Julius

Season pass details courtesy of The Tojo Dojo's translation of the Japanese PSN details for the game: Day 1 DLC and substory DLC isn't great, to be honest, though the additional story stuff has me the most intrigued. I had wondered if they might have some substories as part of the DLC, but didn't want to put that out there, and well...I think that part sucks, to be honest. Connecting over substories is such a huge part of the conversation around these games I feel, and locking some behind a season pass fragments a pretty dedicated audience. Guess I might end up waiting until a complete edition down the road

Watched the second episode of The Bad Batch, and think it was a very solid second episode, though it definitely hurts going back to a more typical episode length after a glorious 70+ minutes on Tuesday. Whereas the first episode spent a lot of time setting the scene and the overarching narrative for the rest of the show, this episode did a very good job of making me care more about the cast, and added some valuable emotional depth to them. Really solid episode, so glad The Clone Wars effectively gets to live on through this. Roll on next Friday!

Wow. Epic offered $200 million to get some first party PlayStation games on the Epic Games Store. They aren't wrong at all about Nintendo, but that doesn't make it any less funny

Oh man, you're in for a treat when you get to the latter half of the season, I'm getting chills now just thinking about it And yes, the movie is canon, which I think is such a great move - hope we see other anime follow suit. It adapts the Mugen Train arc which starts at chapter 53, so where Season 1 ends leads straight into it

Honestly, same. I'm really excited for the new content and that Photo Mode, but with Rift Apart releasing the day after (seriously don't understand what they were thinking there) and me up to my neck in games these days anyways, it's not like I'm starving for it. I'll probably save the new content and my Platinum run until further down the road. Got loads of other Final Fantasy games to play for the first time too, so there's that Say what you might about Square Enix not being the smoothest-sailing ship out there, but they seriously know how to put together great trailers. I still watch the trailers for Remake every now and then, and feel like I watch the XVI trailer on almost a weekly basis! It's unfortunate a lot of the spinoff stuff goes over my head as I've not played them and the only other real alternative is to watch videos on them. Sucks there aren't easy ways to access some of them now, so hopefully Ever Crisis gets completed and comes out sooner rather than later, but with how they've talked about it, I imagine it'll probably finish up not too long before Part II is out

Launching worldwide on 24th September 2021 for the PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles. Stream was a good watch, worth checking out in my opinion: Instantly the best-looking school in a video game? And so, so close to being one of the greats... Also, in this interview with IGN, Nagoshi confirms that Yakuza will remain turn-based and Judgment will continue down the action route.

A new trailer for Intergrade was shown during today's stream for The First Soldier. Would be wary though, feels like the last shot might have been hinting at a bit too much from the Yuffie stuff? Though I guess it could be a little predictable, so maybe not. Looks like it will be PS5 exclusive for at least six months: Do feel a bit sorry for Xbox players at this point, but as I've posted before, I thought something like this might be going on where Intergrade would be considered a new version with its own marketing and exclusivity deal. Got to imagine it might end up on Game Pass when it does make its way over to Xbox on day 1, seeing as most of the sales for the game will have been made by then, and that'll be yet another deal. Square Enix would be cashing in big time three times on this game (PS4 exclusivity window for base version of 1 year, PS5 exclusivity window for Intergrade of 6 months, and potentially Game Pass day 1 when it does go over to Xbox). Crazy! Also, it seems like we were very close to getting some sort of announcement on Part II today, but I guess this little tidbit will have to do: Interesting that Nomura wanted to announce something now. If I'm remembering correctly, I think some of the leaks pre-release for Remake, from the demo, hinted that they'd already started work on some moments in Part II, so I guess it might be further along than we might think? Think it was smart of Kitase to not give the go-ahead, though, just given their history of long waiting periods between first trailer and release, especially since moving over to Unreal Engine 4 for a number of major releases. Once they brought these games back to show them off, it wasn't too long a wait, so I think they've learned their lesson. I thought we'd get them focusing on XVI until release either later this year or early next year, give it a few months, and then potentially see something from Part II next summer. Nomura seems to be itching for it, so maybe there could be a trailer at this E3, or at The Game Awards to finish the year off? You'd think the smart move would be to hold onto it until after XVI is out, but this is S-E and Nomura, so...

So according to this screen grab, it looks like there will be a season pass? Question is, is that going to be additional story content, or will it be like DLC in previous games aimed at a mini-game, like the Clan Creator Cards in Yakuza 6? I'd guess it's something along the lines of the former, I think a detective story just hands itself to being updated with more story content in a way which wouldn't necessarily impact the game in a major way. RGG have shown that they can pump great content out at a nice clip (now that I think about, surely they have to be one of the best managed teams in the industry?), so I'd always be down to supporting them through a season pass. I also wonder if this hints at either needing to stagger content somewhat as a result of COVID impacting development (maybe something originally planned as part of the base game was moved over to a season pass?), or if this is a way of elongating this game's presence to bide time for their next project? Or maybe they just realised they have earned a seriously loyal audience (case in point: how many of us here have Judgment on our shelves off the strength of our experience with Yakuza but have yet to play it?) and want to milk it a bit more considering just how quickly these games go down in price and what great value they would be even at full price, I wouldn't blame them! But it could also just be a weird translation looking forward to finding out what the deal is, either way!

As was previously leaked, LEGO sets coming for The Bad Batch: Shame about the shuttle, looks pretty rough (and is tiny). Echo's helmet looks great, weird decision to not give him the kama cloth though, and I really miss the old accessory holes the helmets used to have. At this point it's been a very long time since I've bought LEGO, and it would take something awesome to bring me back, but looks great all the same!

Considering how they started teasing it a couple of weeks ago, I'm kind of surprised it took until the day before the announcement for something to sneak through, just given how many leaks there are these days. Still sucks that it leaked at all, but I'll take a genuine mistake by a store like this over some journalist trying to steal their thunder. I've got to play the first Judgment, so I'll see when this lands, but no doubt I'll end up playing it at some point. I would assume based on their past announcement to launch windows that this would be coming late 2021 or early 2022? And for the love of all that is good, RGG, I love what I've experienced of your games and want to support you on day 1, but the insistence of launching with steelbooks is killing me. I'm still waiting for the standard PS4 version of Yakuza 7

The game is big, but I wouldn't have been surprised if it were bigger to be honest, given that it's the trilogy and the DLC? Though, I don't think this includes the 11GB day one patch! EDIT: update on this. Those EU language options are costing us! In all seriousness though, a little weird that the other languages aren't optional installs.

I was going to wait on this game once it became apparent it was a bit longer than what I was looking for, and I'm kind of glad I did having heard of this and the update issues. A simple quick save which erases itself after opening the game back up would be ideal I think, it keeps the core of the game, but doesn't force you to stick with it until there's a point where you can save. Feel like From Software should probably consider doing something similar to that with Elden Ring, if that game is as open as calling it open world would seem to suggest?

Super Animal Royale is coming soon to Switch (and PlayStation, and Xbox), and has to have one of the funniest turns in a trailer I've seen for a while

The more the merrier - Square Enix, Sega, Bandai Banco and more are coming to this year's E3: Can't believe they used a Ghibli GIF. There's going to be a Ni no Kuni mobile game here, isn't there?

Something else worth noting about today's report is that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold 10.6 million copies over the course of FY2021. For comparison, we learned Ghost of Tsushima had sold 6.5 million copies back in March, just under 9 months after release. By all accounts, the Mario Kart figure also seems to be higher than the sales of many other AAA titles released last year, such as Final Fantasy VII Remake. We haven't had an update on The Last of Us Part II for a good while now, so we can't compare there, but the fact that it's still going toe-to-toe with some of the biggest new exclusive releases just speaks to Nintendo's success in pumping out evergreen titles. It's pretty crazy! In terms of other titles still going strong released before last year, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sold 5 million copies over the course of the last fiscal year, Breath of the Wild sold 4.86 million copies, Super Mario Party sold 4.69 million, Pokémon Sword & Shield sold 3.73 million, and Super Mario Odyssey sold 3.42 million.

Yep, combined. A breakdown of the 84.59 million sold is 69.89 million of those are Switch consoles, and the remaining 14.7 million are Switch Lites

Also found some graphs to look at: Ouch at that Wii drop-off. I don't think we'll see anything like that with the Switch, considering there is no direct console hybrid competition like there was for the Wii and the Kinect/PlayStation Move, and back then their handhelds were clearly under threat from mobile gaming. But I think the Switch's performance in the next FY is kind of out of Nintendo's hands, so it would take a lot of optimism for me to say it hasn't peaked in fiscal year sales yet. Even if they manage to ship the Breath of the Wild sequel, the Pokémon Diamond & Pearl remakes, and Pokémon Legends Arceus by March 31st 2022, I think it's more a question of maintaining stock than anything else, because everyone's being hit by the chip shortage. Then again, even with knowledge of the ongoing shortage, they're forecasting 25.5 million hardware units sold for the next year to their investors, and they've likely left space for that forecast to be bumped up every quarter (as we saw at this point last year - they were only forecasting 19 million hardware units sold for FY2021!), so they seem very confident that they won't be impacted, because we would have seen that factored into their projections otherwise. I think the takeaway here is obviously that the Nintendo ninjas caused the chip shortage Pretty crazy that it's still tracking just below the DS on there. I really have no idea where the Switch ends up when all is said and done a few years from now, Their weakest quarter for hardware sales for this past fiscal year (this past quarter) was just below the hardware sales of their second best quarter of the previous year. Their next weakest quarter, thanks in large part to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, sold nearly triple the hardware units that they would normally sell at that time of year. That's pretty insane!

Nintendo's FY3/Q4 2021 earnings report is out, covering the period of 1st January 2021 - 31st March 2021. It's an extra special one as it's their End of Year earnings release! The Big Takeaways - 4.73 million units sold this quarter between the Switch and Switch Lite, with a total of 28.83 million units sold throughout the fiscal year, bringing the overall tally up to 84.59 million units sold to date for the Switch. - Total software units sales from the past fiscal year are 230.9 million, just under 40% of the console's lifetime software sales of 587.12 million. - Off the back of this, Nintendo is forecasting sales of 25.5 million Switch consoles for the next fiscal year, FY2022, ending 31st March 2022. They are also forecasting a decline in both revenue and profit over the course of the next year when compared to the last year, likely due to the positive impact of the COVID-19 stay at home period on sales, and not expecting an Animal Crossing: New Horizons-sized hit. - These sales have has seen it sail by the official sales figures of the Game Boy Advance family (81.51 million units sold) and the estimated sales figures of the PSP (80 - 82 million units sold). The Xbox 360's sales are a bit tougher to nail down, as some cite it as being a pretty nebulous 84+ million, whereas Statista cites it as being 85.8 million. Going with the latter figure, the Switch has entered the list of top 10 best-selling consoles of all time for the first time, sitting tight at number 9. Next on its hit list would be the Xbox 360 and then the PS3 (reported as being more than 87.4 million units sold) - which it will likely surpass by the end of this quarter - and after that is Nintendo's own best-selling dedicated home console, the Wii (101.63 million units sold). - Nintendo has had broken their own record (set in FY2009 off the back of the Wii and the DS, when they recorded an operating profit of ¥555.26 billion) for highest operating profit in a fiscal year by a console manufacturer, with an operating profit in FY2021 of ¥640.63 billion. - Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury sold 5.59 million units in its first six weeks since launch. This means that it nearly outsold the Wii U release of the game (5.89 million units sold) in that timeframe, and has more than likely surpassed it in the month or so since March 31st. - In just over a year since it launched, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has managed a figure of 32.63 million units sold. Good lord. - Ringfit Adventure has passed the 10 million units shipped mark, with 10.11 million units out in the wild, after shipping 1.43 million units in this last quarter, just missing out on a place in the top 10 list of best selling Switch titles. - Super Mario 3D All-Stars has sold 9.01 million units since its release in September, up less than 1 million units over the course of this quarter. Top 10 Best-selling Switch Games as of 31st March 2021 1. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 35.39M 2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 32.63M 3. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 23.84M 4. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 22.28M 5. Pokémon Sword/Pokémon Shield - 21.10M 6. Super Mario Odyssey - 20.83M 7. Super Mario Party - 14.79M 8. Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu!/Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee! - 13.28M 9. Splatoon 2 - 12.21M 10. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe - 10.44M

Continued my Suikoden II journey the last couple of nights and have now passed the 10 hour mark, having acquired what I imagine will become my castle. I'm absolutely loving it. The pixel art has continued to blow me away, the most recent example was when something got thrown up in the air and fell to the floor, it was brilliant. Something I've also noticed since my last post regarding the "shade" is when you step into little pockets of light, such as light filtering through trees, there's a short but noticeable colour transition for your character from dark to light. It's such a tiny detail which really shows off just how polished this game is, every time I notice something new like this I can't help but grin, just realising how much passion was clearly poured into this game. Couple that with memorable moment after memorable moment, so many wonderful standout scenes, and I seriously struggle to imagine this game somehow fizzing out by the end. It hasn't pulled its punches on being a war story, and is so much stronger for it. I need to highlight some cool events in the story, so I'm popping them in the below spoiler tag: Something that I mentioned last time was the storage, and yeah, it has started to become an issue again. While it's still much easier to manage, I haven't seen a storage space for my items (such as the one in a base) for a good 5+ hours at this point, and so have been lugging around a full inventory, but I imagine that will change within the next hour or so. While yes, you can abandon items if you find something else you want instead, it's a bit of a pain to have that message asking whether you want to keep an item or not pop up every single time, and it's meant replacing gear with slightly better gear but not being able to build it up, which I felt was important to an extent in the first game, just considering how many characters you'll probably want to kit out. However, something I really do like, and which has made this somewhat manageable, is that when you buy items from stores you can either place them in your bag (shared inventory) or equip them directly to party members. If you're replacing an already equipped item with your purchased item, for example better headgear, then you get the option to either place that item in your bag or sell it immediately to the shopkeeper if you don't want it taking up valuable space. Little touches like these make some of the systems in the first game seem archaic by comparison! Also helps that I'm completely flush with potch without even trying Having a lot of fun with the battles too. Attached the Double Beat rune - which allows a character to double their number of attempted hits in a standard attack - to Nanami, who already hit twice before, so is attempting to attack four times I thought of attempting to stack it (not sure if it works), but figured the other one might be better off shoring up another party member. But speaking of battles, I've got to share one of my favourite Unite attack animations so far: Riou and Nanami's Family Attack (the one below is a rare one where Nanami also gets to recover some health). Also, this wouldn't be without one of my posts without mentioning music, so here's some more excellent music: Radat Theme, White Deer Inn Theme, Coronet Theme, the returning Moonlit Night Theme, and Dandy Richmond - one hell of a theme for a private eye, that's for sure! Plenty of returning faces, but the new characters feel just as strong, and there's so much connective tissue which makes it all feel so natural. There is something I want to touch upon after having recently visited South Window and Radat, it's speculation more than anything, but it definitely belongs in a spoiler tag: Continuing to have a great time with it, already looking forward to my next session

We made it through to the final of the UCL tonight and I seriously can't believe it, it feels very weird. I don't know if it's just because 2012 was such a special run with such an old spine to our team and this feels like it came out of pretty much nowhere, with a mostly young and inexperienced squad, but we've been solid when it's counted and I guess that's all that matters. Real Madrid might still have some of their star names from their successes in the last decade still around, but they looked tired tonight. It's almost the sort of performance which might make you expect some big signings in the next few transfer windows, they've been very slow to transition this old guard out at this point. Crazy to think this will be Thiago Silva's first UCL final if memory serves, and pretty sure that Tuchel might be the first manager in the modern era to make it to consecutive finals with different clubs, but might need to fact check that. Either way, very, very nervous about the final. A team managed by Guardiola hasn't lost a final for a decade, City are in imperious form, and it feels like there's an energy to them that I can't see in us that I just can't place, it's weird. If we can give as spirited and energetic a performance as we did tonight, though, anything's possible. Great performances tonight by Kante, Havertz, and Mount in particular - super weird (but absolutely awesome) having someone a couple of weeks younger than you who is also a massive fan of a club score to put us through to the final I say that not to compare myself to where he's at, but more that I can't imagine the pressure he's under, and he's thriving in it. Mbappé being a few days older than me and winning the World Cup? Now that does feel a little weird

Episodes of Loki will be releasing on Wednesdays, meaning the show has been bumped up to start on June 9th. Have to imagine that's them wanting to spread their biggest IP throughout the week, no point cannibalising your viewer numbers by having this and The Bad Batch in direct competition on Fridays.

I haven't! Admittedly though, I feel like that's the case for a lot of games for me, as I didn't really have much exposure to them growing up. It's why I tend to jump from one generation to another a lot of the time when playing games, though the preference I guess would be to have everything on the newest system to make things easier. As for Resident Evil, my only exposure to the series, as far as I can remember, was watching one of my friends play Resident Evil 4 around his house straight after school one day, and that must have been over a decade ago now! I have the image of Leon carrying a rocket launcher in a church or graveyard (? There were definitely some Gothic buildings, I know that much) burned into my mind, and that's pretty much it. Actually, now that I think about it, I did also try the Resident Evil 2 demo a couple of years ago, when I noped right out of there almost immediately horror films I'm fine with, but horror in games just isn't something I've had much experience with or exposure to, and I think that's why it gets to me a bit more (also being in control, because you know I'd sprint the other way in a lot of these situations - who wouldn't?!). Playing The Last of Us for the first time last year was putting myself well out of my comfort zone, but I knew that if I wanted to understand games and my own thoughts on them as a whole better (and experience one of the most critically acclaimed ones out there) that it was something I eventually needed to do, and it's up there as one of my favourite gaming experiences (but screw that hotel basement). The Last of Us Part II got to me much more, I got through it over a few days and remember not sleeping particularly well, though that game felt purposely long and much more intense, and the realism of some of the violence in that game is probably what disturbed me the most. Demon's Souls was taking myself even further out of my comfort zone to experience my first From Software game, and that was a tough one because of how much I perhaps had to unlearn about what many games today tell you to do, so there was certainly a learning curve to it, and coupled with some of the imagery, atmosphere, music, sound design, etc. in that game, it was one I was surprised I ended up loving so much. I think that's why it's so important to always be willing to give things a go, you never know what you'll click with or bounce off of. Goodness knows what I'll do when I get around to Bloodborne, though. I'm sure that'll be fun As for how I'm tackling Resident Evil, I've thought about it and read around a bit, but I'm always open to suggestions. My idea was to start with Resident Evil Remake, then play 2 Remake, 3 Remake, 4, 5, 6, 7, and then Village, then likely branch out to other games from there. I'm always willing to give older games a go, and so while Remake might not be the easiest entry point (I have to imagine that 2 Remake or 4 would be?), that's where my mind goes when thinking about where I'll start, and I think it might be tricky to return to after. I know there are the originals for 1 - 3 (I think they're still available on PS3 and PSP/Vita, unless I'm mistaken?), but my concern about reaching that far back to start off is how I'll fare with tank controls, and potentially bouncing off the series if I don't enjoy my experience with them?

Some reviews going up, seems to have done really well: Think this will finally be the summer I get around to playing a Resident Evil game, but looking forward to eventually catching up and trying this at some far-flung point in the future