Julius

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

My younger brother has been keeping up to date with the volume releases, and from what he's told me, the anime essentially makes some of those fights what they are. He still loves it, but can't wait to see how ufotable adapt it. So, once you get to the end of chapter 52 where the first season ends, might be worth checking out some of those Season 1 fights online easily some of the best fight animations, they knocked it out of the park, and you're missing out on some stellar music too!

Agreed, and it's such a shame. I think the next step the industry could greatly benefit from is us knowing more about what goes on behind the scenes, whether that be documentaries shining a light on development (like Raising Kratos which we got for God of War) and the history of the industry, and more transparency over budgets and unit sales. At the moment, what constitutes success to these companies is almost impossible to figure out, as evidenced by Jason Schreier's recent article on Sony Bend and how Metacritic is now seemingly a factor in what success looks like too. Managing expectations better knowing whether you're walking into something being primed as a blockbuster or a smaller release based on their budgets I feel would help, though on the other hand, I guess it could also just further the split between some in the gaming community. At the same time, though, knowing more names and faces to associate with games can only be a good thing in my opinion. Even as someone who has been following gaming news for a few years now, I feel like I know so little about the people behind the games and what they have to go through. Anyone with a shred of empathy should be able to understand to some extent Jason Schreier's work on investigating crunch, but at the same time, it's easier to attach emotions to people than it is simply an article on the matter. Kind of surprised he hasn't tried to put an investigative video together now that I think about it. Plus, it's genuinely interesting stuff!

A fictional film about people walking around playing Pokémon GO would actually be kind of hilarious. But I genuinely also think that a documentary about Pokémon GO's players, it's rise, reception, etc., would be a fascinating watch. It dominated the summer of 2016, and that was an Olympics / Euro's year! And speaking about documentaries, uhhhhhhhh...yeah, let's see some Nintendo documentaries. We saw that footage come out over the last few years of their offices, and I really enjoy going back to watch and read the Iwata Asks stuff, it's brilliant to get more insight into the industry, especially a company which we generally don't get that great a look into. While we still have living legends over there like Miyamoto, let's see some direct-to-streaming documentaries on individuals, put the spotlight on relatively (or completely) unknown stories, and give us a peek behind the curtain. I absolutely adored Disney's Imagineering documentaries, so something similar about the history of Nintendo seems like such an obvious choice.

Well this is...something. So what's going to have the worst stock situation, the console or the shoes?

The retractable lightsaber lives and it looks GLORIOUS. Also just finished the first episode of The Bad Batch. Holy smokes. Uh, yeah, the first episode is 70+ minutes long, and every single of them was great: the animation quality picks up exactly where the end of The Clone Wars Season 7 left off, which is to say it's great; the music has been excellent; they've done a great job of instantly selling me on these characters (much more so than in the adapted arc for Season 7 of The Clone Wars); and it hasn't spent any time sitting around wasting, it's just got on with it. Already so many familiar faces outside of the Bad Batch, too. Best premiere a Star Wars animated series has had by a looooooong shot. Guess I'll dive into a spoiler tag! Great first episode, very much looking forward to Friday for the next one! Haven't really been any announcements today, which is a bit strange as I feel like we do normally get a few things on May 4th, but there's been a rumour going around today that Lucasfilm Animation is looking to start putting out films, which I am all for after how their longer form episodes and arcs from the end of The Clone Wars and the start of The Bad Batch have turned out. Fingers crossed this means we'll be seeing some of the abandoned arcs from The Clone Wars - such as Cad Bane vs Boba, Crystal Crisis, Dark Disciple, and Son of Dathomir - adapted for Disney+.

Yeah, I was thinking about this earlier, and while I could see PlayStation and Xbox grinning and bearing some of it (though some of the internal PlayStation stuff floating around too likely does annoy them quite a bit), I could see Nintendo being absolutely miffed right now, because they clearly seriously hate leaks. Now they'll never hear the end of Samus not coming to Fortnite, which will probably make them clamp down harder and be less inclined to have a character turn up in Fortnite in the future. I honestly could see heads rolling at Epic after this, I wouldn't be surprised if the Big Three put a lot of pressure on the higher-ups at the top of Epic's hierarchy, Sweeney in particular. I have no idea if this was his stupid idea, but I could see them posing to move out of deals which haven't yet been acted on (such as potentially anything they would have in line for Unreal Engine 5) to get their way and get him out. On the other hand though, as someone interested in the industry, this has seriously been eye-opening. Can someone do this to Disney next please? Let's see the Mouse sweat

So let's see what we have here... 1. Cashing In - EA cashing in on the strength of the license with minimal effort. Remember the expansion pass? That was fun. 2. Jedi Falling Upwards - Respawn trying to show EA that you can actually still make a decent game with the license. 3. Cashing In II: The Reckoning - The Mouse Sees All - EA somehow almost losing the license and DICE cleaning their mess after having their reputation dragged through the mud. 4. LEGO Star Wars the Ultimate - I can't believe they didn't try to port this to modern consoles. I'd pick it up for PS3 if not for the Skywalker Saga coming at...some point. 5. Star Wars: Unhinged - played through this again last year and boy is it goofy fun, even if it has aged a little poorly. Some of those facial animations though...yikes. 6. The Last Great Battlefront Game - I've put thousands of hours into this and that's probably an understatement, I know each and every map like the back of my hand, Kamino and Coruscant especially. And those space battles and flying to capital ships to destroy it from the inside! I bought this when I was in Australia in 2007, still have that copy to this day, and played it up until I got a PS4 in 2015 for the new and improved Battlefront (I say, trying to smile through tears). So many great times with that game, I can't tell you how many times I completed the campaign or Galactic Conquest. Speaking of which, easily one of the best campaigns in a Star Wars game, even if it's pretty basic and objective driven when you break it down, getting to live in the armour of a 501st Legion trooper was something I wanted to do since I first saw Episode III. This will always be on my personal list of Top 10 video games. Also spawned what became my own personal Final Fantasy VII Remake having not really grown up on too many video games, Pandemic's Battlefront III: Remember when you could climb into vehicles? It's a shame we can't do that on modern technology, right guys? Frostbite is totally incapable of this, right? Right?! (Also ground-to-space battles is one of the most exciting things I've ever seen in a video game, even if it's just touched up visuals) 7. LEGO Star Wars: The Better Films - I remember reading about this six months, maybe a year, before release in a gaming magazine in a tiny corner shop next to my primary school. First time I ever memorised a video game's release date, man I loved that cantina and watching those cutscenes back. Remember when LEGO games didn't need to be voiced? 8. Star Wars BuT wItH bLoCkS - played this so much around friend's houses growing up, and even at my after school club. I had so much of this game memorised by the time I finally got my own hands on it, it spawned a series of LEGO games and I imagine still holds up to this day. 9. Precursor to Greatness - okay but seriously, the game is probably seriously overlooked, and that's because they decided to release a sequel with so much more content, faster loading times (at least from my experience), etc., just a year later. Still, some seriously cool maps such as Rhen Var and Bespin (which had ground-to-air battles!), and I remember it having Republic Commando-styled orders too. Great game but completely overshadowed by its successor. 10. Without a Shadow of a Doubt - the only game on this list I haven't played, and I'm pretty sure that's just because I wasn't around when it released H-o-T, I've actually never played KoToR, as it wasn't easily accessible (or at least, as far as I could tell as a young kid) and not available on platforms I owned (we had an old PC, and I didn't have an original Xbox), but I still know a surprising amount about the game from playthroughs I watched, scouring Wookieepedia for as much as I could get my hands on about the era, and all of the ToR stuff from the Galactic Timeline Records, which I've probably watched through tens of times: I've got a PC more than capable of running it now, but I'm not particularly keen on playing games on it (weirdly, guess that's just what happens when my only real gaming experiences growing up were on dedicated consoles), so will await the eventual port to PlayStation/Switch (right..?) and remake. Also never played the Rogue Squadron games for similar reasons, unfortunately. Got to imagine the reason that these games didn't crack the top 10 is simply that they weren't available on PlayStation 2, otherwise I'm sure their numbers would have been bumped up enough to make the list.

What timeline is this again? What a strange one. Conte going to Inter after his success there was one thing, but Mourinho going to Roma when he's an Inter legend and was adored by the fans, having won the treble with them? What a strange, strange world we live in. What's next for him after this, Sporting? Wish him all the best, I really want to see Mourinho get back up there amongst the best in the game, it's been over a decade since he last won the Champions League (that's nearly the case for Pep too, which is pretty insane!). Honestly, I'm more surprised that he wants to return to countries where he's already won, he "only" needs to win the league in France and Germany to become the first manager to win it in all of the five major European leagues (I think Ancelotti is on four after missing out on La Liga at Madrid).

Right?! I mean, how many Japanese people emigrated to the States, got brain damage and forgot Japanese, and then only learned English as their primary language in the 90's? Pretty niche audience for sure

Yeah, you know what I meant also I might need to bleach my ears now... I thought there might have been one just considering that there was one for Kirby that my brother enjoyed (to be fair it wouldn't surprise me if there was something out there for a lot of these), but this anime in particular looks like it was limited to OVA's, originally released in 1996 in Japan, and 1997 in the US - wasn't that a few years before the US even started getting Fire Emblem games? Compare that to today and it's a total no-brainer to make a modern Fire Emblem anime. Especially considering that everyone and their mother wants a political fantasy epic these days! I genuinely think it would be absolutely massive as an anime and could be the next step the series takes towards being part of the mainstream consciousness, a game following that (let alone one actually tied directly into it) would sell like crazy.

Agreed, though I think after the inevitable success of Rift Apart next month, I wouldn't be surprised if we see PlayStation ramp up production over at Insomniac with an employment drive. They're releasing games on a biennial basis currently, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if by the end of the generation PlayStation has positioned them to put a game out just about every year, cycling between Spider-Man, Ratchet & Clank, and then either bringing an old IP like Sunset Overdrive back or doing something completely new, especially if Xbox's purchases pay off and we see content coming out consistently for Game Pass. Just a thought, could absolutely go the other way too, because I think they've got a nice pattern to their releases now as it is. But with it getting increasingly competitive in the coming years now that Xbox don't hesitate on pulling the gun on acquisitions (for better or worse), I do think Insomniac are the prime candidate of their first party studios for rampant growth.

Immediate thought is that you could have all of these shows and films about individual IP's, and through Smash Bros. you already effectively have a tournament arc built in if you want to do any crazy crossover stuff to rake it in. From the little I've played of Earthbound, I feel like the Mother series could make for a great anime. Assuming they seriously don't want to release Mother 3 (and I mean, do we have any reason to not assume this?) it could at least give fans in the west an opportunity to enjoy that story, as I think it might be easier for them to censor/alter certain things in a show rather than the game. And I think that's a much easier sell than releasing a censored version of the game at this point, to be honest. Star Fox feels like it's begging to be a Saturday morning show to be honest, and so does Paper Mario. Zelda would need a voiced Link (which I genuinely think would be the greatest hurdle to us seeing anything come of it) but would be awesome in the style of the Castlevania anime, and you could just as well base it somewhat off the manga. In terms of films though, a live-action Kirby would be the stuff of actual nightmares (I imagine a Stitch situation but instead half the town goes missing and it turns out it was the little pink guy all along). EDIT: okay but a Fire Emblem anime would actually kill, get ufotable all up and in on that. It already basically has a rabid anime community following given how many fans idolise characters and the art style too, and it has the gacha game to boot. It actually makes so much sense that that's exactly why we'll never see it

PlayStation trademarked Sunset Overdrive just over a week ago. For anyone wondering what the deal is with ownership of the IP, as the first game was released on Xbox: Interested to see how they traverse this, I imagine any hopes of a port would probably mean giving in to some kind of Xbox demand, which I can't see PlayStation doing to be honest. So maybe a sequel of sorts?

In a crew interview with CNET, it has been revealed that The Bad Batch will be 16 episodes long. Recently it leaked that the first episode would effectively be a triple-hitter in its own right, coming in at some 70+ minutes, so if that's repeated for the finale, it's essentially a 20 episode show if compared to the runtime of previous Star Wars animated series, and that's without taking into account the lack of runtime constraints now that they're on Disney+ (typical episodes will likely be 25 - 30 minute long). Looking forward to it!

Unfortunately didn't get to put as much time Suikoden II today as I had originally wanted to, so I'm just creeping up on the 4 hour mark. It would be 5 hours, but to add to the series of unfortunate events, I went into my session today completely unaware about how the PS3's internal memory cards work for emulation of PS1 and PS2 titles, and as I found out an hour in at the first real opportunity to save my journey, I had filled up my existing one between Metal Gear Solid and Suikoden saves. To add insult to injury, you can assign memory card slots and rearrange them quite freely through holding down the PlayStation button, but for whatever reason you can't create a new one from there (I'm sure there's a technical reason I'm not fully aware of, but either way, it sucks when you can do so many other things with the internal memory cards from that position), meaning I had no choice but to quit out of the game to create a new one (meaning I took the opportunity to create a whole bunch of them). Anyways, as for the game itself? It's been nothing short of fantastic so far, holy cow! I have to start by mentioning the opening movie for the game, because calling it epic would be selling it short. It's a masterpiece in itself: Then I started the game after transferring over my Suikoden save data, which doesn't waste any time in getting going, as you are almost immediately pulled into the thick of it. Much of the game since then has been similar, there's no dilly-dallying at all (and there wasn't that much in the first game either) and it moves confidently and quickly from one plot point to the next, all the while not feeling rushed at all. It makes whirlwind moments like getting caught out in an ambush actually feel like a whirlwind, and its easy to get caught up in a moment. The key characters and story have been set up, I've seen some familiar faces from the first game (something which I've been vocal about loving in games before), and despite only being less than 4 hours in, it's completely gripped me. So much has happened in such a short space of time, yet every moment feels like it gets a chance to breathe, and it seriously reminds me of Chrono Trigger in this way. I'm very curious to see if this carries through to the end of the game, but if it does, it's going to take a lot going wrong elsewhere for me to not love this game. Because there is so much that I love about this game so far. Something which has actually had me audibly whisper "wow" to myself on numerous occasions is just how expressive and animated the characters are. Of the games I've played to this point I genuinely think this game blows many other pixel art games out of the water in this regard - and that's including games I love and hold in the highest regard when it comes to this, such as Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger. And the Pokémon Ranger games, weirdly enough, deserves a mention too. For instance, they put in the work to have Riou lean down to grab a rope from the floor, at another point he's crouching over and cleaning the floor, another time a character ties a rope to a rail, a character trips and struggles to get up, there's a hug, and a dog dives onto someone before snuggling up to them. There's also the accuracy and effort of adding "shade" where necessary which goes far beyond what was in the first game, which was minimal at best, often giving rooms a bit of a flat feel in hindsight. It is genuinely some of the best pixel art animation I've seen in a video game from that era, and I doubt I'll shut up about it anytime soon, so rather than continue to list these instances, if you want to see what I mean, just watch the opening credits sequence, backed by a beautiful track called Reminiscence: And it should come as little surprise that with Miki Higashino returning after her work on the first game, which had a soundtrack I absolutely adored, that my love for the music in this series has only intensified. There's Enemy Attack which is as panic-filled and chaotic as you might expect, and the opening of which really reminds me of some Final Fantasy tracks before the crazy woodwind comes in over the top dizzyingly; Days Past, which is about as melancholic and wistful as it could possibly be; the ensemble version of Reminiscence, a slower and strained version which just gnaws away at you; and Beautiful Morning, which initially serves as Nanami's theme before being used elsewhere, which is just incredibly jolly. And speaking of Nanami, despite being so early on in the game, I already feel so attached to these characters, they're just that endearing, and I have to highlight Nanami for being the most animated and funny of the bunch; that track captures her vibe perfectly. As if I couldn't praise this game more than I already have, they seem to have fixed things which I thought got in the way of the first game knocking it out of the park, namely inventory management and NPC's tagging along. In the previous game, as I mentioned in my Gaming Diary entry back in January, each character had a limited number of slots which would quickly fill up with equipment, leaving only one or two slots open for carrying health items. This meant you would have to unload items and reorganise your inventory almost every opportunity you got to back at your headquarters, but in this game, there's a shared inventory you can access outside of battle, which can carry up to 30 items. This is in addition to the slots each party member has (3 for equipment, and a further 3 for whatever you like), so even though you would still only have 48 items to carry between them at any given time as you would in the first game, the organisation of these items is so much easier, and you still have a space to dump items into back at headquarters (though I've yet to give this a go myself, but it looks like there are more options included this time around too). As for NPC's tagging along, in the first game, you might find yourself trudging through a dungeon to save a character who would then have to join your party to make their way back with you, which meant you would have to alter your party formation. That isn't the case here, as they wisely added a 'Convoy' which any characters who are only there to tag along can be placed into, rather than taking up a valuable space in your party formation. My only genuine issue so far is a holdover from the first game where text speed can vary quite a bit, and so double-tapping X to get through the dialogue and view the next line, in instances where you have a choice of dialogue, can result in you accidentally selecting the first option without even realising. Heck, even found a bit of an exploit to sleep at Inns for free completely by mistake! It's rare that a game pulls me in and so plainly makes the case that it's something special this early on, and yet here I am wanting nothing but to book the rest of the week off and be completely consumed by this game. I'll have to see if it lives up to its early promise, as I know there's still plenty to go, but so far so great!

The one percent. 7.9% of players have earned this trophy.

Okay so for some reason the YouTube channel for The Game Awards is giving the live audio for the Epic Games vs. Apple courtroom case. Audio is muffled to all heck but this is hilarious

There was also the email exchange between Gio Corsi and Epic, where the latter basically (read: pretty directly) threatened PlayStation at the end of their email, that's worth mentioning. Didn't think there'd be too much interesting out of this case, but it's off to a start I really wasn't expecting. How long before we get to the desperate Stadia emails?

Discord to be integrated into the PlayStation experience as of next year. From Jim Ryan's post on the SIE blog: Interesting stuff considering all of the rumours not too long ago about Microsoft looking to purchase Discord. Look forward to seeing how this ends up being integrated, at its best I think it's a strong next step towards cross-platform play becoming the norm, as this will further help gaming communities to flourish.

imnotcryingyourcrying.gif Well, guess I'm not avoiding the cinemas this summer like I was planning to after all! Had me tearing up, boy have I missed the cinema (ahem, Lucasfilm, it's your turn to put something like this out tomorrow)