Julius

Amiibo up at Amazon UK for £25.99! Link

Burn this Yeah, think I'll definitely have to get around to Ocarina of Time. I was really enjoying it too when I dropped it, it's just getting over that hump of working my way through back to where I was before. It's nice that we have access to a fair few of the older 2D Zelda games through NES and SNES Online, I do look forward to getting to those at some point too. I actually also got a copy of the Link's Awakening remake through work just before Christmas too; we have a weird points reward system and a catalogue to use those points on, so I spent a good 30 minutes listing all of the games I was interested in from there, finding their retail price, and comparing that to how many points they cost to get the best £/point value

Registration has gone up for the next major system update beta later this year: What's everyone hoping for, either in this update or some other one in the future? For me it would have to be: • folders (my digital games are completely buried right now) • get rid of the screenshot capture notification completely or make sure it doesn't turn up in screenshots, like how the UI for capturing recording doesn't show up in those recordings • make trophies a bit more accessible, maybe give us the choice to pin some (especially those with Activity Cards or counters) • improve the look of the individual trophies. I really don't like the cards • settings presets for certain games would be cool. For example, I normally turned trophies off for story-driven games but just leave them on now as it's a bit of a pain to turn them on and off from game to game, so maybe a way to let us add a preset for notifications for certain games I choose and not others. • along similar lines, presets for headsets with certain games. I play online with my friends quite a bit each week but from game to game I'm having to adjust their volume and the volume of the games themselves.

Yes, this combination was the best for clearing a room when combined with the Topiary Sprinkler! Love the chaos that would ensue and a small army of Agents of Doom just following you around Completely agree. I was prepared to play more but once that Platinum popped it was like the game was telling me to put it down.

I think logically, from a business perspective, the former makes the most sense: leave no semblance of a doubt that it's a sequel to Breath of the Wild, that title recognition is far too valuable to drop considering how well the first game sold, especially in comparison to earlier entries in the series. But this is Nintendo, so of course that goes out of the window and it'll be the latter Now that we know there aren't any other plans for Zelda's 35th (boooooooo), I think I'll probably return to Ocarina of Time on 3DS sometime this summer. I got probably 60% of the way through before dropping it out of the blue, so while I can see its influence on so much of what I play, I still haven't seen that ending! I've been actively putting it off (and playing other Zelda games) in case there ended up being a Switch port for the anniversary, but now we know that's not coming anytime soon, I think I'll have to. Similar thing with Dragon Quest VIII too. Started it straight after XI, got some 20+ hours in, got bogged down with other things and dropped it. Been praying for a port to modern consoles and actively putting off the other games I own in the series hoping for it, but nothing at the anniversary event or at this E3 (except for Square Enix tearing my heart out). Guess what I'm saying is my 3DS will probably see some use for the first time in a while this summer

Yeah, I think it's totally fair. I really enjoyed it, but I went in expecting it to be a bit longer than the 2016 game based on the price (somewhere between 15 and 20 hours?), so was a bit surprised by its length in the end. I was actually ready to dive into Challenge Mode, thinking I'd need to get through it for the Platinum like I think you did with the 2016 game and with Miles Morales and NG+, but turns out you only need to play through the first 10 minutes of it after cleaning up the collectibles in your first save so unless you really crave a second playthrough, it doesn't do as much to keep you hooked either if the main draw for that return was seeking out that Plat!

Went through the exact same thing! I actually pulled Dark Souls down from its shelf the other day and popped it under the Rift Apart case next to my TV, and I'm staring at it right now. Trying to resist the urge as much as I can as I want to update the Gaming Diary thread first, as once I start Dark Souls I know I won't get around to it for a while, but I feel it calling to me

Sucks because I want your thoughts on those new games and to read about you annihilating Demon's Souls, but I think it's fair, especially as we start to learn that more and more of these games are coming to PS4 too -- I think it could've been the game to help push you over the edge, but I still feel like XVI could go cross-gen. If you had a base PS4 I might worry that the console would spontaneously combust (probably a little over-the-top though I was seriously concerned with mine playing The Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima last summer!), but if I'm remembering right you've got a Pro, so I imagine you should be good. Even if the upcoming first party games were PS5 exclusive, we know so little about this second half of the year as it is, and like you said, that E3 Direct gave us all plenty to play. I put through my tentative pre-orders for the next six months or so last night, now that E3 is finished, and though there are some I might change my mind on (the Diamond & Pearl remakes -- I might just replay Platinum ), I feel like it's a pretty stacked six months we've got ahead of us!

Wrapped this up last night and grabbed the Platinum. Was a great game to play the last week with E3 and the football on, hopping in and out between things, and I had a blast. I'm glad I played the 2016 game a few weeks ago - which I thought was good, but not great - because I genuinely think I'd struggle to go back to it after playing a Ratchet & Clank game like this which I enjoyed so much. Many of the things I enjoyed I mentioned before: the game looks incredible (hundreds more screenshots have been taken since my last post), the setpieces are fantastic (!), the DualSense is by far and away the star of the show, and the controls feel much, much tighter. The weapon variety and how you use each one adds so much, and while by the end of the game I certainly had a strategy like I did the first for huge encounters, I still found myself grinning the whole time. Some things I didn't touch on before were just how great it is for each planet to be filled with so much to do besides the story, and how full of life each planet is: it's not just the enemies, and it never just felt like a level, but a place with so much to see and going on. The gadgets are so much fun and there were times where I frequently would just play around with them for the sake of it, pushing myself to see if I could reach parts of the map in ways the game wasn't necessarily designed for, and it was a lot of fun. Certain planets are much more open than others, and I kind of wish there were less invisible walls in the way and the game was more sandbox-like in structure, because it genuinely is that much fun to traverse these planets and fully utilise these gadgets. Also, though we saw some of the uses of the SSD in trailers and gameplay to do with the portals, there's a particular planet about halfway through the game which did something incredible. I don't want to go into why exactly it blew me away, but I think it's something many here would appreciate (but might go unrecognised by less avid players). It was also my favourite level first time through, though it's a bit of a pain to traverse through on return visits! Something I didn't expect at all from this game was that it actually touches on mental health a few times throughout. Though it's not the deepest dive we've seen into mental health in video games, it doesn't feel at all phoned in -- it seems genuine, and I think even with that lack of depth to it, added a lot to these characters and will hopefully land well with younger players in particular. Music is solid too, feels like I'm tearing apart the first game now, but I thought the music was much better here, and overall I'm struggling to think of anything I preferred from that first game compared to this one. This is also the first game where I used some of the Activity Card hints for tracking a couple of down, namely Gold Bolts, and combined with the Map-o-Matic, it's a much better alternative to looking up a guide. Trophies tracking progress is also great (though it doesn't seem to track everything that you'd think it would?), but I did find it a bit weird that they make such great use of the Activity Card hints but then there are still items to collect which aren't in the Map-o-Matic or Activity Cards. I got most of them anyways, so I only had to look up one at the end when cleaning up, but it honestly felt like a step backwards having to look up a guide because of how Activity Cards are incorporated. Maybe for a rare item like that they could have the Activity Card hints unlock after you complete the story? Maybe they should have certain Activity Card hints unlock at certain points in the story too, and have them greyed out until then (for example, you revisit some planets later in the game with new areas unlocked, but it'll show hints for those newly accessible items on your first visit). Anyways, overall, felt like I took a risk playing this game after enjoying the 2016 game but not loving it as I know others here do, and I'm happy I took that risk. I'll probably dive into it a bit more later in the Gaming Diary thread, but what we saw of this game before it's release, and my trust in Insomniac after Spider-Man and Miles Morales, was rewarded. Loved this game! Wanted to wait until I finished Rift Apart to chime in on this, but it certainly depends on the game for me. It's been so infrequent so far that I've actually bought a game at around the £69.99 RRP (only Demon's Souls and Rift Apart, and to be fair I've enjoyed both immensely), and if that money didn't go towards those games, I probably would've spent it on some other interest, hobby, or going out (as that type of spending I do from a monthly entertainment budget), so for me at least, that money is going somewhere for me to use for fun anyways, might as well be a shiny new game. It probably helps that I have relatively little interest in AAA releases from most of the bigger publishers launching at or around that £69.99 price too (I'm thinking your annual Ubisoft, EA, and Activision games), and I'm more than happy to go back to stock up on games I missed out on for PS4, PS3, 3DS, DS, etc., instead. This all being said, there are certainly a couple of games I'm waiting to go down a bit before picking them up, because either I feel it's a bit of a risk as I don't have much experience with that genre (such as in the case of Returnal, though to be fair I'm also waiting for them to sort out a quick save feature for that game), or I just wouldn't feel the need to pony up the £50 - £70 they're asking for anyways (such as in the case of Sackboy's Big Adventure). Which brings me back to Rift Apart: I'm genuinely surprised that there hasn't been the classic "the game isn't long enough to justify its price" topic coming back up. I actually ended up spending less time with this game than I did the 2016 one, and overall that first playthrough was comparable to Miles Morales in length (though to be fair, skip the cutscenes in Miles and the length is halved). What makes this game £69.99 vs £49.99 for Miles? Were they considering the reuse of assets in Miles and the need for unique assets throughout much of Rift Apart? It's an interesting one because it's the same studio. I was happy to pay full price based on what I enjoyed of Insomniac games before this, but can completely understand why others would want to hold off. Game Pass is undeniably great value, but in my case, it means absolutely nothing to me if I can't reel off a list of games I personally want to play on their release date -- indie games I tend to play after the hype has died down in a lot of cases, as I find it a bit harder to commit to them when there's so much else to play. Sure, there are games I want to play on there (the entire Forza series, the Halo series, Rare Replay), but in terms of big, brand new games, I think Forza Horizon 5 and Starfield are the only ones moving the needle for me at all, which is why I'm happy to just wait until next year when Starfield releases to consider picking up a Series X, because I can reel off a list of 10 or more first and third party exclusives that are either confirmed, or very likely on the way, for both PlayStation and Nintendo that I cannot wait for. Also, to be honest, Starfield is the exact kind of game I'd want on my shelf, I love it's artwork! For me, I've said it before, but I'll say it again: Game Pass is great value right now, but we still haven't seen even the first wave of Xbox first party exclusive games come out consistently (forget this generation, that's been the case for the last few years), and though it seems Infinite might kick it off later this year, how their lineup is curated, and how those teams are managed, remains to be seen. I'm hopeful for them, but until they've proven themselves, I think it's fair to be a bit cautious.

The erhu at the end was playing the start of Zelda's Lullaby. I've watched the trailer a lot, that took a while to pick up! I kind of want to play more Zelda games now just because I hate to miss out on musical nods like that (oh and I hear they're pretty good most of the time too )

Nice VaatiVidya video which wraps up the info not just from Miyazaki's IGN interview, but his Famitsu and Igromania (a Russian site) interviews too:

We saw it on Friday, and today was just further confirmation: this Italy side is the real deal. Extremely strong at the back, fluid in the middle, and lethal when they need to be up front, and more importantly for a tournament, really good so far at game management. Switzerland always seem to roll over against the bigger sides at tournaments, felt that a bit here. Italy vs Wales should be a good one! Yeah, the not-so-new rule. It's nice that it's at least applied consistently, but as someone who used to play as a defender through school and after, I think it's really stupid when it's clearly unintentional, for example with Chiellini I don't understand where else he's supposed to put his hands in that situation. Do the rules not account for needing to balance your weight with your arms? But oh well, rules are rules It's hilarious because he's only 23 years old and I think he's much older as I don't watch him play on a regular basis, but saw him through to his 30's a few years ago in FIFA

Locatelli was always great in my old Milan Career Mode in FIFA. Glad to see him finally living up to the hype

Hell of a ball by Locatelli to the right wing, damn. Absolutely deserved to finish that move off, Italy look lethal. Also that Chiellini goal being disallowed...yeah, don't agree with that one. At all. Maybe players should start tying their hands behind their back?

Appointments opening up for 21+ year olds today, so booked the earliest I could find: my first appointment is in just under 3 weeks' time, and then my second appointment is towards the end of September. Finally!

Bloomberg are reporting that PSVR2 is aiming for a Holiday 2022 release. But my wallet

Five favourite games of this E3 (yes I'm counting Summer Game Fest in this, don't @ me!) for me would have to be, in no particular order: • Elden Ring - fantastic trailer and the thing I'm most hyped for from this E3, looks incredible and it comes out in January! • Starfield - thought what was shown of it in the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase was pretty underwhelming, but the behind-the-scenes video with the concept art and Inon Zur's music more pronounced than in that trailer, as well as Todd Howard's interview with The Telegraph, got me really excited. Will wait until next E3/summer, when I assume we will get a deeper dive, but assuming no delays, I think I'll be picking up a Series X a few weeks ahead of this next year. • The sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - sucks that it's probably coming the second half of next year rather than the first, but I thought the trailer was fantastic for getting your mind racing, the new mechanics and items they showed off were super cool, and I really enjoyed the music. Still one of my most anticipated! • Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising - I backed Eiyuden Chronicle on Kickstarter last year, ahead of playing the first two Suikoden games this year, just because I had a hunch I would get on well with those games and because it felt like it was worth supporting something like this. Having now played the first two Suikoden games, both of which I loved dearly, I cannot wait to see what Murayama and Rabbit & Bear have in store for us with the game! And it still looks fantastic. So, why the hype for Rising? Because it's the first we've seen of it, and I can't wait to hopefully get a bit of a peek behind the curtain into this world next year! • Replaced - love pixel art, love the backgrounds, it was a pretty high octane trailer and I can't wait to see more. Somerville looks great too, I personally don't have any real investment in Metroid Dread but was hyped just because I know so many here were hoping for it and will absolutely be picking it up, and Advance Wars 1+2 is something I'm definitely interested in. A bunch of indies I like the look of, perhaps too many to mention! Oh, other than Trip to Yomi, that's probably level with Replaced for me! Some other topics for discussion I'd like to throw in the mix: • Favourite Trailer - Elden Ring. Release date earlier than I think anyone was really expecting, yes it used the same music as before but I don't care, the crescendo of the choir at the end as The Tarnished leaps towards 16-armed dude gives me goosebumps every single time. It also really gets the mind racing with possibilities, actively is pushing me towards playing my next From Software game, and I'm very excited for it, or course! I've watched this trailer back a lot, as you might be able to tell! • Worst Trailer - Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. Absolutely horrendous trailer which did absolutely nothing to inform you of what the game itself will be like, instead focusing on being edgy to the point of cringe. CHAOS. Urgh. And it sucks even more because the shadow dropped demo was corrupted and the update didn't take place until a day later, but when it did, the gameplay was actually good! • Best Presentation - Nintendo. It's unfunny just how easily they walked away with E3 off the back of three of their relatively smaller IP (Metroid, Advance Wars and Warioware) and a trailer for the Breath of the Wild sequel. There were a couple of things I took issue with from a presentation perspective, but overall it was incredibly well paced for its length and there were some really smartly curated moments too, but I'll get to that in the Direct thread as I'm still catching up on some of Treehouse! • Most Disappointing Presentation - Square Enix. Look, Gearbox was objectively the worst E3 conference I've ever seen, but I had no expectations going into that, and nothing riding on it. Capcom was underwhelming, sure, but it was pretty inoffensive. Square Enix crushed dreams during their presentation. Final Fantasy I - VI Collection I've been begging for for years? Steam and Mobile only. Final Fantasy Soulslike rumour? A trailer that does nothing at all to interest you in the game, promotes everything Final Fantasy has done wrong after doing so much right the last few years, it's rough. Babylon's Fall? Looked rough. Final Fantasy XVI? Complete no-show, guess we're waiting for a State of Play for that. • Greatest Presentation Moment - Geoff Keighley's over-the-top introduction for the Elden Ring trailer and then declaring he was free afterwards. Did so incredibly well to keep it under wraps, and though Summer Game Fest was far from being the best show this last week, I'm grateful that he holds it. • Most Awkward Presentation Moment - Randy Pitchford interviewing the cast of the Borderlands film, it's been a while since I've felt this awkward watching something on a stream. Runner-up would be Deviation Studios being announced at the tail end of Summer Game Fest -- not because of the guys themselves, thought they were a little nervous, but because it just felt so out of keeping with having a somewhat neutral space and didn't need to be there. • A Presentation Moment That Hit a Pet Peeve - "We have an amazing show: 30 titles, 27 on Game Pass" - Sarah Bond during Xbox & Bethesda Showcase. They need to stop doing this, shut up and let your games sell themselves, damn it! Runner-up would be every "Exclusive" mentioned, legitimately think they added a good 10 - 15 minutes to their show with that and "Day 1 on Game Pass". Urgh! • Most Disappointing Moment - Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters. I refuse to talk about this further. • Biggest No-shows - Final Fantasy XVI not being at Square Enix hurt. Was really hoping for something on Playdead's or Fumito Ueda-helmed genDESIGN's next games too. • Overall E3 score - 5.5/10. As has already been said before, most of these publishers and studios didn't need their own events based on what they brought with them, and I think the lack of things to fill in the gaps (impressions from the show floor, interviews, demos) just made it a thing I tuned in for when it came to particular presentations, rather than normally having something on in the background, as was the case during previous E3's. Nintendo boosted it by an entire point for me, this wasn't a good E3 on the whole, but they at least managed to drag it out of the grave.

"We did our research into what you thought it would be, and went with the only thing we came across. Welcome to The Legend of Zelda: Wii Sports Resort Skydiving+"

The Legend of Zelda Game & Watch is up on the Nintendo UK Store for £44.99 (link). (Had no idea where to put this so here I guess )

The Special Edition is up on the Nintendo UK Store for £79.99 for those interested! Link

Ah yes, the aptly named The Legend of Zelda: Zelda Dies, Link Gets an Infection, And Yes, There is Time Travel, MUHAHAHAHAHA Jokes aside though, anyone got any more title predictions based on the trailer? I liked Whisper of Malice before, but there's no way that they're not incorporating the sky into this somehow after that trailer (plus, other than the start, it seemed much more hopeful and bright than that first trailer!). If there is a time travel element as @Kav and @Mokong have been speculating about, especially if it has something to do with what's going on in the sky, I wonder if it could be something like Pastward Skies? Jury's still out for me on just how they will want to name it in terms of potentially incorporating "Breath of the Wild", I think just in terms of marketing it'd make things much easier for them to (and based on what Bill's saying there's no way it'll just be something like Skies of the Wild, right?). Something like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 - Pastward Skies doesn't seem too long (though I'm imagining it's footprint on the front of a box and it is pretty long!), though anything longer than two words for that second subtitle probably would be and so they for sure wouldn't incorporate "Breath of the Wild" if so.

Damiani from Easy Allies said to do exactly this when they first saw the trailer. It's beautiful

France deserved the win, better team on the night and unfortunately the ball just didn't fall the way Germany needed it to in the final third. Both teams were very nervy and complacent in possession, especially in the first half, think Hungary and Portugal can take away from this game that there might be some points they could sneak away with in their next games

Mbappé and involvement in offside goals, name a better duo

If anyone interested in seeing more of Dread turned off the Treehouse stream for whatever reason, they're back on with the second part!