Julius

Okay, clarified: physical owners will also get the same option to upgrade. Save data will not be transferrable between PS4 and PS5 versions. Not too surprising, but why didn't they just say this from the offset? So strange!

Digital Foundry comparison for backwards compatibility is up:

PS5 version releasing on 2nd March 2021, with a free upgrade available for those with the digital PS4 version when the PS5 release comes. I'm guessing it's just the wording of it about the digital version getting it immediately (an option to have it preloaded maybe?), because I have to imagine it'll be the same day for the PS4 physical version to get an upgrade too. Surely? UPDATE: it would seem not. Official press release puts it pretty plainly: Huh. Personally I'm in no rush (still got to play 5 and 6, and I want to try out Judgement, before this) but that seems a bit odd. UPDATE 2: insanity. Would be nice if he gave a source, but it's the senior editor of Gameblog over in France, so I guess only a tiny pinch of salt? Still, that press release is a bit of a mess!

Update tomorrow at 14:00 BST regarding the upcoming expansion:

Series X previews are going up. Series X vs One X loading time comparison: Digital Foundry are just polishing their content up before we get their perspective too: And a few more load times: Also a few mentions that this is coming in at somewhere around 800GB available storage (after the OS partition).

Well, it's still 53 days away over here in Europe... But Digital Foundry's breakdown of the recent gameplay shown during the PS5 Showcase will at least make the wait 10 minutes and 45 seconds shorter!

After putting a few more hours in on Friday night and a decent amount more yesterday, I can now say that I've finished Super Mario 64 for the first time. This game is a classic, and even as a first time player nearly 25 years after the game's initial release back on the N64, I could still get an overwhelming sense of just how special this game is: charming and (mostly!) upbeat soundtrack, diverse and masterful course design, and this great sense of exploration all come together into this great game which stands the test of time to this day. Mario himself controls just as tightly as you could want him to, even by modern standards, which is a feat I'm still astonished by after finishing the game. I feel like a large part of this game's timelessness comes down to just how sprawling some of these areas are, in every direction. You have the wide grassy fields of Bob-omb Battlefield to test and acclimatise your skills and power over the controls, the sweeping depths of Jolly Roger Bay (the water levels in this game are GOOD! I think that's the first time I've ever said that ), and the heights of Whomp's Fortress and Cool, Cool Mountain to experience all of that in the earliest parts of this game. Grabbing Power Stars is a lot of fun, as is familiarising yourself with courses. I generally would at least get to the point where I got the Power Star awarded for collecting for the Red Coins in each course, just because it feels like a good test of your understanding of the course. And Mario's moveset perfectly complements that. You have the Backflip to get to new heights in tight spaces; the Triple Jump to audaciously flip over obstacles, and keep momentum; the Cartwheel Flip to sharply return to the direction you were running from, then flip over anything in your way; and - my favourite move in the game by far - the Long Jump to instantly thrust yourself through the air at a breakneck pace. Chaining these moves together and gaining some level of mastery over them instills a great sense of awe and accomplishment which feels great to this day. The way all of this is accessed is through Peach's Castle, which is an interesting enough place to explore, but my favourite part of Peach's Castle by far is jumping through paintings into new levels, and especially those ones when/where you enter the paintings having an actual impact on the course. It took me a few tries to notice when they were doing this, but once I did, I was honestly taken aback a bit, because it's such a simple thing which could easily go overlooked, yet has such a huge impact in that you can then influence courses once you have it figured out. The level design is fairly consistent in layout, mechanics, and theme, but almost all of them feel distinct, and so you end up with a great catalogue of courses to explore. It just feels so fresh to enter a new course, and even somewhat similar ones (such as Jolly Roger Bay and Dire Dire Docks, or Whomp's Fortress and Tall, Tall Mountain) are spaced far apart in a way that it stills manages to feel fresh. Throw the caps into the mix for good measure and each course feels so different to the next, I really enjoyed that aspect of it. All of this being said, my least favourite parts of the game - and those which I think have aged the worst - are those tighter spaces where you can't exhibit this mastery over jumping around and leaping long distances which I feel the stronger courses in the game offer consistently, because it is so difficult to control Mario in those scenarios when you have so little control over the camera. These tighter spaces also typically find themselves matching up with some puzzle platforming, and the camera just doesn't work with you on some occasions where in more modern games it would. It's definitely most noticeable in Tick Tock Clock I feel, which is a shame, because I enjoyed so much of what that level was trying to do (though I have to question why they didn't slow the music down when you slowed the mechanical components in the course...). It's a shame, it really is my only biggest knock against this game as a first time player. The skill-based platforming far outclasses the puzzle-based platforming in my mind: in more open areas when traversing across narrow spaces (a small land bridge on Tall, Tall Mountain comes to mind) the camera sweeps in this organic way which perfectly matches the gameplay, and in those moments this game is unstoppable. The only other thing which comes to mind is very minor, and that being forced out of a course after picking up a Star, but I know that's something Odyssey doesn't do. It's not really an issue now that I think about it, and an worst it just helps you familiarise yourself with the courses. I understand that this is a port, and that this game is a revered classic with a storied history and longstanding fan base (and as someone who wants to support game preservation and has been wanting to play this game for a long time, I'm glad I've finally got the chance to!), but something as simple as giving the option for more camera control and not having it switch between fixed angles would have modernised this game and done away with what is by far my biggest problem with it. I know that wouldn't have been an option on the N64, but it is now, and I don't think this is at all like the fixed camera angles of the older Metal Gear Solid games. Heck, default it to the classic camera by all means, but in a third-person 3D platformer being ported nearly 25 years after release, again, it would have fixed what is by far my biggest issue with the game. I would have been happy to continue to collecting Stars if not for the camera, but I'm still really happy with how much I enjoyed of the game, and it's certainly not something I'll let sour my experience. I just hope Sunshine's camera will be better! But, not wanting to end on a sour note, I've got to mention some of my favourite moments in this game. Tall, Tall Mountain is easily my favourite course of the game, its variety of short and long horizontal areas while spiralling up this huge mountain is awesome. Even falling from way up in the course to near the bottom back at the start didn't feel too bad, because it was just so much fun to run around the course! I would say that discovering the underwater town in Wet-Dry World was one of my favourite moments, and collecting all 8 Red Coins to get that Power Star with some precise platforming was a whole load of fun. It was probably my favourite Power Star to get in the game. Getting frustrated for 30 minutes at being unable to get to the Star above the Thwomp in Tick Tock Clock wasn't so fun, but was fun was taking a short break, and doing it first time when I got back. The most typical gaming thing of all and lastly, getting to the spinning platform on Rainbow Ride for the second time after not figuring out how to get to the Tricky Triangles area, and taking this enormous Long Jump of faith across the course and landing felt so good. Getting over there and immediately realising that I just couldn't see the path over because of the draw distance from where you start? Certainly gave me a chuckle! There is so much charm, and fun, and game to this video game. I had such a great time with it, and camera issues aside, it's a timeless classic with movement which I'm sure would make most other 3D platformers - both modern and of the era - blush. Look forward to giving Sunshine a go next in the coming weeks!

The game has a provisional PEGI rating of 18. Imagine it's based mostly on the blood splattering all over Joshua's face in the trailer, but still, it would be interesting if this game ended up actually receiving an 18 rating. Also, Yoshi-P has shared during the XIV panel at TGS that a teaser site with character and world info will be going up at the end of October, and also acknowledges the western audiences jokes about how long it might be until the game is actually released...and takes the tiniest bit of a dig at XIII/XV/VIIR too Oh, and he didn't have any plans to share any XVI info today. That lands squarely on Yoko Taro

Turns out there was a bit of a mistranslation yesterday: no new characters, but rather new gameplay focused on a character we hadn't seen much gameplay from before. A lot of Daruk and Impa gameplay, Impa's shadow super looks great, love how slow Daruk is, oh and we got to see the laser parry. Good showing! I was watching this live and they had J-Mon and HighGai providing live translation, which I've got to mention because it was a jolly stream, and much better than yesterday's show without any type of live translation!

So there's a CG project (presumably a movie?) called Resident Evil Infinite Darkness coming in 2021, which was just revealed in a teaser on Netflix Portugal's Twitter.

Story trailer from TGS (in English): Looks awesome! Daruk and Mipha sound a bit different to me, but not sure if that's new direction or actually different voice actors. Also reveals at the end that the wooden Training Shield and Sword will be exclusive to those who have Switch Breath of the Wild save data. Makes me wonder if they might have some ideas for save data transfer for Breath of the Wild 2... Here's the gameplay we got to see: Apart from the pop-in, which is super noticeable, I think it looks great. Impa as a straight up ninja They said that there will be another stream showing a new character at 17:00 JST tomorrow, so 09:00 BST. And some new key art for the Champions and Impa has just gone up on the Japanese site, too:

Watching this now, seems like a bit of oversight on Nintendo's and KT's side to not have a translator on for this, especially with it being advertised by NoA. Even SEGA's terrible opening show yesterday had a translator - heck, they even translated a Japanese 60th anniversary ad live! - and most of the big TGS shows have so far. Weird decision. For this reason, if anyone who wants to watch it live, I'd recommend checking out the GameXplain stream: Gameplay being shown and looks great though! Just seen Young Impa and little egg guy EDIT: Young Impa's playable! Not much of a surprise but still cool to see!

The gameplay demo shared at TGS earlier this morning. It's in Japanese, so I have no idea what they're saying, but it still looks great!

It does make you wonder, doesn't it? While other teams of course will still have ridiculous levels of crunch (previous stories on Naughty Dog spring to mind), I feel like that's one thing which runs across the industry - and, yes, does need to be monitored and improved drastically - but this feels just as big an issue, if not bigger. While I'm mostly against the industry sort of folding in on itself with major acquisitions, it does feel like Ubisoft are in desperate need of some other entity to report to. They need to sweep out the toxic members of upper management (which would be almost all of them if the recent stories are anything to go by) and completely overhaul their structure, and proven people need to be put in place. I feel like we've long passed the step where a third party might be able to monitor and improve this, because it seems to run extraordinarily deep. Don't feel too bad about not playing an Ancel game, and I don't really play Ubisoft games as it is (I've never seen one which has captured my imagination), so personally it's not too different: I wasn't buying and playing those games anyways, and until things are addressed (no more of the tiptoeing around it during Ubisoft Forward's, for instance) I'll probably continue to not play their games.

Yeah, was reading up on Libération's articles yesterday (the same folks who broke the other recent Ubisoft stories), and...yikes. The first article takes a bit of a step back, and covers interviews with some of the development staff. Basically, seven years of work just on pre-production (which they've only just come out of) and Ancel coming in and out of hands-off role to pick apart the team's work. The second article is an interview with Ancel himself... Just...urgh. At this point not only is it increasingly demoralising to read about this, but the more we hear, the more and more I think Ubisoft just need to outright purge their upper management, bigger names, and executives from the company. What an absolute mess.

Hope those still playing enjoy the Fall update, which drops on Wednesday!

So yeah, this looks all but confirmed! (cardboard box and red exclamation to boot) UPDATE: and confirmed.

SEGA with by far the biggest botch of the show so far. CEO Haruki Satomi announces a "one last thing" towards the end of the SEGA & Atlus TV opener - which honestly didn't give us much of any news, but it's running for the next three days, so we might still have more to come - we see a bunch of arcade machines, and then it's clearly the silhouette of Akira from Virtua Fighter. He turns around, and across the screen reads Virtua Fighter x esports Cut back to the studio, the hosts have questions and thought it was an announcement for a new game, aaaaaaand it's the end of the show. Must suck really hard to be a VF fan right about now. EDIT: found the tease: EDIT 2: Google translate seems to be hinting at a reboot..? But guess we'll have to wait until next time for further clarification on what exactly is going on. On a more positive note, the show opened with one of the weirdest but funniest ads I've ever seen, so I hope that goes up later. It was an emotional rollercoaster Capcom in just over an hour!

TGS 2020: Quick & Dirty - Day 1 Just wanted to quickly run through the two big shows from today, Xbox and Square Enix. Xbox Yeah, so Xbox has an anime mascot in Japan. Because why not? The other big news was that, as previously revealed through price listings, the Series S would be launching nearly $30 lower than was previously mentioned in Japan. Originally it was going to be 32,980 yen, and is now going to be priced at 29,980 yen instead. By the way, Series S pre-orders sold out quickly over there, and though we don't know what the stock allocation looked like, that seems to be a good sign. Then it was a smattering of Phil talking about how Japan was the fastest growing Xbox market (not surprising given some of the numbers they've put up...), Samurai Shodown being announced as Series X|S launch title, and a new trailer for Scarlet Nexus. Oh, and a free Japan World Update coming to Flight Simulator next Tuesday (29th September). Game continues to look great! Square Enix Then it was over to Square Enix, and the somewhat shallow dive into NieR Replicant Ver. 122, which was announced to be releasing 23rd April 2021 in Europe and North America, and the day before in Japan. That's to PS4, PC, and perhaps a bit surprisingly, Xbox One too on Day 1. Continues to look great! The panel was a lot of fun, Yoko Taro is always an interesting character, and today was no different. I think his tweets before the show can give us a bit of insight into that We learned that NieR: Automata has sold over 4.85 million units worldwide, which is insane! And Dragon Quest XI (and it's Definitive Edition) has sold over 6 million units worldwide, which is even more insane! Much deserved, I love that game! And lastly, NieR Re[in]carnation, the mobile game, was announced to be coming to the west. Tomorrow - Day 2 If Day 1 was an appetiser, this is...not really the main course (I mean, look at how stacked Day 3 is!), but a potentially better appetiser! First up of the two major shows today we have SEGA & Atlus TV kicking things off at 12:00 BST. Will we finally see Persona 5 Scramble get a release date for the West? Knowing our luck, probably not! But with it being SEGA's 60th Anniversary, hopefully there will be one or two surprises for them to share! Following that, we have Capcom's Special Program scheduled from 14:00 - 14:50 BST, which they have already said will feature some reveals, as well as a better look at Resident Evil Village! Should be another fun day!

This is great! In terms of this year, hands down, from the games I've played, this has to go to The Last of Us Part II. I heard going into the game that there would be a wide range of accessibility options, so I checked them out at the start of the game and...there was a lot. And by a lot, I mean I think this has to be the golden standard of accessibility in gaming. You can play the game even if you are blind. If that isn't worth recognising, I don't know what is. Here is a list of the 60+ accessibility features in the game, and here is a video showcasing them: And a lovely video on just how much it means to those who do need these features, well worth a watch. These two are a big part of the accessibility in gaming community (Steve worked with Naughty Dog on this, too, so it's interesting to hear about his experiences and how they improved throughout the development of these features): It's awesome. I don't need any of these features myself, but I instantly saw the list and it brought a huge smile to my face. And heck, changing subtitle size and colour should already be a universal standard. I really do hope that more companies, especially on the AAA side, see this and start to incorporate these accessibility features in their own games. Great work by Naughty Dog! However, I don't think that this needs to be something awarded to only one individual or group, and with it being the first time this particular award is being given out, I do hope that earlier examples of this are recognised. One such case I think should be recognised too is Xbox's Adaptive Controller, which released around two and a half years ago: The more players the better

Jason Schreier shared on his podcast, Triple Click (link is timestamped), that he has heard that XVI has been in production for 4 years, and is coming much sooner than people think. This lines up with the rumours that were swirling last year about Unit III ramping up into full production on something, which we now know to be XVI. It also lines up fairly well with familiar names being tied to XVI who worked on XIV's Heavensward expansion, which released in 2015, stepping away from XIV after the expansion was released, and most likely being moved onto XVI. Late 2021/Early 2022 is beginning to look a bit more promising with every tidbit which trickles out about this game (I also think declaring this far out that we have news coming in 2021, and looking at VII Remake's marketing cycle after being reintroduced last year before E3, lines up with this), but of course other factors like COVID still might end up delaying the game. Or a mid-production engine swap, my gut tells me that's something Square Enix might do seems the game is in good hands!

Lupin III: The First looks really good, really digging how well they've translated the art style to CH. Never watched any of these films before (only seen snippets of the Ghibli film), guess now might be the time to start!

They will restock them at a few places I imagine. If I were you I'd just wait for Amazon as most other retailers have proven they can't be trusted at one point or another when it comes to console launches. Anecdotally, I've only heard good things about GAME at launch for consoles (since I asked here I've talked to a few friends about this too), so I imagine it will be fine (that's where my pre-order is, wasn't willing to wait for Amazon to go up out of the blue like GAME had). But Amazon of course is also about as safe a guarantee you can get for the costume arriving on launch day! I imagine they'll get more out available to pre-order before launch, but do we know yet if these new GAME pre-orders are for launch too? Only reason I ask is because I read that some stores in other countries have started trickling out more pre-orders, but they're not expecting them to be delivered until later in November/December. It's going to be hectic either way from here on in trying to secure one, I think.

Yes (and no), it's something between a remake and a remaster of the original NieR Replicant which was exclusive to Japan the NieR released in the west, if I'm remembering right, was based on NieR Gestalt (older protagonist, from what I understand a slightly different story where Nier is the father in Gestalt, vs the brother in Replicant, of the girl on the boxart). Also gameplay looks to be inspired by Platinum's work on Automata, which is nice to see, and those animations look great! Also the devs are hilarious and it's worth watching just to see them bring up the debug mode