Order. Force Tears range from a bit of fun to much more challenging, spent a good bit of time on one or two of the platforming ones and still got plenty to go (didn't come across many during my blind playthrough of the story, mind you), and this game has one of my favourite boss fights of the last few years outside of a From Software game. Things like Fast Travel, the map being vastly improved, unlockable map upgrades (to show collectibles), and other QoL improvements just make the game a much smoother ride than Fallen Order, which I'll now admit I have zero plans to return to outside of crit pathing the main story, because it will seriously be that hard to go back. The customisation, from Cal to BD-1 to your lightsaber, is awesome...even if it was a bit weird that we can't customise the Mantis like we could in FO (maybe in some future patch?). I'm always a big fan of customisation when it's done right (not too many options, but enough to make something individually unique to show off to your friends), and for me, Survivor more than delivered on helping me build a beautiful lightsaber (which I'll put in the spoiler tag below because I want to show it off in a few colours but don't want to clog the page, but there aren't any spoilers; also, I'll throw a very funny clip from when I was testing out a blade colour for lighting in-game): That all being said, for me - and as someone who occasionally dabbles with 100%'ing games, and was always going to go for the Platinum in this game - there is a bit of that bloat to the game that I was worried about going into it after seeing what happened to Ragnarök last year (and for all intents and purposes, the two are structured *very* similarly). I'm deep into seeking things out now for the Plat, and I'm still randomly running into entirely new segments of the map on one planet that I hadn't even come close to finding before, despite the planet being at 80% completion when I wrapped up the story (I had two planets at 100% and the rest were around 80% when I finished the story, doing most of what I could find my first time going through each planet). Now, I'm all for having a bunch of content in a game - especially with next-gen exclusive tax taken into consideration - but what makes Survivor a bit of a pain at times, for me, is that these wide open areas (and heck, even some of the more linear ones) suffer from some abysmal level design. I'm going to say it again: the places are pretty, the game is fun, but the level design - outside of the occasional isolated puzzle - sucks. What do I mean? Well, we talk often about how some games are brilliant at naturally pointing you in the right direction for whatever they have planned next for you...and Survivor does the complete opposite of that. Following the natural path will get you lost more than once, and I found myself time and time again referring to the map and going "oh, damn, we took a wrong turn and I'm now about a mile west of where I should be". I also turned off prompts for interactive environmental cues (think L2 being prompted when there's something you can Force Pull), which is something I also did in Fallen Order, and this was a huge mistake - there's a reason that's on by default, and that's because the game is incredibly confusing and frustrating to get through without those prompts (which completely shatters the movie-like immersion it goes for). I ended up turning it back on but there were still a few occasions after that where I found myself staring at a dead end and my map and going "okay, game, where do you want me?" Someone might be sitting there reading this and be going "really, Julius, is that such a big issue?", to which I say "yes, absolutely, you son of a gundark", because this game for me commits one of the cardinal sins of a Metroidvania-style game in that it goes COMPLETELY overboard with the amount of teasing it does for areas you'll gain access to once you unlock abilities later in the game. I'm not talking a handful of times here, oh no, I'm talking tens of - if not a hundred or so - instances on my way to completing the game's story where I found myself staring at something I couldn't interact with *yet*, and knew full well I would be later. There is no subtlety to it like you'd expect from games that have helped pushed that style of exploration forwards - Metroid or the modern From Software games, and heck even God of War is much more subtle compared to this - and it almost always ended with me giving the game an eye roll and letting out a sigh. These are issues I had in Fallen Order on occasion but it wasn't as glaring as it was here, likely down to that game's linearity being such a key part of its design. I'll also slip in a mention here about the traversal jank (not new complaints by any means), from how floaty Cal is when platforming, to not really being able to accurately gauge how far you can reach with Cal (probably down to said floatiness), to being able to get to some areas in ways you absolutely weren't supposed to. It reminds me a lot of PS2 and early PS3 games, in both the positive and negative lights. On top of all of that, the game's combat is just...it feels incredibly unresponsive and restrictive, in that once you start an animation you're almost always locked into carrying it out, which inevitably leads to some stormtrooper giving you a whack and staggering you mid-animation which you can't dodge independently of your attack animation. There are times where it works and the combat feels fluid, but this is normally during 1v1 encounters where you can focus on just parrying, blocking, and attacking in one direction, whereas against groups - which are the majority of battles in the game - you are going to find yourself locked into an animation more than once that only they can stop. It's seriously bizarre. Maybe it's heightened for me a bit playing Bloodborne recently, which has some of the best and incredibly fluid moment-to-moment combat I've experienced in a game, but this isn't a new issue, as it was one of my gripes with Fallen Order, too. This game - once again, like Fallen Order - takes SO MUCH inspiration from modern From Software titles, and yet no-one thought to include i-frame dodges, despite some boss battles CLEARLY calling for it? Again, it's just really bizarre: of all the games where you'd think you wouldn't be locked into an animation and have more options to dodge and weave during an animation, or animation cancel, it'd be a game where you're playing as an acrobatic space wizard wielding a glowstick he can recall at any time, but alas. Lastly, in terms of complaints, something that has to be mentioned: yeah, I don't understand why this game only got a six week delay, it should've been delayed until June, if not September, because it's been pretty broken at launch. I experienced a crash five minutes in, I experienced crashes during cutscenes, I experienced crashes after completing puzzles (needing to do them again), I experienced crashes during key boss fights - I probably had ten or so crashes so far throughout my time with the game, and I'm sure there'll be a few more before that Platinum trophy pops. There's also some egregious pop-in at times, the frame rate can drop to the teens (and, to make it worse, is very much reproducible), and I experienced screen tearing for the first time in a newly released AAA title in about half a decade with this game, if not longer? Certainly the first time I've experienced it on my PS5, and in a next-gen (current, now, I guess?) exclusive at that. It's a shame, because I think this game does everything outside of some of its gameplay fundamentals (lack of truly fluid combat and level design) incredibly well, and so once it's polished and up to scratch - hopefully by the end of the year - it'll be worthy of running in a way that the game deserves. Because it does deserve it. I probably sound a bit scathing in some of my criticisms, but again, they're not new, with a lot of them being carryovers from Fallen Order, perhaps more pronounced by more open level structures than the linear ones in FO. Also, without spoilers, it's honestly just so much easier to deep dive into criticisms than it is highlight points of praise, which is why when I talk about games for the first time, I seem like I have a lot more negative to say than I do positive. There's a lot to love here as a Star Wars fan, or as someone looking for just a dumb fun time with a game that's more akin to a blockbuster, but I have to say - and I say this as someone who feels Respawn is worthy of praise for this game, but doesn't care much in general for game critic scores in any serious manner - I do find myself scratching my head a bit looking at some of the scores this game got, and some of the justifications given, in light of the game's launch experience, and also just how it functions as a game vs as a spectacle? To end on a positive note, anyways, for me the bugs are made a little more acceptable - on PS5, can't speak to the PC experience - by it pretty easily being one of the most visually gorgeous multi-platform games delivered by a third party publisher that I've seen in a while. This game's lighting, particle effects and sound design deserve special praise, and it's the first third party game for me this gen where it feels like I'm looking at something next-gen. You just can't deny those views.

One week to go! Brad Ellis from Easy Allies spent an hour the other day thinking back to Breath of the Wild and his history with the Zelda franchise, a fun watch I'd recommend that'll shave an hour off the next week while you wait for Tears of the Kingdom to drop

The game's PS5 version is finally getting a standalone version on the PlayStation Store and an upgrade path from the PS4 version of the game. It was previously only available through the Miles Morales Ultimate Edition or the upgrade path to that from the base game. Per the PlayStation Blog: Looking forward to revisiting this before the release of Spider-Man 2 this... September? Or thereabouts

Hard to say. On the one hand, I'm pretty sure it was around this time last year (late April/early May) that they confirmed their showcase details. On the other hand, it's a Wednesday. I could be wrong about this, and maybe it's just because I feel we rarely get random important news drops from Xbox in general, but thinking back I don't feel like they've given many updates on Wednesdays before. But either way: eh I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm super interested in what's been going on with Redfall or what we'll see in terms of first party stuff from Xbox next month, so if that's what they're trying to do, it's falling on deaf ears in my case.

Finally – a trailer for Dune: Part Two!

More details on the Xbox Games Showcase and Starfield Direct have dropped (previously announced to be taking place Sunday 11th June) – Showcase starts at 18:00 BST, with the Starfield Direct immediately following. No surprises there considering that they've had that 10:00 PDT / 18:00 BST slot on a Sunday for a while now, then!

A prequel comic just got announced for Free Comic Book Day: Think we're about to see marketing start to kick in for this game now, what with SpiderVerse just a month away, and a trailer for the game not being ready in time for that would be a potentially huuuuuuuuuge missed opportunity. Excited to hopefully hear from Insomniac in the coming month or so and finally get a release date and some more details on the game

A new Wednesday, a new game announcement – and a pretty neat one at that! Here's a bit more of an overview from Modus Games:

In Tanta We Trust, the game's prequel DLC, just got a trailer and is still scheduled for May 26th:

The trailer for that Gran Turismo film is out: That From GAMER to RACER tagline makes me want to die

I'm kind of surprised it took so long after someone got the CE the other day. Apparently the game's files have now been dumped online, which is why there are apparently multiple people trying to stream it. Nintendo are shutting them down but pretty hilariously the streamer who lasted longest (I think the one you're referring to Ashley) got banned and then was streaming again within a few minutes. By the way, it's kind of nuts that's people are doing this so blatantly just a week or so after Nintendo ripped that hacker apart in court (ended up jailed for 3 years and 25% to 30% of his salary basically taken for life to put towards paying off his $15 million or whatever fine). It's a shame about the leak, and it's going to be a long week and a half or so now for those of us wanting to avoid spoilers, and it'll be a week in which I'm sure those files are going to be ripped to shreds and a very surface level view of the game from items to dialogue is going to start turning up everywhere (at least for people following game news). So that's potentially another game that's going to have it's discussion dictated early on by leaks. Think I'll be walking away from YouTube until launch later this week myself. Also, with them being proactive this time around about shutting down streams – does this all mean Ninty actively decided to not go after the people that were streaming Scarlet/Violet early last year?

The game's OST will be releasing physically in July, with Standard and Ultimate CD Editions announced. No word yet on the likely inevitable vinyl release, but man, that collection sure looks real purty

PSA: there is apparently a Collector's Edition of the game out in the wild, so if there was a time to go dark (if that's your sort of thing), it's probably around now Just 13 days to go...

It's been four hours and it's still installing But yeah, will definitely share some thoughts! Hope I don't encounter too many hiccups (I'm pretty sensitive to framerate variation and they can give me headaches), but well, it can never be worse than Cyberpunk was at launch I guess

It's been nearly three weeks since Celebration ended (), so what better time to post than now? Well, I've got to do something while I wait for Survivor to install... Day 1 - Friday 7th The first day of Celebration we didn't arrive until around 10:00, which was okay - we had won passes through the lottery to the Celebration Stage for probably the premier showing: the Lucasfilm Showcase (I'll also take this opportunity to say that we managed to pick up Celebration Stage passes for all of the other lottery events except for Ahsoka). I was honestly just getting hyped seeing so many Star Wars fans at the train station, and the conductor announcing as we arrived at the ExCel that "I know most of you are here for Celebration - stay safe, have a good weekend, and may the Force be with you!" was met with applause and laughter in equal measure. The Showcase was magical, so, so, so many reveals, so many guests (!), so many awesome moments which really just made me feel I was walking on clouds from the very start of Celebration. The highlight for me was probably seeing Daisy come out and get some love (I have issues with the sequels and zero of them can be put on the actors) as well as the timeline and the announcement of Filoni getting a film! Nah who am I kidding, it was the namedrop in the 8 minute preview we got of Mando S3 E7 - I still get chills when I watch that moment back Following this, we went straight from the Celebration Stage to the queues at the same stage for the Making of Andor panel, but not before I made a quick trip to the toilets and ran into the first of a few familiar faces over the weekend, Star Wars Sith, who was probably the only YouTuber to cover every SWC-related announcement in-depth (and is definitely a recommendation if you plan on going to SWC in the future), and so I thanked him for all his help in getting me ready for Celebration and wished him a good weekend; over the weekend we also ran into Eric Whiteley from Blind Wave (a few times, actually - the first time I was like "huh, swear that guy looks familiar..." ) and I recognised Father Roderick (yes, the priest who reacts to Star Wars trailers) on one of the other days we were walking the floor. The Making of Andor panel was brilliant, even if a little less energetic than the Showcase (which was much-needed in all honesty!), and I love just how much love the show got there and in the Showcase when showing off the next season and bringing out the cast. We got invited back to the premiere of Mando S3 E7 which started at 18:00, which meant quickly darting through from the Celebration Stage to the other side of the ExCel to pick up our Mando S3 posters, but not before I came across a not-so-tall guy posing for photos with one or two people...my first thought was maybe a smaller YouTuber, but nope, it was the legend himself, Doug Chiang! Almost didn't recognise him with the moustache he's been a hero of mine since I first started diving into the behind-the-scenes of Star Wars with the Making of Revenge of the Sith book I got from a carboot sale as a little kid, but I kind of blew it a little by taking too long to hype myself up enough for a photo - I was next to take a photo with him when he was whisked off by security as a small crowd had started to form. I didn't mind though (I'm really not one for being in photos, hence needing to hype myself up beforehand) - I got to see one of my heroes in the flesh, which was awesomeeeeeeee also made use of my Store reservation (all the tote bags were sold out immediately, and I really needed one because my bags were pretty full just on the journey into London; also spent a while trying to find the commemorative pins, and when it turned out they were at the tills, had a funny exchange with the cashier as I collected a small pile as she scanned my other items..."anything else?" "uh no I'm going to need to cut myself off there I think because I won't stop otherwise" ) Anyways, we ended up back at the Celebration Stage at the end of the day to watch S3 E7 of Mando, and it was magical to watch it with a 4000+ strong crowd. Honestly, it was depressing to go back to watching the finale by myself, but at least I got to see what turned out to be one of my favourite episodes of the season with a crowd! Met a lovely guy on the way back that evening who we spoke to until we got on the train, spoke to some strangers about their awesome art pick-ups and what happened at the Showcase (all the news for which they'd missed because the signal inside the centre was awful), and got given a Brit Batch badge by one of the girls we met in the lift back at our hotel. A lovely first day, set the stage for talking to more folks in the days that followed! Day 2 - Saturday 8th So, as stated above, Ahsoka was the one panel we didn't manage to get Celebration Stage tickets - or any tickets, in the end - to...which naturally meant getting up at 05:00 and queueing from 06:30 -- yeah, so much for the warning that we'd be removed if we queued before 08:00 talked to a bunch of folks in the hours we spent queueing for this (especially as we slowly trudged into , and eventually, even though we were in the first "lane" to enter the hall after making it through security, we decided to dart over to the Galaxy Stage (a streamed-to stage) rather than the Celebration Stage (to be in the room with everyone and the guests) because it seemed the safer option. We ended up queued up outside the Galaxy Stage for over an hour, no idea if we'd be getting in through standby lines, and made good friends with the German folks behind us - we formed a pact to not pick up our bags (which we'd put down, because, well, 4.5 hours of queueing!) until we knew what was going on; eventually, as they started to call lanes in one at a time, it got to a point that I refused to look in the direction of the stage. We did, however, make it through in the end - and there was PLENTY of space! Anyways, the panel was amazing, the extended trailer was AWESOME, and it was such a good time - well worth the wait! After that, we beelined it over to the Celebration Stage queues for the 40 Years of Return of the Jedi panel, and made more friends while doing so. The panel itself, while exciting to see Doug Chiang and some other ILM folk as well as Ian McDiarmid and other big names, was a bit of a mess? Ming Na-Wen was hosting a panel for the first time and it showed, and it got really awkward when Billie Dee came out and would answer questions minutes after the fact or seemingly not answer questions at all - it was clear his age was getting to him (struggled to read notes from a piece of paper) and it was honestly kind of heartbreaking to watch we got a cool poster for the 40th anniversary and the announcement of the film returning to cinemas at the end of the month (which I'll be going to watch tomorrow!) so not all hope was lost. Following this, we took a quick break and then went to start queueing at the Galaxy Stage for the Clone Wars - 15 Year Anniversary Panel at 15:30 (two hours ahead of it starting!) but were turned away and told to go to the smaller (and streamed-to) Twin Suns stage because they were at capacity with the Young Jedi Adventures panel and had no plans to clear the room. Told my friend that we'd go to Twin Suns, but guaranteed that there would be space there when people start to trickle out because that space was probably mostly taken up by families; it sucked, but on the off-chance I was wrong, Twin Suns seemed the safest option. Well, that turned out to be its own sort of chaos - we were a few lanes in and then they shuffled people in for the Hasbro panel, saying they wouldn't clear the panel, which left us in the first 20 in the first lane as the standby queue. Some people trickled out of the queue not thinking they'd get in, others because clearly they wanted to go to the preceding Hasbro panel and couldn't because people had now gone in to guarantee spaces for TCW panel, and they stopped allowing people to join the queue, so as the time came closer, we just saw more and more people get turned away, which was its own weird kind of heartbreaking (this included the guy we met at the end of the first day!) it was a mess, and what made it worse was that through the Discord myself and a girl in our front of the line cohort learned that there WAS space at the Galaxy Stage and that we would have made it in if we weren't turned away, but alas! Eventually we got in and I sat next to her - there was a LOAD of space, mind you, but anyways, it was worth the wait. There was a quick music quiz (I told my friend all the answers after not volunteering and crushed it haha) before we dived into the panel, which was honestly, in terms of panel chemistry, my absolute favourite of the weekend - Amy Ratcliffe is an incredible host (my favourite at SWCs past and she crushed it once again this weekend!), Dave Filoni is, well, Dave Filoni, and the voice cast obviously have great chemistry, just randomly breaking into lines from the show. It was an absolute treat. And that was it for Day 2! Day 3 - Sunday 9th On Day 3, we made it to the Villains of the Sequel Trilogy panel with Ian McDiarmid, Andy Serkis (who got so much love after Andor - and rightly so! Even joked about his Kino Loy being Snoke ) and Gwendoline Christie. This panel, hosted again by Amy who did another awesome job, was probably the surprise of the weekend for me - some funny digs at the sequels and politicians by Ian, and some great stories shared, as well as a couple Christopher Lee shoutouts! Was a bit unnerved by them not mentioning Adam Driver at all until the 53RD MINUTE of a 60 minute panel, but alas - there was also a fleeting moment where the room questioned for a split second if he was about to make an appearance, but it wasn't to be (geniunely think he'd get the greatest applause I would have heard all weekend) After this we queued up for the Look Back at Obi-Wan, which was really fun, best seats we got at the Celebration Stage all weekend - it was awesome to see Ewan and Hayden in the flesh - Ewan walked out on-stage with the Obi-Wan cosplays shortly before the panel started - and the applause lasted so long when they walked in that for a moment I thought we'd spend the entire panel standing! We did end up seated, watched a few of their favourite moments from the show back, but honestly, Vivien Lyra Blair stole the show - she had such great chemistry with everyone and awesome answers to Amy's questions! Still no official confirmation of the second season, strangely, even though it was clear everyone on-stage definitely were up for it. Had thought about attending the Animation Game Night but think my empty stomach and burning candles at both end finally caught up with me after the hype of the panel, so we went to get some food before finally getting to walk the floor. Not as big as I thought it would be, but still, lovely to see everything and everyone and talk to some folks! Day 4 - Monday 10th The final day started with the panel for The Bad Batch, which was awesome with the announcement of a third season and a trailer that I think no-one in the room thought would be dropping. It was a great panel and I loved the energy in the room! Highlight was taking a seat before it was clear a bunch of Press and other folks hadn't turned up, so following orders, we swamped ther middle section and ended up in Press seats After that, it was a case of getting some food down before sneaking into the Marvel Comics panel ahead of Doug Chiang: Designing Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Mandalorian, which was a real treat. Can see how the Inquisitor ended up looking the way he did in Kenobi (retrofitting his design to be based off a live-action character rather than realising they'd had a pau'an in live-action before, but alas!) even if I wasn't a fan, but overall, amazing panel - as expected. Beautiful art, Doug is always a joy to watch and listen to Lastly we decided to ditch the Galaxy Stage in favour of trying to see if we could find Alice Zhang and get our badges signed (she did the awesome art for the passes this year!) after ordering her full postcard set before the Doug panel (which had sold out on the Saturday I believe?), and she was lovely. We had hoped to catch some of the closing ceremony from the LIVE Stage (which we didn't get to all weekend before this!), but I just watched the stream while queueing (somehow had signal haha) and they announced Japan 2025! Which is exactly what I'd been expecting I explained my logic to my friend and sister before Celebration (already announced that up next was 2025, D23 being positioned for off-years, Star Wars is huge in Japan, if they go biannual then 2027 has to be Anaheim for the 50th anniversary so there's no way they'd do Europe again in 2025 and America then seems a bit more unlikely if it's there in 2027 - it's also ROTS's 20th anniversary and TFA's 10th, and I remember the former being especially massive in Japan), so obviously I was well chuffed at the announcement - was already planning to be in Asia in 2025 so that worked out well for me Final Thoughts And that was a wrap on Celebration. Oh boy did it hurt to walk away from it and see it slowly shrink and close that last day, I actually started getting post-con depression at the end of the Saturday (Day 2) because I realised we were already halfway through it so safe to say I missed it immediately, but enjoyed it a lot! So many highlights, from running into Doug Chiang in the hall to DJ Elliott and Atomic Blonde killing it on the Celebration Stage with their panel warm-ups, but honestly - and genuinely - my highlight was talking to other Star Wars fans, whether it be in queues, the DLR back to the hotel, or just randomly walking around the convention. So yes, this two-year wait for japan is going to be painful, but worth it I'm sure! Haul Yes, I stole the Reserved Seating - Press sign from the Bad Batch panel because it just seemed like a keepsake no-one else would have also learned on the first day through the Discord that the timeline t-shirt was made available on Day 1 but was very hush-hush, every time I went to the store no-one had a clue what I was talking about, but a fellow Discord user picked up a black version and so I paid a bit over the RRP for their white one - worth it for me, nice to have a timeline t-shirt! oh I also managed to keep all my wristbands intact too, so another nice keepsake for me! I just had them fit super loose because I have *questionable at best* blood flow sometimes Oh, and not pictured: the £100+ postcard set by Alice (the poster in the bottom right features her badge art, she also did Andor to complete the fifth row!), probably going to put together a frame at some point with her art, the commemorative pins, badge/sticker and wristbands at some point. Also forgot to include the exclusive POP figures, but those aren't for me, they're for my sister's bf, soooooooooo A smattering of pics (in the spoiler tag) And lastly, I took a bunch of pics (uh presented in no particular order because I forgot to arrange them before uploading to Imgur, but some favourites are at the top!); check a look! Quite fond of some of these

Survivor? I hardly know 'er This is a big boy install, on that front they've definitely outdone themselves

Per their End of Financial Year report for the year ending 31st March 2023, the PlayStation 5 sold 6.3 million units in Q1 2023, which is Q4 in FY23 for Sony, which has resulted in them breaking the recor for most consoles sold in an opening quarter for a calendar year and contributed to the highest revenue on record for Sony in their FY Q4. This comes after previously projecting sales of 5.2 million units and 6.2 million units for the quarter. Overall, this brings the PlayStation 5 up to a lifetime sales figure of 38.4 million units sold. Safe to say it's over the production slump which saw it (more than understandably) stumble out of the gates at launch! Now let's hope they deliver the good in June/September/whenever with some more game announcements ETA: Sony are aiming to sell a record number of PlayStation consoles in a 12 month window – 25 million units. Gentle reminder that publicly stated aims are almost always going to be a lowball for the sake of investors (so that they can outdo their own goals); this almost certainly means that, should things go smoothly, they're probably more realistically projecting 27 million to 30 million units sold in the next 12 months.

TWO WEEKS TO GO! Interesting, but might make some of the discrepancies in reported performance from previews make more sense (I think I heard everything from "it was practically flawless" to "it C H U G G E D").