Julius

Mentioned before by @BowserBasher that it was in early planning: Universal have now announced that they will be building a park in Bedford. (BBC News article if anyone wants to give it a read). The park is set to open in 2031. Construction aiming to start in 2026: Also felt relevant: No word on whether or not a Super Nintendo World will be included from what I can see, so I imagine it won't be planned for opening – but surely it would only be a matter of time, right?

Probably so that they don't immediately sell out before more waves of invites are sent/it hits general sale

General pre-orders have opened up via Amazon UK, only the standalone console for now: Nintendo Store kerfuffle aside (for the GCN NSO controller and what would still probably be my first choice for the console itself if available for delivery at launch when things start to open up), that's me pretty much done with a backup in place! UPDATE: bundle added to Amazon UK as soon as I post -

Creator's Voice interview for the game is up – and this gets a video! And just to reiterate, launching first on Switch/Switch 2? Though it only states Switch 2 at the end of the video, despite the previous Twitter post about it coming first to both Switch and Switch 2? A lot of marketing weirdness with some of these Switch 2 games

I knew this situation with pricing seemed eerily familiar

These went up at 10:30 while I was in a team meeting and they're still up at the time of this message. Smyths seems to be getting stock added intermittently too, seems like those reports of there being ample stock available is true – just seems like it's being rolled out in waves, which is the smart thing from a business perspective (limits potential reach of scalpers, creates scarcity, etc.). Links to the Argos pre-orders for those curious (standalone, Mario Kart World bundle) Just hope the same holds true for the GameCube controller with it being a Nintendo Store exclusive and all, fingers crossed! Glad to hear you got your order in too @S.C.G

I'm not sure that's actually true; I believe the only people able to pre-order the GameCube NSO controller for now are those who had an invite to pre-order the Switch 2, don't think I've read anything specifying that a pre-order of the Switch 2 was necessary (at least for the UK store – I'm not sure if this is also true for others). EDIT: just a screenshot of the wording they use -

Hmm, maybe need to wait for that follow-up email they mentioned? Strange. I wasn't expecting all these other accessories to drop on the Nintendo Store today and be available to those without an invite (barring the GameCube NSO controller and the microSD Express), but have already put my pre-orders in and paid for those elsewhere, so

Pre-orders are now live via My Nintendo Store UK for those who received their invites: Still no word on if/when these pre-orders will open up to those who didn't get an invite – I imagine it'll be the case that it opens up after they've given sufficient time for those with invites to get their pre-orders in, but no update yet. It sounds like more people will get invites as time goes on and criteria will become increasingly lax. With the GameCube NSO games being a part of my launch plans, I'm just hoping there'll be enough stock of the GCN NSO controllers! Made the mistake of stumbling onto the NSO page on my Switch last night and seeing that I've been an NSO member for 5+ years (which I didn't realise before, apparently ~87% of the time I've had a Switch I've had an NSO subscription!) outside of a short break towards the end of last year before picking up the Expansion Pack, but alas, it is what it is

In case it needed to be clarified, the game is coming to both Switch and Switch 2: Take this as a hint that I should kick on with playing Hollow Knight for my pledge sometime soon...

Dan Da Dan S2 arrives in July, but the first three episodes have been announced as coming to cinemas in June!

The cartridges will taste weird again! From GameSpot: GOTY, or something

Got an email earlier this evening saying I didn't get an invite from Amazon for the Switch 2 pre-orders – but seems it is now getting ready to be made available for purchase without an invite Soon™. Guess I'll keep an eye out! Don't think they've said anything about it – I would assume it'll be 08:00 or 09:00, but who knows

15% off gaming gift cards from Curry's using code "PERKS15APRIL": Might be a good way to stock up on some eShop funds ahead of the Switch 2 drop!

Nintendo Store is down today in preparation for tomorrow's Switch 2 pre-orders going live: Feels like they've really gone above and beyond to try to make it a smooth process. Hope the other platform holders take note with the launch of next gen in a few years!

If anyone wants to laugh about this a little (because what else can we reasonably do?) SNL have you covered:

I always knew that Star Fox Grand Prix was a musical RPG. It absolutely explains Fox's light-footedness in Smash! Anyways, this is awesome. Kind of crazy the number of leaks we've been getting out of Nintendo and Nintendo-adjacent studios this past year or so. Does this soft confirm that the Nintendo Ninjas are roughly the same age as Nintendo's old guard and are around retirement age? Because they've been caught sleeping as of late

Time for an update! I'm 32 hours in now, just completed Chapter 20 and have 40 Side-Ops under my belt, so according to the % in the ACC I'm currently at 31% completion. Don't necessarily think I'm going for 100% completion, but just to give a sense of where I'm up to. Anyways, game freaking rules. I'm having an absolute blast with it Before digging into what's been good, the bad or so-so...I just don't really care for whatever the overarching narrative is supposed to be yet, which is a bit wild considering I'd guess I'm somewhere in the game's second act with how it's all going. It felt connected to Ground Zeroes and Peace Walker at the start but has done barrel rolls and cartwheels to avoid broaching those topics too much, and The Man On Fire and the Skulls aren't really interesting or fun so far in terms of story or gameplay. Honestly, the game reminds me of my experience so far with the Final Fastest VII Remake project at times, where it's great when it's grounded and hitting the marks you'd expect (i.e. sticking to the script), and just goes a bit sideways for me when all of these fantastical elements start turning up. Other MGS games have similar things, though, but because there's such a greater emphasis on linearity and story in those games than there is here - just due to its open world nature and Side-Op and Mission mission structure - you can go so long without touching those elements here that it lacks the natural ping-pong between wacky and grounded that other MGS games had. It really, really doesn't help that Snake has said all of about two pages worth of dialogue the entire game up to this point (okay, I'm exaggerating a little there, but you catch my drift) and it results in a serious lack of characterisation here compared to past iterations of a playable Snake (be it Naked or Solid). Another sticking point for me, granted likely down to the tech at the time of development, is the lack of cohesion between the open world and mission structure – you can fly between Landing Points at Mother Base (albeit with some unnecessary showboating from the pilot) but can't fly in the chopper between Landing Points in the open world, and because it's so incredibly rare that Missions and Side-Ops are clustered together, I basically drop in, complete a Mission or Side-Op, call my chopper in to evac, load up the ACC, search for the next Mission/Side-Op I'm going to tackle, and then fly there from the ACC. It just feels so disjointed and, again, probably down to tech at the time and wanting a loading screen between some Missions/Side-Ops so that you can't clear the area first/it can spawn back in, but whatever, it just feels like such an odd choice Because, to talk about the good now – sweet mercy is this game so damn hard to put down! While the overarching narrative is a pretty big miss for me so far, there have been beats in the story which have had me absolutely hooked. There's one scene when freeing some kids in a Mission where my instinct was "cool, so I'll just make the choice to free them when the game gives me contr–" and Snake raises his gun, takes aim...and starts firing. I felt like the rug had been pulled from under me completely, left audibly gasping, and that Kaz - who has been a hothead the entire game so far, by the way - had got one over on me. It was such a powerful use of tension and making the player feel like they'd lost control for a second that when I had my hands back on the proverbial "wheel" as Snake next, I let out a sigh of relief. This game feels like it has something important to say in these smaller and more focused beats. While my average rating is an A/B, I've also picked up a few S-ranks along the way – just the three, but I was well chuffed with two of them, and the third was born of incredulous frustration because it involved those damn Skulls. The first S-rank I got was against Quiet – driving over to check in on Huey, the last thing I expected was to get sidelined into another task, and the first time around I tried to bob and weave but she quickly shot me down. The second time I played her like a damn fiddle, drawing her fire from the opposite end of the ruins to get a visual, going prone, marking her with my iDroid, before calling in a Fulton/Ammo resupply to see if it would take her out...did it a couple of times and she was knocked out this has become my go-to tactic for snipers and I love that it was something I just thought of and discovered worked through playing around with the systems the game presented (Emergent Gameplay™). I will say that her handling in her cutscenes and in her cage is a bit much - a lot of gratuitous angles, which doesn't really add much for me - but popping in every time at Mother Base and hearing an excellent array of licensed songs (Kojima has seriously good and varied taste) and some awesome MGS music never fails to put a grin on my face. And the instrumental for Heavens Divide just turning up out of the blue the way it did legitimately choked me up. My second S-rank was actually for Caravan of Traitors, which I spent a few hours on. Tried a bunch of weapons against the Skulls, had no real luck, every time I went to Fulton out the mark for the mission they were on it (and me) with a moment's hesitation, and yeah, it wasn't remotely fun. Tried to climb into the marked truck and drive away, no luck. The first time I dropped in I noted that the route seemed to originate around the Airport, so figured if they're delivering something it's getting dropped off there before they go and attempt delivery...and so I staked out the airport and found the exact spot and this gap in the fence I could hop over. It then took like 5 more tries but basically I gave up on the slow and steady approach I prefer in these games and full on sprinted in before the cutscene came in and RNG'd the Skulls popping in, not noticing me in a nanosecond, and getting my Fulton off on the mark in a spot they couldn't reach before running the hell away and Fultoning out atop a nearby material crate. It was brilliant that it all came together for an S-rank, but good lord do I hate those guys Last one was for Chapter 18, honestly I spent over an hour on that mission taking my time because I really liked the structure of the "level", Fulton'd every enemy out, and naturally did all but one of the tasks to land an S-rank My typical loadout at the moment, unless a rocket launcher is needed for a helicopter or something, is a silenced assault rifle, silenced tranq. sniper rifle, and silenced tranq. pistol; been playing around with the different types of grenades and got to a point I can pretty effectively clear a room or two out with a Smoke Grenade and Snake's bare hands, which has been fun to get a hang of! Also donning the Sneaking Suit always (because why wouldn't I?) and have D-Dog tagging along with a knife – the main thing which slowed me down on missions was taking things super slow and marking every single enemy before going in, whereas having D-Dog around allows me to be much bolder in my approach. D-Dog and D-Horse I believe I've maxed out affection for, only took Quiet out into the field and just didn't gel with my gameplay style for now, but I'm sure I'll circle back around to her. I was non-lethal 99% of the time prior to unlocking the second map, at which point the AI seemed to spike in difficulty a bit, and so now I'm just careful to use my iDroid to mark anyone with A+ or higher stats, and don't mind too much if I'm killing otherwise in the name of efficiency. I also go absolutely all-out lethal if some enemy douchebags start to shoot D-Dog or my chopper and wipe everyone off the face of the planet if they push me too far – my Snake... ...is a vengeful one. Got pretty handy at getting headshots in this game too, which has been great fun. To circle back around to something I've mentioned before, the Mother Base stuff: I'm still not sure how I feel about it. Command Platform is currently developed to 3/4 (just a few thousand units of Fuel from developing to 4/4), the rest are 2/4 (next priority will be Base Development for the additional material refinement). It depending on an in-game clock rather than a real-world clock means I'd need to leave the game on to do some of these ridiculously long online events, so I've just been picking away at the events which are 90 minutes or less which I have available to me anyways. Collecting resources to upgrade platforms can be a bit of a pain, I feel like I'm always low on Fuel, but oh well, it is what it is. And to answer what exactly that is, is a realisation I had a few sessions in but wanted to give a few more sessions to see if it played out, and honestly my thoughts remain the same: this isn't V...it's Peace Walker 2. And as someone who really enjoyed Peace Walker last year and is playing V now close to a decade removed from its original launch, having heard through the grapevine about how the story is a mess and getting a mix of opinions on how the game wasn't complete and needs a Director's Cut, and so was going in with lowered expectations vs, say, a continuation of Metal Gear Solid proper (i.e. the numbered entries), I'm having a splendid time with it and don't mind that at all. But considering it's called what it is and that it is a bit messy when it comes to the story so far, I can understand why people went into this and came away disappointed – but perhaps it's more accurate to say not getting what they had expected? This is all to say that I'm not going to guess where this could end up in my own MGS rankings just yet considering how much of the journey still lies ahead, but in terms of gameplay, this is by far the best Metal Gear Solid of the bunch, and considering that the MGS gameplay loop of Tactical Espionage Action has become one of my favourites in all of gaming, it's safe to say that it'll be up there for me even if the main narrative comes up short. Hopefully the best is yet to come

Just a quick update on this, and something I completely missed amidst the Switch 2 hype and chaos of the past week: using the inspect tool on that page reveals a "game" category which is not yet listed. The VII 25th Anniversary stream was held in mid-June 2022 during Not-E3, so I wonder if we get IX's version around the same time? If I'm remembering right the PS4 port of the original came out in September, so could be a similar window? Or, do I dare suggest, maybe something even a bit earlier? Now the Switch 2 hat is out of the bag I could see some third parties coming out ahead of Not-E3 with announcements of their own, and IX's actual 25th anniversary is 7th July (for its Japanese release) – a window Square Enix have released some JRPGs into in the past few years (Octopath Traveller and Live A Live, from what I remember, both released in July?). Be interesting to see how they manage it. Anyways, I still just want an update on that Tactics remaster/remake we know exists but they continue to refuse to acknowledge, damn it!

Yeah, this was the big takeaway for me I think. It's one of those where I'm happy to buy in on launch day with the promise of what's to come (feel like they could've shown more with this in mind, honestly, but I'm sure future Directs will fill out the next 6-12 months more), but at launch, I feel like I'm going to enjoy the Welcome Tour for an hour max, maybe toy around with Mario Kart World for a bit, and the bulk of my time will probably be spent with some of the GameCube NSO games. Not that I'm complaining about that - it sounds like a fun weekend! - but it is absolutely missing a killer exclusive single-player app for launch. And I think you're right – if it wasn't going to be anything else, it really should've been Prime 4. Let's not forget that there are around 150 million OG Switch consoles out there though, because it's still going to shift a lot of units on that thing too And honestly, seeing the performance options on Switch 2 they've cooked up, I'm even more impressed with what they've managed with Prime 4 on the OG Switch. In side-by-sides the bump in fidelity is obvious on Switch 2, but I feel like the real wizardry is that the game has still looked excellent on OG Switch in the footage we've seen so far! Unless you're a Mario Kart World junkie or dying for GameCube NSO, I don't think anyone's missing out by missing launch with the Switch 2. And both of those at launch feel like they're targeting very different parts of the Nintendo audience. Mario Kart World is going to be massive in that everyone buys it and it'll probably break some sales records in the long run, but I'd be lying if I said I thought Mario Kart World at launch was the right one to push as the Day 1 game.

Upcoming fixes look like a step in the right direction from what I've heard about the release: I do wish Konami would try their best to sort these out ahead of launch and not have the mindset of fixing things post-launch, like they also did with MGS Master Collection Vol. 1 (especially in the case of Suikoden which went quiet for ages after announcement), but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't simultaneously shocked and impressed that they're actually putting the effort in to clean up any shortcomings of their remastered collections.

All story expansions are now released! Chapter of Marisa Chapter of Seign Chapter of Markus