Julius

I don't know how on Earth I missed this, but the first teaser for Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio went up the other day... ...and I can't wait! Forget the voice cast (which is absurdly stacked), what has me most excited here - besides GDT and this being a passion project - is the animation team. Mark Gustafson, the animation director from Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, as co-director? Patrick McHale of Adventure Time and Over the Garden Wall fame working on the screenplay? Heck yes, I'm all in on this. The wait to December is going to be brutal.

Didn't get to play as much as this I wanted yesterday, but I did make a start and I'm a few hours in. Fast and loose early thoughts: • This is basically Pokémon: Dopamine Rush For Monkey Lizard Brain Edition, good lord. Throw a Poké Ball to try catching a Pokémon while sprinting away before you see what happens to immediately throw your Pokémon of choice at a tree or some ore for materials, bundling into the grass to sneak and then throw another Poké Ball at another Pokémon, rolling out and throwing another Pokémon out to do some more material gathering...the speedruns of this game are going to look absurd! • So far, I've been pleasantly surprised by just how animated the characters are in cutscenes and battles, they seem far, far more emotive than they have been before. Akari takes the cake for most animated so far, I chuckle every time I see her swing her arms around to do the stupid little "let's get on with it" jig. • I saved and reset my game for an hour straight to play around with hair and eye colour combinations, before landing on a good combination of the two but realising that I like a fair number of the styles on offer. Naturally, this means I'm going hardcore RP mode and starting with a shaved head before "growing out" my hair as the game goes on funnily enough, I landed on the same colour combination as I did in Sun, but for an entirely different reason... • the arc of the Poké Ball when thrown can feel incredibly satisfying. I've been playing around a bunch with seeing how far away I can hit a tree or catch a Pokémon when throwing them, and catching a Pokémon while it's running around and nailing that timing is a lot of fun. Well, the dopamine hit is nice I mean, I don't know about "fun" • some other QoL features worth shouting out: the streamlining of changing movesets (evolution is a bit weird, but sure, why not?), receiving a quest and then adding it as your objective by pressing +, etc. • while they're neat mechanics on their own, Heavy Ball + Back Strike is insanely overpowered, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I caught an Alpha Luxray on my very first attempt by just sneaking into the grass and using that combo. • Pokémon running away in battle sucks. It sucks hard. It's always sucked hard. • research tasks getting me to use Pokémon and moves that I never would have given a second thought otherwise is actually really great. Normally in Pokémon games I get my main team and don't use the rest, sticking to the most powerful attacks I can get early on rather than using a wide range, before using more nuanced movesets later on. • someone managed to fit in the phrase "crammed cheek by jowel" into a Pokémon game, which is way too funny to not mention. • despite the game looking leagues better than it did when it was first shown last year, it's still rough around the edges. The framerate isn't great at times, textures leave much to be desired, and having a vast open world where your radius of vision is, like, 25 metres before Pokémon vanish/start popping in can be pretty distracting. • on the flip side, there are some really cool minor details that I'm appreciating a lot, like how your character takes off their sandals when entering the upper level/deck of a home. • in terms of the gameplay loop, it's a bit distracting at times to basically find myself stopping after running around like a headless chicken for 15 minutes, catching new Pokémon while collecting materials, and composing myself before opening up the Pokédex to see what I actually need to be doing. I wish you could either pin an abbreviated checklist of your research tasks to the HUD itself, or just streamline the process of getting to the details in the Pokédex (for something I need to check more frequently than before, why can't pressing down take me to the page I was last on rather than having to press 'A' as well?). • speaking of the HUD, I love that there's an option to toggle it by clicking in the right stick, it makes capturing HUD-free screenshots so much more convenient! I do wish it stayed off and wasn't brought back by interacting with things, though. I also wish removing the HUD didn't mean taking away the aiming reticle when trying to catch a Pokémon. • I'm pretty happy with the soundtrack so far, especially some of the battle themes. The Galaxy Team HQ has a theme which sounds like a mix between Rowan's theme, something from Monster Hunter, the Pokémon Ranger HQ theme, and the barracks theme from Fire Emblem: Awakening -- I'm not complaining! • Regarding the story... To wrap up my thoughts: so far, so good. I'm enjoying this more than I would have hoped early on, though I do share the opinion that others have voiced that this could very easily get repetitive very quickly, especially with all of the bursts of dopamine you get from the saturation of different tasks to do out in the field, but I'll have to wait and see on that. So yeah: thumbs up from me! Totally agree! The intro like you said smacks of PMD, but the whole vibe too. Being taken in by a town/guild, and something I've found mirrored it very closely too - and I don't know if this is just down to us not having cutscenes curated well previously - is when Akari/your opposite character says something at night early on, before it cuts away to Mt Coronet and the rift above it. Got huge Explorers vibes for what happens at night in that game for me.

Ah my bad, got my wires crossed so what you're saying is that back when Xbox were beating PlayStation in sales... (I kid) It's interesting seeing the discussion here about whether the Xbox version or Switch version is a better form of emulation for a game like Banjo-Kazooie, though. Look forward to seeing the revival of a similar debate for the N64 vs 3DS version of Majora's Mask next month!

So, what we're saying is that in the year following Nintendo's greatest software sales total on record, that they couldn't afford a grand for a font? Yeah, that sounds about right

I mean, to speak to how well the old games must have been designed to make them somewhat intuitive without an ability to read, my younger brother had a speech impediment which delayed his reading development quite significantly by a few years up until he was around 5 years old, and he completed both SoulSilver and Black before that point. So, at the very least, they've nailed making these games extremely accessible even for those with difficulty reading. Personally I don't mind if a game has voice acting or not, but ultimately I find it's down to the presentation. I think it was an easy thing to forgive back when the games were 2D, but once you make the jump to 3D and have characters miming speech like this... ...then I think it's fair to criticise. Either design the cutscenes so that we don't need to see a mouth moving, or take the plunge and add it, but having this as the introduction to the first Pokémon game to actually be designed more with 3D in mind (Gen VI and VII were basically 2D games in a 3D skin when it comes to their design philosophy) made it especially jarring I think. I actually wouldn't mind voiced lines only in particular cutscenes and then silence or grunts the rest of the time. It's far from ideal, but if you get the balance right, you can end up with games like Dragon Quest XI and Persona 5, where the voices in cutscenes actually help lend some weight and emotion in the form of a character voice that you can assign to the dialogue yourself. Anyways, this should be arriving today, and I'm pretty anxious to see what the game flows like. Pokémon games can definitely feel very stop-start at times, so hopefully there's something of a balance here.

Shovel Knight 2 is exclusive to Luna. But more seriously, yeah, I agree (though I do wonder if the "hair-raisingly" part might be a hint?). Nintendo does a great job of just letting the Directs speak for themselves, whereas even Xbox doesn't know when to shut up -- my biggest E3 pet peeve will always be them starting out their conferences by screaming that they have exactly X number of games to show, it's like telling someone how long a movie is and then sticking a clock right in front of them during the most tense parts! It's one of many reasons that I'm not a fan of there being so many events for teams who could easily feature on a bigger platform making the decision to host their own event. We don't need to know everything about your game, and trust me, you probably don't have enough to say to sustain an event!

Looks like the first noteworthy event of the year could be taking place next Tuesday (1st February), the day of the third Yacht Club Games Presents, airing at 22:00 GMT. They're teasing a megaton announcement. Could be nothing, could be something, guess we'll have to wait and see. I am getting major flashbacks to that WayForward announcement of Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia, though...

Game has gone gold... ...and it's going to be a beefy one! Crazy to think that between them and a Day 1 patch, this and Gran Turismo 7 will probably take up a good third or so of your storage on an untampered PS5. Guerrilla have also shared some PS4 Pro footage, which looks bonkers. We've seen some serious wizardry on the PS4 and PS4 Pro the last few years!

I mean, I didn't pick a side To me personally I consider them equally and don't really prefer one over the other, they both have strengths but they also have some massive weaknesses which I think some other games have tackled better. If I had to choose, wanting to battle to gain experience points and to drive the story forwards is my preference, though, because I think it's a much easier way to drive things. Catching Pokémon: 99% of the time I'm interested in catching only when it comes to team building or catching certain cool Pokémon, but otherwise I've never really cared about catching them all to complete my Dex. Battling: I didn't pay much attention to stats or IV's/EV's and the greater scope of battling until Gen VI, when it was made a bit more accessible and there wasn't much else to do in the post-game, because to be honest there's no need to. There's such a massive gap between the difficulty of battles in the main story when compared with the competitive scene that I can understand why it's daunting to many, and the games for a long time haven't been very accomodating when it comes to teaching you these things, because you can absolutely brute force your way through the main story of Pokémon games. Because of this I think that the games are great for getting to grips with the absolute basics of JRPG's (talking to everyone, exploring everywhere, battling everything you can), but teaches bad habits when it comes to more advanced things, such as battle technique (to be fair the same can also be said of Final Fantasy at times; Dragon Quest does this best, in my opinion). This is a very long-winded way of saying that you're all wrong. The most slept on thing when it comes to Pokémon is the potential for its worldbuilding and storytelling, and I've always felt this way, so to see them botch or gloss over it again and again pains me. Personally, I really think that potential greatly overshadows any talk about the mechanics in the games. Legitimately all they need to do is hire a competent JRPG writer. Okay, that's an oversimplification, but you catch my drift! To be fair, it's not ideal - I think ideally it would be free, honestly. The only reason I don't think it would be if such a hypothetical game existed would be because there's more money to be made through a subscription, and because it would make sense for currently paid-for services like Home to be included as part of the package. See, I don't think Legends: Arceus is a sign that they're going one way or the other next with the next mainline game(s); I legitimately think it was the only way they could make a Monster Hunter-styled "open world" title, which I firmly believe is what they wanted to do. I fully expect the next mainline game(s) to build off the foundations of Legends: Arceus, not in terms of being goal-driven in the way that catching Pokémon is, but making things more open, growing from Monster Hunter zones to something a bit bigger (I always come back to taking some inspiration from Dragon Quest XI and Xenoblade Chronicles when it comes to this)...which can be done well, it just won't be, because of the reasons we've all discussed before. In Legends: Arceus in particular? They could add some more battling in DLC for sure, maybe some Trials-type thing tacked on or, you know, that thing that always happens in the anime but rarely happens in the games: a good old-fashioned tournament arc, damn it! I fully expect DLC for this game, and would love some more battles, obviously assuming we haven't been hoodwinked and that there aren't actually that many in the game to begin with. The additional content for Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl is clearly just going to be the Mythical Event Pokémon, and with this coming out in January, I don't think there's a chance that they'd have something else in store for the holiday season except DLC: ILCA, if hired again, will probably need until at least Spring 2023 to turn something around (assuming it's another remake); and I think Game Freak are going to be turning most of their attention towards the next mainline game(s) after this. Man, I hope this means we see more spin-off titles this year.

Yeah, it was a solid podcast episode, and I too feel like Jones is definitely loosening up. I do still think he's better as a co-moderator rather than the host just because he does like to be part of the conversation so much that sometimes it's like he's a panelist (for example, he'll introduce a topic, say he's about to throw it to someone, give his opinion and then throw it to them), and I know he's mentioned before that he prefers being on that other side. Somewhat similarly, I'm getting to the end of GOTY Deliberations, still the best in the book in my opinion, but some of the issues from earlier Deliberations have persisted. Firstly, and I don't think it's really a massive problem, but it hurts my appreciation of the debate a bit at times when the Deliberations basically become a social strategy game rather than talking about the quality of the games themselves, such as... The other thing for me with these GOTY Deliberations is that I think it's one of the few places where Ben's passion can come off worse for wear, which is a shame because he's one of my favourites out of the group and I love Frame Trap, trust his opinions on games, and admire his passion and articulation for the subject. He's nowhere near as hostile this time around as I feel he got last year, when at times he was almost venomous; I think in part that's down to not having to sit on a Zoom call and instead sitting with the other Allies and discussing things face-to-face; I remember a specific instance where he basically made Huber backpedal hard on something in a pretty unfriendly way. I get that he probably plays the most games out of all of the Allies, but he definitely has a "this MUST win" mentality at times, and is pushing very hard for a good three or four games to be included when most of the categories only have five nominees, so you end up with other Allies backing off. While they clearly care about the discussion being had and want to have a say, I think they're not as on edge in these discussions as Ben sometimes is. An example of that this year is... And I mean, not to overgeneralise, but I do feel like Ben has been kind of going down this path of his passion almost blinding some of the others ever since he started donning caps all the time. I don't want to say it's disrespectful, because I know Damiani where's a hat a lot of the time too, but there's been a pretty noticeable change of attitude from Ben over the last six months where I'm finding myself questioning if he's alright, or if something is going on. Going back to Ben being a louder voice through his fiery passion for games, Frame Trap in particular is where I'm noticing it more and more, and again there's just a different flow to the conversations where it's very stop-start now in a way I don't think it was before. Ben will start introducing the next game a panelist wants to talk about, but then almost overbearingly starts to give his own opinion before they've got much more than a sentence or two in edgewise. Last thing I'll mention at this point as a criticism the Deliberations: the guys know Huber, we know Huber, so they know you've got to rein him in. Don't ask Huber to introduce a long list of nominees for a category and then get annoyed when he gets sidetracked and starts the conversation about a nominee well before finishing reading the shortlist -- it was always going to happen, so just do the smart thing and have someone else read the list! A positive thought though: Brad as always manages to be the voice of reason through these Deliberations. I think he's the most level-headed during these, but he injects some humour into it (especially during some of the more heated moments) which is definitely needed as the guys rightly grow a bit tired as it goes on, he's the most concise with his opinions, and he's not afraid to cut things before the nominee discussions if he knows they don't stand a chance in the conversation for actually winning (such as with Lost Judgment). Probably sounds like I'm railing on the guys, but yeah, the energy has definitely changed over the last two years for me (understandably - Kyle leaving, working from home for so long, etc.). Still my go-to place for gaming opinions out of all of the podcasts and reviews!

A very light-hearted Chinese New Year's Greeting this year! Well worth watching if you want a good chuckle Now the question is...

Like I said above, you could have a service-type, subscription-based game for battling which would essentially include Home (and actually give you a place to use those Pokémon instead of waiting around for the next time that they're available to be used in a game), where you can transport Pokémon to from the games and Go. Because let's be honest, I would struggle very hard these days to imagine anyone playing a hypothetical new Pokémon Stadium/Battle Revolution style game without having played any of the other games, so they'll already have caught Pokémon to use. Heck, just house the Battle Facilities in there too. People can then use rental Pokémon from the Battle Factory if they really don't have any Pokémon or want to try things out/swap things up. Yeah, this is why I think an MMO-like, subscription-based game would probably work best. Keep battle animations consistent within the battle-based game, major updates for new Pokémon and mechanics, etc. Then if Game Freak wants to make crazy changes like culling Pokémon, reducing movepools, etc., they can do so in the single player game without it having a drastic impact retroactively by limiting what you can bring forwards.

Waiting until "after Q2 2022" for mine. Hoo boy, that's not going to be a fun wait... Also, no deck pun, really? "All hands on Deck for launch" or something like that? No?!

New footage of Star Wars 1313 has surfaced: Nailed the look early on in development at least, because that's a Star Wars-looking Star Wars game. Not sure it needed to be a Boba Fett game, though -- I know it was reported previously that George Lucas was the one to push for Boba to be the main character, but from the limited things we know about the game, I feel like it could have just as well been anyone else or an entirely new character.

Yes, thank you! -- I've always thought the same, especially so since they got into paid-for subscription services like Bank and Home (and based on the story and setting of other franchises like Digimon, and especially Bakugan)! I've always imagined an MMO-like place for battling where it's basically trainer central: play mini-games with others, fully own and customise your character with a regularly updated catalogue of clothing, heck multiplayer battles and events, trading, raid battles, etc., could all take place in thus one game/service (you could also them have massive celebrations around holidays and tie-in events for new releases). This could also be the place with a profile kept for your tournament runs and competitive battling, as well as all of your Pokémon from Home, meaning that all of your Pokémon can be kept in this MMO-type game using a standardised animation set for battles that could be updated maybe once per generation in a big update (mostly for new moves, but tweaking the appearance of any new ones as required/desired)? And assuming that Game Freak proper is mainly staying on the main games in such a hypothetical scenario, this would mainly be a third party endeavour, but there could be a a dedicated team for battle animations that works with both sides which basically doesn't need to be working on every title right now, which is one of the myriad of reasons for the increasingly limited number of Pokémon per game. The single player titles could have limited multiplayer functionality (i.e. any co-op modes exclusive to that title, local/online co-op only compatible with that game for battles and trading, etc.) but the bulk of the multiplayer and competitive experience could be kept to this one game/service. You could then also have the option when starting a new game to sync your profile with the new title so that your look from the outset in single player titles (skin colour, eye colour, hairstyle) is how you intend rather than having to wait until late-game to get the look you desire. I'll leave it there, because I've thought about it a lot and could go off on a huge tangent, but yeah, I totally agree. In terms of business they could have it be a subscription service (because £€$¥!!!), but every time a new single player title is released it could come with a code for a free month (or however long would be smart based on the metrics they surely have for the usual drop-off rate and timing on Pokémon titles). And yeah, you could absolutely just call it Pokémon Stadium Online -- sorry Phantasy Star for stealing your acronym!

Well, guess this balances out with the last round of PS+ titles being extremely good. I do appreciate them mocking the ridiculousness of the Tiny Tina title, though

Picked up some small card cutouts of the PlayStation logo in PS1 and PS2 colours from Etsy to add a bit more colour to my PS5: I think I'm leaning towards the PS1 colourway - the black specifically really reminds me of the Net Yaroze PS1 dev kit photos I've seen. In terms of the PS2 colourway I'd probably be leaning towards matching it with the white faceplate? It came about through sheer laziness when testing the different combinations and not wanting to remove the bulkier faceplate, but I kind of like how the PS5 appears with a bit of a panda look... Any opinions welcome (because I don't know which I want to commit to! ) With a bit more practice I think I've got a fairly reliable system now to not scratch the black plastic underneath the faceplates when removing them, which I managed on my first attempt last week. You basically need to make a '4' with your arms by laying the PS5 flat on a table with the PS logo up and the bottom of the console facing you. Grab the corner with the PS logo with your right hand, and the opposite corner (closest corner on your right) with your left hand (left arm tucked under your right arm). Pull both corners up slightly and then slightly pull towards you, using your thumb on your left hand to limit the console's movement - I found that it should detach pretty easily!

The moment of truth: reviews are live! Scoring very well:

It's funny, because I think we're going to see a very noticeable gap in scores between this and the review scores for Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl that wouldn't have been quite as drastic if these weren't releasing so close together? And not to mention being announced together in the same presentation? Pokémon has been tired in a myriad of ways for a long time (which I think is natural, given both a lack of ambition and competition), and I don't think it's at all a coincidence that the big gaming media outlets finally seemed to agree en masse that this was the case with BD & SP, with Legends: Arceus just on the horizon.

Looks like the ability to upload gameplay clips and screenshots directly from the PlayStation 5 to the PS App is finally being rolled out. For now it looks like it's being rolled out in the US, it's seemingly for PS5's only, and will be limited to automatically uploading your captures moving forwards, rather than giving you the option to manually select. One step at a time, but this will finally save time in my group chats on Fridays when one of us witnesses something hilarious in GTA, that's for sure!

So...I guess that wasn't the final trailer? What is going on over at S-E? The hilarity ensues.

My favourite (and in my opinion, the best) GOTY discussion has arrived: the 2021 Easy Allies Awards Deliberations! Guess I know what I'm listening to over the next few days at work

Yeah I'm well aware, that's why I said "even more" and Eclipse, too. EA winding down and announcing titles that are likely the last to be announced under their current exclusivity deal in such a matter-of-fact way over a year before the deal ends makes me think that we could see further projects announced (in addition to those already announced) throughout the rest of the year. The titles announced and revealed by other publishers so far is likely Lucasfilm Games wanting things lined up and ready to go for when that EA deal ends.

Unsurprisingly, Japan gets the better trailer: Love how the title is kind of clickbait for the trailer this time around. Such a strange marketing cycle! But anyways...the 360° video showing off Hisui is pretty cool!

Throwing this in a spoiler tag because I know some might want to avoid it, but it's been shared by official channels - some new Pokémon have been revealed: Strange decision to share them with us just three days from release in the way that they have, though could be because of the leaks, and I suppose they'll want to show it off in marketing and it might have been tough to keep a lid on with reviews going up (I believe the embargo is lifted tomorrow?).