Julius

Except there's a perfectly valid and understandable reason that it's been delayed, and as has been said, they said that it's being delayed. I don't think it's time to freak out just yet. Now, if things miraculously wind down in Ukraine by mid-June when we'd expect a special Direct from Nintendo (I'd give wiggle room up until the end of July considering E3 seems all but gone), and if we don't see it during their big summer Direct, then by all means I think we can start to question what's going on. But again, it all depends on the climate and situation in Ukraine by that time -- if at that point in time things are still anywhere near as bad as they are now, I wouldn't be surprised if it releases somewhere between September and December. I still think it'll release; the world and this industry is very different to how it was back when the original games first released, and it takes a whole lot less for a company like Nintendo to market a game like this than was the case back then. I can see why in the days of the GBA a game like this might get cancelled if it was delayed, because there would be practically zero marketing momentum, logistics were more of a nightmare, etc. Nintendo can tweet that the game is coming May 15th or whatever in a month's time - if things have stopped being as crazy as they are - and instantly get far more eyes on the game that way than they would have been able to back in the early 2000's. There are plenty of other games to play for the time being, and like @Hero-of-Time says, and as I agree wholeheartedly: considering what's going on, it really doesn't matter. It's a game which will no doubt make some people smile, frustrate others, or just be completely ignored by some sections of the Switch crowd, and that's fine. At the end of the day, it's just a game. I'm surprised by the delay -- I genuinely didn't think it would happen myself. But again, fair play to Nintendo, because it's the right thing to do.

I know it's been rumoured but I can't remember it ever being confirmed - I was shocked that they really just casually mentioned the Grand Inquisitor turning up! I still find it kind of hilarious that the show that should have been a planet-hopping, intergalactic adventure (Boba) ended up with the main character spending all of his time on Tatooine, whereas the show that would have been easiest to argue for it all taking place on Tatooine (Kenobi) is going to end up being a planet-hopping, intergalactic adventure

It's just getting delayed, it won't be getting cancelled. This is a much better and more obvious reason than we got for the previous delay, so hopefully it'll be fine? Depending on how things go - which is obviously completely out of their control, so if things continue as they are now for the next few months, it could be a while, but I think this might be a more immediate response to the news being so front and centre at the moment - I could see them pushing it to mid-May. May looks fairly quiet anyways, and there's currently a noticeable gap between Switch Sports on April 29th and Fire Emblem Warriors on June 10th, so I imagine that's where they'd want to put it. But like I said, whether they get to is kind of out of their hands

Coming October 25th 2022.

It's getting delayed. It's the right move.

Yeah, that's the spell I found and am working on levelling up my INT towards - if nothing else because NG+ for the other endings I don't get (which I'm now going to commit to unless the game becomes stupid in its final third) could be pretty straightforward. I've tested a few of the spells I've got with my current INT level and yeah, magic kind of breaks this game like it does in the other Souls games I've played, so that'll be fun to play around with Speaking of levelling up, I'm just shy of where I want to be with my build - with the time I've put in, I figured I might as well just use it to prep for NG+ too. Just got a little more to go with my farming, still got that last quest to do for the armour I want, and then I should be good to go, so I'll give an update them. I may have gone a little overboard with my farming, but well, hopefully it will have paid off! Already have my first port of call once I'm done and that's the pair of Abductor Virgins. I hated those guys. Time for some sweet as heck, blood-letting, metal-scrapping revenge!

I feel a disturbance in the Force. It's as if a million voices suddenly cried out in joy and died of the hype. EW's article can be found here. Bunch of great images to take a peek at and some light details to get the marketing ball rolling.

So Square Enix have just launched a dedicated music channel on YouTube: Over 5500 tracks and they'll be adding themed playlists. Take note, Nintendo.

Looks like something for Stranger of Paradise may have slipped out that we'll see in the State of Play today. Damn right I actually realised while playing Elden Ring that I've only played one game developed in the West so far this year of the five games I've played. Not to suggest that Western developed games are bad by any stretch - there are many that I love - but there's definitely some secret sauce to a good number Japanese games that typically makes them that much more appealing to me. I imagine it's just the shift in cultural perspective which enforces their design and writing to be so...unpredictable, I guess, compared to what I'm used to with Western storytelling and design? Got to imagine there's a TED Talk or GDC presentation on it somewhere My expectations are really reined in when it comes to XVI news today, I feel like that would either get a State of Play of its own or a blowout from Square Enix, just based on how far along it seems to be, how Unit III generally handle their development and marketing timeline, etc. I'd love to be surprised, but kind of like with Breath of the Wild's sequel, I feel the smart move would be to announce that they're showing the game off at an event ahead of time, just because there's that much hype and expectation to see more of it. Then again, smart moves aren't exactly S-E's forte, so Deep down there's a weird part of me - and I imagine this is just down to XVI failing to turn up so much before - that thinks we've got better odds at seeing something like a Final Fantasy Tactics remaster, or even VII Remake Part 2 (yeah I went there), than XVI today. Not that I think that they're terribly likely, just more likely. Gut feeling, and seeing how my past is with FF hopes and dreams, naturally this means XVI is going to be shown today and announced to be coming to PS Now exclusively, as well as streamed on mobile

F-Zero X is being added to the lineup this Friday:

Funnily enough, they go on to call out that for streamers there may be some licensed music used, so to be careful when streaming. So I guess that means we're almost certainly getting another trailer for Stranger of Paradise also imagine we'll see a final spot for Ghostwire Tokyo, too. Focus on Japanese publishers is nice to see, but 20 minutes doesn't really give me much hope to see much outside of Square Enix and Capcom. I know we're expecting Final Fantasy XVI news soon based on the update we got towards the end of last year, but I'm trying my best to imagine that's not happening, as we've been burned a few times by it not turning up at other events at this point. Outside of that from S-E the only thing I can think of is a potential remaster of something like Tactics, which has long been rumoured, though the timing would probably kill Triangle Strategy on Switch if it did show up here. Hell, give us Parasite Eve or something. Or, you know: Dragon Quest VIII Remastered. Please? Over at Capcom, if Street Fighter 6 is exclusive (though I don't think it would be wise for it to be), then maybe it's here? But something like Resident Evil 4 Remake could be saved for June, if we see it at all this year, so maybe we finally get a classic RE Collection on modern consoles instead. With that in mind, I'm only really backing two horses that I would love to see here that I think are reasonable to hope for: whatever is next for Astro Bot (a full-fledged non-VR game PLEASE) and Granblue Fantasy: Relink.

I finished this in a day but forgot to follow up, so... ...Ufotable really are just out here setting the standard for animation in the industry, huh? Rewatching the Mugen Train Arc, as much as I still love it, the final fight - glorious as it is - is very stop-start, just due to the nature of the characters involved. It's not a particularly long fight, despite how intense and lustrous it is. But the Entertainment District Arc is all killer, no filler, and there's a fight on multiple fronts which goes on for about half of the Arc. That the animation quality, then, somehow stepped up from what they achieved in a somewhat short but very intense burst at the end of the Mugen Train Arc, is simply astounding -- the animation in a weekly show was just as good as, and perhaps arguably (I'd definitely argue this) even better than, that of the movie. Demon Slayer just nails the basics of a shonen. You care about these characters, the shorter arcs, the overarching arcs, and are easily invested. It's not doing anything groundbreaking for the genre in terms of writing (it's not Hunter x Hunter subverting a lot of the tropes in the shonen book), but it's writing is simple yet very effective, and that's perhaps the most important thing. It's because it isn't trying anything dangerously bold in the genre that the animation takes centre stage -- the conversations I see aren't about what happened in the final fight, but how that final fight looked and felt. The clanging sound of swords, the almost lucid slashes across a dark background, the way characters leap to and at each other, how it's all choreographed and framed, and then it's all elevated even further by the soundtrack. Look, I think it's a small step down from Mugen Train's OST, but that's not saying much when Mugen Train has one of my favourite recent anime OST's, and some incredible tracks. I've been weirdly inconsistent on here about scoring anime I watch, as I view it a little bit more casually than I do games or films, but I track and score every anime I watch on MAL, and finishing the Entertainment District Arc, I was stumped for the first time in a long time on how to score it. Again, the story itself isn't anything wild or a Magnum Opus of writing, but I seriously don't think I've been as hyped by, or as in awe of, an animated fight as I was watching the latter parts of the Entertainment District Arc. So I gave it a 10. Seriously, jump on the Demon Slayer anime bandwagon if you haven't already, because your eyes and ears are in for a treat.

Meanwhile, a meaningful update on where I'm at:

I haven't played around with Scapes too much yet to be honest, but I'll throw some replays up later

Trophy hunters love this one simple trick!

You see, the problem with a great idea like that is that doesn't allow the refs and VAR assistants to be as incompetent

Delayed four and a half months until October 11th. One part of me is saying RIP to the thought of having XVI out by the end of the year now, probably slipping into Q1 2023... ...but then the other part of me is holding onto a thread of hope in that we've been told to expect news in the next month's - and that we wouldn't be getting the next update to begin with until we were reasonably close to launch. Head honchos over at S-E have some pretty massive decisions to make here. A mid-October release date for this just doesn't seem the right decision if XVI is aiming for that same window. I haven't been wowed by anything from Forspoken that we've seen since the first trailer, so part of me selfishly would rather that game be pushed further back for XVI to step into the limelight.

In what can only be described as a mind-meltingly confusing move for a company like Rockstar, but is actually a sensible move, it looks like GTA V on next-gen is only going to be priced at £15 until mid-June, and £35 thereafter. Which timeline are we actually in at this point?

My problem with how VAR is utilised in offside replays is that arms are even considered to the extent that they are to begin with, especially with how handball has been cracked down on (maybe a bit too harshly) in most cases. It's football -- unless there's an extreme example where some part of the arm is offside and is used to gain an advantage (for example, if a player controlled the ball with their shoulder) I don't understand why we wouldn't just be looking at the attacking player's legs and feet in comparison to the defending player's legs and feet. Part of the idea of offside is to essentially have a fair footrace to the ball if a defender is tracking back, but only considering their position in a vacuum and not even their direction or current momentum (which is silly anyways because nine times out of ten the defending player is going to be slower than the attacking player through the middle of the pitch), so it's supposed to be an equalising thing for, again, essentially a footrace...where one player might be facing or currently moving in the wrong direction to begin with.

I saw a clip of this going around yesterday without any context and it shot up on my to-do list for the game My plan going into the game was always to do a hybrid Knight/Sorcerer build focusing on STR/VIG/END as usual for much of the game before pumping Runes into INT/MIND later on to give me more versatility and to see the cool spells. But my experience with the last boss, as much as I loved it, showed me that my current build just probably isn't going to cut it moving forwards, considering some of the later areas I've already come across later in the game, and this was hammered home by 5 seconds I had spoiled of some random boss fight (thanks, YouTube thumbnail clips - thankfully didn't see a name or even really the boss, just someone with a typical sword and board melee build like mine getting smeared across the floor), which made it abundantly clear that rather than re-spec... I'm going to choose to grind in order to level up INT/MIND so that they're pretty much on par with my other stats and incorporate them into my build. Well, INT a bit (a lot) further, as I have a spell I've picked up that I really want to use! I'd actually already started doing the quest which would get me to where I needed, as it turns out, so will be finishing that after work today and putting some other essential parts of the grind in place. After the grind I have one more thing to do to get the armour set I've been fawning over the entire game, I have the big ass swords I wanted, and so there'll be no looking back. Tonight, I become a farmer. A farmer of Runes. And ascend to damn near godhood.

Getting Gold in IA-5 kept me from playing Elden Ring yesterday. Some of these License Tests are no joke! To give you an idea, the course is probably no longer than 2 miles, and when I completed it I had some 483 miles added to my daily counter, so...yeah, it's rough. Definitely the one I've spent the most time on so far, but Gold on some of the other License Tests is nothing to snort at either. Got to the point where I know that part of the track to an insane degree and was adjusting on the fly to wheel spin and dodgy cornering on each run, constantly getting Silvers, and ended up with an insanely clean looking run. About 25% of the way into my attempts I think I had it down but my thumb locked onto the left stick and I accidentally flicked the car off the track as I took it off for a straight. Grrrrrrrr. My mate bested my time after probably half of my attempts but watched my run for reference and I gave him tips on it as he went. A little grating to my pride that he beat my time considering how much time I put in to mastering the test, but I'm glad he went for it and can now appreciate my pain, and I'm never going back. My Gold run according to him looked much, much smoother than his, though, so I'll take that hopefully the PS App hurries up and updates with screenshots and videos soon so I can start sticking some footage I've captured on here (had an insane rally run where I became Lightning McQueen), as uploading to and copying thing from Twitter is a bit of a pain!

Yeah, honestly I don't blame you, especially with all of the other great games out at the moment, as well as waiting to see how this whole microtransaction situation plays out long term for the game, because right now I think it's tough to gauge exactly how impactful that is on the mid- and late-game. For me, I knew the quantity would be there to help me replace FIFA (though I had questions over whether or not it would click), and so £70 was fine for me because I was signing up for the long haul anyways, but if you get the opportunity to grab this game on sale towards the end of the year when I imagine we'll see it going for £30 to £40, I think it'll be a bargain for how much you'll get out of it

It's addictively good, and I mean, the fact that I've apparently already put 15 hours into it while mainly playing a game as brilliant as Elden Ring - and I'm someone that typically hates playing more than one game at a time - speaks volumes about the game's quality. Not once but twice I've already noticed my friends playing the game at 23:00, I figure if we're all playing we might as well jump in a chat - even if we're at different stages and doing our own things - and all of a sudden it's 04:00 or 05:00! It's just that much fun. Friday night one of us was in Yorkshire but he jumped into the chat to talk, and so I shared my screen over the chat in the PS App, which was a surprisingly seamless experience. I mentioned a lot of my points of praise before, but what I think you'd enjoy about it is that it definitely feels like a game where it highlights all of the things you need to do to progress as you play - if you just want the main course, by all means, it wants you to just start digging into the meat of the meal, and you don't really need to dive into the side dishes of the game if that's not your thing. Coupled with the fast loading times and snappy menus, if you only focus on races and the minimum required upgrades, I reckon you're getting through some 10 - 15 races per hour quite handily, and if you're in a rush and ready to go from one to the next, probably even a bit closer to 20. From what I've seen of the trophies it also seems to be one that wants you to put time into the game and mastering it in some aspects (such as the License Tests, which are very addictive, especially with friends' times to beat), but isn't asking nearly as much as I would have expected from a game like this. There are things I have gripes with, though, for sure. After one long session I've already kicked the in-game soundtrack to the curb and have started a custom playlist for the game, mainly with music from older games and some Japanese pop/rock/jazz/hype tracks to keep that GT vibe going, and if not that I'll just stick on a podcast instead. Again, online multiplayer not being available from the get-go in a game which requires online seems pretty deplorable to me, and even if you crit path it to unlock it (it's 9 or 10 café missions in), you're probably looking at an hour to an hour and a half to unlock it if you win every race on your first attempt and don't get distracted by some of the side stuff. And yeah, there's a big question at the back of my mind about the microtransactions. It seemed inevitable after how I saw them implemented from a distance in Sport, but keeping mum until the release of the game about it (it was one of the first things I asked about to my friend who got the game a day early when we jumped in a chat together) in the style of Battlefront II was a stupid move, and having the option to top up your wallet with some microtransactions show up every time you get some more credits added to your funds after a race, or when confirming a purchase, is despicable. I picked up the Digital Deluxe Edition and have only been using the extra cash I got on upgrading my vehicle and yesterday I finally dipped lower than 1 million CR in the bank, mainly because you'll do a bunch of races with one car and then you'll need to use an American 4WD car that you haven't upgraded, and need to start upgrading that to get it in shape for a race to be competitive. This all being said, it's still far from the most disgusting and predatory microtransactions I've come across in a game, because GTA Online takes the cake there. In short: highly recommend, don't think I've ever been so addicted to a racing game before, and if not for Elden Ring, I have no doubt my time in the game would be double what it currently is. I wanted to nip playing FIFA in the bud this year and it seems doable now that GT7 is here. Also @Cookyman I'm playing with the front of car perspective. I did start in the cockpit, and the game looks fantastic there, but once I got to the point of the License Tests and needing to shave off a second or two here or there to beat my friend's times, I found that I needed a full view so that I could cut over corners exactly how I needed to, etc.

I also beat the big boss that is the hot topic, and hoo boy, is that one hell of a fight. I already loved the character from what I'd read and heard about them elsewhere in the game, so finally getting to square up to them, and having the fight surpass my expectations, was pretty spectacular. And I'm looking forward to seeing the ramifications of the fight too. However, while the fight is conceptually awesome...I do think it has some practical issues, and I feel like there are definitely one or two things which could have been done to make the fight a bit. It also brought to the forefront a minor nitpick for me in the game that I'd come across a few times before but could put up with, but this being a boss fight, it blew it up exponentially, and now it's going to be on my mind a lot moving forwards into other important fights. For reference, I've been running a STR-based melee build, which I've only really recently started phasing into a Magic Knight hybrid, and I'm probably one of the lesser experienced Souls players here, so looking at the tally for my number of deaths, I think I'm probably going to be one of those more intimate with the fight in terms of sheer exposure to it. I spent a good while with it, but thankfully, just powered through - got to that point where I always knew what was coming. It never felt unfair as I feel a couple of bosses in Dark Souls and Demons Souls did at times (looking at you, my clip-happy experiences with O&S and Adjudicator), but well, I'll just get onto it: praise, criticism, my idea on how it could potentially be improved, warts and all. Stopping there for now, got a few places I want to check out before I've got a couple of ideas for where I want to head next. I'm pretty confident I know where exactly the next big bosses are going to be based on my running ahead (I've pretty much only got the top right quarter of the map left to discover, and I have a good idea of what to expect there based on NPC talk, quests, and item descriptions), but I'm in no real rush to get to them, because I'm just enjoying the game that much. I do look forward to hopefully getting to the grinding spot @Hero-of-Time and @drahkon have been mentioning though, one final big grind before probably just going where I think I need to go would be very nice Lastly, it needs to be said: what a great year this already is for games. In all of the Elden Ring hype - which it's worthy of every drop of - I've somehow not realised that with this, Legends: Arceus, and a good chunk of late night/early morning Gran Turismo 7 sessions that I already have 3 games that I'm confident I'll be talking about at the end of the year when it comes to my personal favourites and backing in GOTY discussions. That's insanely wild, and I haven't even picked up Sifu or Horizon Forbidden West yet. Dare I say that 2022's already on course to be one of the strongest years for gaming, never mind the fact that so many other games with huge potential are pencilled in or are likely to be aiming to come out by the end of this year?