Julius

Celebration write-up will probably happen first, might start on that today! Post-con depression hit hard but I'm finally starting to get over it (is what I'll keep telling myself, honestly it started hitting me on the Saturday of Celebration ) Bad Batch S2 I'll refer back to my notes later this week and probably talk about that separately, because there's a lot to say! For now though, I watched Tales of the Jedi in one sitting on Wednesday last week, trying to keep my Star Wars hype alive. Loved it for what it was, which is basically Clone Wars shorts with the appearance of Bad Batch, really enjoyed getting to see younger Dooku and Qui-Gon, as well as seeing more of Ahsoka (and that tie-in to the final ep of Clone Wars!!!). Really excited to see what they plan on tackling in S2, would love for them to jump around the timeline some more!

Just finished Season 6 of My Hero Academia after starting it last night. Yes, I do need to go outside, get some fresh air, and touch grass. Honestly? Best the show has been since the end of the first cour of Season 3, and the best overall season in my opinion since Season 2 (which remains my favourite). I knew pretty much everything that happened in the first half of the season as I read the manga up until that point a few years ago, and while some frames still leave much to be desired, I think it's the most action-packed and driven the show has been in a very long time. There's half an episode of recap at the start of the second of the second cour (which, honestly, for a change, was very welcome, considering just how much happens in the first half of the season), but other than that, the story just marches on, and as always, the fights are typically high octane, Huyashi's OST is on point, and there are those classic MHA moments trying to get you to well up. And yeah, they got me once or twice. My Hero overall has some serious issues as a story, such as almost all of this taking place so far in the span of one year (and I definitely get the sense that Horikoshi set that pace early on and may have underestimated the workload that would mean), or some really weird pacing where we go from slow crawls to insane sprints, but Season 6 feels like a marathon in the best way possible. So much would happen in some episodes that entire episodes flew by in what felt like 10 minutes at most, but was actually 24, and so for all of My Hero's flaws over the years - both in source material and it's anime adaptation - I've got to say, they knocked it out of the park for me with Season 6. If memory serves, they also went the entire season without Mineta saying anything incredibly inappropriate, and that, I think, is a win for anime. Gets a 9/10 rating for me, matching the rating I gave Season 2, and a huge leap up from the lowest score I've given a season of My Hero with Season 5 last time out (which I gave a 7/10). Now the long wait begins for Season 7!

Not sure what you have or haven't watched (or what you're looking for – so a bit of a shot in the dark!), but a quick flick through Funimation's catalogue makes me want to recommend one of Ranking of Kings or Kaguya-sama: Love is War, both of which are brilliant shows in their own right

All eight episodes listed in S6 are OVAs, maybe worth checking out if you just want more AoT and to see some of the extra stuff animated, but it won't be where you're picking up. Part I of S4 is everything from E60 - The Other Side of the Sea to E75 - Above and Below (16 episodes total), which finished airing in May 2021, so I think it's a safe bet to say you're past that point based on you saying you brought yourself up-to-date last year. Part II of S4 is everything from E76 - Judgment to E87 - The Dawn of Humanity (12 episodes total). This part finished airing in May 2022, so if you did watch everything that was available last year (depending on when last year you brought yourself up-to-date, and if you watch subbed or dubbed), then it seems likely that you finished Part II also, or at the very least a good chunk of it? Which leaves Part III/The Final Chapters, which is listed at the bottom of S4 as E-SP1 - THE FINAL CHAPTERS. This is just under an hour long and is basically two episodes in one, and the first half of AoT's finale. This released at the start of last month, so you definitely won't have watched this. Hope that helps Not yet. The first half of the series finale was released at the start of last month as an hour-long special, and the second half is set to release this "Fall" (so, September at the earliest).

$500+ million at the box office in its first week and a bit makes the film the biggest video game adaptation at the box office to date. Not surprising at all: arguably the biggest video game IP of all time, voice cast stacked with celebs, and made by the studio behind the juggernaut that is the Despicable Me-verse. Really curious to see where this ends up alongside Illumination's other films at the box office!

Last week's gameplay trailer, totally forgot to post it as I watched it in the queue for the Obi-Wan panel Hype. Two weeks to go!

Rated in Korea: Not surprising considering that it was slated for release this year, but hopefully this gives us a bit more of a solid reason to think it'll actually make it out this year and not slip into 2024

That's...but that's not even what I'm saying? I'm saying they showed a lot, which I would not equate to being "spoilery", which is the general consensus in here – that they didn't really spoil anything (which I agree with, without context a lot of these cutscenes and lines really don't amount to much besides more speculation about their place in the game). And I almost certainly wouldn't equate me saying that they showed "a lot" to them showing "too much". I just think it's clear that they dialled up to eleven how much they were prepared to show in this trailer compared to previous trailers for TotK, and while that makes sense for one final blowout trailer, if we were to compare it to BotW's final trailer, I would say that the amount of new stuff they showed in their final trailer compared to the previous trailer is exponentially more than what we saw before for TotK, whereas BotW's final trailer felt like a natural step up in marketing from its previous trailers. I mean, Nintendo themselves said to get hyped for a three minute trailer and we basically ended up with four, so even by that metric they did show a whole lot more than we thought we were going to see. One last time: I don't have a problem with them showing as much as they did at all - I wanted that for goodness' sake, and have been asking for as much for months now! - and I've been waiting for this game to get a great trailer, which it finally has. I just thought it was worth warning that it shows a whole lot more than previous trailers did, which it does. I'm not saying that it's spoilery. I'm not saying that it shows too much. Just that it shows a lot, and if you're sensitive to that, then it might be worth skipping.

Just stumbled across The Explorator which was shown off last week, and it looks like a very unique and fun time! The scream caught me off guard

Leaked TV spot seems to confirm the name of a mini-boss we've seen in trailers up to this point as being a certain enemy from the original Zelda, as well as a returning element from BotW, and seemingly further confirmation of a certain location... Anyways, yeah, the trailer looked fantastic. The idea of getting some support throughout our journey is really exciting to me, and the shot at 2:38 seems to be exactly like something I've mentioned wanting before (ahem, fighting with a bunch of folks on our side in the guise of Seven Samurai). Spoilery =/= showing a lot. For me, at least, there's a pretty big difference between something that spoils the fun of something and showing off a lot that we hadn't seen before/expected to see. This trailer absolutely showed a lot, especially when compared to previous trailers which were incredibly reluctant to show too much; this trailer was a blowout of epic proportions (and I loved it for that) in much the same way as the January 2017 Switch Presentation trailer for BotW. I'm clearly not the only one who thinks this. Now whether or not you'd consider it "spoilery", I don't know, I think it's really hard to gauge something like that with a game like this. But for a game like this that is so deeply entrenched in exploration - much more so than most games releasing these days - maybe seeing a bunch more previously unseen locales, enemies, and characters can be considered "spoilery". For me, it's probably the part where we see a bunch of shots and hear lines clearly taken from cutscenes, when, if BotW is anything to go by, this game probably won't have that many cutscenes to begin with, so maybe it is "spoilery" in that sense. I'd generally agree that it's not "spoilery", but would say that it shows a lot, hence my previous caution for those on the fence about watching the trailer. I'm curious now, though: what could Nintendo have hypothetically shown here that you would have considered to be "spoilery"?

Final trailer for Tears of the Kingdom – hnnnnnnnng the music! Also, 3 minutes my ass Fair warning: while I loved the trailer, I feel like it showed a loooooooooot, so if you're on the fence, it might be best to skip this one? BUT FINALLY A GREAT TRAILER FOR THIS GAME! Less than a month to go!

Final trailer drops tomorrow at 15:00 BST: Livestream link: At 3 minutes long, it's going to be a meaty one! I've said it before, but the trailers for TotK have paled in comparison to the heights of BotW's trailers (and the last few have reused the same track over and over), so I'm really hoping that we hear some new music and get a trailer which lives up to the hype that the BotW trailers had me expecting.

State of Play with 20+ minutes of new gameplay coming this Thursday (13th April) at 22:00 BST! (yeah I didn't feel like it deserved its own thread, sue me )

Well my planned trip to Japan in 2025 just got longer and more expensive...

Scratching my head wondering how Pixel Remaster never ended up with a thread probably the PC first release? Now featuring a new pixel font! is absolutely hilarious as a selling point to highlight FIRST in your launch date reveal trailer (even if you're right dcubed, it's ugly as sin, but like you say – better than nothing!) Anyways, yeah, in for this, obviously, but no real rush with the onslaught of the next few months that is Jedi Survivor, Tears of the Kingdom, and Final Fantasy XVI. Will pick it up when I'm able to get my hands on a physical version, and this might be perfect to accompany me on a long plane trip or two this summer!

Pokémon Stadium arrives on the Expansion Pack next Wednesday – 12th April!

Previews have been going up and look great, check a look: And here's a clip from Kinda Funny showing off far more customisation options than I expected: Three and a half weeks to go!

Weekend was busier than expected, so didn't quite get through the entire season but did get through another five episodes, meaning it's time for another update! Started off a little slow with the first few episodes of the season, but certainly picked up in E3, bit of a welcome breather with E4 and E5, before really starting to get into the swing of things I feel with the following eps. Looking forward to seeing how the rest of the season plays out! Honestly, if you take The Last Jedi's plot and apply it to some random faces in the GFFA, I genuinely think there wouldn't be nearly as many people with problems with the story Rian told. But I do get why people have issues with the direction he went in, which I think is just emphasised more boldly by how much it stands out alongside TFA and TROS, not in that it doesn't fit, but it goes in very different directions – we've talked about it before, but the lack of cohesion and a plan is really what hurt the sequels, even if there's still stuff to enjoy in them. Because I absolutely agree, it sucks that we'll probably never see Rian direct Star Wars again, or if he does, I doubt it's for a trilogy. It sucks because what he did with what I always refer to as Force Skype™ between Rey and Ben is one of the smartest storytelling choices that feels so specific and unique to this story and these films that it just wouldn't work quite as well elsewhere. Imagine an entire trilogy where he got to flesh that out. Again, the duel in TROS using it is great, but the angles themselves when Rey and Ben are talking generally felt like a huuuuuuuuuge step down from the framing Rian used in TLJ. Yeah, generally the same for me I think. TFA - I love and nothing will ever replicate that hype going into that film for me. The problem is it does feel a bit stale because even with new elements (characters, music, etc.) pulled off in a great way, it does try to ape on ANH a lot, which I think (for understandable reasons) pulls off those beats much more strongly than TFA does. J.J. was also too good and perhaps a little stupid with how many of his mystery boxes he set up, and with no real cohesive plan for the trilogy, it forces Rian's hand in TLJ and even his own hand in TROS to go a certain way with the story to try to tie up those loose ends (and even then there are still some that get left!). TLJ - most inventive film in the trilogy for me and Force Skype™ is the best filmmaking fundamentals utilised in a new way and added to a Star Wars film I would say period. Abundance of ideas, great music, felt like going back to those Kurosawa inspirations (again, it's straight up Rashomon), everything with Ben, Rey and Luke I adored, same goes for the Holdo Manoeuvre and how everything builds up to the film's climax, and the final act feels like it sets up IX well (unfortunately J.J. decided to run a bit of a different race rather than take the baton and keep running with it). Also the perfect goodbye for Carrie Fisher. I do think outside of Luke/Rey/Ben, though, that's where the film is generally at its weakest, and it was almost like Rian tried to cram too many ideas into one film when there were enough ideas to split across two. I think this is the closest to Revenge of the Sith in terms of having great ideas and a great main story thread, but just not executing all around, and so some of the side story stuff falls to the wayside a little bit. TROS - like you said, great moments, but for me that's all they are; overall, the film is, fundamentally, a mess. It passively aggressively (and other times very aggressively) at times tries to undermine some of Rian's decisions in TLJ, the pacing is the worst in any Star Wars film (think I said when I first watched it something to the effect of while ANH was saved in the edit, TROS was destroyed in it), and yeah, if just drops the ball for the most part I think as what is supposed to be both a Saga-ending and Trilogy-ending film. It's funny because after watching it three times in cinemas and not having much to love about it other than Adam's performance (because the film butchers Williams' score because Disney are stupid and likely wanted a super short final cut to maximise what they could out of the Saga-ending film at the box office), going in looking for things to love worked and there are great moments throughout, it's score lowered for me. It almost feels at times that the film doesn't flow through those moments but instead delivers one great moment, then takes aim at another, and the 10 minutes between those are basically trying to explain how we get to that next moment. It's very weird. But yeah, I've got appreciation for the sequels, and I did before, I just think IX (kind of understandably) left a poor taste in my mouth when I watched it at release which soured so much of the trilogy for me. My biggest hope, as ever, is that they learn from this so that whenever we get another trilogy, the same mistakes aren't made again (and continue to make great casting choices of course) Yeah, definitely a bit of both I'd say, and I really appreciate the ambiguity around the reasoning for that decision. So many other shows aimed at kids I feel might have addressed it in a really hamfisted and direct way ("Why did you do that?"), so I'm glad that they didn't do that here!

First trailer for Secret Invasion, which is still scheduled for 21st June.

The legendary Ryuichi Sakamoto, best known for his Oscar/Grammy/Bafta trio-winning score for 1987's The Last Emperor, and other great scores in award-winning films such as Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and The Revenant, has sadly passed away at the age of 71 RIP. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is one of the most emotive pieces of film scores for me, and I can still remember the very first time I listened to it. Incredibly heavy and melancholic, but also wistful and purposeful. Well worth a listen if you've got the 4 minutes or so to spare:

Started The Bad Batch S2 yesterday, only three episodes in but here's a hotpot of thoughts: Looking forward to continuing watching when I get back

I disagree pretty much entirely, but if it's not for you, that's fine! I feel the same way about football commentary a lot these days (ahem, Lee Dixon). Some context might help explain why and how I enjoy it though, so I might as well share The way I split it is usually for the big conferences that I'm looking forward to and put time aside to watch (like a Nintendo Direct or the old PlayStation E3 conferences), I would watch it through myself first, and then watch reactions after to see what others think. I like to hear other people's perspectives when it comes to a lot of things (even if they're different to mine), but for games and other such things, I much prefer reactions like this to most critical reviews. It just feels much more natural. I've also been listening to the Easy Allies Podcast and Frame Trap, their other podcast, for 6+ years now (although much less recently), and having years of them interacting together and talking about games means I understand (more often than not) why they feel certain ways about certain games, or are super excited for certain reveals. For conferences and shows I care less about, if I do tune in, I tune in with them. Worst case they add some much needed humour to a typically really dry, stretched out and boring presentation, best case there's a cool unexpected reveal which livens things up, and the energy of seeing other people react enthuses me a bit during a typically otherwise dead showing. I think of it like watching a big football match but then watching highlights and commentary from other channels to see what others said, and for the ones I care less about, like talking over a trashy movie with mates on a chill Sunday afternoon with a pizza What I'll admit is a bit funny about this, though, is that I rarely watch "normal" streams, and mostly tune in for things like this. I think it's just because there's a much more solid start and end time? But anyways, back to RIP'ing E3

We're just under three months out, and the game has gone gold!

A bunch of great memories were shared in the E3 Hype, Memories & Traditions thread ahead of E3 2021 - which turned out to be the final E3 - so it's worth going back and digging through some of the great stories people shared back then. To not tread over too much ground again, my first and favourite E3 that I tuned in for was E3 2016. I still go back sometimes and watch those trailers and conference moments again. PlayStation killed it with a live orchestra, and the reveal of God of War (with a live stage demo that was scored live by Bear McCreary!), the announcement of the Crash trilogy being remade, Resident Evil VII really being the first in a long line of great and subversive Resident Evil trailers (with a demo dropping the same night!), the reveal of Insomniac's Spider-Man, diving headfirst into hype PSVR announcements of some short but sweet experiences with Arkham VR and Battlefront's X-Wing VR Mission, and of course the big one, the reveal of Kojima's upcoming project after his split from Konami in Death Stranding. Nintendo also had an awesome showing at E3 2016, because with the Wii U having already died a fast death but with the 3DS chugging along, they made the audaciously bold move of coming to E3 with one major home console title in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And it CRUSHED, and arguably won E3 for Nintendo that year singlehandedly. I tuned in for Treehouse and just absorbed everything shown off about BotW, and let's not forget to mention that doozy of a trailer: It's a 10/10 trailer and it's not even the best trailer for the game! Nintendo's marketing team were lethal snipers in that 12 month period in their shots taken:shots hit out of the park ratio. E3 2017 for Nintendo was a Switch coming out party which delivered reveal after reveal after reveal (and Mario Odyssey took after Breath of the Wild, with yet another 11/10 trailer to show off Cappy's abilities!), and while logistically a mess with how people were shuffled around, E3 2018 for Sony was another great showing with the Ghost of Tsushima demo, Resident Evil 2 Remake being revealed (properly) and releasing just seven months later, the awesome The Last of Us Part II demo and themed stage, and much more. My favourite demo though has to be Square Enix's E3 2019 showing of Final Fantasy VII Remake. Four years after the game's reveal at E3 2015, it had a lot to live up to, and so coming out swinging with one of the best demos - and one of the best demo narrations, and live at that! - really took some doing, so kudos to them for that. Easy Allies are my favourite folks to follow in terms of reviews and reactions for game reveals, and so over the years they've produced a stupid number of moments that are seared into my mind alongside certain announcements and reveals, but to go back to E3s from before I started watching them but have since watched (and watched certain moments of over and over again), the GameTrailers reaction to the big three announcements at Sony's E3 2015 showing - the E3 of Dreams - is one of the greatest reaction videos I think from a gaming journalism outlet. There's so much emotion and none of it feels forced or faked, and the fact that this honestly set the tone for an entire company being spawned from the closure of GT still blows my mind. To add to what you and @Jimbob have said about Sony at that E3, I think what's so great about this messaging is that it's hilariously just delivering on the bare minimum of what a gaming console really should be about: the games. We've seen it countless times over the generations where someone tries to make the console a general entertainment system rather than a gaming system first and foremost (I mean, look at what happened when Nintendo went from the Wii U to the Switch!) and it's a mould I think the industry might still continue to break away from for sometime...and in my eyes, that's a great thing. You two are forgetting to mention another great component to Sony clapping back at Xbox that year, though, which was that after seeing Xbox's self-destruction on the Sunday, Shuhei and Adam went into a little meeting room and shot a very quick video - just over 20 seconds long - which set the tone of what was to come in their conference. What I will always admire about PlayStation is that they are in the business to win it, and sometimes it feels like they're the only one. Nintendo does amazingly well, sure, but they're the protagonist in that they just do the most random stuff at times and IT JUST WORKS. Xbox are that character who wants to be friends with everyone but lacks the depth and nuance others seem to have. And PlayStation is a straight up, suit and tie, cutthroat antihero of a business. I know it's included in the E3 1995 video you shared dcubed, but shame on you! "$299" absolutely deserves its own spot, if only for being the moment Sony pulled the seat from under SEGA at the big boys' table. There's so much more I can say about E3, but I'll leave it at that for the shows themselves. It's a shame the direction they went over the last few years, and the ESA's glaring weaknesses as trustworthy organisers really accelerated everyone else in the industry adapting to the Direct approach and doing whatever they want. We've all talked at length for what feels like - and has actually been! - the impending death of E3 for years now, so it's no real surprise, and COVID was honestly a final blow, because they never had a chance to bounce back from how much they messed up E3 2019 (remember the leaked documents? Fun times). I will miss E3 for its focus, but for one week, on a medium we all love: games. It was like Christmas slap-bang in the middle of the year, and the hype here and elsewhere would be palpable, and watching reactions trickle in and quickly discussing things between vast oceans of announcements before posts would be lost to the aether was always fun. It was this community's pilgrimage, and so to no longer have a Mecca to travel to, I genuinely wonder what the unseen long-term ramifications of this could be, such as shady business deals being agreed behind closed doors for smaller devs and publishers just happening less, or how about potentially missing out on providing a physical place to give developers-in-training somewhere to aim to be in 5, 10, or 15 years from now? For an industry which feels like it has, over the last few years, become aggressively and increasingly corporate, bleak, and soulless, E3 felt like a last bastion to connect these big name publisher's - and certain people's faces - to those of us watching on, either on the ground at E3 or from the comfort of our own homes, and so I do think more is going to be missed than we initially acknowledge. There's a reason we miss live conferences, and it's because it takes so much passion out of presentations and enthuses them with an oftentimes uncomfortable level of sterility. Anyways, RIP E3. Your death was inevitable, but that doesn't make it any less gutting.

ICYMI: Vol. 1 of the OST for Mando S3 released yesterday, covering Chapters 17-20; Joseph Shirley has done a fantastic job since taking over as lead composer at the start of the season, very much looking forward to seeing how he musically wraps up the final three episodes of the season! Also how did this season go by so fast