Julius

Today it's been a year since the PS5 landed in the UK and Europe, as well as many parts of the world not called Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand or North America. Because those lucky sods got the thing a week earlier The last year has flown by! How's everyone feeling a year about the PS5 a year in? What do you think of the DualSense a year removed from Astro's Playroom? And what's been your favourite next-gen / console exclusive game or DLC so far?

To be honest, I don't think I've looked at it since catching it Anyways, thanks Glen!

Surprise me it's just getting thrown in a Box after anyways!

Sorry, got pulled aside for something, just coming in now EDIT: I totally didn't accidentally head upstairs first...

Well that's just bizarre. I can try to get around changing some of the names lower down the list, but his canonical name? What an odd choice. Now I'm questioning if that was the case back with the originals? Can do, I can make my way over to the Union Room whenever you're ready think I've got a Metal Coat somewhere, so I'll do the same with my Scyther for my Dex. Also, just noticed something a bit odd...

Are you sure? It was the first predetermined option for me, just under choosing the name yourself. I know because I went down, accidentally pressed A, and then Rowan was checking to make sure this random child's name really was Barry

Considering how much change Jim Ryan has forced internally at PlayStation over the last few years, and how he seemed to always be on the side of doing what's best for business above all else (staying relatively quiet on bigger issues in the industry until now, waiting until the fire was under their feet to jump into cross-play, etc.), I really wasn't expecting him to speak up on this of all things, so fair play to him. It's not on, and we need people in key positions making sure things like this aren't allowed to continue in every industry, but especially gaming, where unfortunately these sorts of thing seem to have been thriving for the last decade or so. As for the marketing partnership, I reckon Activision needs PlayStation just as badly as PlayStation need them these days, if not a while lot more. They follow the money: PlayStation sells more consoles (currently) than Xbox does, and with that and Game Pass competing for the time they want people to be playing their games, they really haven't got a choice but to go with PlayStation from a financial perspective. You love to see it. Yeah, Phil Spencer stepping up I almost expected, much more so than Jim Ryan at least. I think Xbox still has quite a ways to go to get where they want to be, but from everything I've read and heard about Phil - the interviews I've watched of him, the initiatives like the adaptive controller that he really loves to put in the spotlight - I think he just seems like a pretty genuine guy who is almost tired of some of the stuff we see in the industry today. I mean, who isn't tired of it? I only follow the industry and I'm genuinely exhausted by it. Honestly, it's a shame more of the big Activision Blizzard games aren't on the Switch, would've loved to see all three console manufacturers just issuing statements on this.

Alright, this evening I swapped over to playing it in handheld mode and removed battle animations (will probably bring them back for big battles like the Pokémon League and the climax of the story), and I feel like I'm enjoying it quite a bit more than I was on my TV. Got some more minor complaints from today's session, this time around the overworld/movement: Like I mentioned before, I didn't play Let's Go or even the Sword & Shield DLC, so I haven't had a Pokémon follow me as much as mine are now for a good while. Running into your Pokémon the first time is funny, but after that it's just a bit awkward pushing them forwards. The original games were tile-based, as core series Pokémon games were until the jump to 3D. However, because the characters and world is much smaller this time around because of how little that's been done to make it look like anything other than the original games, there are times where you'll be doing something relatively simple and getting caught on things nonstop. My best and most frequent examples of this so far are the gym puzzles, because they are still entirely tile-based, such as in Veilstone's Gym where you need to walk into what are essentially wall dividers at exactly the right angle to push them along, meaning that unless you want to mess around with getting stuck on everything in the gym except the thing you are trying to push, you need to switch over the D-Pad / arrows rather than use the stick. It's also an absolute pain for some of the bike slopes. Speaking of which, you can only go up, down, left, and right with the D-Pad / arrows - you can't move diagonally. It's very bizarre! There's some very noticeable clipping at times, usually on staircases. I don't know if I didn't pay attention in Sword or completely miss it being talked about with Let's Go, but it seems amplified here when the characters look like they're two inches tall. It just makes the game look like it lacks polish (which, well, it did anyways, but even more so!). Depth of field is all over the shop from location to location, making it more noticeable and far less appealing to look at when it does turn up. I don't know if I'm going crazy, but there seems to be some kind of delay when swapping direction (running up and then trying to run down without stopping, for example), which is especially bad from what I've experienced when running. I've played on both Joy-Cons and a Pro Controller at this point and it seems to be consistent across both controller setups. Obviously without trying to I'm constantly thinking back to the original games, which is what made me notice the delay, because I remember just how snappy swapping directions while running was back on those games. As you can imagine, for the more complex bike slopes where you need to swap directions while riding a bike pretty quickly, such as the one on Route 209, I ended up having to just ride in circles with the left stick and then approach it at a very peculiar angle instead. Again, could be crazy, but I'm pretty sure there's a fairly noticeable and reproducible frame rate drop in the lower third of Pastoria. Got to imagine it's down to there not being a western gate to help with the transition to the rainy Route 212. Half tiles that you can't step on are still a thing, such as in Pastoria Gym. Okay, that might have been longer than I expected swear I'm enjoying it so far for what it is, though. Finally got the Manaphy Egg and Platinum outfit as Mystery Gift opened up this evening, but think I'll be saving the Platinum outfit for after the sixth gym for some weird kind of role-playing satisfaction. Also, think I've finally found a track in this that I think is stronger than the original: the Great Marsh theme! Unfortunately no-one's uploaded it, so you'll just have to believe me And speaking of which...

Yeah, will do. I imagine I'll probably have the League out of the way on Saturday unless something comes up, and my next stop was going to be hitting up the Underground anyways; I'm 80% sure that's where Elekid would be, as I seem to remember needing FireRed or LeafGreen packed into the GBA slot back in the original games, and that's obviously not an option here. Heck, might be down there already, but after testing the Grand Underground out the other day and enjoying looking around, I think I just want to get it all done in one fell swoop in the post-game Will let you know, but it shouldn't be a problem I was thinking about grabbing an Electivire to replace my Luxray for post-game stuff too, so might use the opportunity to trade an Electabuzz back and forth if it's ready in time? What I'll say from what I've played of the game so far is that the EXP Share might be the most broken of any Pokémon game I've played so far, though it's probably worth mentioning that I didn't play Let's Go, so I can't make a comparison there. Diamond & Pearl of all Pokémon games challenge you the most to battle all of the trainers you can find, because a lot of the post-game in the Battle Zone is locked behind seeing everything in the Sinnoh Dex. Naturally, then, I've made sure to battle every trainer on every route/in every location so far, and while I expected to be a few levels above the average trainer level, I didn't expect to be so crazy overleveled that I'm actually pretty bored by the battling; my Monferno was Lv. 30 by the time we hit Hearthome for the first time (that's after 2 badges + an additional route and a cave). I could be off, but it feels like I'm facing more trainers in this per route than I did in Sword, which would make sense considering how Sword - to some extent - was probably balanced around the new EXP Share, meaning fewer trainers are lying in wait, whereas the original Diamond & Pearl wouldn't have been. I don't like the lazy dev rhetoric when it comes to remakes, but it's pretty absurd that I'll probably have an Infernape before I get to the third gym. Throw in the updated Friendship/Happiness mechanic from Sword & Shield and it gets even worse, not to mention just how annoying the extra lines of text can be. It's funny, because I actually think something like this could help if, say, they were to remake HeartGold & SoulSilver specifically (which, at this point, if they're phoning it in, I'd happily take just to have Johto on my Switch). I love those games, but they were also really poor in terms of level scaling, and I remember getting a team close to the levels of Red's took me a long time!

I could be wrong, but I don't see a thread for Sifu? So here we are Anyways, after being delayed into next year from 2021 to 22nd February 2022, the game has actually been bumped up to a release on 8th February 2022. You don't see that too often, and luckily it steers it a few weeks clear of Horizon Forbidden West and Elden Ring, whereas before it was sandwiched between the two. Combat Overview: Death and Aging Overview: Previous reveal trailer from the February 2021 State of Play: And the gameplay teaser from July's State of Play:

Loop Hero is coming to the Switch on December 9th! Weird they wouldn't just shadow drop the game with this news at The Game Awards, but I guess they might just show this trailer there again instead anyways. Heard a lot of good things!

Been very heavily rumoured the last few months since the launch of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, so no surprises here. Bizarre this is passing over the Switch, I wonder if they have plans for it down the road? But crossplay and rollback netcode can only bode well. Could be fun!

... putting us in the shoes of someone experiencing a stroke?

Delayed to 2023. Hard to be disappointed when we know very little about the game in the first place, so New artwork does look pretty sharp, though.

First trailer for Turning Red: The film is set in 2002/2003, for anyone wondering about the choice of music

Cool I finish work at 15:30 if you want to jump on then, if not I'll be free later in the evening too, just got to head out for a bit at 17:00. Let me know what works for you

I mean, apparently it's still pretty broken, which is why I'm still waiting to play it I get what you mean though, and I think that's a fair point that if the RPG aspects are up to snuff, it could deserve a nomination, in spite of the myriad of other problems it could potentially have. If anything though, I think it might just speak to how light the last year has been for RPG's, because I've just looked up a list of them for 2021, and it isn't particularly long!

Woah woah woah, hold up. Did anyone else's mind just completely blank out the fact that Cyberpunk got a nomination for Best RPG? I can't speak to the quality of the game as it crashed on me enough to stop playing, but from what I've read recently, it's still not in a great state? Not that anything in particular comes to mind to take its place, but that just seems like a bizarre nomination.

So, I've put a few hours into this, and the good thing is that it's keeping my attention. Even if it's been a bit of a mixed bag so far, I'm having a pretty good time. I'm just about to head into Eterna City's gym; at this point my team is: Monferno - Lv. 24 Staravia - Lv. 22 Buneary - Lv. 18 Luxio - Lv. 22 Budew - Lv. 20 Buizel - Lv. 17 I've never had a Monferno as my ace starter before, as while I did trade a Chimchar over to Platinum back in the day along with a Piplup and (a superior to my in-game starter) Turtwig, it quickly fell to the wayside. I still hate Chimchar's design, but Monferno and Infernape are a lot better, and from what I remember from the Diamond & Pearl Dex, it's very light on Fire types, so figured now was as good a time as any. Back in the day on Diamond the first Pokémon I ran into after getting PokéBalls was a Lv. 2 Starly, and surely enough, the same thing happened in Brilliant Diamond. Naturally had to catch it in the same type of Ball, a Premier Ball! Think I'll be keeping Luxio around as well as Budew (I've had but never really used a Roserade in previous games, so I look forward to it!), but the other two spots at the moment are being kept warm for particular Pokémon I won't be able to get for a little while (Gible and Sneasel). The battles are a lot faster than they were back in the day, that's for sure, and that's something I'm very grateful for. Going back and seeing Diamond & Pearl battle footage these days is completely rage-inducing. Only problem I have with battles really, as has been the case since X & Y overhauled the EXP Share, is being overleveled. I walked over Roark's team with a Lv. 15 Monferno. I could go out of the way to apply limits to myself, but it's a bit too much effort for my liking to do so, and besides, if any games want you to battle everyone, it's Diamond & Pearl, seeing as you needed to see every Pokémon back in the day on the Sinnoh Dex to access a large part of the post-game. Based on my time with the game so far, I'll be very surprised if I find out that's changed. There's definitely a charm here that I just haven't felt in a brand new Pokémon game since the transition to 3D. Maybe some of that is nostalgia, but I've found myself smiling at the silliness of a lot of the NPC dialogue in the game so far, and far more frequently than in, say, Sword (which admittedly did have some funny moments). There's a hilarious nod to how you had to get access to Mystery Gift back in the day, which have me a good chuckle. In terms of the charm, I don't think it's the chibi models, which I still think are hideous and could end up damaging the more serious moments in the game, especially with their deadpan expressions during zoom-ins. It's definitely not the depth of field, which is all over the place and seems to change from location to location. I don't think it's just the music either, as some of the remixes I've heard so far sound almost identical in arrangement to the original games, but just come across much softer, to the point that I'd describe some as lacking energy. Maybe it's the locations? Because take away the NPC models and I think the game looks alright, the colours are nice and it looks like a low poly take on classic locations, even if it could've done with a higher budget and more time. It could also be the lengths ILCA clearly went through to include small details, like the background of the Pokémon using a HM and the animation for it matching that of the original games, or the TV changing over to show something which kind of matches what you're watching, or the battle transition animation matching up too. I also had my first excursion into the Grand Underground...man, that's surprisingly fun stuff. I forgot just how much I loved the minesweeper-like minigame for the dig sites, and finding the caverns with Pokémon has been pretty cool. Nothing too crazy, but still caught some pretty rare stuff (an underleveled Gastrodon and Houndoom, a Scyther, some Skorupi). Stocking up on PokéBalls before heading down there seems like the smart move, and honestly running out (I had 40 before heading down) after about an hour down there was probably my saving grace; I think I'm going to have to save this for the post-game, for my own sanity! Enjoying it so far, definitely some weird nitpicks I've got so far, we'll see if those (and my enjoyment) persist until the end of the game. One of the nitpicks is that they use a zoom-in before a lot of battles to show you your opponent up close in overworked chibi form, but then it quickly cuts to the typical overhead angle before going into the battle. It's just a little bizarre to see in action! There are some downsides to it coming so early: you can't post screenshots for the game yet (I like to illustrate my points!); and the Mystery Gift servers aren't up yet, meaning my wait for the Platinum outfit continues

Official trailer for No Way Home: Recently rewatched the Raimi trilogy, so it's fresh on my mind...there's no way they're going to bungle the handling of multiple antagonists in a single film again, right? Right?

I don't mind lending a hand, can start downloading it now. Will warn you I haven't played the game before though, so not sure if that would stretch out the time it takes to complete a round? How long does a round normally take?

I couldn't help but chuckle at Geoff wanting to show off the theatre good for him, must be great fun and feel very accomplishing to head a massive production like this! I genuinely got chills when he reeled off the nominees for Most Anticipated Games: Elden Ring, God of War: Ragnarök, Horizon Forbidden West, The Sequel to The Legends of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Starfield). Next year is so stupidly stacked with potential it's insane! One game a piece from the GOTY winners for 2017, 2018, and 2019, a massive Bethesda RPG, and Guerrilla Games getting their second crack at a gorgeous looking RPG too. Sure, a few of those could get delayed out of the year (GoW, Zelda, and Starfield), but if most of those release next year, I think there's a lot to be excited about. I think it would be really smart for Bethesda to turn up with some gameplay of Starfield here. Less than a year out from their planned launch, their first tentpole release since Xbox picked them up, I think it's time. More than maybe even in the Oscars voting process, I have a very hard time thinking that the average gamer has any clue what good game direction actually entails. It's a massively different task from one game to the next, which is why I fully expect it to reflect whatever takes GOTY home/is the most popular. Now there's great stuff to Rift Apart and I had good fun with it, but yeah, maybe Game Direction ain't it. As for Horizon 5, I know the cut-off technically isn't until this Friday, but I wonder if it released too late to be in with a good shout for a GOTY nomination from the press. Based on what I've heard/seen/read of the game and it's reviews, it definitely looks deserving, but racing in particular is such a hard one. In all seriousness, when was the last time there was an objectively bad Gran Turismo or Forza? Even beyond that, I can't really recall many flops in the genre over the last few years (there aren't exactly a ton of racing games coming out in the first place, to be honest). I don't think it's a good excuse, but I think it's much more difficult to not only compare racing games to other games where you control a character with a more clear overarching goal, but even more so to be very noticeable as a racing game. It's a tough one, but yeah, like @Ganepark32 said, once the Sports/Racing category came up you just didn't feel like it'd be in with a shout, which I think is a shame. I'm actually pretty surprised that Resident Evil Village got nominated, as even though it reviewed very well, it went fairly quiet very quickly, and definitely hasn't had the same buzz around it as say Resident Evil VII or Resident Evil 2 in recent years.

Well, well, well, look at how the tables turn. This should be huge. Kotick is obviously not the only thing wrong with Activision Blizzard, the place sounds like it's been rotten to the core of its hierarchy for a while now, but the biggest change at massive companies almost always has to come from the top - even if (perhaps especially if) their hands are forced by great journalism like this.

Nominees for The Game Awards are about to be announced, you can follow along here: You can places your votes here. Game of the Year 2021 nominees: Deathloop It Takes Two Metroid Dread Psychonauts 2 Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Resident Evil Village

First trailer for Adam McKay's next film, Don't Look Up: Looks great, guess I know what I'm watching on my birthday this year