Julius

PlayStation new release highlights of the next month: What's everyone in for? For me, I think I might finally buy my first new release of 2025 – but I'm still undecided on whether that's Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii or Monster Hunter Wilds. Very curious about Afterlove EP, there's also Tiny Terry's's Turbo Trip finally coming to console to keep an eye out for, too.

Always rated the Arse

Rumours swirling from Nate on Reddit that a State of Play is coming the week of Valentine's Day, which would seem about right to expect anyways. The big PlayStation game this year I'd want more news on is Ghost of Yōtei, but I don't see Yōtei releasing until September onwards (autumn vibes to that cover art) and I doubt we get a release date while GTA VI's remains in limbo, so that'll probably come at a later point? So, realistically, the main things I'd want to see in the next State of Play are release dates for Snake Eater, which has been totally MIA since TGS a few months, and the Xbox games officially confirmed to be coming to PlayStation in Spring but have yet to see release dates: Indiana Jones and The Great Circle and Forza Horizon 5. These are all games I'm totally down to pick up Day 1, I just need dates for them! Besides them, I don't think there's much else I want or expect to see at the next SoP, but I'm open to being pleasantly surprised. It feels like Square Enix are going to hold their potential goods back for the Switch 2 event, I imagine, so I don't see the Tactics or IX Remake turning up here (if I had to pick one I guess it'd be IX purely because of its ties to the original PlayStation) and likewise for anything Dragon Quest or anything I want out of Chrono Trigger. Probably see one of the upcoming PlayStation GAAS titles? Really curious to see how the next one is presented in a post-Concord world. Got to imagine a Death Stranding 2 update is due at this point as well, maybe that could get a release window or even a date, what with it being billed for release this year too? I'd say my hype is pretty subdued for this one, if nothing else because I know exactly what I want to get out of it, but I'm excited to get some release dates for the games I want to see -- so it's hard to complain!

At the moment I think you have a few options: For one-liner/single paragraph spoilers with no line breaks: Use the old BBCode of [ SPOILER ] and [ / SPOILER ] like so: For multiple lines/paragraphs with line breaks: - copy a spoiler tag from an existing post. When I do this on mobile I have to edit an existing post of mine and then awkwardly highlight the text before the spoiler tag, the spoiler tag itself, and the text immediately following, copy it all > paste it > then remove the text before, in, and after the spoiler tag. It's a bit easier on PC I find where you can just copy the spoiler tag box itself. - leave the spoiler until the end of the post and use the good old [ SPOILER ] and [ / SPOILER] (okay, so apparently I can't just leave a space after the / as I've just learned, which has spawned its own spoiler tag ). I say to leave it until the end of the post because otherwise it seems to swallow up everything you type after the /spoiler code. EDIT: just [ SPOILER ] (no spaces) will suffice to create a spoiler tag apparently I'd probably also suggest titling the spoilers with text ahead of the spoiler tag itself given that previous spoiler titles have gone missing and there's seemingly not a way to add them now – revisited some old threads recently and seeing spoiler tags can be a bit confusing to the point I end up dodging almost all of them. I want to get around to watching Severance at some point, but it's pretty rare that I watch shows while they release -- I'd typically rather wait until it's all over and digest it all in one go. We'll see, though, you guys have been talking about Severance S2 enough that it's got to be worth keeping up with, never mind the crazy number of rewatches you mention!

Going to jump aboard the fear of heights train @Ashley @drahkon and @Cube are on, but throughout my life it's manifested itself in different ways to the point I think it ties into the idea of overcoming it a good bit. Look, forever and always, glass floors in tall buildings/structures/elevators (the sick bastards who design elevators like this have an ass-whooping waiting for them in hell I swear), total no-go for me -- I'm fairly sure? It's been a good while since I've been put in that position. And the stupidly big gaps you can look through between steps on some steep stairways, oof. Up until I was in my latter years of high school, though, it was horrible. Rock climbing, abseiling, Big Swing rides - hell, most types of rides involving heights - and big slides, you name it, put me in most situations and I just couldn't stand the idea of heights, maybe even more so if there were moving parts to whatever was going. Made things like the Pioneer Centre and PGL an absolute nightmare for me in primary school. But then, sometime towards the end of high school, that changed a good bit? I was big on architecture, and so if scaling a tall tower which might otherwise set off the fear before interested me enough, then the fear of heights just melted away. Similarly, we went on a trip to a rock climbing centre as part of DofE in my final year and I found out that I could climb to the top of a rock climbing wall without giving my fear of heights a second thought, whereas my friends who were adamant that they had a fear of heights just couldn't. Looking back, I think I put the changes down to a combination of gaining confidence at the time and going through enough things which were waaaaaaaay more stressful in high school/my personal life to the point I just didn't care enough to give it a second thought, might not be the healthiest way to overcome a fear, but hey, I think it mostly worked. Maybe that's something I look to push myself on and test some point this year? These days, I think it mainly manifests when looking straight down from a great height and that feeling of vertigo kicks on which brings on the fear and anxiety. As a quick aside, The Last of Us Part II probably has my favourite depiction of said feeling in any media, just because of how accurately it conveys the distorting feeling of vertigo a fear of heights can bring on to non-height-fearing people.

Just seen about the plane crash in Philadelphia now too – a girl and her mother heading back home to Tijuana after completing a course of lifesaving treatment for the girl in the US, which was sponsored by a third-party – good God, that just isn't fair, not in the slightest May they rest in peace. What a torrid end to such a draining week/month of bad news.

The game turns a year old today:

Laika: Aged Through Blood landed on Switch yesterday: While this was one I had shortlisted as one of many, many indies to get around to back at the end of 2023, @Nolan has actually played the game and shared his thoughts a little while back here, and I think does an even better job of selling me on the game than the trailers have that I've seen. Just one I wanted to make sure was highlighted now that it's finally on Switch!

So, there's an interesting update on Lance McDonald's 60fps patch for the game~ Yeah, so SIE have DMCA'd it and Lance has taken it down...nearly 4 years after it was released, with the game's 10th anniversary in March. I'm not saying anything, I'm just saying.

This cover of the Pokémon Emerald Frontier Brain battle music (from the same guy who did the Ruby & Sapphire and Diamond & Pearl medleys, Dr Pez) is something else And that something else is perfection 2:47 onwards holy damnnnnnn

Just been adding some indie games to my Steam wishlist, and realised that I add so many games to my Steam wishlist via the Steam app purely because it's the easiest to access and navigate, and despite the fact that it's my least used ecosystem that I have access to: it doesn't have a silly limit like the PS Store wishlist does, and I can only access my Switch wishlist via the website or the console itself. I also get regular notifications from the Steam app which helps me keep an eye on when things are releasing and what I'm interested in. It's got me thinking just how much more I want out of the eShop next gen, namely I'd want to see an app for it outside of it actually performing well and not being a stuttering mess. Oh, and maybe some awesome music to vibe to while looking around again, too. What are everyone else's hopes for a potentially revamped or new approach to the eShop on the Switch 2? Is there anything in particular you want to see them do differently or learn from the eShop as it is on Switch?

Glad you highlighted this, I was reading about it he other day and think it's a brilliant idea. Anything in this space where people can vote and a big company can potentially make something happen to follow up on it is great, I wasn't around for the Smash ballot back in the day but it's definitely giving me similar vibes. I also love that of the current Top 5 games with the most votes (those being Black & White, Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Collection, Black & White 2, The Operative: No One Lives Forever, and Freelancer), I'm only familiar with C&C by name, and I only recognise The Operative from the character in the artwork for it. I think Freelancer out of the bunch is the one which piques my curiosity most at a glance. I should probably look into how I can easily access GOG on my Steam Deck at some point!

The online component of the Multiverse dies after its next update, following Season 5 which will run from Feb 2nd to May 30th, following which it will only be delisted and only able to be played offline: There's got to be a story here about what WB's hopes and expectations for the game were back when it was conceptualised. Can't wait for the NoClip doc in like 5 years

It's probably the slight Mexican tint to it all, the fauna, the random off-road car darting towards the water's edge, and the nice clear waters

Yep this feels weird

Ridge Racer 64 races onto the N64 line-up – today!

After 32 hours, that's a wrap on my second Armored Core VI playthrough – all missions S-ranked, and Platinum got Yep, this has probably cemented itself as one of my favourites after this playthrough, and between this January and revisiting The Last of Us Part II last January, I think I've learned that I love revisiting and reassessing games at this particular time of year. Certainly helps if the game's spectacular Now, could we get news on a sequel already please Miyazaki and From?! I'm dying over here!

Feels kind of obvious to state at this point given that it's coming to PS5, but eXtas1s is saying that Forza Horizon 5 will indeed be coming to Switch 2. Like @Dcubed said, I imagine this is going to be the case for as much of the Xbox catalogue as the Switch 2 can handle. I'm curious to see what's there at launch. I think Halo and Forza Horizon both would be an absolute killer Day 1 combo. ...which is exactly why curation of your catalogue's releases is so important. You read to start taking some notes come the launch of the Switch 2, Phil & co.?

Yeah, definitely one of the easier Amon fights in my opinion, at least of the ones I've done. Felt very PS2 to me for some reason, maybe it was just being in the middle of all those shipping containers How many people did you throw into a river in the end? It really was. I'm curious to see if Pirate Yakuza has a similar issue, what with the case in Gaiden being that side content is such a large part of the game if you do everything, perhaps just given how much shorter Gaiden was. Chicken Man ruled though, and that final set of fights was pretty awesome

More details on the release from Forza.net: Panic Button doing this port is a very good sign given that they're a dedicated port studio and they've been behind the modern Doom ports to Switch, amongst a whole host of others, but I do have some questions. Firstly: does this get a physical release? I'd lean towards not given that other Xbox Game Studios releases haven't up until this point, but then, they've all been multiplayer or smaller scale titles so far – this and Indy feel like the first full-price AAA releases we've seen from them on PlayStation. There is also the fact that even first-party games on Xbox like Hellblade II: Senua's Saga didn't get physical releases on Xbox last year. Still, that'd be a hell of a collector's piece, hence my curiosity. Secondly: will this have adaptive trigger and haptic feedback support? Last I checked these weren't available features on Xbox Series controllers, but they're key features of the DualSense, so I'm curious is Panic Button are going to add support for those features in? As far as I'm aware the other Xbox Game Studios games to come to PlayStation have all done so with full trophy support, so I'm expecting a Forza Horizon 5 Platinum. That'll be fun! Between this and Indy being scheduled for a Spring release, both of which I'll be getting Day 1, as well as the other rumoured and confirmed games coming from XGS this year to other platforms, I have to imagine this is going to be the best year for Xbox as a publisher since the 360 (I'm also fairly sure I never played that many Xbox first-party games in a single year on my own 360 back in the day, so to have two in the same quarter is pretty wild!)...and depending on what else they get out - like that rumoured Oblivion remake - maybe ever? They've bottled their handling of supposedly competing with PlayStation completely over the last decade, but getting the chance to play some of their great games elsewhere makes me happy and, as I've said before, a bit sad for those who committed to Xbox at the start of this gen when picking up a Series X|S. I'm especially happy with how they started with smaller titles and multiplayer games to help them grow, because I'm sure many other businesses would've jumped in the deep end with Halo, Gears of War and Forza ports from the get-go – this feels a bit more planned out, even if it wasn't their initial goal when Phil Spencer took over so long ago. We've been getting State of Plays in February pretty consistently for a good while now – maybe we get release dates for this and Indy then?

Coming to PS5 this spring! I've been waiting for this! Holy. Shit. Day 1. I might finally have a reason to put GT7 down?!

GTA VI and its online component will be sold separately with a story upgrade available to Online owners, reports Wccftech, along with some pricing talk and potential news of locked 30fps on base next-gen consoles, and potentially 60fps on the PS5 Pro: £100 (+?) GTA VI + GTA VI Online incoming. Had a several hours long talk with a friend about this just the other day and I figured it'd be either this or a week of "earlier access" to the game ahead of launch which would get them to/around that £100 figure No surprise with the performance news, either. Can already see the ad in my mind's eye and talked about this with my friends at length forever ago: "plays best on PS5 Pro". Last year's release to help get production stock to a point that they can handle a massive spike whenever this game lands, and potentially a price cut or bundle for the Pro or standard PS5, makes a lot of sense now. Still won't be upgrading myself, though...

Feel like this might be of interest to some here: the Video Game History Foundation Library goes into early access – today! Definitely looks like it's worth checking out Also, I didn't know about it releasing today, so...did they just shadow-drop a LIBRARY?!

Summer Game Fest returns on Friday 6th June! It's better than nothing and though SGF is typically a step down, the 2024 TGAs were excellent – so I'm looking forward to it!