Julius

You hate that which you cannot possibly comprehend. And my name is Julian, so I guess we've also got the King part covered... yes I know the character's name is spelt Julien in the show don't @ me

Hope you feel better @Hero-of-Time, DQ sounds like a great and cosy antidote to COVID I've also actually recently gone back to Dragon Quest VIII too, seems like it's good timing - obligatory Cor blimey! After picking it up on 3DS once I finished XI a few years back I made it up until what I guessed was the climactic midway point (which I semi-confirmed as I checked which step I was up to in the IGN walkthrough before diving back in, and it was slap-bang in the middle), and I kind of just fizzled out on it - not because it was a poor game, but there were other things going on at the time I think and by the time I was ready to game again, I didn't know how I felt about picking the game back up. I do wonder if part of the reason I put down the game might have just been the game being a little too open at the point I had got to, it might have taken a bit of urgency away to "go to the village over yonder!" when that village is a slow and busy 5 minutes away, but I think I had some transport methods by then...so who knows? Anyways, that meant restarting the game this time around and deleting my old save, which is never a fun thing to do. I've slowly been chipping away at it over the last couple of weeks, as the game is fresh enough in my mind where I know what's going on and so longer playing sessions haven't been the way to go for me so far, but I want to finish this game, and so naturally work and life has started getting hectic again - swear my experience with this game is cursed. Wait, my journey with this game is cursed, hmmmm... So far I've been investing my skill points into Swords/Courage for Edward (my MC, figured I'd stick with the old English names of kings after Arthur was my MC in XI! Also A = 1, so Arthur for my first DQ, and E for Eight, so Edward for VIII...yeah I put too much thought into that), Axes/Humanity for Yangus, Whips/Sex Appeal for Jessica (I did also pick up the first few spells from Staves too, due to them having such a low cost and being so helpful), and Bows/Charisma for Angelo. The Boomerang like you say H-o-T is super helpful, but from what I remember I didn't get too much use out of it by the point I put the game down the first time I tried to play it (think it was just more effective to attack an individual enemy by that point), so I haven't invested any skill points in it so far, but it's still done a good job of flattening enemies. Also, sure you've figured this out by now but thought I'd mention it: when you come across an area with Metal Slimes, once you've taken one out, just start whipping that camera nub around until more turn up, it's a lot of fun to farm those things early on and taking advantage of the memory (or lack thereof) for enemies appearing in the overworld But yeah, not much to report on my end other than that I love the risk and reward of the tension system, the Dragon Quest vibes, the enemy designs, the NPCs and voice acting have been as charming and funny as I remember them being, the world is a pleasure to explore, alchemy and the way it works with the world's economy is brilliant, battles are nice and snappy - especially at 2x speed! - and the party is brilliant too. It's fascinating too that this was the first mainline Dragon Quest designed truly with 3D in mind, and Level 5 kind of just nailed it, from the way alleyways are tight to sweeping staircases curve around, to the design of dungeons and puzzles, to the way having 3D enemies has them doing fun stuff like an enemy which is a frog but when attacked flips around to the ugly face on its back, which does more damage, and reverts back to the frog side when attacked again, and there's also the mini-bosses if you're not careful enough with some enemy groups and don't manage to wipe them out fast enough. Okay, maybe I had more to say than I thought I did. Lastly, though, the music - yes, even limited by the tinny 3DS speakers and not having the full orchestra of the PS2 - has been brilliant, the overworld theme especially (and yes I'm linking the orchestral versions where possible even though I know it's not in the version I'm playing, I'm trying to do you guys a kindness ) And probably the silliest, which I think has been in some of the earlier games: the casino theme in this game sounds like there's a few drunk guys having too much fun on the brass, and it's perfect! Undeniably a very special game from where I'm up to so far, and from what I remember from the last time I tried to play through it. I probably won't give too many updates, but looking forward to reading your thoughts as you play through H-o-T!

Looks like the PlayStation Plus library of classics is beginning to take shape, with Syphon Filter 1 and 2, Dark Mirror, and Logan's Shadow being rated in Korea. Feel like these are going to be a long next few weeks until we get an official update on the line-up!

Man, that would be cool if true. I haven't played any of the Rogue Squadron games but have only heard great things! Meanwhile, there's me trying to convince Aspyr to remaster the original Battlefront II:

The actual second trailer for Lightyear (first was a teaser trailer I guess):

Casually - and unsurprisingly - done gangbusters. Look forward to seeing how future LEGO games learn from this, and of course looking forward to diving in myself next month

I'm not joining that party yet, because it's a sequel which is heavily dependent on story, and I think they'll be better off saying and showing as little as possible like they did with The Last of Us Part II (well, kind of). I also don't think we saw too much of GoW 2018 before it released, so I think this is keeping in line with that. That being said, if we get to the end of the summer without a release date and we haven't heard anything official, then I think it'll be time to start being concerned, because I see this eyeing a release from September to early November if it is coming this year (in prime time for GOTY discussions). God of War 2018 only has its release date announced three months prior to its April launch, which is why I think it makes sense to be quiet until we're three months or so out (I think all we had prior to the release date trailer for that game too was it's E3 2016 live demo and E3 2017 trailer?) and then ramp things up, maybe even more so with COVID delays and delaying production due to Christopher Judge's physical rehab taken into account. We'll have to wait and see I guess, but yeah, I don't think they can hold off until Gamescom in August or a potential PlayStation Showcase in September before giving us an update if they're still aiming for this year. If it does get delayed to 2023 - which would be totally fine, they should take the time they need - I just hope they'll let us know sooner rather than later, because it'd be a pretty big blow to learn of a delay after Not-E3 in June. EDIT: Bruno Velázquez, Santa Monica Studios animation director is bullish that the game is still releasing this year:

A whole lot of nothing, but today it's 4 years to the day (what the Hel?!) since the release of God of War (2018), so Cory has a message of thanks for the support from fans and has said that they are currently deep in the trenches but will show the game when they're ready: Don't bother looking at the comments, it's people complaining about not seeing more of the game yet

Collector's Edition confirmed for UK release via My Nintendo Store, you can register your interest now:

Hideo Kojima has entered the chat Haven't played all of his games yet, and no doubt I'll find countless examples of this in the ones I've yet to play, but there are just too many ideas in his games which are one-and-done things and surprisingly haven't been aped on by everyone else in the industry. In Metal Gear Solid there's the ketchup incident, everything about Psycho Mantis (memory cards, controller ports, have at it), and a bunch of others. Metal Gear Solid 2 in its structure and the reintroduction of mechanics from the first game is almost a jab at Hollywood sequels and expectations. Metal Gear Solid 3 has injuries to contend with and a bunch of camo options which should simply destroy the flow of the game, but don't. Metal Gear Solid 4 has blink-and-you'll-miss-it opportunities to see flashbacks to older games during cutscenes. And then there's P.T. and the entire way that the game's publicity through streaming and sharing of ideas and knowledge about the game was practically a mechanic unto itself, and absolutely necessary to see the end of the demo. Dude bleeds weird and originality when it comes to mechanics in games. ᵃ ʰᶦᵈᵉᵒ ᵏᵒʲᶦᵐᵃ ᵖʳᵒᵈᵘᶜᵗᶦᵒⁿ You know who else gets super weird with mechanics? Yoko Taro. NieR: Automata has a bunch of examples of this, but the one which is front and centre for me is the plug-in chips. For those that haven't played the game, you're an android and so can customise your character through finding and installing chips: robot companion, upgraded fire rate, more melee damage, etc. Excellent use of context for upgrades in a game. But what do you do when you need more space, in real life, such as on your phone or computer, beyond increasing memory capacity (which you can do in the game)? You start deleting things. And so, NieR: Automata gives you the option to straight up remove HUD elements to make space for other chips to be installed, and you can go so far as even removing the Operating System and dying as a result. Fascinating game! EDIT: also, every Yakuza mini-game, especially those with a story, and substories. Weirdest quests of any game series I've played (seriously, it's not even a question), but in line with the games themselves, they're often stupidly wacky and incredibly endearing by the time they're over. They're very difficult to forget as a result, despite some only being a few minutes long, and so I'd say that despite their weirdness, Yakuza might have the most memorable quests in a game series.

Like you I'm also not the type to go out seeking those things in films, but I think they're honestly laying it on a bit thick there: while romance is definitely a part of the film, it's handled differently than you'd expect based on those descriptors (it's no Notebook), and I think at its core it's more of a coming-of-age story. It's best to go in knowing as little as possible, and not overhyped on it, but I'd recommend checking it out - personally, I'm a big fan of it. Aside from it's story and characters, it's got what are probably some of the most gorgeous visuals I've seen in anime (alongside Violet Evergarden), and it has a stellar soundtrack, so I think it's worth checking out for those reasons alone - just look at it!

Makoto Shinkai's next film, Suzume no Tojimari, is scheduled to release 11th November 2022 in Japan (so probably early 2023 most other places? And probably a limited run in LA before the year is up to qualify for the Oscars next year), and has also had a new teaser trailer and teaser visual released: Not too crazy a theory about how this could tie into Your Name, but I'll stick it in a spoiler tag just in case: This wait should be fun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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