Julius

Eh, we'll see. I think it's possible it's not, but I also think this might just be a case of it not being a great entry point to the genre? I'll always appreciate respectful discourse, so thanks I think some of my below point kind of touches on @Sheikah's second: I actually really did love that fourth boss fight! Think I was just tired when I typed it up Actually, speaking of the boss fights, how would everyone rank them? For me it would probably be...

Fifth boss beat last night, great fight. Definitely one of the easier ones I think, but I thought it was really enjoyable in that you needed to pace yourself and fight a bit more smartly than you needed to with some of the other bosses. Credits have rolled, and while overall I enjoyed it, with some excellent highs (some of those bosses have to be up there for me in the Top 10 I've faced, especially the third), it was honestly a bit more of a mixed bag for me than I sense it was for others. It's one of those games where I can see why it clicked for others, and I'm happy to see that it did, but even though the gameplay itself clicked for me, the actual core of the game - going on runs until you drop - really didn't. I do want to speak to the positives first, because there are plenty of them. The boss fights are some of the most exhilarating I've played this year, and I would love a Boss Rush mode to be added at some point down the line -- how it essentially becomes a third person shmup is insane (imagine some of NieR Automata's bosses but much more intense). It's very much a skill-based game, which was perhaps my favourite part of the boss fights, because you really need to get to grips with Selene, as I've mentioned before. Yes, there are OP weapons and such that will put things in your favour, but even then, you're unlikely to be walking all over bosses, and even some of the mini-bosses, without really getting to grips with your weapon and the timing of dodges and jumps. It's one of the best looking and best sounding games on the PS5 so far, and Housemarque did an amazing job at making it feel cohesive, from it's biome variety with native alien fauna, to the sound profile of each biome's inhabitants, and the game simply looks gorgeous. It's yet another experience enhanced greatly by the DualSense's haptics and adaptive triggers, and the game's soundtrack is gripping. Now onto why it just didn't click for me, in terms of the gameplay loop. In part, I think this is because some weapon and perk combos are OP as all heck, so there's less of an incentive to go with what you know rather than something that will demolish everything on sight (see: my experience with the third boss). 99% of the time, parasites and the like seemed kind of useless, and if they weren't, the game did a terrible job of making me want to use them, so the risk-reward nature of the game had little bearing on my playthrough in the end, and along similar lines, as my first roguelike that wasn't a Mystery Dungeon game, I think it doesn't do a great job of explaining things or highlighting things that are going to be particularly helpful (see: my experience with the Astronaut Figurine; also my experience in the penultimate biome, where I accidentally attached a parasite which slowed my dodging and melee recharge time considerably while trying to grapple to a higher platform during battle). I also think the last biome sucked. It really, really sucked, to the point that it almost felt like it was inviting me to sprint from room to room. And - a pretty big one - the mini-map was pretty atrocious. The mini-map is like a bird's-eye view of the map you get from opening up the map from the touchpad, which distorts floors into overlapping where there is no clear overlap. I last count of the times I would head to where some resin was on the mini-map to be left looking up and down to see if it was above or below me, before opening up the map and manipulating it to see it was in a different part of that room all along. I think the major sticking point for me with this game is that I struggle to see why it needed to be a roguelike, because even by roguelike standards (from what I know of other games), there just wasn't enough variety for me on each run. I quite enjoyed the story, but it felt like the story itself was promised part and parcel with the game being a roguelike -- but it could just as well have been a linear game with longer levels consisting of more rooms being included with more paths to head down, and I think could've been a stronger experience because of it. It sucks, because it's one of those rare cases where it sounds like I'm tearing the game apart when I also think it's one of the most exhilarating and visceral gameplay experiences I've had this year, but the loop just didn't work for me, which is the very foundation of this game, so I'm grappling with it a bit. I think it's a tough game to recommend to someone not already pretty deep into gaming - either very good at them, or very interested in the medium - and even then I think it has its flaws -- very high highs, and some middling lows. It just wasn't completely for me in more ways than one, and that's okay. Still, I'm very excited to see what Housemarque does next. I want more boss fights like this please!

Trailer for Attack on Titan: The Final Season - Part Two...

Honestly, anything and everything this game can do to help differentiate itself from Breath of the Wild is only going to be a good thing in my eyes. I have many concerns going into this game, arguably the biggest of which is if my memories of this upcoming game are going to end up getting mixed up with memories of the first game (compounded by the possibility of the open world not changing all that much), so a slight change in tone and a noticeable shift in colour palette could be the way to do it. The first game was very heavy on lighter colours for instance, such as light greens and blues, as well as natural textures of the surroundings; something as simple as making the grass a few shades darker could make a huge difference I feel. It's funny because I think the first trailer for this sequel nailed it thanks to the environments shown: everything just looked visually darker (most of those shots being interior shots helped), which matched the tone of that trailer perfectly. We then start to see Hyrule Castle rumble in a very familiar looking open world, but it taking off almost makes you ask the question of what changes this would bring. There's a lot of reds, shadows, and purples in the trailer, which heavily contrasts against flashes of light (Link's arm, the glowing strands at the start and end of the trailer, etc.). The second trailer starts out with this before we see Link going all Fortnite and dropping in from the sky, which takes us through a few scenes up in the clouds to show off a colour scheme which generally looked even lighter than what we saw in the first game: yellow and golds of trees contrasting against the whites of the clouds, and the blue of the sky. So the potential underground and skies look fresh, but then I think seeing Hyrule at ground level still have that largely unchanged colour palette just really makes me a little nervous about this game's visual identity when compared with the first. Your post also reminded me of some great speculative fan art which came before the second pack of DLC, which I think kind of nails the colour and tonal shift, as well as the weirdness: Like @Sméagol said, some people don't consider that a Zelda game... ...they just consider it a Saturday night.

Oh yeah, I know it's stuff he's heard off the record at a social event, it's just one of those situations where I'd be very surprised if anyone who works at Nintendo would actually turn around and openly say to someone - even in a social setting - that they aren't feeling good about 2022, or doubt that BotW2 is making next year? And if they did -- would Peer actually share it in that situation? Because I'm not sure he would. For me it's nice to see someone saying that basically they haven't heard anything about it being pushed back, but hearing this doesn't really move the needle for me we've already been told to expect BotW2 in 2022, and we can already see from Nintendo's 2022 slate that it's shaping up to be a stacked year. It's just another six months until E3 (holy smokes E3 2021 was already six months ago?!) and then I think we'll have a crystal clear idea on when BotW2 is coming. I'm basically hoping for the best (2022) and preparing for the worst (2023) These two minutes basically sum up how I imagine Schreier when he gets to leak something or fearmonger

Yeah, always loved hearing Peer back when I listened to NVC. It's kind of a nothing statement - the last thing we officially heard about the game was that it was slated for 2022 back at E3, and would there ever be a year where Nintendo isn't excited about their upcoming year? - but it's nice to hear at the very least. I'm going into next year on the fence about whether it releases in 2022 or in 2023, mainly down to COVID impacts, but also it's the kind of project seemingly growing bigger and bigger with the more that we hear about mechanics and their ideas for it, but I'm more than happy to wait. I'll take this over Jason Schreier fearmongering over games like this and Elden Ring getting delayed any day of the week. I guess the trade-off for his contacts in the industry is that he's a bit of a hype killer.

Suikoden is the new hotness confirmed

Final Fantasy VI's Pixel Remaster is coming in February 2022:

You monsters.

Made more progress on Saturday. Third boss reaction: And that fourth boss... This game is goooooood

The PlayStation Plus version of Final Fantasy VII Remake is being made upgradeable to the PS5 version of the game from Wednesday, and Intermission will be 25% off for a limited time. Must be annoying for those that went and bought the game after finding out that the PlayStation Plus PS4 version wouldn't be able to upgrade back near the start of the year.

I don't follow the box office as closely as I used to, but No Way Home has thrown the entire kitchen out -- it's opening weekend (and launch around the world) has been absolutely insane! From Box Office Mojo: So, in summary: Biggest opening weekend for Sony of all time, finally surpassing Spider-Man 3. Instantly the sixth best performing film of 2021 at the box office. Third highest global and domestic opening weekend of all-time, behind Infinity War ($258m / $640m) and Endgame ($357m / $1.22b). It outperformed The Force Awakens in the midst of a pandemic! Speaking of which, and I suppose this goes without saying when you look at the other numbers above: it's the biggest film opening of the pandemic by a loooooong shot. It's the first film to surpass $90m domestically since The Rise of Skywalker did so to round at 2019. Very much deserved in my opinion and a massive shot in the arm for cinema chains I'm sure, but even with how sold out Odeon showings were all day, and just how absolutely packed the Odeon I went to was on a Wednesday (!), I still think it has to be noted how insane this opening has been. It's the most flatfooted I've been by an opening since Jurassic World. I don't expect it to have crazy legs - MCU films are known to be some of the most predictably frontloaded in terms of box office performance - and I think Omicron will likely deter people from repeat viewings (I know that's the case for me -- any year before COVID I would have already been three times at a minimum!), as well as any other restrictions which might be coming our way (i.e. the potential for lockdowns following Christmas). Normally I'd expect it to close somewhere between $1.3b - $1.6b, but it's just so impossible to predict given the circumstances it's released into. Still, kudos to Marvel and Sony for a stellar film, they got it right creatively, commercially, and critically, which is to say they really nailed it. It was a strange experience for me (anyone else got more audience reactions than we seem to get on the UK? Not to complain but it felt bizarre!) but it felt so great to be watching a massive film like this in the cinema, which I haven't done since The Rise of Skywalker (and, you know, which didn't tarnish my affection for a franchise). Can't wait to see where they go with it next!

Yeah, I'd definitely second what @Happenstance said and recommend Brotherhood -- for me it's comfortably in my three favourite anime series. I haven't watched all of the original Fullmetal Alchemist, but it does take a bit more time with setting things up...before they ran out of material and started with the filler/going their own way with the anime. I say this just in case you don't gel with FMA, because FMA:B is a faithful adaptation made after the manga was completed, so they're two shows which start in the same place, have a lot of overlap in cast, but diverge pretty noticeably at a point. If you ever do want to check out Brotherhood, I think it moved from Netflix to Funimation just a few months back. Still, curious to hear you get on with it! I should probably get back to the original series at some point

Yeah, got to agree with you there. It doesn't exactly weaken the first game, but another arrow in the quiver in this situation can only be a good thing, I think. That we saw a settlement in the September State of Play trailer gives me confidence with this, though, and it makes me hope for another two or three more! Total aside, not related to the gameplay but rather the story: I'm not a fan of how they've come out and said it's a duology rather than a trilogy ahead of release, as I think we all assumed would be the case. Because now I feel like the ending is going to be pretty predictable, whereas if we went into this game expecting a trilogy and realised it was only a duology once the credits rolled, it would've been much more exciting I think. I feel like a relatively easy way they could have kept it fresh, based purely on what we've seen in the trailers but taken a bit further, is to just throw Hyrule Castle so high that certain parts of the map are in an eclipsed state and are much cooler -- for example, imagine if snow spread down into the Gerudo desert because of this, which would change so much of the game's economy (for example, certain fruit might not be able to grow there anymore), and most importantly it would just visibly look different, as well as give a reason to see characters crop up elsewhere (items to change the weather, which given the rain situation in the first game I think should be coming anyways, could also play into this). Or they could've just basically nuked Hyrule when the castle went up into the sky I guess, like how Elden Ring clearly has chunks of castles and stuff just sticking out of the ground. We'll see, but yeah, based on what we've seen so far I'm a bit nervous. Adding new sections through verticality with the underground and sky is awesome, but if the ground level looks essentially the same just with different enemy compositions and maybe another couple of towns, I don't think that's enough of a shift, because I could see it forcing me down the critical path. It's a tricky one, and I don't envy them. Obviously a lot of this is based on pretty short trailers for a massive open world, so fingers crossed it's just a case of them not showing us those changes yet!

The official box art for the game has been revealed: That's Square Enix box art alright. The stitched together character portraits form Chaos.

Fulfillment update is coming on Monday, for those who have got Analogue Pocket pre-orders in recently: Fingers crossed mine comes sonnet rather than later, but yeah, got enough elsewhere to keep me busy just in case!

If this year was the Year of 9's, next year - on paper, at this moment in time - has a seriously high chance of being the Year of 10's, and one of the greatest years in gaming. So I'm hyped. For me there's a lot I'm looking forward to, but next year I want to focus mainly on knocking games off of my shelves because I've got too many that I haven't yet played, and to save this list from getting too long I'll focus on the titles I'll be picking up Day 1, no questions asked, which I would choose over other games: Elden Ring I'm still relatively new to From Software's Soulsbornekiroring games, but I had a great time with both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, and so I'm hyped to go into one of these games fully blind and at the onset of the zeitgeist. Biggest challenge for me that I foresee is that I've played their two oldest games that are like this, so I imagine this will be a lot faster paced when it comes to boss fights. This game is also the reason you won't see Horizon on my list - I'm excited by it, but there's no way I'm risking burnout on open world games by playing that in the week leading up to Elden Ring. Gran Turismo 7 is a week later too, so I guess that's not getting on this list either. Pokémon Legends: Arceus I'm cautiously optimistic on this one, but coming off the back of the nostalgia trip that was Brilliant Diamond - which is the most I've engaged with a Pokémon game in a very long time, and I had a whole lot of fun with it - I definitely have the appetite for another Pokémon game, and so how I'm going to stave that off until Arceus I'm not quite sure. Looking forward to seeing the new evolutions and Hisuian forms, and obviously to see how well Game Freak's first "open world" turns out. God of War Ragnarök Like others, I loved the 2018 game, and I can't wait to see how the story pans out, but also for any new mechanics (or weapons) that SSM might be keeping to themselves. This is probably the one I'm most confident about turning out well, because it doesn't seem to be diverging from what we see in GoW 2018 (which is a good thing, because it doesn't need to!). Starfield I've also yet to play a Bethesda game (I won't lie, I am very tempted to dive into Skyrim), but this has spoken to me since before it was announced at E3, and was only a rumour. Something about this project is just gripping to me, I guess I'm kind of hoping to see the strengths of space exploration seen in a game like No Man's Sky combined with the RPG nous of Bethesda Game Studios. Probably the biggest reason I'm going to be picking up a Series X next year. The sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild I know there's a decent chance it'll slip into 2023, but right now it's slated for 2022, which means I'm going to be holding onto some of my work holidays for next year until we either see this delayed or it gets a 2022 release date, because I can't wait to just lose some days to exploring Hyrule again. I was late to the party in getting a Switch and playing Breath of the Wild, and despite it having glaring areas to improve in, I couldn't be more onboard, I loved my experience with that game. To be frank, though, this is also the one which I think could have the toughest time living up to expectations -- how do you keep that sense of exploration fresh this time around, when we're already intimately familiar with the map? I had hoped Link would be relegated to the underground and that Zelda would be playable above ground, with us rebuilding Hyrule, seeing a bunch more settlements, and getting to use her magic, but the trailers so far seem to point to anything but that happening. Granblue Fantasy Relink I've been following the development of this game for a few years now, and I'm super excited to see what Cygames has in store for us with their first console RPG. For those that don't know, Granblue Fantasy is a huuuuuuge mobile game in Japan, and has drawn many comparisons to Final Fantasy games of old (having the same composer and character designer probably helps that somewhat!), so assuming this does release in 2022, I have high hopes and expectations for it. At the very least, it looks stunning! Omori I've heard too many good things from those who played it on PC to not be super excited about it. Now, in terms of things that don't have a 2022 release date attached, but I'm bullish about releasing next year... Final Fantasy XVI Why we haven't seen this game in 2021 I'm not sure, but next year is the 35th anniversary for the series, and both Stranger of Paradise and Forspoken are scheduled to release in the first six months of 2022 -- barring any significant delays, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to piece together when they're hoping to release XVI. If you need a reason to be excited beyond the trailer we had last year, look at the love XIV and Endwalker is getting, and think of what Creative Business Unit III could achieve in a single player game. Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters - ON CONSOLE For years I have been yammering on and on around here about wanting the first six Final Fantasy games to be brought to modern platforms, and well -- the gaming gods heard me, decided I wasn't specific enough, threw a monkey's paw middle finger my way, and put them up on Steam and mobile. Not. This. Time. It's happening in 2022, on modern consoles, or so help me Gilgamesh! It's the 35th anniversary for the franchise and they have put so much more effort and time into this than their other PC ports of beloved games (I'm sorry Chrono Trigger). They know the hunger is there for it to happen. It would be one of the most idiotic moves made by Square Enix in years if it doesn't happen. Do it you cowards.

First trailer for How I Met Your Father... ...yeah, I think I'm good.

Been a little while since I've updated with casting news for the Netflix live-action adaptation, but with yesterday's announcements it's time to dig in. Firstly, last month on the 16th, there were three additional castings that were made official at the time production started for the show: From left to right we've got Paul-Sun Hyung Lee cast as Uncle Iroh, Lim Say Kiu cast as Gyatso, and Ken Leung cast as Commander Zhao. There were some details on production also included in this Deadline article which I thought were cool to hear about. Also wanted to share this clip of Hyung Lee getting emotional over how this cast is great for representation and inclusion, and I agree - think they've done a great job with the casting! And speaking of casting, there's the news we got yesterday: In case that image ever goes down, from left to right and top to bottom: Elizabeth Yu has been cast as Azula, Maria Zhang has been cast as Suki, Tamlyn Tomita has been cast as Yukari, Yvonne Chapman has been cast as Avatar Kyoshi, and Casey Camp-Horinek has been cast as Gran Gran. For anyone else wondering who the heck Yukari is, she's an original character for the Netflix live-action adaptation of the show -- she's Suki's mother, as well as the mayor of Kyoshi Island. In the original show the mayor was male and had no relation to Yuki. I'll be honest, this is a change which makes me a little nervous? What was so cool about the Kyoshi Warriors was that they were strong and independent characters, and I always got the sense that they'd all gone through some sense of loss; off the top of my head I don't think Suki ever mentions her parents in the original show, so I kind of assumed that like a lot of the other characters in the show that she was either an orphan or separated. Either way, I just don't want her to be asking for permission from her mother to help Team Avatar, coming to loggerheads with her over their difference in opinion, before she either runs away or Aang and the team somehow prove themselves, and so her mother is now happy for Yuki to support them/be friends with them/whatever. Oh and also: Netflix just better see this through, unlike how they treated their Cowboy Bebop adaptation. At the very least they've got the castings spot on so far from my point of view.

Five SEGA Mega Drive games being added today.

Found the original Famitsu scans, as expected the work shown above is only for select scenes: Famitsu's cover and content is laden with the Pixel Remasters this month for the series' 34th anniversary, if anyone's wondering why this image has come from Famitsu. The aim for the Pixel Remasters was to have them all available by the end of 2021, right? Or at least, VI still shows as being scheduled for release in 2021 on Steam...wonder if we'll hear anything about it on the day of the anniversary (Saturday)? Apparently the Famitsu article says it's coming "this winter", so I guess don't expect a shadow drop or it to actually release this side of the New Year

So, uh...VI is getting a bit of a facelift in its Pixel Remaster! Two new screenshots from Famitsu: Almost like they've tried to make it look something like Octopath, which is to say it looks fantastic. You better not take all of next to announce this is coming to other platforms in 2022 for the 35th anniversary, Square. I swear to Gilgamesh.

A new trailer with a focus on the Machines of the Forbidden West:

A heads-up to everyone interested in this game: the Network Test has been datamined and over 3000 audio files from the game are now out there. Naturally, that means a lot of the story is now out in the wild too. Thought I'd share because I wouldn't be surprised if we unfortunately see a lot of videos and articles in the next two months spoiling a lot of these details, so take care in avoiding spoilers.