Julius

They've since removed the claim, for obvious reasons, but it's unfortunately not that surprising at this point, I feel like it's something we would have heard about if it were on its way. A shame, sure, because I am a big fan of backwards compatibility and preserving games, but it wouldn't have been the biggest selling point anyways, and I feel like they would've been investing a lot to play towards what is honestly a very niche corner of their audience. Would love some sort of accessory module we could get separately to attach in order to do this. Though I would still welcome news to the contrary, what I've really been hoping for (and is probably a bit more realistic) is that PS1/PS2 games on the PS3/Vita would be playable on the PS5. I guess the problem with that is licensing and third parties wanting to rake in some cash on port collections.

This year TGS is going digital, but that hasn't stopped it from being packed with 204 Japanese companies, and 198 from overseas. The event will be running from 24th September - 27th September, with some less than ideal show times for its potential western audience, but with the schedule now out, it looks to be a very promising and exciting event to look ahead to! The Schedule Below I've listed what I think are going to be the events with probably the most eyes on them during the show, purely from a "let's see some games" perspective. This is all subject to change, and I wouldn't be surprised if more companies are added to the list, and I'll be sure to update this if that is the case. A full listing of the events as of 1st September can be found here. Times listed below are in British Summer Time and Japanese Standard Time. 24th September Xbox Tokyo Game Show Showcase | 13:00 - 13:50 BST / 21:00 - 21:50 JST Square Enix | 14:00 - 14:50 BST / 22:00 - 22:50 JST 25th September SEGA & Atlus TV | 12:00 - 12:50 BST / 20:00 - 23:00 JST Capcom (ft. Resident Evil Village) | 14:00 - 14:50 BST / 22:00 - 22:50 JST 26th September Cyberpunk 2077 Night City Wire Japan Special | 06:00 - 06:50 BST / 14:00 - 14:50 JST Level 5 TGS Special Meeting | 07:00 - 08:50 BST / 15:00 - 16:50 JST Konami Information Program | 12:00 - 12:50 BST / 20:00 - 20:50 JST Koei Tecmo Special (ft. Ryza 2 and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity) | 13:00 - 14:50 BST / 21:00 - 22:50 JST 27th September Koei Tecmo Musou Special (ft. 2 new Dynasty Warrior titles) | 07:00 - 07:50 BST / 15:00 - 15:50 JST Bandai Namco (ft. Scarlet Nexus and Sword Art Online) | 09:00 - 10:50 BST / 17:00 - 18:50 JST

Next (?) Night City Wire seems to be taking place at 06:00 BST on 26th September, but is described as a "Japan Special", so it remains to be seen if there will be any new info at the event. You'd think so, but could just be a marketing push in Japan

We still have two threads for this game, but this one was opened first, so...I'm going to pop it in here We'll get our next look at 14:00 BST on 25th September during Tokyo Game Show.

The next Xbox Showcase will be the opening show of Tokyo Game Show (outside of the ceremony), starting at 12:00 BST on 24th September.

Great topic for discussion. As someone who fell into movies hard towards the end of high school, and then games really hard after leaving, I feel like reviews are a really good starting point to reference when making your first foray into any new type of entertainment: games, books, films, heck even specific genres (anime comes to mind specifically when I say this). I just think it's a great way to quickly cement yourself in that medium, by gaining a better understanding of the technical language, what is and isn't popular (and most importantly, in good reviews, why that is), and most importantly giving you things to want to check out and to start building confidence in what you're talking about (either in person or online). When I first dive into a new type of entertainment, I check out reviews (and in a lot of cases, specifically review scores to help avoid potentially having things spoiled) and recommendations, then make a list of what my gut instinct tells me I'd like, and then just start trying things out. I don't think I'm too selective with my gaming choices (one or two genres I definitely want to play more of, but I'm up for playing almost anything from any time, so long as I'm in the mood for it), or even with movies, but I'm incredibly selective with longer investments, such as anime, so my list is mainly built up of well received series. This all being said, as someone who watched film reviews almost religiously and listen to a movie podcast every week day towards the end of high school, I specifically soured on film reviews around the release of The Last Jedi. Normally I would go into a film watching reviews, watch it myself, watch more reviews, return to the film, and form my own opinion; with The Last Jedi, I'm not sure if it was the exhaustion of the stark contrast (and negativity) surrounding the film's critical and audience reception, or it being quite a middling experience for myself after that first viewing, but I tried to watch a review or two after seeing it a few times and I noticed for the first time that I just didn't care what the reviewers I normally watched had to say. That's not to say that they didn't have good points, and there's a lot of criticism I think which can and should be aimed at that film, but the way the Star Wars community specifically became the most toxic it had been since perhaps The Phantom Menace, and how it generally didn't want to criticise things in a constructive or, more importantly, respectful way...honestly, kind of soured me on the series as a whole. It was an exhausting process, and even among friends I found it difficult to have a conversation like we normally would about what we did and didn't like about the film. To swing this back around to the topic at hand though, I think I'm where you're at @Fierce_LiNk. Maybe it's something to do with the state of the world, or how people seem to generally think a louder opinion is a more relevant or justified one, but I've generally become sick of reviews. I genuinely can't remember the last time I watched a film review. I think it's also just because I know my own tastes and preferences well enough at this point that I generally have a better idea of if I'll enjoy something going into it, so don't need to depend on reviews as much. With games, if I know I'm getting a game and nothing will change that (this year: FF7R, TLOU2, Ghost of Tsushima) then maybe I'll watch the Easy Allies review for it, because those are some excellently written reviews but do a good job I feel of being balanced and fair, all while doing it's best to avoid spoiling anything. But for those games, I'm buying them, and nothing anyone says will change that. Anecdotally I really enjoyed those three games I listed, but heck, a 6/10 score for any of them wouldn't dissuade me. I like going in not knowing what critics thought, but at the same time because of where I land with reviews right now, I like to have something of a general idea as to what the criticisms might be, if not too specific (i.e. performance issues, story pacing issues, good voice-acting, etc.). On the other hand, games I have little to no interest in playing? I might watch a review or read around just to know what's going on, and be aware of that conversation surrounding that game, but not so I can moan about it or even partake in the conversation, but just to be aware of it. An example of this would be Flight Simulator: reviewed really well, but I quite frankly don't have the time or PC to warrant me playing that game, but I was really curious about the conversation going on surrounding it, and love that it's been well received. When I'm not sure what I want to play next is normally when I seek out reviews (and in some cases trailers, too), whether it be picking what's next from the games on my shelf or if something is coming up. I hadn't played a game since the start of the month and just starting to write my own "review"/reflection on when I played Yakuza 3 earlier this summer got me really excited and was enough to make me dive into Yakuza 4! A bit of a jumbled scattershot of thoughts, but in short, while I think reviews have their time and place in helping us make informed decisions on how we spend our time, or learning more about an interest, I think the sheer number of reviews and the toxicity which can oftentimes be attached to them has made it a minefield I don't enjoy navigating as much as I once did.

Made some more progress today, got to the end of Chapter 7. Chapter 4 ended up being pretty long, though I guess that's partly my own fault for giving so many substories a go I'm really loving the main story, so becoming increasingly selective about the substories I follow up now. Speaking of the main story: HOLY YES. Chills. Laughs. Fist pumps. Yakuza

Started Yakuza 4 last night, going to be continuing with Chapter 4 tonight. Seems a much slower burn in setting up the main story than the previous games after that initial hook early on, but I know there are multiple playable characters in this game, so I'm not too surprised. Super weird not starting the game playing as Kiryu for a change, BUT, Akiyama is awesome. A big fan of his backstory so far, being on the flip side of how Yakuza 0 started and being a "loan shark", learning so much more about a different side of Kamurocho, and just interacting with the place differently. Really great seeing how the place has changed since 3. Substories are still great, the one I will title "¥30 million scam" had me in stitches towards the end. Slight nitpick would be going back to the Sky Finance office to continue with (or even wrap up!) one substory, only to have another start, sometimes out of the blue. Also been a LOT of references to the past games already, such as with Akiyama's backstory of course, but also little things like recommending a place to that food critic in a substory and being like "Yeah, obviously the best place around here for ramen is Kyushu No. 1 Star, you should absolutely go for the pork bone broth!" based on knowledge gained from the past games. It also does such a great job at setting up the tone, very early on you know it's going to be a much darker affair than Yakuza 3 was (which I had a great time with, felt like a summer special! Smaller scale but still great), and focus very heavily on what's going on with the Yakuza. It's an interesting direction to go in after having such a Kiryu driven story in 3, and I can't wait to see more. A lot of different sides at play, reminds me a lot of 0 so far. Obviously I've seen the cover of the Collection, the icon on the PS4 menu, and the opening montage at the beginning. There's a face which seems familiar to me, so I just want to throw who I think it is in a spoiler tag as a guess more than anything, just to come back to it later. I'm loving this. This series man. Cosy and brutal and not afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve, what's not to love?

It's getting to the point with this sort of thing where I question if Disney are inevitably going to have projects depend on this more, for example if we were to ever see Luke Skywalker in live-action set between ROTJ and TFA. It's going to be a difficult line to toe, because while I would have personally much preferred Harrison Ford's younger face to be plastered all over Solo and for a half decent voice actor to have voiced him, you then end up in a situation where Alden Ehrenreich probably doesn't get the role in the first place, or if he does his name isn't advertised, and he isn't doing press junkets (such as with Guy Henry as Tarkin in Rogue One). But then, we do know Lucasfilm has scans of all of their (major) actors' faces, and George was always looking ahead with this sort of thing, so I'm curious to see how it goes. It would certainly make it much easier to tell stories in the GFFA a hundred years from now in live-action, rather than having to lean so heavily on animation. As for Solo 2...I don't think it'll happen, purely because of the box office numbers of the first film (I mean, that and the production mess it ended up being). And yes, I know they absolutely did send that film out to die: next to Infinity War, Incredibles 2, et al, oh and not to forget the nonexistent marketing campaign. It was stupid. Granted, I think we potentially end up with something better out of it, a Disney+ show a la Young Indy. That's all I wanted from the start with a new Han anyways (that and some more stuff between ROTJ and TFA...), heck why not bookend the show HIMYM style and have it be an older Han reminiscing and telling these old stories to a young Ben?

As someone who grew up on the early LEGO Star Wars games and adores how they're timeless treasures which breaks down a major barrier for all people playing (regardless of age or language comprehension), I always think that's the best way to go. But the second best in my opinion is not using the original voices like they did with LEGO TFA, as @Ronnie mentioned (you're right by the way Ronnie, and I remember them making a huge deal out of it at the time), where they lifted most of the lines straight from the film, re-recorded a few, and only added a couple here and there. It's honestly kind of lazy in my opinion and doesn't leave much room for playfulness and comedy, which is what these games are all about. I remember it's why I never picked up the LEGO Avengers game, because it received similar treatment. Here we have Sam Witwer as Palpatine, and what mostly sounds like a returning cast from The Clone Wars (Matt Lanter as Anakin, James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan, Cat Taber as Padmé, Tom Kane as Qui-Gon and Yoda, etc.). I'm not sure about Rey - that could be Daisy, but it's hard to tell here I think, and if it is her I'm confident there'll be more original lines here than in TFA, so it works either way - or Han, but that kind of sounds like Matt Mercer as original trilogy Luke to me (I think he portrayed him in Battlefront II if I recall correctly?). Curious if they dropped Mark Hamill a line for older Luke... I think it's the next best thing. Honestly, with everything going on right now in the world (I mean, even without it, to be honest), I'd much rather this be voiced than not. As much as I love the grunts and sighs of the earlier LEGO games, this seems to be shaping up to be a voice cast Star Wars fans are very familiar with, and they deserve all of the work they can get. Hopefully they have a lot of fun with it like they did for some of the background voice work in the films!

So I actually ended up checking out the beta expecting the single player stuff @Map mentioned to clock in like an hour or something, but nope. Way too long, after two missions it would allow you to invite players but wouldn't let you play with them, which was hilarious gave up in the end on trying to play with my friend, weirdly run beta. What I played wasn't especially fun, had little idea what was going on most of the time, and you'd enter a building, for example, and every corridor would look the same, and without a compass/objective marker it became tedious to move forwards. Also, weird checkpoints. Feel like it should've been opening mission (basically tutorial) > option to play either single player or multiplayer. Not opening mission > second SP mission > haha you thought this was a multiplayer game, here's a third SP mission > multiplayer. Drove me up the wall. Then we talked about this with the rest of our group and said we'd probably wait until it's on sale at Christmas, probably have worked out the kinks by then, but I think it inevitably will be on sale nonetheless. And then Square Enix decided to kill any chances of me playing the game anytime soon by announcing a $10 battle pass for cosmetics for each playable character from launch. That's insane. I don't even know how much backlash there might be, because I'm fully expecting this game to have been drowned out by the end of the month, as there's a LOT coming out next month (heck, I think it's going to have issues competing with Tony Hawk). While I'm sure this game might still have some noticeable early sales numbers, I think it's hard to maintain a community when things like this are brought up for the first time a week out from release, getting major Battlefront II vibes from keeping this so quiet (even if it is cosmetics only).

Mythical Beasts gameplay from Gamescom:

Deluxe Edition... Neat. Not sure if I'll bite this time like I did with TFA, though. UPDATE: a better look at it. Blue Milk Luke!

It really does. As someone who will be new to the franchise, I was completely sold on what we saw during the PS5 event in June. This and everything they were saying in their interview with Geoff makes it a Day 1 purchase for me. Also, for those who missed it, they revealed that the game would be coming in the PS5's "launch window". I supposed that could be read in a lot of ways, but for me, I'm leaning towards that meaning the first six months? Which alongside with Miles Morales means that Insomniac is doing a lot of heavy lifting for PlayStation going into this next gen, and I can't imagine Spider-Man 2 being too far behind in all honesty (I imagine late 2022 at the latest, unless they hit a development speed bump?). Insanely good purchase by Sony.

Ratchet & Clank looked fantastic, love the sound of what they're doing with the DualSense's unique functions such as with their adaptive trigger example, sounds interesting! LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga probably had my favourite trailer (stealing the Ep IX trailer music!), felt like a lot of care went into that game, and it looks like so much fun. The Star Wars: Squadrons single player trailer was also pretty good, loved the propaganda at the start. Other than that...the show didn't really live up to my expectations, which were already low going in. Still on the fence with Mafia: Definitive Edition after how the recent remasters were handled, and not much else really grabbed me that comes to mind right now. It wasn't very well paced, and I found myself nodding off about halfway through. Honestly, think I'm just ready for the next gen marketing to kick in and get my pre-order in at this point.

Single player trailer from Gamescom: Loved that New Republic propaganda at the start, game looks good. I'm (still) in. Really aren't leaving much up to the imagination with Project Starhawk though, are they? Guessing this means we'll finally get to see one in action!

Pushed back to Spring 2021 (originally 20th October 2020) Using the music from the last trailer for Episode IX took this to a whole other level of anticipation for me Still would've been cool with a version filled with mumbling, but I'll take it! Just looks so much fun, and like it's been made with so much love.

LEGO Star Wars using the music from the last trailer for The Rise of Skywalker has got me so hyped. Trailer of the show for me so far. I am so in.

Yep, caught myself drifting off for a moment there. I mean, what was with that WoW: Shadowlands animated short? It was so long! Not very well paced at all at the moment. Hopefully the Ratchet demo turns up soon...

Oh this sucks. Been a while since I watched Soccer Saturday, the chaos of that 2011/12 was definitely the most I tuned in. Not very happy reading through what the reasoning might be, if there's any truth to it. I am absolutely all for diversifying on-screen personalities, but this doesn't mean you should just sack your current personalities, especially when they're as experienced and well-received as Le Tissier, Nicholas and Thompson. Unfortunately this seems to be becoming more commonplace across all industries. Again, diversity is great, but it shouldn't be the first thing considered in these situations.

Most annoying thing I've heard about all of this was on Sky Sports while flicking through channels, something to the effect of "if United can't afford Sancho, then of course they can't afford Messi!" Of course Manchester United can afford Messi, and of course they can afford Sancho! The higher-ups just think that other clubs should polish their shoes for them and aren't in the slightest way respectful: I think they think Dortmund is still a smaller club than United (in worldwide appeal/fanbase size? Sure. In terms of what happens on the pitch? Haven't been for years) and should think it's some kind of honour to sell a player to United, and should sell lower than their asking price - even though they have more than enough money to bring Sancho over at the asking price, which in my opinion was totally fair. Utterly ridiculous. On the flip side, Chelsea have been doing some wonderful business, our best summer in a long time: Werner and Ziyech before the window started, Chilwell confirmed and Thiago Silva all but, and Havertz and Sarr seemingly on the way too. Just need a goalkeeper too now and we're set. I know Abramovich loves Messi, but I think our great transfer business this summer actually puts us out of the running, and honestly, while I'd love to see it, I don't think he'd suit our system or our long-term plans.

Figured as this is going to be the final hurrah for the COVID-19-induced Summer of Gaming, it warranted it's own thread for the main show - which is tonight! Kyle Bosman will also be hosting a pre-show which starts half an hour before the main event. So, how's everyone feeling going into Gamescom? Maybe it's just me but my expectations feel tempered by still not knowing much about the next gen consoles, and I'm not expecting many Japanese games to turn up here, what with Tokyo Game Show's digital event next month and the potential for another PlayStation event prior to/at launch. I'm expecting the already announced big boys like Call of Duty, fully expecting EA to show up in some capacity with a remaster or an EA Sports demo drop, and a slow of AA games. Think it will be a great time nonetheless! Oh, and obligatory Gamescom tune (skip to 08:19 in the event the link is broken):

Pre-order registration has just gone up in the US... Apparently PS+ members are getting free shipping, and it makes sense that Sony might want to cut out the middle man to some extent to help avoid scalpers...or perhaps more accurately, just get the box in the hands of their fans. Some FAQ stuff for pre-orders directly through Sony: SOON™. But seriously, surely it has to be in the next week or two with this out there now, right? RIGHT?!

SEGA have announced the end of the SEGA Ages initiative (linked article in Japanese). This means that Herzog Zwei will be the final SEGA Ages release. The article goes on to say that there are more M2 games which they wish to re-release in the future, and SEGA's own Rieko Doama and Kagasei Shimomura are already working hard on their next project, though it's not clear if that will be related.

Oh, it's great to see Square Enix finally bring the Final Fantasy Legend games to the Switch. Absolutely everyone's been asking for them. No other Final Fantasy games we want re-released. A very tone deaf Partners Showcase, seems about right at the moment and I can see them cashing in some marketing cheques right now. Jokes aside and in all honesty though, when do people expect the next actual Direct - not Pokémon, and not a Mini (or apparently much worse: a Mini Partners Showcase) - to land? Because, if I'm remembering right, we haven't had one since the start of September last year when Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition was announced, have we?