Julius

Caught up on Episodes 4 and 5 of The Bad Batch this morning, and yeah, I'm still really enjoying it. Agree with @Ronnie that 4 was a bit weaker, but I felt 5 was a nice return to form, with some great character interactions. Roll on next week!

GET INNNNNNNNNN Thank God there was little to no drama this time around, waiting until penalties twice when we've got here before had me very nervous. Though my mouth dropped and it went way too quiet at that Mahrez shot, and Mason Mount coming off before the game finished definitely had me nervous going into the last 10 minutes. City never really got going, we were worthy of the win. Controlling the game through disruption, Kanté bossing it as always, Azpi was on fire at the back. City missed not having Fernandinho or Rodri in the middle from the start, because they looked shaky throughout; Pep got it wrong choosing Sterling, and City were snuffed out tonight. I do feel for De Bruyne - especially as the last time we were here I was excited for him hopefully getting through to our first team - it was a bit of a dirty foul by Rudiger, and reminded me of the Ramos challenge on Salah a few years ago. Feel bad for Thiago Silva too, he's a living legend and deserved the full 90 minutes, but Christensen came on today and I think only had one awkward moment, otherwise was absolutely solid. Such a young squad, only looking up from here I hope, and the England lads have me very excited (that's probably a bad sign ) for the Euro's.

For the first time we're leading in a Champions League final. I don't know how to feel

Look forward to reading your thoughts @drahkon! I've been half tempted to return to this (and the first game) over the last few weeks, especially as I played it on a base PS4. So far I've staved it off well enough - there are so many other games to play, it's seriously an embarrassment of riches at times - but the release of the 60fps patch for Part II means the game is slowly calling me...

Yeah it's awesome! She's been on the receiving end of a lot of undeserved stick for the longest time, and while it sucks that I imagine her coming out got delayed because of that, I'm glad she felt comfortable enough to come out and share this now - I can't imagine hiding something like this for so long (also found it way too funny and pure that she continued hiding her name from Huber in fear he'd blurt it out). If anyone hasn't seen it yet, I think it's well worth watching this week's Easy Update, it's really well done: From an Easy Allies community perspective, I think a very, very strange silver lining to last year's post in recognition of what was going on following George Floyd's murder - and being in support of BLM - is that a whoooooole lot of idiots came out against it, and the guys pretty much told them they don't want their support. A community will never be without flaws, but I think it weeded some people out who otherwise might have otherwise kicked off over Isla's news. The last couple of months I thought I was going crazy thinking her voice was changing and I noticed her skin was looking smoother too, but never put two and two together! There was a question in last week's Fast & Loose where someone asked them all to stand up - just so we could laugh I guess at them wearing shorts - but Isla was pretty fast to shut that down, and I think Kyle said he wouldn't either, and I didn't flag it at all then either. I also want to highlight Damiani here, the guy's been respecting Isla's pronouns for years, calling her "they/them" even when she's not around, which really didn't look easy at times; you could see him catching himself and making sure he got it right. The guy gets a lot of undeserved flak, but it's obvious he's a genuinely good guy who's conscious of his thoughts and actions, and I know he's really good with this on Friend Code too (where I also feel he's constantly getting better as a host), so yeah, good on him!

Did you play Curse of the Moon 2 already? I imagine you might have, but I'm just wondering because I really feel like that game swooped right under the radar amidst the chaos last summer.

I was waiting for someone to say something like this

A Spanish outlet called Vandal, with some clout from their previous reports, has apparent info on the Switch Pro/Whatever™ from Chinese accessory manufacturers. Below is a translation, original article here. Ethernet port would be big, right?

Some pretty nice deals at the moment on big last-gen games: - Red Dead Redemption 2 is down to £14.85 on Amazon UK for the PS4, and a bit less for the XBO. - The Last of Us Part II is down to £9.99 at GAME. It's £5 for shipping, but I think a way around that might be to price match over at Curry's?

Weird that they didn't mention this during the State of Play, but development is apparently on track and there'll be an update very soon... Wonder if that means that - at the moment - it's still on track for a 2021 release? Because that's how it reads when you consider that they said that was the aim. But yeah, weird they didn't mention it in the State of Play. They did the same with the mention of a 2021 release last year too, saving it for a post-show video. I want to say that it's so no-one makes a massive deal out of it and less people pick up on it, hopefully meaning less pressure on the team, but in this day and age that's just not possible.

Weird that they didn't mention this during the State of Play, but development is apparently on track and there'll be an update very soon... Wonder if that means that - at the moment - it's still on track for a 2021 release? Because that's how it reads when you consider that they said that was the aim. But yeah, weird they didn't mention it in the State of Play. They did the same with the mention of a 2021 release last year too, saving it for a post-show video. I want to say that it's so no-one makes a massive deal out of it and less people pick up on it, hopefully meaning less pressure on the team, but in this day and age that's just not possible.

Wow, not even a release window. I understand playing it safe due to potential delays, etc., but still, that's pretty wild. Looks good, though going to need to watch it again outside of the stream to get a full grasp and appreciation of the visuals. Underwater looked particularly stunning. Also: a grappling hook, a glider, and wearing green? We see what you're doing Guerrilla quite like the designs of some of the new machines, and you at least know that they've done a good job with outfit design in the last game when the opening shot has Aloy helping that guy get up and from just seeing his armour I suddenly remember Erend is a person. I understand why they went with a mission that mostly followed stealth for the purpose of this gameplay video, but considering how it's an open world game, I do wish we got to see more of that side of things. Reminded me a whole lot of TLOU2's E3 2018 demo at times, and I feel it did one or two things we'd expect to see in Naughty Dog games ("oh hey there's the bridge") that I can't remember them doing too much of in the first game. Feel like there were some weird cuts in there, but I'm putting that down to being a demo and wanting to get other perspectives that we might not necessarily see in the game, as well as getting through it at a decent clip. Overall I'm left a touch more excited, but I'm not foaming at the mouth for this game based on this. I kind of just want to see some more, especially of the open world.

Coming December 7th, new gameplay trailer:

Mine has arrived also! Though I haven't checked for damage yet, so we'll see what shape it's in Feel like this is great timing for a book like this seeing as we've got this Bank Holiday weekend. Look forward to digging in!

Bezos needs to recover from his divorce somehow

I watched a few of the reactions to the livestream and had it on in the background today, and there are a couple of things we haven't talked about. I think the biggest one is the massive focus on player choice/agency? It's in the title to an extent when talking about "Fate", and even more so in the Japanese title ("Selected Flame of Fate"), but I'm really curious what that will end up meaning, as they talked about it more during the stream. A voiced protagonist, surely? Some kind of impact on the story? Maybe some level of self doubt in the story, with morality mechanics? It's another part which makes me think about how this does seem to be a push for popularity in the West. Also really glad that Takeshi Uchikawa is returning to direct this, he did one hell of a job with XI. That was my first Dragon Quest game and I instantly felt like I knew what the series was about, and this shift to a darker tone had me a bit concerned that someone else might be at the helm, but with him returning, I'm pretty confident that we'll end up with something great. It also sounds like they're only just prototyping their battle system. Commands aren't going away, but I'm anxious to see what exactly the changes are when it comes to the combat this time around. I would imagine it's building off XI's free-roam, like I said before, and could become an FF VII Remake situation (though with more of a focus on your menu-based options perhaps?), but it really could be anything. Also watching the trailer back, if not for the darker tone and apparent shift to make it more "adult", I would've guessed this was a sequel to XI or maybe linked in some way. A big part of marketing is your initial message, and so having "XI" shown for as long as they did before adding the strike through to make it "XII" does make me wonder if there might be something there? Makes sense, this seems to be much earlier in development than pretty much everything we'd heard about it (very little) made it seem. Doesn't UE5 run on the Switch though? I know they could push it further with new hardware, and I imagine the Switch has either been replaced or is on its deathbed at that point, but I could've sworn I'd read Epic say something about it. Also I just hope that Square Enix aren't stupid enough to do what they did with XI again this time around, so I hope it comes to everything on Day 1. A definitive edition is fine, and yeah we knew about the NX/Switch version early on, but it was absolutely a slap in the face to people who supported the initial PS4 release; I know there were technical reasons for this too, but that doesn't exactly make it any better. This series needs and deserves better, especially seeing as it looks like they're pushing the boat out to get more reach over here.

Looks like we're going to have to go back to saying "A new God of War title (Santa Monica Studio)". Rolls off the tongue better anyways Pretty much every insider is saying to keep expectations tempered going into E3, so...

...this actually looks passable? I feel like this has to be coming to the West. I know Dragon Quest isn't as big over here as it is in Japan, but that looks like way too much effort to not just half-heartedly release it over here.

We're in the bad ending timeline.

Sony projection for this financial year is to sell 15 million PS5's, and then 23 million the year after. For reference, at the same point in the PS4's life cycle that they expect to reach 50 million with the PS5, there were 40 million units sold.

Zidane is off again: Guess we'll see him back there in a year or two once they've bought Mbappé. This is going to start the circus of manager transfers this summer. Conte looks to be leaving Inter as they won't let him make some big buys (poor guy always seems to have this issue), Allegri has been sitting out for a long time now...should be interesting to see what happens!

PlayStation Direct is coming to Europe:

So turns out Horii straight up said during the stream that they might get to Dragon Quest I and II remakes after this The whistle is hilarious. Horii gone rogue!

I don't mean to put pressure on Team Asano, but...just do it for all of the 2D FF's and Chrono Trigger! HD-2D Frog, are you kidding me?!

The mention of a new battle system makes me think that they're going to take that extra step forwards with the free-roaming you could go during battle in XI? I'm half expecting something not too dissimilar to what we saw in VII Remake, but this is DQ, I kind of feel like offering a classic way to play turn-based is a big part of the appeal. This feels like a last ditch effort to finally see the series do well in the West, so it has me a little nervous, but I'm sure they'll deliver.