Julius

Not necessarily related to film and might be for a TV series, but Nintendo have just announced that they have acquired Dynamo Studios, Inc., who will be renamed Nintendo Pictures, and will find themselves responsible for planning and producing "visual content": I've looked them up on Anime News Network, and it seems like they have a focus on CG productions, working on CG for films like Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV and Giovanni's Island, series such as Yuri on Ice!!!, and offering production assistance for projects such as Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero and Earwig and the Witch. They also have a history in gaming (I'd have to imagine relating to CG production again), working on the likes of Metroid: Other M, Persona 5 and Dark Souls III, to name a choice few. Curious to see what they'll be trusted with planning and churning out!

I'm dodging around this thread a little as someone that hasn't played Link's Awakening before, but when someone posts music, I can't help but listen, at least a little bit, and it's always interesting without context. It's a track I've had pop up once or twice on YouTube and Spotify autoplay by accident, so it's not necessarily completely new to me I guess? So, to give an alternative take on this music as someone that hasn't played the game before and has no idea what it's tied to in the game, I think it's a great track because I feel like it implies a lot about what is happening/has happened. It's immediately foreboding, and at 0:25 you get this back and forth of the strings which clearly state Dies irae, a Latin sequence which has been used in orchestral music dating back centuries, and is incredibly popular even today in modern scores across cinema and gaming (if you're wondering how it fits, just say the phrase as the strings go back and forth and you'll notice it's in sync with the track, and once you realise what it is you'll start hearing it everywhere). Dies irae roughly translates to "the day of Wrath" or "day of Judgment", and it's a bit of a musical cheat to imply impending doom or reckoning, so coupled with the foreboding nature of the piece at the start, I think it's really safe to say that some sort of reckoning is happening. Is this reckoning internal or external? I have no idea, but the whining and strain of the strings makes me think it's some sort of internal reckoning (I mean, to hazard a guess, relating to whatever Link's titular "awakening" is), as external reckoning, at least musically, tends to be a bit more directly oppressive than I feel this piece is. That it's stated consecutively just adds to this overbearing feeling of something unchangeable, if that makes sense – like whatever type of impending doom is at hand, it's not something which can be taken back, like some sort of permanent change or a realisation which recontextualises things. Further, at 0:50 I feel like the feeling of pain and melancholy in the track is really doubled down on as you get what I can only imagine is a sample or recreation of the original GB game's music (which is awesome), and with Dies irae playing out under and over this, it further strengthens the back and forth of the phrase. No idea how close that mini analysis is, but if it's anywhere near, I think that's another clear indicator of how good a track it is. If not it still sounds great all the same I really need to get around to Link's Awakening, don't I?

The funny thing is that I could totally see it going that way, I think everyone has talked to at least one other person in their life about this phenomena, and my only conclusion is that humans are weird. I do also think it'd be funny if they just kept stuff like ass shots in the game but then just pixel censored the entire scene every single time Or better yet for Naive Angel Mode: how about a Michelin Man costume?

I know it's been doing the rounds the last few weeks, but now that it's official...

And that's a wrap on my Grounded+ run, meaning: Platinum and 100% acquired I've got nearly an additional 100 hours logged in the game now compared with my playtime before, and I've had an absolute blast these past three and a half weeks just glued to this game. The story and gameplay of the main story is phenomenal in more ways than I care to count and have already mentioned, Left Behind is a stellar piece of DLC, and Factions is so fundamentally distinct when compared to most other online multiplayer shooters these days, and is a hell of a lot of fun in its own right. I never quite got the appeal of replaying games (I tend to complete one and move onto the next), especially when I hear about people replaying survival horror games like they do with the Resident Evil games, but now I think I can see the appeal, especially when playing on higher difficulties to show off some level of mastery of the game's mechanics and it's levels. To cap off my Grounded+ adventure, Sunday night I blasted through The Dam and University (well, ran, for the most part!), and last night I finished my favourite level around 23:00, which...took a while. I was pretty tired and figured the last couple of levels would take a fair few attempts, but today it took me an hour, with the penultimate main level taking me one attempt, and the final (kind of) main level taking just two. Had a great time revisiting this game, and it's further cemented itself as one of my favourites, especially with the Grounded+ run of the main story and Survivor run of Left Behind. Playing through it I did have Part II on my mind a fair bit, and I think I'll have to replay it after Part I (which I now can't wait for, if only to get treated to a half decent Platinum screenshot! I mean what even is the state of PS4 Platinums on PS5, they're gross!?), because I now want to contrast that game to The Godfather Part II considering the important parallels at times that this game has with The Godfather. Off the top of my head, there's definitely a lot similar in terms of theme and tone between the two (though not quite as bloody in The Godfather Part II's case), but playing through this again actually got me noticing where some of my issues with Part II come in, as there are a lot of sections in that game which clearly parallel sections in this game, but which I think this game does miles better. For example... That got long, but I could talk about this game until I'm blue in the face, so I'm just going to force myself to stop there. Now to wait another six weeks or so to play it's remake

Already starting to train in the dark arts of their hand gestures

Certainly looks to be the case as they've been removed from the Blog now: Can't wait to play Dino Crisis next month (hopefully)!

So apparently Italy have got Dino Crisis (as well as Ridge Racer 2 and Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny):

Still can't believe four years later that it lost to God of War at The Game Awards H-o-T a fraud confirmed?!?!

Yeah, I can definitely see that, and I'd add it to the list of reasons for having this mode. I think you're right in that it could probably be the primary motivator behind including the mode, but there are reasons across the board to make a move like this. I can't help but wonder if in some regions which are a bit (read: way) more on the extreme end of what can and can't be shown, if Nintendo would consider releasing the game there with the game only presented in Naive Angel Mode. It might seem like a stretch but this definitely seems like it could make the game more palatable to those regions. Adding options is always a case of more upsides - for business and consumer - than it is downsides, so I think it's the smart move; if anything it's just a funny sounding mode. Not to comment on Bayonetta in particular (because I haven't played any), but there are definitely times where characters in all mediums are oversexualised to all hell and back, and that goes for male, female, and non-binary characters, and it's not always in great taste. I mean, where are these people complaining about boobs and asses when Kiryu is ripping off his shirt just to show off his back tattoo and throw down Yakuza style with his new friends, huh?! I'd agree with you in that shaming or defending things like this can definitely go overboard very easily in either direction (unfortunately that's the case for pretty much everything these days, so nothing new there), which never achieves anything like, if Bayonetta being dressed a certain way isn't for someone and causes offence to them in some way or another, awesome, you do you and just play whatever else you want to play, however you want to play it!

Well there you have it, July's games: Also being added but not pictured:

No, I'm on about the name of the mode in particular (which is what I said in my post); they certainly have a tendency across their many forms of entertainment to lean into things with some sense of purity/naiveté and play it up, and so the title of the mode just seems like a fun, tongue-in-cheek way of doing that. I'm probably doing a poor job of explaining this though so just ignore me The move is clearly one to sell a normally mature game to audiences who might come up against some resistance when trying to play it (parents, religion, whatever), as well as to just make it less awkward for some blokes and lasses who don't want someone walking in and seeing them play this for whatever reason. Though, I'm sure that applies to some Japanese folk as much as it does elsewhere in the world

Next issue of Famitsu will have a focus on XVI:

Well I'm not proud of it, but I found it this but Realistic Gun Lady instead of Anime Sword Girls:

Yeah, "Naive Angel Mode" is definitely a name where they knew what they were doing, sounds like anything but got to sell those copies in Japan I guess! Wonder what the obvious Labo tie-in will end up looking like...

On that topic of showing way too much, Platinum have shared that there will be a "Naive Angel Mode" for those who like their video games a little less risqué: A hilarious but neat addition, wouldn't mind seeing this crop up elsewhere if it means more people getting to try new games out. On the other hand, now I'm sure people will be asking for less risqué games to have a more risqué option

Yeah, I just meant in general towards the back end of the year Nintendo has had a good year with frequent releases, but the last few months (across the entire industry) has seemed a little quiet in terms of major releases, but of course Nintendo are definitely a big part of the upcoming period I'm referring to. There's a period of around a month from October 20th which sees the releases of Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, Persona 5 Royal on new platforms (which is going to do bonkers, throw that on the list of "who knows what else!" for Switch), Gotham Knights, Bayonetta 3 (same day as the new CoD), God of War Ragnarök and Pokémon Scarlet & Violet. It's definitely been a year where, thanks to the longer quiet stretches, I feel it's been kind on backlogs, but still, we're going to hopefully be seeing a great and exciting wrap-up to the year with all of the new games on the way

Buried in the onslaught of Bayonetta 3 news which just dropped, it was just announced that a physical edition of the first Bayonetta will also be coming later this year: EDIT: According to Business Wire, this seems to have a release date of September 30th in North America, but based on the above tweet I'm not sure if that also applies over here. EDIT 2: okay, looks like it's coming to Japan on September 30th too. I'd imagine it's the same story for the rest of the world then? Which makes how vague the above Nintendo UK tweet is a little confusing.

Bayonetta 3 releases October 28th! The game is now available to preorder digitally through the eShop for £49.99, also got some really nice art going on too: There will also be a special Trinity Masquerade Edition of the game, also available October 28th: Man, the back end of this year is looking stacked

Physical retail edition will be landing September 20th: And an Exclusive Edition will be made available in Q4 with some small extras:

MinnMax continues their journey of interviewing everyone to move around or retire in the gaming industry, this time with a focus on Brandon Jones: Fingers crossed they do something with Ben Moore! They also recently put out a great video on the GameStop/Game Informer situation, which has seen something like half (?) of Game Informer be sacked: Man, Ben Hanson does such a great job over there.

Humanity sometimes sucks, but other times how much we're capable of when we work together can make my jaw drop; I feel like these images come at a good time to give a refreshing and much-needed perspective on our place in the universe. I've been staring at the new photo of the Cosmic Cliffs of the Carina Nebula a lot since it came out; it's absolutely stunning! The older version was very wispy and dreamlike, beautiful to look at its own way, but the resolution here from just 12 hours of exposure for these images vs the two weeks the Hubble needed is remarkable. Really excited to see the new findings and discoveries made off the back of this The highest resolution versions of these images (for wallpaper purposes, of course!) are available for viewing here.

English trailer is up, confirming September 22nd as the game's release date worldwide:

The game's gone gold! And we've still yet to see any actual gameplay. Which is pretty nuts to think about, hopefully we get to see something sooner or later, lord knows some of the AI needs it Oh yeah, this comparison definitely works Sidebar: sometimes I do wonder if the universal love for Empire compared with A New Hope and Return of the Jedi is somewhat skewed today by it escaping the awful Special Edition seppuku George committed with those films, whereas Empire came away virtually unscathed. I kind of like to see it as one final display of gratitude to his teacher, Kershner, by gutting those other two films to make Empire shine just that bit brighter EDIT: also, this looks to be good news – apparently the first time in 13 years this dev (an environmental artist) hasn't had to crunch at Naughty Dog.