Julius

Early reviews are in, and they're looking very positive! It also looks like the game mechanic that was leaked before is being shown in reviews and marketing now. Very odd decision to leave sharing it so late, cool as it might be, so if you're trying to go in avoiding knowledge of what it is, it might be worth dodging the reviews.

Teaser trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – Looks okay, though I have seen some LOTR fans a bit concerned by just how clean a lot of it looks when compared to the movies. Guess we'll have to wait and see how it turns out!

Attack on Titan really just said "Bangers Only" to this second part of The Final Season, didn't they? Another fantastic episode. Also made decent progress with Jujutsu Kaisen, will probably finish catching up in the next day or two. Still really loving the fight scene animation, but what's really hooking me right now is just how much each we get to see each character figuring out their opponent(s) during fights, and learning about their skills – it's giving me major Hunter x Hunter vibes in that sense, to say the least. And that's before mentioning that pacts are pretty similar to Kurapika's contracts, as well as the general use of contracts/pacts in HxH. So what I'm saying is that it's a serious take on Mob Psycho's initial premise of exorcisms combined with some elements of Demon Slayer in its combat/general flow so far and a sprinkling of HxH. There really isn't much to complain about. Well, other than the fact that the second OP is clearly a massive step down from the first (it's still good though, at least the chorus), and that the second ED is left in the dust by the first. It's still good...it's just nowhere near as good!

checks the trophies on the first search result and sees Sekiro and Dark Souls III Yep, got to be the right one! Sent Yeah, it's not really something I've touched with the From games I've played so far, but something about those experiences felt so isolated anyways, maybe that's why. Elden Ring is definitely one I'll be looking to jump into the online stuff for though once I've beat it, I mean jolly open world co-op? Heck yeah, sign me up!

Yeah it's a Superbowl car ad, but if you've watched The Sopranos, it's undeniably hard to not get chills watching this:

New trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Official poster too:

Yeah, Vaati's is fairly free of spoilers, he actually talks for what feels like a good five minutes at the start of his preview about not wanting to spoil things for people, so in his preview he basically limited himself to the opening area and its immediate surroundings - so stuff that we got in the CNT pretty much - and he covered the differences pretty extensively. I can see myself going with Vagabond or Warrior. I've gone with a pretty standard melee build in both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls (even more so in Dark Souls actually, as I actually made a bit of room for magic in Demon's Souls!) so feel most comfortable with that kind of build, but I do feel like magic and the like are going to be really helpful for ranged combat (such as in the open world), so will probably end up building a hybrid. PlayStation! Yourself? I'll probably solo the game first before heading online (figuring out and defeating bosses is my favourite thing about From games so far), but would love to head online with people at some point. Haven't really touched it up to this point in either Demon's Souls or Dark Souls, besides when getting invaded myself!

Oh come on, everyone knows the reason they're so rare is that female JRPG bunny girls eat the male JRPG bunny dudes after mating Final Fantasy XIV bunny dude fans are freaking out right now Aye, Henry lived! ...or did he?... Yeah, he did

Just shy of 50 hours, that's a wrap for me on Legends: Arceus. Damn it Game Freak, make our trainer...pages?...update with new photos please! I want to talk a bit about the final battles in the game. Spoiler tag containing endgame content incoming... And one last look at my final team and outfit for the game... I'm going to take a bit of time to listen to the soundtrack before sharing my final thoughts, but for now to sum up my time with the game in three words: I loved it!

When I played Fire Emblem: Awakening, I was one of those players. I was about 20 minutes into a pretty long battle which I'd already reset a couple of times due to watching characters I liked take the fall, when I lost a character I didn't really care that much about. Rather than reset again, I let her die. Permanently. *villainous laughter* I mean, it was a bunny girl -- does losing her really count as a loss?

You can farm Razor Claws by catching Sneasel, you know, like you can in the other games! And I forgot this because..? It only took catching eight of them (so changing the time of day once) in the Coroner Highlands to get the two I needed -- and I actually got them one after another. Picked up the Leaf Stone with all of the Merit Points I had collected and now have the item evolutions out of the way. Not far to go at all now, just the 8 Pokémon left, and they're all tied to Requests and Missions, so far as I can tell. Also nabbed a fifth (and potentially final?) shiny:

I first heard about it in this SNES Drunk video a few years back. Every time I really start to get into a new hobby, I go hard on a research phase at some point, looking up lists, listening to podcasts, and reading up on a lot of things... probably too many things

There are four tiers of completion as far as I can figure when it comes to completing the Dex. The second is as far as you need to go for what I guess can be considered the "true ending" (catching Arceus). The first one is, like in Diamond & Pearl with unlocking the rest of the Survival Area, you only have to see a Pokémon for it to count towards your Dex completion (i.e. register it). The second one is catching every Pokémon in order to unlock the "true ending" and see Arceus. This is what I'm currently doing, and what I imagine most will do. The third tier is completing every page to Research Level 10 to complete a Pokémon's page. Beyond completing the Dex, the only benefit I can find to this is that every tick on a page increases your shiny odds for that Pokémon, which, when coupled with what I imagine shows up as the reward for this tier (the Shiny Charm, at a guess?), it will raise your shiny hunting odds considerably. I imagine that this is probably made a much smoother process by first getting access to all of the mounts. The fourth tier is getting a perfect on every page. From what I gather, this will increase your shiny odds even more, but I can't seem to figure out if it a lands you a reward

Made some more headway on the Dex, only got the 13 Pokémon left to catch now. 3 of these are locked behind item evolutions (I need a Leaf Stone and two Razor Claws), though I do have around half of the Merit Points I need to buy all three already, so will see how the satchel hunt goes before I might need to dive into a Rift, to either hunt for Leaf Stones or Razor Claws, and/or to hunt for the one of the three which can be found in Rifts - Weavile. The other 10 Pokémon I need are all tied to the remaining Requests and Missions, so there really isn't much left at this point! Spiritomb and Cherrim Requests are both out of the way too -- if anyone gets stuck at some point on the latter, this video has a helpful guide which utilises the weather in a way I hadn't seen any of the other guides I looked at mention. Anyways, during my RNG hunt for Cherrim, I got lucky and heard a shimmering noise while sprinting for a tree, so I turned to my right and what do you know, there was a shiny Buneary hiding out in the grass: I also got lucky and found probably my favourite Hisuian regional variant in shiny form during a mass outbreak, and it's easily my favourite of the shiny bunch so far: Glorious! Anyways, with not too much left to do at this point, I think there's a chance that I might be done with the game soon. I was thinking before about going for max rank, but at this point it's probably going to be a whole lot of grinding out research tasks just to see certain moves, so whether or not I do that will probably depend on if I'm in the grinding mood.

Have you heard of our lord and saviour Kleavor?

Damn, that's insane! Especially more so when you think it's a totally new IP when compared with most other 20+ million first party sellers for PS4 being from already established IP, like God of War and Spider-Man. I've heard bits and pieces through podcasts about the turnaround of the PC version of the game too, so it seems even more deserving. PlayStation are being very picky and late to the party with their PC ports, but they seem to be on the right track to making them count. I'm really curious to see how Forbidden West turns out. With the (hindered) growth of the PS5 install base since launch, I expect that we'll hear that it's the biggest first party launch on the platform to date. You know, before that same thing is said like another three or four times over the next year or two

Cinematic trailer time: The game is now up for pre-load too, for anyone going digital.

Oh yeah, George was done by the end of III. For all of the hate the sequels get at times - rightly or wrongly, I think there are clear issues there, but it's seriously not the end of the world - the very vocal minority of the fanbase who gave George crap for the prequels brought it on themselves. The only real reason he was up for selling Lucasfilm is because of how he and much of the cast (Jake Lloyd and Ahmed Best come to mind) were absolutely rinsed in hatred for years during and after production, and he chose Disney to continue the story, hence the "low" sale price. It's a real shame, because he didn't really get to see how loved the prequels themselves are hy so much of the fanbase until Celebration 2017 -- by his own admission, Star Wars has always been aimed at and for kids, but he never really got to see a lot of the prequels audience grow up and have their voice. But yeah, tangent aside, using McQuarrie's concept art so much in Rebels - and beyond - has been absolutely awesome, though I do remember the hilarious reactions to the skinny lightsabers when we got a first look at them. Next to George Lucas, think it might be fair to say Ralph McQuarrie is probably the most important person to Star Wars alongside John Williams. Looking at his concept art today still gets the mind racing! Neither do I, and I actually thought that his episode of Mando S2 was one of the weaker ones, too, so I've always been a bit stumped as to why he was chosen to helm The Book of Boba Fett. He's clearly close to Jon Favreau - probably most apparent in The Chef Show - but I hope that's not the only reason he got the gig. I would love Bryce Dallas Howard to get a show at some point. Fair play to her for proving herself, coming from being the daughter of Ron Howard leaves a lot of expectation, and I think she's delivered so far. It's looking back at her being Gwen in Spider-Man 3 A May 4th shadow drop (or maybe just a short lead-in with week or two of a heads-up) would be fantastic, but yeah, we're definitely getting to that weird point where there has to be overlap between the shows. The Bad Batch episodes are short enough that I definitely think you could get away with it overlapping with Kenobi and/or Andor, so long as they're not on the same day. And yeah, I'm very excited to see where they take the show moving forwards. Easily the best looking animated Star Wars show we've had so far I think, though being an evolution of their existing assets and style from The Clone Wars certainly helps! Man, I know it's a stacked year already, but I think Fallen Order II is definitely aiming for late 2022. Whether it makes it is another conversation, it could easily slide into 2023 with a long list of other games currently slated for 2022, but I would be surprised if it didn't turn up at Celebration or whatever event that EA plans to hold this summer. And yeah, I'm looking forward to digging into the High Republic stuff! I'll probably start there and then get back to work on picking up all of the hardcovers I've missed from not reading Star Wars novels the last few years. There's definitely a huge benefit to having some distance from the Skywalker Saga when it comes to what you can do from a storytelling perspective, though I do still find it funny that they didn't go straight to the Old(er) Republic - I guess you've got to keep something in the tank, and that could easily be a decade or so of focused content by itself at some point! Do find the decision to have the first show set in the era's dying days a bit of an odd one, though. Yeah, could easily be it's own animated show, or included in a New Republic era animated show whenever we get around to getting another one that's their main focus and not some side hustle. *crickets* Yeah, just a weird way to go about it. Fennec basically took over the badass role Boba had in the Mando S2 post-credits, and I do wonder if they'll eventually come to loggerheads over something. But man, was some of the writing around Boba outright stupid. "I have lots of credits" + "Boba, you know what you can do with credits? Buy muscle" (seriously?! How do you not notice how stupid Boba comes off being told this by Fennec?) = "we hired only a couple of guys and found some stylish kids from the big city to help us out". Super bizarre! Right?! I think it's either that or it begins with a flashback or dream sequence that he snaps out of, but it certainly writes itself since we learned that he would be getting off Tatooine. I'm thinking we see some popcorn or something this time around and hey, so long as we don't see another sand planet, I'm fine with wherever we go! And man, I've got nothing but respect for how much Liam Neeson clearly loves the role of Qui-Gon. It's been years since The Clone Wars finished it's initial run, and I still can't believe that he wanted to come back and do it (I do wonder if him doing some VA before, such as in Ponyo, helped? But I think he just wants to be involved every chance he gets). Weirdly I'm not a huge fan of Clone Wars Yoda either outside of his own arcs, though I like him in Episode III (well, when he's not flipping around the place). Either way, so long as his look is either ROTS CG or original trilogy/TLJ puppetry rather than the original monstrosity they had for The Phantom Menace: You don't need to be trained to perceive one, just to become one, has always been my understanding of it (and possibly only perceived by Force sensitives, and probably appearing only to who they want to). Anakin won the Force lottery as he's the Chosen One is how I'd wave off the follow-up question of how Anakin became one too. And I mean, Yoda's actual line at the end of the film is definitely what I'd prefer to what was cut and in the novelisation ("I am your apprentice now, Qui-Gon")! Personally, I think the Force ghost stuff is really interesting from so many different angles, mainly because of the irony that the Sith actively search for immortality but to no avail, and it's discovered (in the modern era at least) by a rogue Jedi, Qui-Gon, and is later learned by people who have disassociated with the Jedi Order to some extent, largely no longer taking its teachings as gospel like the prequel era Jedi did. It's a very roundabout way of showing that neither side has the answer. Don't get me started on Leia being a Force ghost at the end of IX, though. The Rise of Skywalker has many problems, but throwing away years of small details dropped throughout the shows and films, just to get that shot...and then there's the voices of the countless throwaway Jedi. Man. There is just no escaping my opinions on that film, is there?

So, as someone who hasn't played XC2 -- if Nia is the cat-eared one we saw in a bunch of trailers before the game launched, I agree that's 100% who that is. For me the tell is that the mask she's wearing has cat ears on which do a good - but not perfect - job of covering her actual cat ears. And that other character definitely sounds like Jenna Coleman, so I'll be very surprised if that's not Melia we see just before her!

But yeah, I hope you're right. Nervously and excitedly optimistic is pretty much how I'm feeling about it at the moment, because as many problems as Revenge of the Sith has, it's final few scenes really do try hard to close the book on that chapter of Star Wars, Obi-Wan, and Anakin, and set the pieces in place for A New Hope. Rebels obviously used the McQuarrie art by the spadeful, but sometimes I do wish Lucas had Vader entering something of a proto-Vader suit at the end of ROTS rather than the complete package. I know there are slight differences, but for a guy known at the time for his knack of squeezing out new designs out of his team when not absolutely necessary - meaning more toys! The clones say hey - I do find it funny that he didn't do it the one time where it might have made sense. Yeah, I get what you mean. Seeing something kind of middling in Star Wars is nice - obviously I'd rather it didn't happen, but you get what I mean - because you can reframe your perspective of your enjoyment without all of the drama and negativity surrounding something being absolutely slated or praised a little too much. It really does get me foaming at the mouth for their next animated series, though. As much as I love The Bad Batch, there's so much more they could do, and it's a shame that a lot of those ideas seem to have been pulled into live-action stuff -- as much as I enjoy it there, there's a timelessness you can achieve in a coherent animated project that just isn't possible in live-action, as the technology is still finding new ways to be advanced. I'm definitely getting that feeling of the run-in to IX, when we had the film itself, Mando, Fallen Order, and a Battlefront II update all within a month and a half or so. We've just come off the back of Boba, and now we've got LEGO Star Wars in just over a month and a half, Kenobi and celebration a month and two thirds after that, Bad Batch S2 at some currently nebulous point in the future - but surely not too far away? Not to mention everything else they've got going on in terms of published works (think I'll be cracking on with the High Republic once I've rewatched the films). It's a good time to be a Star Wars fan with so much stuff coming our way. Hard to disagree. I find that throughout Favreau's career it's obvious that he needs a certain type of actor to express some range to his writing, such as RDJ as Iron Man, which I just don't think he's got here. Not that these actors lack talent, but when you add in the fact that he's not directing and probably wants to leave the episode directors with some wiggle room, etc., I think it's a combination of him leaving them a lighter script for them to unravel themselves and just not being the right guy to write Boba. Because I'm still super confused about his 180° from the end of Mando S2's post-credits to this show, it's like they're entirely different characters. Yeah, I'd hope that he's either off Tatooine by the end of the first episode or about to leave, going by the type of show they seem to be setting up for us. If there's any dilly-dallying about him getting off-world I think we're going to come away wondering why there isn't more urgency. I can see it effectively going the typical 'Call to Adventure' route that we've seen with both Luke and Rey, it's pretty much required at this point considering that when we last saw him, he was consigning himself to a life of solitude on Tatooine to watch over Luke. We'll probably get a look at his day-to-day - getting food, staying quiet with any locals, walking across the desert, typical hermit in the desert stuff - and I wouldn't be surprised if it's another long, "let's see how many minutes we can go without talking" situation, before he gets back to his home, maybe tries to reach out to Qui-Gon (or Yoda, though I could see him appearing as a projection to help teach Obi-Wan how to commune with Qui-Gon if they didn't cover that before splitting up in ROTS) but to no avail or has difficulties with meditation, drifts off, and then has a nightmare (flashback to the prequels or clone wars). 15 - 20 minutes in there's some call to action, be it him being hunted down and feeling like he is putting Luke in danger, or any nightmares/attempts at meditation ending with mechanical breathing. We know very little about the path to ghosthood for a Jedi, but I think the thing that will be blocking it for Obi-Wan will be sensing - and ignoring - that he thinks Anakin is still out there. Coming to a point of acceptance of the choice he made at the end of Episode III to leave his closest friend to burn alive and accepting - and finding some sort of peace with - the ramifications of his choice to not carry out the deed I think might be the conclusion of the show. I wouldn't be surprised if the show ended with Obi-Wan finally being able to commune with Qui-Gon before cutting away (because I don't think they should ever spill the beans on the actual training process), but if he manages it on Tatooine, I hope they keep it consistent and he is only heard rather than seen, as he never completed his training, only appearing "physically" (either interacting with the world or as a Force ghost) in places with an incredibly high saturation of the Force (such as Dagobah or Mortis). In terms of cameos, I'm really hoping for the Grand Inquisitor to turn up at some point, and maybe even Satine if we do get flashbacks (played by Cate Blanchett, obviously, because that's so obviously who she's based on!), just considering her role in Obi-Wan's life. Heck, have the show start with Obi-Wan daydreaming about what his life with her could have been like before being snapped back into focus. But yeah I'm excited

Took a bit of a break yesterday before digging in today to start making some headway on completing the Dex. As I'm only going for catching them all rather than getting complete Dex entries, I haven't had to touch a Rift since the end of the story in search of rare Pokémon, as it seems like I've picked up all of the Pokémon I needed to get from the inside during my sprints through them during the main story. At this point, I'm actually only going into them in search of evolution items, to save me having to pick up a whole lot of satchels and having to trade in points. I'm specifically looking / saving for a Leaf Stone, a Dawn Stone, and two Razor Claws, which is proving fun to say the least. In terms of the Dex, as the main story is complete, I'm not moving forwards with the post-game just yet, and have instead finally opened up a guide and gone through. Like I did with Brilliant Diamond, I've started by listing every Pokémon I need, and the easiest route to getting them: evolution and / or location, if an evolution item is an option, if they're tied to a Request or Mission, etc. At the start of my session I had 61 Pokémon that I still needed to catch, but through using the evolution items I already had to hand (I already had an army of Eevee on hand to evolve, thankfully) as well as just collecting every resource I came across for EXP with Eevee leading the charge (for that happiness maximisation -- I accidentally evolved one into a Sylveon instead of an Espeon, so am now on my second Eevee that I'm attempting to make a psychic ) I have already whittled that figure of 61 down to 26, more than half of which are tied to post-game Requests and Missions, so yeah, really decent progress on the Dex front. I do still have the Spiritomb and Cherrim Requests ahead of me, though, so it's not all sunshine and rainbows just yet; the former will need a guide for sure, and the latter is me potentially sticking on a podcast for hours, hoping the gaming gods smile upon me and throw some RNG luck my way. The Pokémon to give me the most trouble so far has been Munchlax, had to go back to Jubilife a couple of times for the little guy to spawn, but he chose a nice picnic spot once he turned up at least: I've gone in search of a couple of outbreaks at this point too, so managed to nab another two Shiny Pokémon: Buizel and Goomy. And lastly, I'll end this post with this horrifying image of a giant Lopunny's blood red eyes piercing through the gritty sunset haze, looking like a crazed Titan, munching away on the flesh of an unfortunate passerby trainer... ...or an Oran Berry, you decide

1. Would you be interested in taking part? Yes. Considering how long I've been part of N-E now, it's time to show you all that I'm bang average at Mario Kart 2. What day and time works best for you? I'm free most nights these days other than Friday and Saturday, so out of the days you mentioned, my preference would be Thursday. @S.C.G suggested 20:00, and that would be fine with me! 3. Do you want scores to be tracked? No. I'll elaborate. As others have mentioned, I really do appreciate the energy I've seen put into keeping track of and scoring things as has been the case before, but I personally found it a bit intimidating before when I thought about joining up and that there was a scoring system, etc., and thought it put a bit more pressure on turning up all of the time. To be clear though, it's not something I ever voiced, so the burden of that lies with me for not suggesting it -- it's just a bit tough to gauge from the outside looking in just how seriously things are being taken when there are points involved and how it would be received to suggest a more casual approach, which was my only reason for never bringing it up before. Like @Hero-of-Time, if this is a bit more of a casual get-together I'll definitely be interested, and I think it will also make it much more enticing and accessible for people to pop in and join. 4. Should Theme Nights be bought back? I'd agree with your suggestion and how Sam responded to this one -- Theme Nights could be great to get some variety in with tracks and different cc formats, but limiting vehicles could inhibit a more casual approach to things that I think a fair few have voiced wanting. But yeah, those are my thoughts

Been checking the Nintendo UK Store throughout the day, and there it is: physical release confirmed! Pre-order link here. I feel Square Enix as a whole has really put a shift in the last few years to fix their image, at least in my eyes. When I first joined here XV wasn't out and the perspective of S-E was pretty dismal, whereas now I think it's only on the up and up across the board, and the games are coming consistently and they're of a generally high quality. It makes it even more confusing that a game like Stranger of Paradise is coming out next month, but I think, should Final Fantasy XVI release late this year or early next and be anywhere near the high quality as to what CBU III has put out with XIV, they'll have turned that image of taking 5-10 years to get things out of the door after announcement successfully around and delivering a good game at the same time. Who knew that not wasting time over building new engines and just focusing on putting out a quality product on an existing one could be a good idea? I do absolutely agree with you on Team Asano, though. I'm excited to see what other games could get this treatment moving forwards, my only real concern - and I know we're early on, so we're far from that point right now I think - would be the market getting saturated with these HD-2D styled games, which I think could easily become the case and the next big thing indies go for besides being a Metroidvania.

A number of impressions videos have gone up: Might check out one or two but just listen to the audio rather than watch the attached footage, but man, I'm starting to get hyped. Just over two weeks to go. Time to start thinking about character names!

New trailer, including a not-so-surprisingly character reveal... And more gameplay from PS Underground: