Julius

Tim Rogers, aka the Dragon Quest guy over at Kotaku, has released his first Action Button review (he left Kotaku a little while back). It's three hours long. Hell yes.

Review copies are out there. Embargo lifts Friday 12th June at 12:01 AM PT (08:01 AM BST). After the whole backlash from the leaked story elements, dropping reviews a week before release shows a whole lot of confidence from PlayStation/Naughty Dog. Don't think we have any real reason to not be optimistic heading closer to release. Spoilers taken out of context always make very little sense and land the wrong way, much more interested in seeing how this all plays out.

Even if it's mainly for advertising purposes, the timing of this this is a little odd to me. It's one thing to get a deep dive on a new IP with an open world like Ghost of Tsushima, and come away like I've seen so little, but having a State of Play dedicated to a game heavily focused on telling a linear story (even with the leaks aside), just three and a half weeks before release? I feel like State of Play is mostly watched by gaming fans with their ears a little closer to the ground than most, and the majority of which who would watch this normally are likely already in on the game as it is, so I'm not convinced that this necessarily puts more eyes on the game. Just seems a little odd to me, but hey, maybe another round of previews were originally planned around this time? And if that were the case, I suppose this would be the best alternative given the state of the world. I finished the first game just last week and I'll actively be avoiding this, even though I'm all in - I mean, we're so close! - and I doubt I'll be the only one. But hey, if this is the next and last thing on PlayStation's checklist before we get some more PS5 news..?

Put a good chunk of time into 3 today, and have just seen the end of Chapter 10. Got to say, it's a very different game compared to the others that I've played so far in terms of scale and there being two threads for Kiryu instead of one. I don't think it could possibly be to everyone's liking, seeing as one of the threads almost entirely does away with what you think the focus would be, but instead you get this cosy, slow-paced journey which just feels like picking up from where we last left off with (Kiwami) 2. It's not the best story so far, and it doesn't have the best villain/s, but it's still managing to hit all of the right notes for me. Characters are still endearing, revisiting the streets of Kamurocho feels like visiting back home, and Onikawa just feels so much more laid-back. Substories are tiny morsels of hilarity, charm, and the occasional emotional depth we've come to expect injected throughout the game, and still do a good job of keeping things fresh. Even if the game on the whole is clunkier and generally much slower than more recent entries, I'm still having a blast with it. Also @Mandalore, the thing that happens in your Chapter 10 spoiler tag...doesn't happen in Chapter 10. I just finished it and checked your tag to see if I wanted to discuss it, and yeahhhhh, that hasn't happened yet guessed it would be heading in that general direction anyway, so no big deal, but it might be worth updating for anyone else who plays and comes across it!

Started Yakuza 3 a few hours ago and just finished Chapter 4, where things are starting to pick up a bit. Definitely the slowest start of any of the games I think, but there's a lot of jumping around in the first few chapters, and honestly, I think it does a pretty good job as something of a prologue (especially considering how much the events of 2 are referred to), almost in spite of that. Cosy vibes at the orphanage and in Okinawa, great seeing how the dynamics work there between Kiryu and the kids, and it's a great way to escape everything going on at the moment. Felt like a beach/holiday episode of an anime at times, which is to say it feels great, and certainly put a smile on my face a number of times. I'm not sure how well the game is going to pivot into the more serious narrative which seems to be kicking off after such a warm start, from a pacing or narrative perspective, but of course I can't wait to see how it plays out. I think a fair share of the nitpicks I have so far are likely related to this being a remastered PS3 game, but still, I can't help like some of them could have been tweaked for a slightly better experience. I don't think these nitpicks will go away as the game goes on, so I'll mention them now. And to be clear, I'm really enjoying the game, I just feel like these have been too noticeable to not mention: - no pausing in cutscenes. Feel like this is the biggest one I have to highlight considering that it seems the most reasonable thing to add in the game, considering that it was present in 0 and both Kiwami and Kiwami 2. - Also, there are times where the budget limitations show (when compared to the more recent games): having a short cinematic cutscene play out, then interrupted by an in-engine cutscene which plays out like normal gameplay with text and without voices, before jumping back into the cinematic cutscene to complete the scene. It just makes for some real odd pacing. Then there has been one in the in-engine type that I mentioned which wouldn't autoplay the text, and instead gave you the option to autoplay it? Considering how short the scene was, seemed like an odd decision. - enemies block way more in this game than they did in the other games that I've played in the series so far, and bosses even more so. It kind of narrows down your options to approach situations differently quite considerably when compared to the other games, and often boils down to waiting for the enemy to swing at you before you can sidestep behind them, unleash a single chain, before waiting for them to hit you again. Just seems to drag the battles out in a way which isn't that enjoyable. - that camera's horizontal axis controls are seriously sensitive, and there aren't any sensitivity options. Takes a good while to adjust to it. Anyway, this is certainly the game I need right now, and I'm gobbling it up. Can't wait to play some more tomorrow.

Jeff Grubb teasing the next game from A Way Out's Josef Fares: I'm excited for seeing what this is. Played through A Way Out in one sitting with my younger brother just last weekend, and we had a great time. A very unique and well directed co-op experience.

Maybe, but it seems doubtful. This is Nolan's second largest budget (reportedly $205 million to $250 million) next to The Dark Knight Rises ($250 million), and the largest of his original films, so I don't see WB sending this out to die at the box office, so to speak. This was being positioned as a summer blockbuster by one of the few directors whose name has a pull to a wide audience, and considering how much WB put behind it, they were probably expecting a box office upwards of $750 million. Even if lockdown is eased by then almost everywhere and they were hoping to show it on every screen, then there's the cost of going hard in on advertising if they are hoping to be the only film in theatres/taking up most screens and seats, and because the public is likely to still be wary of potentially large public gatherings by then, their box office per theatre will likely nosedive, and I genuinely think they'd be fortunate to make much of a profit. I doubt it would be enough for WB to be happy, either way. I'm guessing that Nolan is the one adamant for theatrical release, and WB seem happy to do that, but throwing years of hard work under the bus knowing that it will likely flop seems like a great way to anger their golden goose. It seems wiser for them to just wait and see, at least for now. If they were all in on July 17th, I'm sure it would have been at the end of the trailer. As much as I want to see the film, I doubt I'd go opening weekend, even if it were being shown in theatres and social distancing measures were in place. It just doesn't seem worth the risk to me, and I imagine that will be the case for most.

Yeah, that's what I've been seeing too. There's no way that he's letting this go to streaming, regardless, dude loves his cinema seats and screen too much for that. The date not being in the trailer but still being in the description means they're still going for a theatrical release first, but I think it means they're ready to pivot on the date, they're just waiting to see what happens I guess, like everyone else. The preview blew me away when I was surprised by it when I went to see TROS in December for my birthday, and it's Nolan, so I think it'll be great, but definitely wouldn't be the same without that IMAX screen. Yep, it's in the description for the trailer. Crazy, but hedging their bets on a return to the norm by then I guess. Probably wrongly, but still

New Tenet trailer, still looks awesome: Very weird seeing 'Coming to Theatres' with no release date/window knowing just how close we were to release, wonder how much we're going to see that in the coming months?

Started and finished Left Behind this evening. Feels like a great piece of DLC: not too long, doesn't tarnish the main game's ending at all, and I'm glad that it wasn't included in the original game, because it really would have hit the pacing hard and made the following section play out completely differently. It was great to see more of Ellie and get to know her a little better. Hotel Basement 2.0 and the origins of her puns are the biggest takeaways here. Now time to get hyped for Part II!

Awesome stuff @Map, it looks great! Really digging the art style and colour palette you went with

Looks like the tweet has been taken down in favour of a new one saying Gran Turismo Sport instead, so in case anyone didn't see it: Very interesting time when PlayStation's silence could very slowly become a problem. Even if there's zero truth to GT7 potentially being leaked by Next Level Racing and PlayStation Brazil, it does feel like expectations are slowly starting to be set for launch which are out of their control/potentially through mistakes. It will be interesting to see if there's anything else like this which gets flagged ahead of their rumoured June event.

Next Level Racing said initially that it was an internal mockup, and then shortly after posted this update on Instagram, stating that it was a mockup found on the internet. A mockup that I'm honestly having a hard time locating anywhere on the internet. No "insiders" have commented on this, either, which is very odd. Looks like they're just trying to save face (which lets face it, they would have to do regardless), and are doing a pretty poor job of it.

Good lord. I know that's it's in the NPD's Top 10 like every month, but still, I find GTA V selling 130,000,000 units nuts.

Next Level Racing, a professional racing cockpit manufacturer that is an official PlayStation licensee (they make cockpits for better simulation in driving games), has potentially just leaked the existence of Gran Turismo 7, and revealed that it's coming this year. Well, there's your graphical showcase to try to match Forza 8. I haven't played a GT in a very long time, so I'd happily take this.

Love Zoom, been picking up a couple of films from them myself as of late. Got a whole pile of films still wrapped from the last couple of months on my shelf, which is a rare sight for me haven't been watching nearly as many films during lockdown, strangely. I'd also recommend signing up for the HMV newsletter if you don't mind that sort of thing for keeping an eye on prices, because occasionally their offers are way too good to turn down. Got the BFI Kurosawa Samurai Collection on Blu-Ray for £24.99 as part of their recent reduction to the BFI line (was previously £49.99) ahead of some much need revisits to those films ahead of Ghost of Tsushima, so that's well worth checking out!

And I've just seen the credits roll on The Last of Us for the first time. Wow wow wow. For the second time this month I'm saying this after completing a game: this is now one of my favourite games. The character development in this game and their writing is ridiculously good. It doesn't force itself into your mind, but always gives you some time to ponder things after hinting at certain things, and doesn't shy away from being direct when it needs to. This goes hand in hand with some excellent level and gameplay design. Areas are never too large to fully explore, and so exploring every single area's nooks and crannies doesn't feel like I'm going out of the way and losing track of the main objective. Not only that, but because this is a survival horror game, by design it knows that you're going to be checking everything out, and so finding notes, recorders, etc., feels like a totally natural way to explore the world's history. It really reminds me of items and Mini Medals in Dragon Quest in this way: practically everything you find feels useful. I read and listened to everything I found, which I very rarely do outside of JRPGs that I'm adoring, and although I didn't find everything - there's one particular door which comes to mind which I didn't have the materials to make a shiv to break into back near Bill's place, and I remember early on feeling the game was pushing back hard enough to discourage this somewhat at the very beginning - I still felt completely satisfied with my discoveries. Piecing together the history of some of these places is heartbreaking. By the way, holy cow, some of the moments in this game are INTENSE. That hotel basement will haunt me to the grave. The environmental design deserves special praise, because I was always in a constant state of "man, wouldn't it suck to have to face a bunch of Clickers here?". I chose to focus on upgrading Weapon Sway, Shiv Master, and Maximum Health, and definitely feel like these made a lot of those more intense encounters much more manageable towards the end of the game. And then there's that change of pace in Silver Lake that comes along and turns everything on its head in the best way possible, and it doesn't feel so manageable once again. Seriously, that's one of my favourite "levels" in a video game. That was enough to convince me to pre-order Part II without even finishing the game. How did I find it as my first survival horror game? Super intense at times, almost overwhelming while exploring that damned hotel basement, but wow, I absolutely adored it. Weirdly, I'm so glad that I've been letting this sit on my shelf, because the wait until Part II being so short makes the experience that much sweeter. But yeah, I'm a fan - a very big fan - of what Naughty Dog accomplished with this game. I am so incredibly fortunate that despite spending a lot of time reading about, listening to, and of course experiencing what's going on in the gaming industry from a player's perspective, that I somehow managed to steer clear of having this game spoiled for me this whole time. The modern era games of Naughty Dog's that I'd played prior to this were the first three Uncharted games, and though there are certainly standout moments in those games (particularly in 2, I found), I never found myself as immersed, as invested, or with my jaw agape like I did with this game. It half makes me want to dive into Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy just so I have the full modern history of Naughty Dog games under my belt, but I definitely don't want to rush through them for the sake of it. Quick shout out to Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker for absolutely carrying this game with their amazing voice performances, and Gustavo Santaolalla's incredible score. It's so restrained and refined, and so naturally tuned to the world and the moments in this game, just...again, wow. Definitely going to let it ruminate, but I planning on playing through Left Behind tomorrow night, if not this weekend (hear that's only a couple of hours long, which seems just right for me for DLC and to tempt me to immediately dive back into this world), and of course talking about this in much more detail in my next Gaming Diary post.

Yep, super curious to see what they have in store for us. The only games that we know are in development are Shin Megami Tensei V (which we haven't seen since what, the Switch presentation in Jan 2017?!) and Studio Zero's Project Re Fantasy, and those games are in such a strange place in my head that they at least feel super far away. It's really strange that we've heard so little at this point - are they normally this secretive, or could there be some sort of development problems? For Project Re Fantasy at least, we've only seen concept art and that really weird trailer if I recall, but I do remember reading somewhere that we should be seeing something about both of these games in 2020. Wonder if we'll finally see a worldwide release date for 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, too. And maybe some news on Persona 5 Scramble?

I see Japanese developers and I'm in. Wonder if this is some of them moving up their Tokyo Game Show announcements now that it's been cancelled? Because if it is, I'm pretty excited for it.

More details from Famitsu being discussed over on ResetEra: I know that it's "just" a remaster, but still, man, that seems like a very quick turnaround to me. Just a bit over a year and a half, and it looks this good? Makes me wonder where they're at with their new fantasy IP...

Takahashi has been speaking with Weekly Famitsu as part of the Xenoblade focused issue that's coming out, including mentioning that a critical path play of Future Connect should be 10-12 hours, and about 20 hours including all side quests. Key points translated by Gematsu:

Yeah...that was a totally tongue in cheek jest based on how we've seen them support it so far. In all seriousness, though, I do agree with @Happenstance. They're already showing minimal support for it. Stadia is a front for them to get things in place for the future, but the tech and support clearly isn't there (yet) from them. I expect a major relaunch, and probably even a rebrand, in 5-10 years when streaming games (as well as advertised) becomes an achievable reality. Google can then also turn around and give us the whole "from our decade of experience in streaming games, blah blah blah" marketing speak.

From what I've read/seen, Amazon has been all over the place with game pre-orders for the last year or so, with issues like running out of stock for customers who had pre-ordered well ahead of time, not delivering on release date, etc. Shame, because I remember them being great for it. ShopTo is the place that I would wholeheartedly recommend pre-ordering from. I've pre-ordered from them a number of times and get it by release date at the latest, and others here can attest to that too. I've also found their customer service very good if/when there are any issues. Worth noting that I think they're charging £0.99 for Royal Mail 1st Class delivery on orders under £50 (the default delivery method) when it was previously free, but apparently that's to do with keeping their operation running as smoothly as possible during all of this. Yeah, I've managed to steer well clear of it all so far and am playing through the game for the first time (might see credits tonight?). Absolutely loving it. Kind of like you, I'm very concerned about needing to offer my soul to make sure my PS4 doesn't explode with Part II, though!

Not exactly related to sales or charts, but today CD Projekt Group surpassed Ubisoft as Europe's most valuable video game company.

Calling it a day after finishing up in the snowy town of Silver Lake. Wow wow wow. I am absolutely blown away by how elegantly paced the story is in Silver Lake, the way that it all starts out as a decent change of pace from what we had to to that point in the game, a refreshing feeling of powerlessness and being overwhelmed after perhaps starting to come to terms with the game leading up to it. I didn't quite catch it with the first three Uncharted games (apart from maybe certain parts, mostly in 2), but yeah, I'm really starting to understand the love for Naughty Dog. Better late than never I guess. I'm loving this game, but Silver Lake is by far and away my favourite part yet. No idea how long is left, and don't want to rush through, but it feels like I might be able to finish the game tomorrow after work. We'll see.