Julius

Early review scores are looking really good!

It hasn't arrived yet and I don't play Fortnite, but it seems to run great on the Steak Deck from what I can see on YouTube (though it does require additional setup, as you need to use the Epic Games Store to download Fortnite on PC these days!):

Played through Imperial China, which was the fifth chapter I played through. That leaves me now with Twilight of Edo Japan and The Near Future left to do, think I'll likely do them in that order based on the mixed reception here that I've seen to the former and the much more positive reception seen for the latter, and then it'll be stepping into the unknown. Yeah, I agree. Megalomania is a really hectic and fun track but man...there's so much which could have been done here to keep it fresh! For example: a secondary melody or B-section based on the time period you're in, using the instruments used for the other themes in said time period? It would have got the point across still but just added a nice depth and some new flavour to it rather than forcing a great track down your throat until you relent

So, this is awesome: a new secret room has been found in NieR: Automata which no-one else has been able to access. That if it is a mod means whoever modded it is leaps and bounds beyond what the game's modding is currently capable of is also just something crazy to think about too. Love stuff like this

I've never had to deal with Steam Support before but from what I've read since it seems like they're top tier. I may have cheekily mentioned this would be my first real step into the Steam ecosystem too just to give them a little nudge Maybe it's just poor experiences with Nintendo's (my brother just spent two months going back and forth with them, and through multiple Switch units, to get his sorted through warranty) and PlayStation's supports, but I was expecting them to take much longer to respond, let alone actually giving me another chance to pick it up. Again: godlike. I like to think Gabe smiled down on me Friday morning Awesome, cheers for linking those! Will definitely take a look as playing the Deck on the TV is a huuuuuuuuuge part of me wanting to pick one up

I'm glad I'm not the only one who immediately got that vibe Didn't get the chance to play yesterday thanks to adulting (woo... ) but from the sounds of it, Near Future or Ancient China might be the ones up next on my agenda. Bit of a shame the Twilight of Edo sounds like a little bit of a mixed bag going off this thread (at the very least in its layout), though, as I was looking forward to being a ninja! I say that like it's a rare occurrence: I'm always looking forward to being a ninja

Well, my Steam Deck reservation expired on Thursday. Checked the website last Monday at 14:00 with a nebulous 'Q3 - July to September' message still being in place. A few days went by, and I honestly forgot to check the site again due to being overwhelmed at work at the moment and some personal stuff going on, but no emails, no in-app notifications, and nothing - surely I've got nothing to worry about, right? Thursday evening rolls around, I finish eating dinner, check the site...and my pre-order reservation has expired. Absolutely gutted, I didn't even bother looking into it deeper - I decided I'd try to message Steam Support on Friday morning, but I wasn't sure if there was much they could do. Friday morning I dig deeper. Now, I use Outlook for my emails, and every single email I've ever received from Steam - purchases including my initial Steam Deck reservation - all landed in my 'Focused' inbox. The kicker here? The purchase email landed in my 'Other' inbox on Monday evening, after I had checked that day. I then proceed to check the Steam app, and only purchase notifications are working - the message I received from Steam which I could see on my desktop/in desktop mode wasn't available to view here. I check the time my purchase email expired, and it was at 19:03 on Thursday...and then I check my log-in history on Steam, and see that I checked the site at 19:14. 11 minutes later! I whip up a quick message to Steam Support explaining and with a bunch of screenshots, but don't expect much in the ways of a response, so I've probably missed out - I sent them this message at 09:30 on Friday. They responded to me by 10:00, giving me the chance to buy it again. Steam Support is godlike!! And now, here I am, waiting probably another week or so for my Steam Deck to show up, but I'm getting really excited to check out the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters and revisit the original Star Wars Battlefront II, as well as check out some PC classics I've never got around to playing before. I've poked my nose around at the emulation scene on Steam Deck at the moment and it looks great, I'm not one for emulation in most cases but might consider it at some point in the future for games impossible to find/buy at a reasonable price (ahem, GameCube games), games not released over here (like the Suikogaiden games), and games which would mean I need to dig out an old console and buy cables to play them because they weren't released over here for some silly reason like the rest of its series (ahem, Suikoden V, if I can get it working), but I likely won't crack on with that until I pick myself up an SD card (which I'll be in no real rush to do). @Dcubed would you recommend the dock you're using for your Deck? I'm trying to figure out which ones are worth looking into while we wait for the official one, but it sounds like you're getting on with it pretty well

I think the other thing that's important to note here is that the entire Multiverse Saga (Phase Four through to the end of Phase Six) is releasing within a five year frame, having started with WandaVision in January 2021 and ending with Secret Wars in November 2025, compared with the Infinity Saga taking eleven years. And then there's the fact that after Ms. Marvel we're already at a stage where Phase Four is longer than the entirety of the Infinity Saga, if you count only the films for that Saga (50 hours 21 minutes vs 49 hours 56 minutes) – which you probably should, considering how much of a mess Marvel Studios was then with its TV and movie departments being at loggerheads. So we're already further into this whole multiverse ordeal than we got with the entirety of the Infinity Saga. It's too much, too fast, and too little of consequence (so far) – I think that's the big issue, because nothing gets time to breathe, we don't really get time to absorb it, and shorter gaps between projects releasing means an objectively lower quality, too. There's not much of a conversation to have, I feel, on smaller projects after they're finished like there was before, instead it's all the big picture stuff because there's stuff constantly being released, and as a result I think that's why we notice the fact that we don't have a solid direction to head in yet: because the conversation isn't "wow, what do you think is going to happen in the next Cap after Bucky saved him at the end of Winter Soldier? And how could this impact Age of Ultron?" and more "we have no idea where we're going with the next Avengers films...and now where we're going is some 3½ years away." I think with how much we've got in so condensed a space of time that it's only natural some of us feel this way I think the Phases are still important in the sense that they're going to be markers of story progression in the way it was before: Phase One was the Avengers coming together, Phase Two was about the team living together, and Phase Three was the splintering of the team and eventually having to deal with the overarching Big Bad. All three of those were part of the Infinity Saga, so it was basically three acts. Phase Four has been a weird epilogue/prologue space so far, I've said this before but more of a "this is what everyone's up to now", really filling up the roster. It's pretty much been the post-Endgame breather, Feige has said as much. I think Phase Five will be much more like what we were used to before (at the moment we've got a cosmic Big Bad set up but nothing really on a local scale), and I have to imagine whatever is teased at the end of Wakanda Forever will likely spell it out for us. Phase Six is naturally going to be the third act of all of this, and there are eight projects to still announce for it, which I imagine will give us a much better idea of what the deal is. I think it could quite easily be the case that we see Doom at the end of Wakanda Forever, as I can't see them waiting until Fantastic Four to introduce him and then having him potentially be the main villain for Secret Wars within the space of a year, and I feel like he'd fit into a lot of these Phase Five projects (either as an actual presence or pulling the strings) too. There's also the likely fallout and explanation of Atlantis duking it out with Wakanda, that seems exactly like the type of thing Doom would be orchestrating. But, anyways: yeah, I agree with you. I think they're looking at the bigger picture too, and at the end of the day, while I imagine we'll be able to look back and split the Multiverse Saga into three acts similar to the Infinity Saga based on its Phases, I think this is more a term focused on clearly conveying a production conveyer belt to fans and stockholders alike. @Happenstance, I think the way you're doing things where you skip things if you're not feeling them and then just checking out highlights/getting the details is probably the best way to deal with it. I think where I come unstuck is that after watching the MCU for so long it's just hard for me to take that approach I guess, but given how much is releasing these days outside of the MCU too, I think picking and choosing those battles seems like a fine idea, and something I'll have to consider moving forwards for some of the Disney+ series

Maybe, but for me it's not a question of it setting things up (which I think it's just taken to a whole other level of labouring out), it's a question of quality. I see your point though, and if it was a case of things being set up taking too long for me, as I know it is for others, being my main issue with the Phase, then I could see that as a possibility. I just don't think it's churned out much content that's actually good, if I'm being honest. Looking back on it now, I've enjoyed moments of the shows, but haven't really been enraptured by any of them (though I've still got to go back and finish Moon Knight, and I don't know if I'll get to Ms. Marvel, as it sounds like it just wouldn't be up my alley), and the films have been all over the place for me too; I've said it before, but I thought Shang-Chi was solid and No Way Home's second half was super, but Black Widow, Eternals, Multiverse of Madness, were poor for me, and all for different reasons. I look back on Phase One by comparison where Iron Man is still one of my favourite MCU films (and one of the best looking), I loved The First Avengers, and obviously the first Avengers film is just a fun romp; it's by no means the strongest phase, and it's got some stinkers (sorry, Iron Man 2), but even if it wasn't leading up to something, I think it's got some good films in there. It's like how Raimi's Spider-Man 2 is a fantastic film even if you take away the superhero side of things in that film, it's just a guy having a bad day caught up in his hectic day-to-day life in NYC, I just don't think Phase Four has much beyond the surface level when compared to earlier Phases. I also think this is the Phase where the focus on quality vs quantity has been thrown out of the window and then some, and as a result, I don't think there's been a single project in Phase Four so far which hasn't had a fair few moments of cheap looking CGI. It's not surprising given how much they've churned out, but it's very jarring going back to the first Iron Man and realising it has better used and more consistent CGI than anything Phase Four has offered up so far. I'll have to wait and see, maybe Love and Thunder will save it for me (still haven't seen it), maybe Wakanda Forever will, maybe they won't. I feel like before I was along for the ride and through a lot of Phase Four I've kind of just found myself being dragged along Yeah, that's an interesting thing to point out. Maybe they're saving it for D23? Honestly, with D23, I'm surprised they had a slate and a half to announce at SDCC. This SDCC has had a crazy number of announcements, it's nice to still see that energy and excitement when things like E3 have made choices which have seen them nosedive. Yeah, we're getting a variant of him in Quantumania at least, but it is pretty weird that we went from having a concrete idea of "oh they're doing Kang!" with Loki, to a while later being like "are...are we still going Kang?", but looking back at the original Phase Four slate, it just looks like a knock-on effect of the pandemic and needing to shuffle things around, as Loki and What If...? were supposed to be after a lot of these other projects: Makes sense too when you consider that we've had a lot of multiverse stuff happen since Loki aired but literally no-one has questioned what the hell is going on, based on its original positioning Loki was probably meant to be a grand reveal of "ooooooohhhhhhh so it is Kang". Yeah, it's definitely felt like an obligation at times more than anything else which has seen me check some of these shows out and continue watching the films. It wasn't a massive thing in Black Widow, thankfully, but two of my mates hadn't seen Falcon and The Winter Soldier, so could get the general gist of the post-credits scene based on its contents, but had no idea who it was that just turned up. And the Eternals post-credits scene basically wanted you to have the slate up to try and guess whose voice you were hearing

Phase Six of the MCU was also announced at SDCC 2022, and is planned to start with the Fantastic Four in November 2024 and end with a double hitter of Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars in 2025. I'd like to imagine this will be the phase where the X-Men finally sneak a film onto one of these slates, but we'll have to wait and see. Mo Marvel Mo Money

As someone who hasn't enjoyed Phase Four for the most part, looking at this I'm just like: It's just been a lot of dead air for me, seems like we're speedrunning phases now, and I think I can already comfortably say that Phase Four is the weakest Phase so far by a long shot – but I'm hopeful that Phase Five kicks it back up a gear. I hate to find myself on the side where looking at one of these slates makes me feel tired more than it does excited. I'm a bit excited for Daredevil to be back at least, it sounds like Guardians 3 is going to be sunsetting the arc there from what was apparently said, and Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania and Thunderbolts are probably the two others I'm looking forward to at the moment as well. The scarier part to me is that I feel like they're clearly still holding some things back for D23 in September, maybe where the X-Men start to fit into these slates? But maybe that'll be talk for Phase 6

Finished another three chapters, so I'm four deep now; the additional three that I got through were The Distant Future, Present Day, and The Wild West. Yeah, I threw going through the game in chronological order out of the window after Prehistory was a bit of a snooze, and wanted to just try jumping randomly from one spot in time to another instead. After finishing up my session with the game today, I actually had a bit of a nose around to see what order others were suggesting in terms of the order of eras to play through, and some sites are pretty strongly recommending that you don't go through in chronological order due to some chapters lining up in a row chronologically which are pretty long. So make of that what you will! I'll throw my thoughts on each chapter in a spoiler tag from this point I think, there's just too much different from one chapter for being vague to really work when trying to discuss some of the nitty-gritty details. I think The Distant Future is a much stronger chapter than Prehistory, in large part because it's actually got a narrative to follow which doesn't immediately send you to sleep. I do agree with what @darksnowman mentioned about some segments where you just walk around and talk to NPCs to walk around some more and talk to NPCs, triggering cutscenes along the way, again, it's just all a bit laboured and makes the game feel older than it now looks. Overall, while I'm still enjoying the game, I think being four chapters in, I now understand why this wasn't brought over to the West a little more. Sure, there are some more adult moments or lines of dialogue, but I just don't think this is a JRPG in the traditional sense; rather, it's a collection of stories which let you sample different eras with different mechanics and ideas to try out, but ultimately, the mechanics which make this a JRPG are an afterthought, and battles are thrown in more as a storytelling device rather than as an actual source of progression. There's nothing wrong with that, and hey, maybe this changes at some point if/when these characters come together, but there's so far been no reason for me to grind or put much thought into what seems to be a really shallow battle system. I've not come across any superbosses in these other chapters, but even if they're there, and I'm just missing them? I couldn't care less: I think if you're here for the combat or a JRPG experience, again just going off these four chapters, I think you're in for a rough time, because this is all about the story so far, and when it comes to the superbosses, there just hasn't been the depth - and a lack of desire on my part - to warrant me wanting to take them on. It's the flesh of a visual novel with the bones of an adventure game wrapped in the skin of a JRPG.

New trailer for the game:

A couple of hours in, just got done with Prehistory myself, and I'm having a pretty fun time. Shocker: the game looks visually fantastic. This is my first time playing one of Team Asano's games outside of demos, and while the depth of field goes a bit nuts at times, I love the colour palette they use and just how animated the sprites are. I mean, look at Pogo and Gori here enjoying the sweet taste of victory, wind blowing Pogo's hair as Gori scratches his behind, it put a smile on my face every time: It's incredibly charming, that's for sure, instantly takes me back to the few other SNES JRPGs I've played, and just makes me want a Chrono Trigger remake in this style even more. Also just love how clean the UI is. I was caught off guard by the music a bit actually, really enjoying Fine Weather's jolly vibes, as well as Kiss of Jealousy's primeval beats which just has this great sounding electric guitar powering over the top, like you're swinging through a jungle. And then there's Megalomania which is an absolute jam, like techno gym music meets Yakuza mini-games in the best of ways also: love and appreciate the jukebox! Not sure if I'm totally used to the battles yet, which definitely remind me a lot of the Mystery Dungeon games, but I got into the swing a bit at the end of the chapter I think. Definitely took a while to adjust as I feel like it takes a beat or two more to transition into battles than I was expecting, and for similar reasons when loading into a new room started throwing tips my way, I had to turn them off as it was super jarring. Anyways, it's not been particularly hard so far, though it sounds like I've missed out on the superboss @Glen-i has mentioned (oh well, I'll just need to keep an eye out in the other chapters!). I don't know what everyone else's experience has been like with Prehistory, but I do think there's an easy way to break some of the fights in Prehistory, specifically the encounters with Zaki: I will say as a word of warning to anyone who hasn't dived in yet, I don't think that Prehistory is necessarily a great place to start, not because it's hard, but because, well, you're just getting by on a lot of grunts and sighs, so it's not exactly attention grabbing. I'm not really sure where I'll go next, if I want to go chronological I guess it's Imperial China, which would seem like a nice change of pace, though The Wild West and Twilight of Edo Japan are also calling to me, just because of how cool those characters look. Had a very similar experience with Prehistory, there were some solid 5-10 minute stretches (maybe even longer at the start of the chapter!) where I just found myself running around the screen to start conversations (aka caveman grunt sessions), have some animations play out, then walk over to another room to talk to someone, have more animations play out. I'm curious now to see if that's consistent throughout the game, because it just feels very laboured – I'd hope not, but we'll see!

I started The Boys on Sunday, and finished up Season 3 last night. Loved it. It's easily the best live-action superhero show I've watched, no question, just great writing and an excellent cast of characters, with Antony Starr as Homelander giving my favourite performance in a superhero anything since Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight. He'd be my pick to be the MCU's Doctor Doom. I could talk about this show until I'm blue in the face, but instead, I'll just highlight a few things. It's very openly a deconstruction of the genre and some very specific superheroes, but what makes it a great deconstruction in my opinion is that, even though it's an adaptation, it's not afraid to change things from the source material (note: I haven't read the source material myself, but needed to check something about the first season because I don't think the show did the best job with that scene, and the differences I read between the show and source material seemed like great changes to me) while winking and nodding at the source material, and in my opinion these changes are for the better. Compare this to the MCU, which has a very "will-they-won't-they" relationship with adapting its source material. I also think the deconstruction just shows a mastery and understanding of the genre which is incredibly rare, because it does such a good job at it, to the point I think the folks over at DC should be on their hands and knees begging the folks working on The Boys to handle some of their properties, as they've exhibited a thorough understanding of their properties in an unrelated show. Something else I want to highlight is just the great sense of humour, they do a great job of bringing people into the joke. It reminds me a lot of Rick and Morty to be honest, which I think does a great job of making people feel smarter than they are with smartly written jokes about very complex subjects, whereas The Boys understands it's audience and how hooked they are on films and film news that it feels like an in-joke when they joke about them indirectly. For me, it was getting a joke about the production troubles faced by a certain Star Wars film, I had to pause I was laughing so hard In short: if you haven't, watch it. If anything I'm gutted I didn't watch it sooner (my friends didn't sell it nearly hard enough!), but I'm also gutted that I'm now caught up. I still have to check out Diabolical, but yeah, that's some damn good television, and live-action superhero television at that

Yeah, I think that's the best way to view it to be honest: not for you and a great start for others. Not only that, if/when you're ever in the mood to go back, it seems likely it'll be on PS+ within 12 - 18 months, so unfortunately I think we'll still see people arguing back and forth about whether this game needed a remake long after it releases. Personally, I'm just screwed because I'm already in the mood to play the game again, even though I've played it three times in the last month

Hey, as a kid raised in the 2000's, Josh Peck is a treasure for what he did in Drake & Josh (and also HIMYF just wasn't great across the board). Drake Bell on the other hand?

Do we dare hope? The game appears to be listed for late Feb/early March of next year: Think this would be in line with the whispers surrounding the game's supposed internal delay from late this year to next.

Is that an American thing? I feel like I plaster commas all over the place based on how I was taught to write growing up by teachers over here (for pauses), and because I like to write sentences with a lot of clauses and pause a lot, I use them pretty liberally. I mean, I also just like throwing in loads of punctuation because it's fun; case in point: that semicolon For writing numbers it would depend on the situation for me: in a more casual setting I tend to use commas for legibility, but in a more formal setting (such as in a Maths class or STEM subject exam), I would rarely use commas outside of lists.

Today Fighter's History and Kirby's Avalanche are being added to SNES Online, and Daiva Story 6: Imperial of Nirsartia is being added to NES online:

This is super weird: here's a 10 minute long video on the game's features and our first official look at gameplay in the middle of the night in Europe, afternoon/evening in America, and early on in Japan. If you haven't played the game before, I'd recommend giving this video a skip and just reading the PS Blog stuff below, because they show and talk about a lot more than I think they needed to in terms of story elements. From the PS Blog: I can't think of the last time they dropped something like this at this sort of time – can't help if they're throwing it out randomly in the wake of the recent leaks, or if they're halfheartedly burying it amongst them a little. Either way, I find it super strange. EDIT: alright, I've watched it, it definitely looks and feels like the timing of it makes it a response to the leaks. While I think it reads and looks like the definitive version to play the game, based on previous wording used about "modernising gameplay", I can see why some might be disappointed by the lack of new things added in Part II, such as going prone or dodging. That being said, I think the game would have needed a much larger scale overhaul if those elements were to be included here (the example I've mentioned before of a certain fight likely being broken by those being added kind of highlights that). I'm a little nervous honestly about how it looks, it's already a very different vibe to the original, just looking at things like particle dispersion and density (the nail bomb explosion, the smoke cloud from a fired gun, the explosion of the sack thrown by the Bloater). I can understand why they changed Tess (she looked late 20's/early 30's in the original in my opinion, definitely not as close to Joel's age as I think she was meant to be), but personally, I much prefer the gruffer look of Joel in the original game compared with how he's looked in trailers and stills so far; ditto for Ellie, actually, there's just a timeless stylisation that's been lost I think (in my mind no doubt a result of working backwards from Part II for those assets rather than revisiting Part I's). I also just think there's a lot of lens flare going on and some of the muddiness of the original being lost can give the game a bit too clean and manufactured a look, we'll have to wait and see of course, but like I said recently after beating the game a bunch of times, they art directed the absolute crap of the original game, and some changes here just seem...a little odd, I feel, again just giving it a different vibe. To be positive though, I will say that things like customisation for those repeat runs is going to be good fun, I love (and hate!) the idea of a speedrun clock in the corner if I so choose to stick it there, the AI seems to be a huge step up (which is the only actual reason I can give for really wanting this, playing the original on Grounded definitely showed how busted some of that AI is now), and the additions made in the accessibility department are freaking awesome, Part II is still best in class in that regard and it's only right that it's carried over to this game. Oh, and the more in-depth Photo Mode looks great (I love a good Photo Mode!), and the idea of new workbench animations and weapon details inspired by the work they did in Part II is fantastic too. There's also a lot of talk about everything being seamless now, and while it's handled pretty well in the original, there are definitely some spots where it felt rough (there's a hard cut to black from cutscene to in-game in the original that lasts like a second at the end of the hotel sequence after the ladder skirmish which feels completely out of place, so hopefully that's gone, it might've been a directing choice but I don't think it was a great one). I think I'm still going to bite, but after this, even more than before, I can totally see why some might be willing to skip it. I don't think I should be nervous at all, yet here I am concerned about the art direction and environment design changes made to "modernise" the game potentially having a drastic impact on the vibe of some scenes and locations, which I don't think I should be nervous about in a remake as 1:1 as this is. Will just have to wait and see I guess, Endure and Survive and all that

Or this kid I like to think Christopher Nolan is a hardcore Nickelodeon fan with some of the casting choices for Oppenheimer

Mixing for theaters and not going back in (properly) for a home release is simultaneously the most and least Nolan thing possible. Every single time I watch one of his films at home I need to keep the remote in hand and be ready to go from 30 up to 70 and back again at the drop of a hat

Maybe the Unobtainium was the friends we made along the way? Either way, the game's been delayed Shocker.

August 30th: