Julius

Anyone else getting a sense of déjà vu? From the .com: Second time's the charm for Hennig, I'm sure

Yeah, I think you're right about that. I know Monolith Soft is pretty big, so I imagine there'll be a bit of tidying up of the game for some of them in the coming months, but I imagine they're otherwise all hands on deck for helping out with BOTW2 and probably chipping away at whatever their next game is. Honestly, it slipped my mind until you mentioned it that Nintendo actually announced Splatoon 3 as coming this summer, and surely this shakes things up a bit for that game. June is pretty busy as it is for Nintendo with Mario Strikers and Fire Emblem Warriors, so there's no way it's getting bumped up as well, so it could be that Splatoon 3 is swapping places with Xenoblade and landing in September? Guess it could also slip into August and still be a summer release, but that's typically a quiet time for releases as it is, and what with it being the summer holidays in Japan and Nintendo published games on the Switch not really coming in August (Tetris 99 and Astral Chain in 2019 are the only ones after looking it up), I'd be surprised if that happened. There's also Mario+Rabbids: Sparks of Hope and Bayonetta 3 to squeeze in there somewhere, Advance Wars to reschedule for release, and we're absolutely getting more announcements at Not-E3 and potentially another Direct before the end of the year, probably in September again. Nintendo basically pulled a Kirby and used Mouthful Mode on the entirety of 2022; what a stacked year it has been and will seemingly continue to be! Either way, I think the move is a good thing: if it did release in September, I think it would be poor curation on Nintendo's part, what with this being a massive open world, an open world Pokémon game in November, and then a quarter or so later another sprawling open world in BOTW2. Arguably much more overlap between Pokémon and Xenoblade, sure, but I don't care how much of a fan you are of Nintendo games, that's a lot of open world games in potentially (depending on how Nintendo are defining Spring) a six months window. I mean it sounds exhausting to me just thinking about it. Doubt I'll get through Future Connect and XC2 + Torna by the time this comes out, but it allows me to not rush to and through those games, which is a nice relief. Only real loser is probably Live-A-Live, which releases on July 22nd as things stand. Curious to see if that gets pushed back now, or if Square Enix repeat what they did with Dragon Quest XI when it first released over here on PS4 a few days ahead of Spider-Man, and just completely ignore the fact that they're releasing next to a juggernaut. Yeah okay, there's probably more overlap in audience for Live-A-Live and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 than there was for Dragon Quest XI and Spider-Man, but that really should have been the breakout success for the series in the west, which is what made the scheduling of its release super weird Oh, and hey: finally - FINALLY! - one of these behemoth, 50+ hours JRPG's is releasing in the dead of summer! That's a win for anime

July 29th?! We're still seeing a lot of games being delayed, and then there's just Monolith Soft sitting unhinged in the corner, casually bumping the game up 2 months from September to July. Damn. A Special Edition is also currently slated for release in North America through the My Nintendo Store: No word yet on a UK/EU release (or counterpart), but I imagine it's only a matter of time?

Fair play to City, very composed and rode their luck with their defending today at times (one of the more composed defensive performances against Atlético I think we've seen this late into the competition in a while), but managed to see it through. One of the more entertaining 0-0's I've seen in a long time. You only had to watch the first 15 minutes of the game to know exactly how the last 15 minutes would go: the ref's decision to not even card Felipe after drawing blood from Foden's head set the tone for the entire match, and he just let things go too many times, so it's no surprise where the game went, pretty much summed up by Llorente shoving Aké at Ederson while he was prone. Savic was brilliant at the start of the game, but man did he show his ugly side as the match went on (not for the first time, either), and Felipe's second swing at Foden after a really good initial tackle followed by Savic's actions were just appalling (apparently you can start a bust-up, headbutt someone, yank someone's hair and just get a yellow, brilliant); fair play to Zinchenko for rushing in. Definitely spotted a bruise on Stones, apparently the BT guys saw a headbutt, and Savic supposedly followed Grealish down the tunnel. What the hell is it with us Birmingham folks not being able to lose unwanted attention? City were on top the first half, but Atlético really came into their own by the 60th minute, and really started dominating - City were definitely holding on for dear life at times, and like I said before, definitely rode their luck. It's always fascinating to watch Simeone conduct the Metropolitano in the way he does, the way he riles up the officials (him winding everyone up and then screaming at Savic while standing ten yards into the pitch to "calm things down" is peak Simeone), the way he gets his team really going – basically a younger Mourinho with a knife between his teeth. Interesting hearing about the Liverpool game secondhand while watching the City match, look forward to catching those highlights, but really enjoyed these second legs in the quarter-finals. Liverpool will naturally be favourites against Villarreal, but never underestimate Emery's ability to get a knockout result in Europe, and City vs Real is going to be very interesting: on paper you'd say City should walk away with it, but Real were 3-0 down with 15 minutes left last night and turned it around through their experience coming to the fore. I could see them using Fernandinho to land some hits on Modric and Kroos, but I don't think City have the right midfield to really kill the flow and experience of Real's core, so I think they're better off focusing on their strengths rather than trying to find ways to exploit Real's. Semi-finals will hopefully be great

Best knockout performance in Europe away tonight by Chelsea at the Santiago Bernabeu ever? At the very least in the UCL era and by an English side, much less by a side trailing from the first leg. Gutted we just let it go in the last 15 minutes, we just looked far too leggy when push came to shove and didn't have the peace of mind that experience gives that most of these Madrid players have. Take Modric and Benzema out of the game and we would have won tonight, and I think we undeniably deserved to win tonight, as we did. Very frustrating about the Alonso handball - by the letter of the law, by all means it's a handball and not a goal, but I have no idea what the hell are you meant to do, lop your arms off? - and this isn't a cop out with me, as I've never been a fan of the rule change; on the other hand, I don't think the ball touched Modric before the corner was given for Rudiger to score from, so maybe that cancels it out. I think a lot of the rules "clarified" or changed in recent seasons have been a mess and don't take into account what the people on the pitch can actually do in the moment. But at the end of the day, in competitions like these, you make your own luck, and last week's poor performance at the Bridge has come back to haunt us. Tie goes into the book as an instant classic (which we haven't had too many of), and unfortunately we're on the wrong side of it. Elsewhere curious to see Bayern bow out here, Villarreal under Emery in Europe was always going to be a challenge, but it's very surprising that a side as experienced and with as much depth as they have clearly struggled. City or Atlético vs Real in the semi-finals could be very fun to watch, but for now I'm just looking forward to City vs Atlético tomorrow night. Sucks to be out of the competition but being a neutral with a competition like this is always fascinating (and way less stressful!).

Yeah, I agree. I really don't think it's as deep as some here are making it and I reckon this was just a freak accident on Nintendo's backend which has since been resolved: she's had her order of the game cancelled and refunded, and hasn't gone the route of staying offline so that they can't take it back off her, as she was scared of legal repercussions of some sort. Which I think is hilarious, because I'm sure Nintendo's T&C's don't go deep enough for pre-orders for something like this to be covered and land squarely on her. She actually mentioned receiving a download code which implies to me that she bought the game digitally through the Nintendo Store rather than through the eShop, which, if true, I imagine puts her in a very small minority of digital purchases. This was already on her profile before a lot of people (here and elsewhere) started throwing about accusations of piracy and name-calling (seriously?) by the way, which is a shame. It took me a minute of looking through her replies today to find that. Some of you are just salty that it wasn't you who got this opportunity after the delay I mean, firstly: above. She even straight up says in the second tweet connected to your original post about this that she thought other people already had access to it. Secondly: I don't think the tactic of openly sharing about getting the game early on a massive social media platform in a way which will get people accusing you of committing piracy on a *personal* Twitter account is one that - so far - the only person who has accessed this game through "piracy" - and therefore, by implication, would be smart enough to do what no-one else so far has replicated - would be silly enough to do. It seems far more likely to me that this was a backend error on Nintendo's end somehow than someone pirating the game from under their noses completely undetected and then posting about it online.

I think this was mentioned on Friday (April 1st) but people couldn't figure out whether it was serious or not. Which makes this tweet from 2013 way funnier: What a legend

Man, those are some great scores. I'm very excited for it! I think I'll be holding off and wait until Celebration/the long Bank Holiday weekend, kind of craving something else at the moment and spent a fair bit on games recently, so I need to be a sensible adult and wait...right? Take it you're planning on picking it up at launch @Ronnie? If so, have you decided which trilogy to start with yet?

Turns out you can still get 12 months of PS Now through the PS Store (browser, not app) for it's RRP of £49.99 and stack it to your heart's content, if anyone was looking for PS Now subscriptions with an eye on getting the PS+ Premium upgrade in June. This is half the price of the upcoming annual subscription for PS+ Premium (£99.99), though you'd technically only get 10 months of Premium rather than 12 if you signed up right now (as it immediately activates). Just need to log into the PS Store in your browser and then go to the below UK link, to stack you just need to buy one annual subscription and then open the link again to buy a second, etc. Don't think I'll be biting just yet as I want to see what's being offered first in terms of games, but figured I'd share EDIT: never mind, stacked 2 years. There's virtually no way that we're going to see PS+ Premium at half price in the next year and a half, and also gives me a chance to test the streaming for PS3 games. EDIT 2: tried out God of War HD for 20 minutes as I figured it'd be a decent test for a combat heavy game, and yeah, that's perfectly fine being streamed. Think these older games might have another issue I didn't think of before, which is how the triggers have changed over the years, as it feels super weird tapping R2 considering the trigger depth on the DualSense compared to when I do so on the DualShock 3.

Sigh Attack on Titan Final Season: Part 3 has been confirmed for 2023. It will be 8 episodes. I mean, at least it's not a film? I've loved parts of Part 2 (first half in particular, latter half has felt like a whole lot of set-up), but still, man, waiting another year and avoiding spoilers is going to be a pain

Some solid details on Summer Game Fest, which will (thankfully) be limited to June:

Yeah, when I played through it when it came out on Switch (oh good lord that was nearly two years ago now?! Wait, it's already been two years since VII Remake?!?! ) I enjoyed the game a fair bit, think it just depends a bit too much on the trappings of JRPG tropes to a pretty absurd degree and ends up a bit bonkers at the end. Absolutely killer OST though. I know Future Connected is much shorter and serves as an epilogue of sorts, but because it's so short a burst for a JRPG, it almost makes it less appealing to me for some reason? Probably my own fault for leaving it so long though And yeah I'll need to check out The Last Story at some point for sure, I think @Glen-i might have mentioned it back when I was looking for Wii and Wii U recommendations back when I got a Wii U. I swear JRPG's are a solid 50% of the games I want to get to, but most of them are just so damn long

Yeah, it's exactly looking over at my shelf which made me say "well I wanna buy it, but..." - I hate being an adult and having to make sensible decisions For me it's Xenoblade Chronicles (Future Connected or 2) or, much more likely, another Dragon Quest. Oh yeah you're right it did, totally forgot about that! Oh yeah that's totally fair, I can see where you're coming from. Think it's a combination of Square Enix just not making the messaging clear as clear as they probably should have and, like you said before, people just going a bit too far with it elsewhere. It would have sucked (I mean, especially over here), but yeah, at least we seem to have some clarity on it now Then I will cross my fingers for you and hope it does come over here that's actually something I'm surprised isn't confirmed over here to be honest. We've never had the game officially release over here before, and now that it is, it's only going to be as a digital title? Seems like the exact kind of scenario S-E could easily take advantage of with a limited run physical release of the game at an extortionate rate

But like I said before, I don't believe that that line was on the Square Enix and Nintendo sites before, and even if it was, it's a single bullet point which says "higher quality background music" -- that's about as nebulous as you can get when talking about a soundtrack for a remastered game, surely? The potential permutations of a one-liner like "higher quality background music" can be interpreted as being anything from a remaster of the original audio, to a fully rearranged soundtrack, to a re-orchestrated version of the soundtrack (for example, if the audio quality of the original wasn't up to snuff and they re-recorded the entire thing). And, again: the only real promotion of the game's OST is the video from before which just says "new tracks and new arrangements from Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition!" in the description (they specify these are new tracks and arrangements for the remaster specifically!) I also don't think you can blame anyone for thinking that we were getting a botched version of the game considering Square Enix's recent history with ports, remasters and remakes being all over the place. Chrono Trigger was a mess on PC at launch, and still is only available on PC and mobile currently; Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters have botched fonts and text sizes, not to mention that they're only available on PC and mobile currently (and don't get me started on the versions we had available before); Live-A-Live is getting a HD-2D remake; for some reason the platform with the most mainline Dragon Quest games right now is mobile; and Trials of Mana got a fully realised 3D remake (albeit with a AA budget at best). I have to agree with @Hero-of-Time, they've simply dropped the ball on being clear in the west about the state of the game and it's features (it shouldn't have been a question in the first place about the OST's state), as I feel like we've hardly seen any of it. I know it's a remaster, but it's a game which hasn't been re-released since, what, the PS3 in the US and Japan, and never came out over here in the first place? I feel like they really should be marketing this game more, especially the specifics surrounding it. As H-o-T said - and as we've even seen a few times over the last couple of weeks elsewhere in the industry - companies need to clear up their messaging and should be nailing it from the outset. I think I'm going to hold fire for now. I really want to, but I've got a couple of other JRPGs a bit higher up the priority list at the moment, and there's also part of me which wonders if there's going to be some niggling annoyance needing to be patched out in the game (such as with Final Fantasy IX's map music). Are you picking it up H-o-T? Just my two pence, but it might be worth just going for digital or importing the English language version from Asia from somewhere like Play-Asia if you do want a physical copy, as I don't think it'll be getting one unfortunately on the Switch specifically I don't think it'll get a physical cart over here in the west, as we've had a couple of remasters from Square Enix now which have only had English language physical editions available exclusively in Asia (Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy VII/VIII dual pack, Dragon Quest trilogy).

Man, the messaging around the game's music has been absolutely atrocious. It's worth noting that it seems like the phrasing in the description for the game around the music has been updated, so I think we're all rightfully very confused Square Enix themselves released a video just over a week ago with new and newly arranged tracks for this specific version of the game (from the last page): There's no reason to think that these wouldn't be in the game, I think the video description itself is very easily interpreted as these new tracks and arrangements being in the game: Then there's what @Hero-of-Time posted the other day. And then there's this, which does make it sound like the soundtrack is the same - just cleaned up - and that the tracks in the above video aren't even included during the gameplay of the remaster: Further yet, someone on Resetera says that this is actually a bit loosely translated and is actually more detailed than the tweet would have you believe: So I guess I'm now cautiously optimistic that Square Enix have pretty amazingly messed up their messaging here and we are actually just getting the original OST remastered, with some extra stuff to listen to outside of the game or something, but it's amazing that this confusion has even come about in the first place. All they had to say was "this game comes with a remastered soundtrack based on the recordings for the original game and..." - I imagine somewhere in the game, maybe from the menu with a music collection or something along those lines? - "...there are a number of new songs and arrangements we've included for fans to listen to separately to this. Please be excited." Swear some of these companies are playing on hard mode

Yeah, potentially, that's what I was getting at with wanting to premiere it at it Celebration - they could absolutely have a panel leading into it (or following) with the cast and show everyone there the first two episodes a day early. They've done stuff like that before, and hey I'm all for it if it means a better time for those attending SWC, it's just the lack of justification in their press statement which catches me off guard? It's just very un-Disney to move things around on Disney+ a few weeks after a trailer and poster with the date plastered all over it and not have thought about that already, especially on 31st March (the last day of the FY), because it's pretty middling news. Could just have been a case of needing to confirm their attendance I guess (COVID and whatnot), because I imagine their potential appearances at SWC would be baked into their contracts (COVID permitting), but it's just...odd, for lack of a better word

A State of Unreal event has been announced for 5th April (this coming Tuesday) at 16:00 GMT:

IGN are reporting that E3 2022 has been cancelled (that's a step closer to being official...right?): ...for a big comeback to be staged in 2023. EDIT: and again

Looks like we're a step closer to the official cancellation of E3 proper. Not too surprising given the dip in quality in recent years, big publishers bowing out to do their own thing, or ongoing questions around the ESA's handling of the event and whether it would even be returning in-person, but man, looks like we're in for another Wild West of game events this summer. And depending on how you feel about Geoff Keighley, you'll probably take this next bit of news one of two ways: Brutal. Still awaiting that official announcement from the ESA, but it looks like the curtain is finally falling on E3.

It's a very bizarre decision. I did wonder myself if it could be down to Celebration - maybe they could have a panel on the Thursday where they do the premiere? - but I have a really hard time struggling to think that that's the reasoning. At the end of the day, when it comes to Disney+, Disney have been pretty stone cold and calculated (they're moving it from the date of the 45th anniversary, so unless they've got some big plans for the day before SWC starts, I don't know what they're thinking), which is why I don't think SWC will be the reason (and if it is, I think that will show in its scheduling, so I guess we'll find out soon enough?). It honestly could be as simple as wanting to destroy some "first day of streaming" record or something along those lines - which I actually think Disney would care about - and I reckon they've got the numbers to back up that they get more views premiering a show on a Friday and across the weekend than they do on a Wednesday and across Thursday/Friday. Until we see the SWC schedule its hard to think of a reason otherwise, and it's very odd timing that this is announced the day following Moon Knight's premiere on a Wednesday. The news came absolutely out of the blue, so maybe it underwhelmed, but would they really be that reactionary and swap things around that quickly?

First time the game's officially coming to Europe and it's with what some people think is a borked take on - from what I've heard - is still an awesome OST which, at best, probably just needed a little cleanup? Square Enix is Monkey's Paw: The Video Game Company at this point. Their decision making is absolutely astonishing for their back catalogue and how it's so inconsistently handled. They fixed Chrono Trigger on Steam after a while, so I guess I'll just wait to see how this all plays out

Huge first week for the game in Japan:

Obi-Wan Kenobi premiere date pushed from May 25th to May 27th, which will now be a premiere double hitter:

This deal's getting worse all the time: NetEase are reportedly acquiring Quantic Dream. Hoo boy -- a Chinese company with a history of oversexualised characters acquiring a company with a history of racism and sexism? Seems like a cesspit designed by Sidious himself.

Recently acquired Firesprite look to be making a AAA horror game in Unreal Engine 5, according to some job listings on their website. Interesting. It's definitely a genre PlayStation themselves haven't tackled recently at a first party level, so hopefully we see some more weird games in genres they aren't currently tackling in the works, too.