Julius

New year, new events thread! Starting it early this year because of the news already coming out that E3 will once again be digital this year, due to Omicron concerns -- we had to wait until March last year before finding out what was up with E3 2021. As reported by VentureBeat: However, Mike Futter has shared that he heard that E3 would likely be going this way in 2022 as the ESA had already abandoned their plans to use the Los Angeles Convention Center -- he says he heard this prior to the emergence of Omicron. And, as has been discussed ad nauseam, but in particular since the start of COVID: publishers don't need an E3 presence, much less a particular one, to communicate their plans to consumers these days. And, without skipping a beat...

I dropped the game after getting to where I wanted with the Living Sinnoh Dex after getting a bit tired of grinding out the Underground. I at least got the Legendary Beasts, can't remember if I got Ho-Oh though. Been feeling really rough the last couple of days since my booster jab, so will take a look once I'm feeling better (hopefully over the weekend) and let you know

A number of "insiders" and smaller gaming outlets seem to think that previews for the game are due to go up within the next week: It's about damn time. I can't remember the last time that something marketing itself as an open world game left it until the month of release to show off a stretch of unedited gameplay and have it's mechanics and gameplay loop clearly explained. And I still think the decision to release this after Christmas and just two months after Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl was a silly idea. To be fair, Centro Leaks are very hit and miss with Pokémon and aren't exactly a reliable source, to the point that I think even Serebii has called them out on a number of occasions for spouting nonsense. They basically aggregate any and all leaks that come out, act like they've heard something similar, throw in a few educated guesses based on details other people pick up, and then kind of gaslight followers when it comes to previous "leaks" of theirs that turned out to be wrong. An example of this is how they have been sharing the versions of the Chinese Riddler leaks, which in turn they are taking from the translations put out there by some attention seeker who seems to be getting off on the attention he gets from sharing the translations of the Chinese Riddler leaks. It's so bizarre. I mean, everything in the spoiler tag doesn't seem at all that surprising to be honest, so I think it's more an educated guess based on what we've seen. I've definitely seen a lot of people speculate on similar things based on the menus we've seen from the game so far, so hopefully we'll get a better idea soon! Yeah, the whole game being about how this is about the Sinnoh Dex being completed for the first time leads me to agree with you. On the one hand, it's Pokémon, so catching/recruitment is going to likely be involved to some extent, but there are very few "open world" games which make being a completionist the core of the game's structure. This being Game Freak, I'll admit I'm nervous to see how they've handled it. Burnout in an open world game is very hard to avoid, even in games which have a variety for you to do adjacent to the critical path of the game, but that could be compounded here by the repetition of having to catch all of the Pokémon, if that's the angle that they're taking with this. I look around and at best I think people are just interested to see what this first "open world" Pokémon game is going to be like - I know that's the case for me - but I think Legends: Arceus has already lost the war, when the first battle hasn't even begun. People with baggage from playing bad open world games don't really want this to begin with, and people who have played good open world games are going to find that this isn't anything like how an open world game for Pokémon has the potential to be. People are going to say that Breath of the Wild x Pokémon is impossible to deliver on, but I do think that there are ways that a great open world Pokémon game could be made with the right team on it and drawing from the right inspirations - ahem, Monolith Soft and Xenoblade Chronicles - and unfortunately I think this Monster Hunter-lite experience thanks to its marketing is already heading down the wrong path. I can already envision the blowback Game Freak gets from this game - I mean, they get blowback with every game, to be fair - and it potentially putting them and fans off altogether when it comes to making open world Pokémon games, when what we know of it so far is zonal open world design at best, probably based on Monster Hunter World. Time to go back to my cave I guess. My optimism fades more every time I talk about this game.. You mean to tell me you don't walk around by pushing forward a left analogue stick?

Been a while since I've posted an update in here, so with 2021 over and me being in a reflective mood before looking ahead to 2022, I figured it's a good time to get caught up and close the book on my last 12 months of gaming. I've talked about a few of these games elsewhere, so I'm probably going to cheat with those and grab what I said elsewhere, what with there being quite a few games for me to go through and wanting to not take too long, so I might be really brief on some games, especially ones I've talked about recently. We'll see how that goes I guess JUNE PORTAL | 2007 Portal is a game I went into having heard a lot about -- not in terms of its content, but in terms of its critical acclaim down to its innovation in combining the mechanics of its famous portal gun with great level design. And it's absolutely deserved. I played the game from start to finish in one sitting, frequently getting goosebumps from the fun and genius of its physics-based gameplay with a number of puzzle elements, which naturally includes the use of the portal gun to entire in one portal and come out of the other elsewhere. Working my way through the Aperture Labs puzzles for the first time was an absolutely blast, and its light but efficient story quickly turns chilling as you get closer to the end. The most succinct way I can think to describe it as someone playing their first Valve game was that its level design and mechanics are exactly what you'd expect from Nintendo on some of their best days. I played the PS3 version, which obviously isn't the best way to play the game, and boy did it make sure I came away knowing it: a few frame rate drops throughout and terrible stick sensitivity meant I had to turn the horizontal and vertical sensitivity down substantially from their default settings, and these two elements combined with the fact that this is a first-person game meant quickly becoming nauseous early on. Only real big criticism I have is that the first 17 chambers (i.e. levels/puzzle rooms) slowly ramped up the difficulty, with it feeling fair and fun, meaning I breezed through the early part of the game, and the story kept pace. Problem is, once the game's story started to take over, I found that puzzles became increasingly obtuse, so you've got a story moving along to its climax at 100 mph but leaving you behind, which resulted in some really poor pacing in my playthrough for the latter parts of the game. A minor criticism would be that there were some objects in those latter stages where you could find yourself caught on objects on the floor, obstructing your movement. On the whole, though, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and cannot wait to start up Portal 2 once I get my hands on my Steam Deck later this year *touch wood* and potentially even return to this game too. Oh, and Still Alive is a banger of a credits song (beware if you haven't played the game, though, because the lyrics of the song are a bit spoilerish). STAR WARS: SQUADRONS | 2020 Star Wars: Squadrons is a game I initially started back in 2020, but got ill shortly after starting only a few hours in, so I had to drop it. Going back to it, I started over. Honestly, I thought it was such a mixed bag of a game: the music isn't anything special by Star Wars standards; it being based on Motive's work on starfighter combat in Battlefront II is great, but the lack of an option to play in third-person and locking players into only a third-person perspective meant I felt like I wasn't getting as much fun as I could out of the game, due to the limited cone of vision you have from the cockpit and how quickly ships can whiz by; the increased complexity from Battlefront II in diverting power to different parts of your ship, as well as customisation options for your weapons loadout, was really cool; but, perhaps most importantly for a licensed game - besides capturing the look and feel of the IP they're adapting (which this game does just as well as EA's Battlefront games) - the story and characters were just so unbelievably dull and forgettable that, looking back, I struggle to see how I continued playing. Probably because it's Star Wars, I guess. Unfortunately, I came away feeling so much of this game was a missed opportunity. ICO | 2001 Playing ICO for the first time after having played a From Software game before was almost trippy -- the atmosphere, the music, the ambiguous nature of the story, the way the castle is so expertly interconnected, it just all screams that it inspired Hidetaka Miyazaki greatly. Now, the camera has aged miserably, calling useless Yorda over and the Shadows grabbing her and having to beat them with a stick is a pain in the ass, but so much about this game - especially it being Fumito Ueda's directorial debut - is still of such great substance, even today. Could absolutely do with a remake, but well worth going back to check out if you've never played it before in my opinion. RATCHET & CLANK: RIFT APART | 2021 SEPTEMBER GHOST OF TSUSHIMA: IKI ISLAND | 2021 I waxed lyrical about Ghost of Tsushima back in 2020, and so getting to return to it for the Iki Island DLC a bit over a year after the game's initial release pulled me back from the depths of a video game burnout and thrusted me back into one of my favourite open worlds. Lives up to the main game in every regard - music, characters, story, visuals - but fails to really innovate, serving more I feel as an epilogue for the game as the wait for its inevitable sequel begins. Getting to pick up the blade of Jin Sakai once again was wonderful, and I got to spend 10 hours more with a game and world I already enjoyed immensely. OCTOBER DARK SOULS | 2011 So much has been said about Dark Souls that I honestly don't know where to begin, or if to. I originally started the game way back in June, but found that I didn't feel pulled back to it for a long time after reaching what I think is probably the game's climax - the room lying beyond the formidable pair of Ornstein & Smough - and perhaps also in part due to me talking about the game in too much detail and too frequently in its own thread (a lesson I think I can learn from). The opening half - really, it's more like two thirds - of Dark Souls is masterful: the atmosphere the game creates with its muddy hues, fog, and overwhelming ambience outside of boss encounters is almost flawless; the enemy compositions in different areas and rooms seems purposely calculated; the heft of my broadsword and knight's armour sees my avatar somewhat slowly - but purposefully - step forward, headstrong and ready for whatever comes his way, particularly in the form of some of the best boss fights I've faced this year. The opening two thirds of Dark Souls are so well paced that despite being pretty open, it still manages to feel linear, and this is thanks to its great design. But, as I mentioned before, unfortunately this veneer was chipped for me once I had conquered Anor Londo. Ornstein & Smough was like the experience was for most: challenging, and at times, very much not fun when they would pull off some moves which feel downright unfair (I'm talking about them hitting you through their counterpart, who is often obstructing your vision; they remind me a lot of my time with Adjudicator in Demon's Souls, though not quite as bad and with much better music). Everything in the game felt like it was leading up to this climactic boss fight in Anor Londo, and your reward? Finding out that you're going on a fetch quest for the final third or so of the game, which instantly stalled my sword-raising and want to carry on at the time; again, I think it's this combined with me talking about the game too much which basically made me burnout at this point. If anyone's seen what I'm like in the Demon's Souls and Dark Souls threads, it's that I'm stubborn to a fault. I pick the games I'm going to play carefully, playing games one at a time, and I can't remember the last time I actually outright dropped a game. And so, naturally, after Ghost of Tsushima's DLC helped pull me back in, I returned to the game with some resolve and saw my journey through to its end. Unfortunately, its the weakest part of the game in my eyes. The areas you visit for your fetch quest seem like they don't have as much to them as earlier areas in the game, as if they didn't get the time they deserved to be fully realised, and for me, some of the jankiest moments in the game happen in the final third. As a result, and especially with some areas being much more open, the pacing of the game somewhat plummets as you warp from bonfire to bonfire, taking on areas which sometimes feel taped onto other parts of the game. The music is still great, the atmosphere is still there, but the thing driving you on - at least for me - just seemed so hazy at this point in the game, and to be honest there are some of the weaker areas, enemy designs and compositions, and bosses in this final section. And speaking of which: Bed of Chaos sucks, but it did lead to some hilarious moments. As did the hydra. It's such a shame that I feel like Dark Souls suffers in its final third, because its other two third are practically flawless as far as I'm concerned. Meaning, that for all of my criticisms, it was still one of the best games I played in 2021. I do still need to go back and play Artorias of the Abyss at some point, so I'm looking forward to that! METROID: ZERO MISSION | 2004 LITTLE NIGHTMARES | 2017 I sat down with my sister on Halloween to play Little Nightmares from beginning to end in one sitting -- funnily enough the last time we did this was with INSIDE when I played it way back in 2016, and this definitely riffs off the skeleton of that game. Part charming, part creepy, and with someone else on the couch a whole lot of fun, the grotesque inhabitants of Little Nightmares are sure to see me again in their sequel this Halloween. NOVEMBER SUPER MARIO GALAXY | 2007 POKÉMON BRILLIANT DIAMOND | 2021 DECEMBER IT TAKES TWO | 2021 I played It Takes Two with my younger brother across two sessions, and we had a blast playing this game together. The diverse range of mechanics throughout the game breed a variety of wildly unique areas and levels, and so the game constantly feels like it's throwing something fresh and exciting at you. Josef Fares gets a lot of flak for wearing his heart on his sleeve and being a bit loud-mouthed, but there's no denying for me that he is a talented director and his team at Hazelight are producing the best two player co-op games right now. It's not hard to see why this got the GOTY at the 2021 Game Awards, and why it's rated so highly by many who played it. However, personally? I preferred A Way Out, as I think the story it tells grabs you a bit more beat by beat, and most importantly for me and my brother, focuses on an almost brotherly bond between its two protagonists. With It Takes Two, I do think it's firmly targeting an audience with its story of people who are either in a relationship and perhaps even playing with their partner, if not people who are experienced with relationships -- both of which my brother and I are not, so while some beats definitely still hit, there were certainly a few misses in there too. Still, I think it's well worth checking out if you get the chance and have someone suitable to play it with! RETURNAL | 2021 I've said a lot that I want to about Returnal in its own thread, but unfortunately for me I can't really cheat here as my thoughts are split across a number of posts and stitched together it doesn't flow that well. For me, the game does a lot well. It's combat and traversal is tight, it has some of the best boss fights I faced in 2021 (a Boss Rush mode would be perfect in my opinion), it makes excellent use of the DualSense's haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, and it looks simply breathtaking, which combined with oppressive and alien hues of blue, green, and red makes the game's atmosphere feel very unique. The enemy designs are great too, and while I don't think there's a standout track, it does have a solid soundtrack. It's a third person shmup which feels like it takes some concepts seen in games like NieR: Automata and dials them up to eleven. It's heavily skill-based, too, which I love. However, as someone who is new to roguelikes (disregarding Mystery Dungeon games here as they're very different besides a very basic similarity in skeleton), I feel like this game is a terrible first roguelike. I don't mind getting used to weapons and mechanics myself, but I honestly think anyone new to this genre might be best served looking up a guide to its mechanics before hopping in -- I'm not talking here about the roguelike nature of the game in its cycles, but rather the mechanics around that, such as augments, etc. The game almost assumes that you're well versed in roguelikes from my experience, which made it awkward when I was still figuring new things out half way through the game. I also don't think it had to be as much of a roguelike as it ended up being, with runs potentially lasting upwards of an hour and, besides a few abilities scattered throughout the game after overcoming a biome and its boss, there isn't much carried over that feels like true progression. While this suits the narrative - which is interesting - and helps show Selene's descent into madness, I feel like having a critical path which stays consistent but then having randomised rooms to the side could give the best of both worlds, in that in restarting a run you could then just look around for a decent weapon and augments knowing that you can sprint towards the end of the area after attaining these items. I think you'll probably know if Returnal is a game for you -- that's probably the most succinct way I can put it. RED DEAD REDEMPTION II | 2018 The final game I played in 2021 I binged across 10 days (well, more like 8, as I didn't play on either my birthday or Christmas) to completion in around 73 hours. Red Dead Redemption II is a goddamn masterpiece. I'm still digesting it to be honest with you, after finishing it a few days ago, so I'll probably lean towards keeping things on the brief side, especially when it comes to story, and my thoughts might dart around a lot. It has the best looking realistic open world of any game I've ever played thanks to its gorgeous skies, outrageously realistic lighting, and phenomenal fog. Not only that, but there is a sense of heading from one plot point to the next and getting lost doing a million other things like in my other favourite open worlds, and there's so much detail to explore and stuff to do throughout the game that honestly, critical pathing the story to me almost seems like you're missing out. The characters are some of the most nuanced from a cinematic and story-based game that I've played, with wonderful performances across the board, but in particular I feel the need to highlight Roger Clark as Arthur Morgan, Alex McKenna as Sadie Adler, and Benjamin Byron Davis as Dutch van der Linde, as for me they were the standout performances of the game, with many of the key scenes and story moments hinging on their interactions. The score, the work on which was led by Woody Jackson, is a goldmine, and with tracks like Outlaws From The West is of the highest calibre when it comes to cinematic game scoring, to the point that I think it matches up some of the greatest soundtracks in the pantheon of spaghetti western greats. The story about Dutch van der Linde's gang in the dying days of the cowboy is, hands down, one of the best narratives for me in all of gaming that I've experienced so far, enhanced so much more by the decisions you make throughout your time in Arthur Morgan's boots, and also my decision earlier in the year to play through the first Red Dead Redemption, for which this game is a prequel. Now, this isn't to say that the game is without fault, because despite the reports of overwork and crunch amongst Rockstar staff throughout development of the game, there are so many moments which can only be best described as what you'd expect in terms of "open world jank". I saw a horse and its carriage striding up the side of a barn wall, I lost count of the times where - with no gun in hand - I would focus on someone by holding L2 only to find myself drawing a gun (who the heck thought the focus and aim trigger being the same was a good idea?), and because the game is similar in mechanics to Rockstar's golden goose in GTA V, an accidental bump against someone can escalate to a bloodbath in the space of 15 short seconds because the engine is designed to almost thrive on chaos. Beyond this, from a storytelling perspective there is one particular chapter which stands out as the weakest - and it is also the shortest and worst paced, almost feeling like a parody of another AAA game from another studio with a focus on storytelling - and there are often moments of a borderline lack of cohesiveness between the story of Dutch saying "we need more money" for the thousandth time and the fact that no-one ever questions just how much money you need, after a bank job in the first half of the game leaves you with flush with cash. The game is also so richly detailed that it's almost a fault of the game, because there are so many systems which you actually don't need to touch in the game. But these are, honestly, me trying to find minor nitpicks with the game which I could expand upon but honestly don't matter too much in the big picture, as I often try to do with my favourite stories and games. And yes, as you might have picked up by now: this is now my favourite traditional open world game, bar none; sorry Ghost of Tsushima. It's equal parts a feast for the eyes, a well-crafted story from beginning to end, expertly portrayed cast, a wonderful world with wonderful people to meet, and a musical masterpiece. So, to cut myself short, here are some stupidly good looking screenshots from the game. I've been careful to pick my favourite screenshots from only the first two chapters of the game, but to emphasise how good I think this game looks: I took well over 2000 screenshots of the game in my 73 hours with it. And that's it for catching up on 2021 -- onto playing games in 2022!

Some PSVR 2 news coming out of CES:

I didn't watch too many new films in 2021 - amidst the raffle of films making it to cinemas, region exclusive streaming platforms, and COVID scares - and honestly I think you guys have covered a lot of them, but I'd throw Tick, Tick... Boom! into the mix. I'm not typically someone seeking out musicals, but it's Lin-Manuel Miranda's directorial feature film debut and Andrew Garfield gives one heck of a performance, with his singing but especially also with his acting. I'm going to be really surprised if he doesn't get an Oscar nomination for this film.

See, I was thinking along similar lines to begin with, but the base game and the expansion planned are only two of the five "versions" currently available, and if I'm remembering right a sixth "version"/fifth expansion was announced a while ago. I guess it depends on how far they would plan to go with it, if and when it comes to the West, but bundling it all together in one package - assuming they do all of the expansions - when it's done seems like they'd be leaving money on the table unless Nintendo are covering S-E's losses and then some, just considering that the base game is probably a £50 title and the first expansion £20 - £30 based on the Japanese prices above. I also have to imagine that saving it all to drop in one go would take quite a long time due to the translations, which would also see them sitting out on potential earnings by choosing to not release things when they're ready to go. Then again, they could absolutely just be taking advantage of their rabid Japanese audience over there. The more I think about it - especially with DQ not being huge over here in the first place - they have a real mountain to climb in getting it all out over here -- heck, there are zero plans to do this with XIV at any point according to Yoshi-P, and it's the biggest MMO right now. At a push I could see them maybe including the first DLC expansion with the base game, heck maybe even the first two? I know they've released all-in-one packages at separate points for the game in Japan, but they seem to be treating this as a new and entirely separate entity in that regard, I guess they're just waiting to see how well it sells.

Just finished the first episode of The Book of Boba Fett. Scattered thoughts: Overall, a solid but subdued opening episode, hopeful for next week!

Yep, that feels like the best month we've had in a while, solid start to 2022 Can see myself playing all of these: Deep Rock Galactic with friends, Strikers at some point when I feel a Persona itch, and Dirt 5 could maybe help tide me over until Gran Turismo 7 in March

Per Gematsu -- Square Enix has delayed the release of the base game to an ambiguous Summer 2022 slot from it's previous 26th February 2022 release date. The first expansion, The Sleeping Hero and The Guiding Ally, has also been delayed, from Summer 2022 to Fall 2022. On the upside, here's a new trailer to help tide people over: I think we all expect this to come to the West, but question for you all: when do you expect it to be announced and actually release over here? My hope would be we get an announcement at E3 or in the second half of the year for the release of the base game and first expansion here in 2023, but I'm not sure.

Nice, I also ended up in B myself! Would've been nice to have it next month, but I've got plenty of other games to play so I'm probably in the opposite of a rush for it, and it also gives me a bit of time to really look into what I want to pick up for it, outside of the few GBA games I already have lying around.

Belated Merry Christmas everyone, hope you all stayed safe and had a great day Christmas and my birthday are back-to-back, so got a neat little pile of books, films and games from them both (EDIT: and also a GameCube controller and Switch adapter which aren't pictured!): Not related to gifts, but I've spent the last two weeks practicing my baking skills for the first time in a long time, trying to recreate a chocolate clafoutis I last made around a decade ago (with no access to that recipe, I ended up tweaking another one I found based on taste and feel). On Christmas it meant I could bake them for all my family, and they turned out great! Wish I took a picture of the gooey inside, but I was too hungry to wait, so that didn't happen

Nice! Also seems like they're finally sharing the original soundtrack in an official and modern capacity with this chunky two and a half hour playlist:

Well, here is the 2021 update -- more (hopefully) coming in Spring 2022. Surprised they left it this late to give an update like this, but I guess Yoshi-P and co. have also been crazy busy with Endwalker. I've mentioned before that I expected an update, and admire Yoshi-P's candidness and openness here like I do with his XIV updates, especially in calling out the specifics of what they're working on (polish). Seems like they'll be aiming for a late 2022 release based on this message, what they've told us previously (not wanting to show the game again until we were getting closer to release), and it being the 35th anniversary next year. Now whether or not it actually makes next year is another question entirely, COVID is still a real thing and that or a multitude of other factors could cause a further delay to production, but it's nice to think we could be in the home stretch and have a new Final Fantasy to play within a year. To further clarify the game's situation, Imran Khan has shared that pre-COVID, from what he heard it seemed like both Forspoken and XVI would bookend 2021: I don't think is that surprising. Everyone and their mother is (quite understandably) ready to dunk on FF given its history of coming out with news too early, but once VII Remake was brought back into the limelight it was out within a year. Almost as if Square Enix's restructuring worked. And in this year's Famitsu developer comments looking ahead at 2022, Yoshi-P has seemingly clarified they are in the process of polishing the game: I'll just be waiting here, patient but excited, until Spring I guess

Early rumours are that next month's games will be Deep Rock Galactic, Persona 5 Strikers, and Dirt 5. I was planning on picking up Deep Rock Galactic to play with friends anyways, but I'll gladly take any help I can get to convince them to play it Strikers would be great too!

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.