Julius

I really don't like the Ubisoft Original branding. Gives off way too much of an EA Originals vibe for me, feels like they're inadvertently cheapening their games' first showing. You mean the best part of E3 so far?

That would definitely be the ideal scenario I'd hope for, so fingers crossed there's some truth to it. Still a little dangerous in terms of fatigue I feel, but would much rather it be because of this than UEFA pushing it on them!

TMNT in Brawlhalla was a cool thing to have, and You Suck At Parking looks like such a fun time! I don't really have any expectations going into this, Ubisoft tends to be a pretty mixed bag at E3, but hopefully there'll be one thing I can latch onto and come away from this wanting.

Just over 20 minutes until E3 proper kicks off with Ubisoft Forward. Anyone tuning in? And any hopes for what you want to see turn up here?

After all of the players left the pitch I remember reading on the BBC website that there still hadn't been official word from UEFA that the match had actually been cancelled yet, which felt a little bizarre. I also feel like this is very neglectful to the players. It's awesome that Eriksen seems to be doing okay and will hopefully only continue to improve with recovery, but playing a football match after having the adrenaline you'd have pumping through you after witnessing something like that is dangerous because there's an increased risk of injury just due to the fatigue they'd be facing. At least they're not kicking off from the start of the first half again, though. My hope would be that the players said they want to go ahead in solidarity and for the fans (misplaced or not I think that's the optimistic take), but more realistically, it's probably UEFA pushing for them to do this to avoid scheduling conflicts.

Brilliant news. Hope everything goes smoothly and pray he makes the best recovery one can in these situations. Really puts things into perspective. I think back to when I was in highschool and when Fabrice Muamba collapsed. It was a stark reminder then - as it is now - of just how precious our time is here, however brief it is. Yeah, good news

Christian Eriksen collapsed on the pitch as he received the ball from a throw-in, received CPR and likely a defib. Very distressing. I wasn't watching the match as it happened but just caught a clip of it; fair play to the ref for reacting so quickly, that could end up making all the difference, and I have a lot of respect for his teammates forming a wall around him so that the cameras couldn't pick as much up as they were. Unfortunately some worrying shots did get through before that, and I agree with @killthenet, it looks like they should've cut away a bit sooner than they did.

The real question is whether Xbox are acquiring this studio or if PlayStation are paying up for console exclusivity

One of the greatest back-and-forths delivered in the MCU so far Didn't think I was in the mood for this show so didn't watch it the other day, but glad I checked it out today. Looking forward to more

Bad Nintendo. Took the topic down as while it's out there in a very official capacity and is very real, it clearly wasn't intended to get out there just yet (even if we will find out relatively soon). Jumped the gun a bit as I thought it was an official announcement due to where it was coming from, but it's not, so yeah, didn't want to inadvertently spoil it for people looking to avoid that stuff. My bad.

Episode 7 of The Bad Batch was another strong one. Also not sure how I haven't mentioned it before, but I love the credits theme for the show: Sounds like a great mix of the Bad Batch Theme and Omega's (which reminds me a whole lot of the music in that emotional scene in the first Pokémon movie, Tears of Life). Onto the next!

Goes without saying, but I'm glad to see Ben so plainly shutting it down. It never ceases to amaze me how far some will go in order to hurt others. But, on the other hand, it's very reassuring to know that the Allies have Isla's back and are willing to speak up so publicly about it.

It's definitely one of those things where everyone has a different idea of what Star Wars should be, so I'm glad that it's clicked for you. Don't get me wrong, I think there are great things and moments in a lot of what they've done: Rogue One's third act, from Vader's Castle onwards, is up there with my favourite third acts from the films; Kylo Ren is probably one of my favourite characters in the Saga (minus what happens at the end of IX) and personally one of the ones I most deeply relate to, major Zuko vibes; a lot of the new musical themes are brilliant (even if I think overall it's a step down from the prequels, and I hate the fact that all three of the sequels go directly from the Force Theme straight into Finale when that only happened in one of the six preceding Saga films); and so on. But up until now, Episode IX is still the thing which I trip up on the most, and it genuinely makes it difficult for me to return to some of my favourite films (like I said, longest I've gone without watching them). Some might say "it's the journey not the destination", but this is a trilogy of trilogies: yes, it is in large part about the destination, because you went out of your way to make sequels. Revenge of the Sith was lucky in a way because, even though I know it has its detractors, it doesn't make the OT unwatchable in any way, and you could easily ignore them. I find it very hard to go back to the OT simply because a lot of it feels like it doesn't matter, especially the ending of ROTJ. It hurts, but hey, lessons learned for what I personally think should go into and come out of something like this I guess. And then we hear J.J. admit he should've planned it out more and, well, obviously! Anyways, I would highly recommend Lost Stars and Bloodline, easily my favourites from the new canon books that I've read, as well as the Thrawn novels. I can't recall, did you read Rogue One: Catalyst? If not, I can't recommend it enough, especially seeing as you loved Rogue One - it adds so much to the film! And yeah, you're right about them being isolated incidents now that I think about it more (though I do still think it kind of sucks). I think another personal hurdle with the novels I have is that once I started falling behind, as someone that was collecting the hardcovers, it became exponentially more expensive for me to catch up that way and I kind of gave up. While Phase 1 of the MCU was rough, definitely different situations stabbing George in the back over his story treatments and rushing the sequels out - IX just to have it release in the same year as Endgame when Iger was supposed to step down for one last ego stroke - says it all really. Remember, Rogue One and Solo were privy to insane amounts of rework (whereas in the case of The Force Awakens it was more just dialling it back from their original plans), and I honestly reckon that they ended up with more man hours on them than some of the sequels because of that. These things need time, I think the biggest issue with Disney is that they don't really care and just want their slate filled (other than The Last Jedi most of the Disney-helmed Star Wars films received their final edit extremely late, and there are certain green screen or CG moments where it's obvious more time might have been needed as a scene managed to sneak it's way through a bit). It's absolutely still one of the biggest properties though, regardless of how you might view the last five years or so, there can be no doubt about it.

The fact that they say "20 million players" specifically makes me think that includes Game Pass and Origin downloads, but still, that's a very impressive figure. Also, Star Wars isn't dead, but I do look back at the five and a half years since The Force Awakens and wince a little at just how poorly the property has been handled, purely from a quality perspective. I'm currently in the midst of the longest hiatus I've taken from watching a Star Wars movie since I first watched a Star Wars film, as I haven't watched one since Episode IX. It's not even the fact that the film itself is bad (though it absolutely is), it's the fact that it also sullies other films in the Skywalker Saga. The hubris that Disney and the creatives involved in the sequel trilogy showed genuinely makes my blood boil. I don't think they've had a truly great game: I thought that Fallen Order was good and had a great last final act or so; the Battlefront II campaign is an abomination; and I played through Squadrons last weekend and, while it looks and sounds like Star Wars, that is a very forgettable campaign in my eyes which is of virtually no consequence considering the things it tries to touch on and reference. I hope the Fallen Order sequel builds on the pretty solid foundation of the first game, but that EA's 10 years of exclusivity is nearly up has me looking ahead and praying that we saw more games of higher quality coming from every direction, and for different genres. Heck, even in the case of the novels and comics, the fact that they will just freely rewrite their unified canon on the fly when an event is shown in film or as part of a series went a very long way to also putting me off picking those up too. The saving grace for me is what we've seen from Lucasfilm Animation and The Mandalorian. They aren't flawless, but they actually feel in line with George's vision for the brand, are of the highest quality for their respective mediums, and continue to push those mediums forwards. It's tough, but Star Wars falls into the same category for me as Pixar these days. It's impossible to be of the highest quality every single time, but they've seriously butchered some parts of their respective brands over the last few years (all I'm saying is at least we didn't get a Rata2ouille: 2 Rats 2 Furious, I guess that's a positive), and it hurts to see things I care about so much go that way. Thankfully there are games and other studios and particular creatives that I feel I can depend on for that consistency and not butchering their own ideas, but yeah, it still sucks. Star Wars isn't dead, but I still think it's got some ways to go before it's truly thriving again.

Yeah, agree with everyone else: Italy look very strong all over, Mancini has done a fantastic job in turning the ship around these last few years and rebuilding. Spinazzola was all over the place, scary to think how someone clearly that motivated might do under Mou next season. Blew my mind that Italy never scored more than 2 goals in a European Championship game before. I can't remember anyone mentioning this at the last few Euro's (but maybe I'm forgetting?), so obviously the first time I hear about that it gets swiped aside and they manage it. While Turkey didn't put up much of a fight or really get going, I think they've done the other teams that come across Italy a bit of a favour, as it looks like their fullbacks pushing up (especially when Chiellini chooses to wander around) leaves them very susceptible on the flanks, as Burak Yilmaz made clear twice in the first half. Turkey couldn't take advantage of it, but if Italy come across a team with some pacy wingers later in the tournament, I think they could be in trouble. Belgium vs Russia was the match I wanted to check out tomorrow, but it's at the same time as Ubisoft Forward which is followed by Devolver Digital, so I might substitute Wales vs Switzerland in instead. Also the fact that they haven't rebranded to Euro 2021 is beyond silly in my eyes, feel like that's going to cause a hell of a lot of confusion in trivia quizzes some twenty-odd years from now!

VaatiVidya trailer breakdown is up: Haven't watched it yet, but I saw someone suggest earlier that maybe the beams of light from the World Tree Yggdrasil Erdtree might be key points of interest or highlighting optional bosses or something, which I thought would be really cool. Would certainly harken back to following the light of your sword in Shadow of the Colossus!

This upgrade came out today to very, very little fanfare. Truly bizarre to see it on store shelves and people buying it before it was officially announced to be dropping today!

All the stuff from the official site: Also what feels like another Berserk reference... Dude on the left giving me major Griffith vibes with that helmet, pretty sure we also saw someone in a similar helmet against the reindeer boss. Yeah, I'm really curious to see how co-op pans out in this game. The way it looked in the trailer, and what they say on the official website, specifically in the section about exploration of the open world... ...makes me think that the main (and easiest) part of online play that you can access will be in the open world, which I think makes a lot of sense given that the glimpses of the world show that there will be a variety of enemies most likely at drastically different levels of difficulty as we see in most open worlds. In the settlements/kingdoms/and so on coming off the open world is where I think it'll probably be gated behind beating a boss or calling for help for one, as I believe is the case in the other From games (they do mention that you can "call upon allies for aid" too). Does feel less like an "open world" and more like an "open field", which I think I prefer (as I feel it would be more focused). Major Ocarina of Time Hyrule Field and Shadow of the Colossus vibes in that open area! I know the rest of Summer Game Fest was a bit wonky at times, but still, kudos to Geoff for landing this, you could really tell how enthused he was about it when introducing the game. Strong start to E3 with this, glad this is where the show ended, and if we get some more stuff from other games I'm really excited about that could be next year (Final Fantasy XVI, the Breath of the Wild sequel, Starfield) then I will be extremely happy, but the fact that this trailer specifically is pushing me over the edge towards playing my next From game says it all. The choir at the end when he jumps gets me every time!

(but yeah you're right, hopefully one day though!)

My copy has arrived too Installing now, not sure quite how much I'll end up playing it today, but I'm very much looking forward to checking it out! Out of curiosity, for those picking it up, which mode are you planning on playing the game in? I'm leaning away from Performance RT myself and more towards swapping between Fidelity and Performance, got to see those reflections and that smoothness!

I thought the show started pretty strongly: Metal Slug Tactics looked great with its pixel art and trailer animation, the Sable footage with Japanese Breakfast singing over it looked great, seeing a couple of indies from PlayStation was good in Chicory and Salt and Sacrifice, and Solar Ash (though I think it showed pretty poorly). But I have to talk about the trailer for Death Stranding's Metal Gear Expansion Director's Cut. Kojima you mad man with the trolling - had me on the edge of my seat the entire time! The layout, the air vent, the cardboard box, the oranges - so much MGS stuff for it to just be a Director's Cut reveal, I was laughing my ass off. I haven't played Death Stranding so wasn't sure at first if it was a scene from the game, but it very quickly became apparent that it wasn't. I know there have been rumours (more wishes so far in my opinion) about Bluepoint remaking Metal Gear Solid, but maybe @Hero-of-Time or @drahkon can clear this up for me: is that box that says 'FRAGILE' on it in the game? Because to let my mind run crazy with speculation for a second: the box is by far the main focus of the trailer, and is the last thing we see, and it says 'HANDLED WITH LOVE - FRAGILE - EXPRESS' and shows two skeleton hands seemingly passing the fragile thing over / holding it up. Is this trailer Kojima reaffirming that he is done with Metal Gear but happy to pass off Metal Gear - the 'FRAGILE' thing - to a team ready to handle it with 'LOVE'? Maybe I'm crazy, but that's how I'm going to read that trailer. And hell, take my crazy speculation out of it, and I still think it was a really fun trailer and look forward to checking out the Director's Cut when I do get around to playing the game, really think Kojima could do a lot of interesting things with the adaptive triggers! I feel like the show kind of dropped off for a good 10 games or so, and feel like it seems to be a running theme with Geoff's shows: fairly strong start out of the gate before tailing off rather quickly in the middle. However, the triple hitter of Tales of Arise (which still looks gorgeous), Sky: Children of the Light (which also looks fantastic and now finally has a release date!) and Planet of Lana (unfortunately for me an Xbox console exclusive) quickly raised my hopes in the middle of the show...before it all came crashing down again and fizzled out until the epic trailer for Elden Ring. That's the point where it felt like this was an opener for E3. There was just so much waffling on, a lot of MMO's which never show off particularly well at these sorts of things, and a lot of cross-brand stuff going on too (Smite x Stranger Things, Fall Guys x NieR - which was funny - and Rocket League x F&F), with what felt like blink-and-you'll-miss-it teases of other shows and a lot of meaningless updates for games we already knew about. Better luck next time Geoff. My Totally Official Score: 6.5/10 (and that's with a +0.5 for both the Death Stranding and Elden Ring trailers) I did start watching the Day of the Devs stream after it went straight into it after Kickoff ended, thought it was a really smart move to go into that hot off the heels of Elden Ring and with Axiom Verge 2 have a pretty big announcement locked and loaded and ready to go. Unfortunately I ended up caving and started rewatching the Elden Ring trailer instead, but @Ganepark32 and @Map have sold me on it, so I'll probably give it a watch tomorrow morning!

I'll get to it...at some point after finishing Demon's Souls at the end of last year I went and bought every modern From Software game except for Sekiro, so thankfully I'm forced to make a decision where I don't play it next just by not having it on my shelf! Also kind of want to see how systems evolved as the series went on, especially because I started with Demon's Souls (even if it was the Bluepoint remake). I was originally planning on trying to get through the other Souls games before this released (assuming the appetite for them stayed), kind of assuming it was March 2022 or later, but think it might be a bit of a squeeze to get them all in before January; I won't rush, guess we'll see what happens. I've definitely been feeling the craving to play one coming on the last month or two though, so I imagine I'll be digging into Dark Souls sooner rather than later. Also just been rewatching the trailer and the stone golem thing with a bell is giving me major Shadow of the Colossus vibes - it's pretty much exactly what I wanted, assuming we can fight it (and if so kind of wanted the Divine Beasts to be in Breath of the Wild). Cannot wait to see more! If it's in-engine showing footage of the game being played, just from camera angles you probably won't get in the game for the sake of being a trailer, then I'd consider it a gameplay trailer? Just not technically raw gameplay footage with a HUD and so on?

Awesome, but assuming this gets a PS5 case, I'm absolutely just going to go based on which case looks better love that deep teal colour, and the way the top of the symbol kind of forms an eclipse! Also, I know Berserk has obviously influenced Miyazaki a lot, but there are several things about this that are just straight up giving off that Berserk influence: the framing of the case and that eclipse, that wolf dude and the Berserker armour, the tree...hell yeah. This damn trailer puts me in a weird spot. I'm really looking forward to checking out Rift Apart tomorrow, but now I really want to play Dark Souls!

Yeah, fantastic trailer for Elden Ring! Also we basically get to ride Yakul from Princess Mononoke and that pumps my hype even further

January 21st 2022!!!