Julius

Have tracking info now for everything arriving tomorrow, so that's nice. On the other hand, still haven't heard back from GAME about delivery for the console changing from Royal Mail to Yodel, and looking on Twitter/ResetEra, I genuinely don't expect to. Hundreds of instances I've read now where people have paid for DPD/Royal Mail and been charged for it but it's been changed to Yodel without any confirmation, and GAME seemingly haven't got back to anyone. You would think that someone over there would have cottoned on by now. I raised a ticket yesterday morning and DM'd them on Twitter, but looking at their site for contact details, there's seemingly no other way to contact them: in their infinite wisdom, they no longer have a customer service number you can call as they have transitioned to working from home, and their support page points you to the live chat on their website, which is absolutely nowhere to be seen. Part of me remains hopeful that it's an error across the board, especially seeing as all accessories and games are still being shipped by DPD and Royal Mail, as was originally the case. The other part of me is designed to figuring out whether my PS5 turns up in pieces, or if it even turns up at all. And then there's the optimist in me, too, somewhere back there, hoping I get one of the few Yodel drivers who actually does their job. Going to be an unnecessarily stressful next 7 days or so waiting to find out what's actually going on. UPDATE: check Twitter for the 40th time today for an update on this, and of course there's a page hidden on the GAME site somewhere about this, which someone had to do some digging for. Seems like all of those charged now, from what I can tell, are the first wave of pre-orders from 23:00 on the night of the September event...and we're the ones who have had Yodel dumped on us. A 1 in 3 chance and I end up with by far the worst option. Don't even have the option for DPD anymore. Woo. Well, I at least hope everyone else enjoys their PS5 next week

Digital Foundry deep dive. It's long. Very long

Nominees coming next week:

Same thing with me, having not played up until the more recent Yakuza entries I'm going to have to force myself to be patient. And yeah, even though I'll be waiting for that next gen upgrade in March, I'm after that PS4 version so I've got them all in a similar case. I don't understand why SEGA insist on putting out Yakuza in steelbooks at launch, but I guess it's a great way to teach me patience

Cries in Europe while waiting for the PS5

Phil Spencer has played Elden Ring.

Some cool insight from Team Asobi on the PlayStation Blog about how they set out to fully utilise the DualSense's new and unique features. Also seem to be hinting at more Astro being on the way, heck yeah! Final paragraph:

For anyone who is a YouTube Premium member and has been since prior to November 6th, you can claim a free Stadia Premiere Edition. Instructions on how to claim here (but you should get a pop-up when you open YouTube, that's how I found out). Mainly in it for the Chromecast Ultra, but a neat deal nonetheless (I got a Nest Mini last year around this time from them too). Depending on when it arrives, might try a few minutes of some games out, though I did just try Superhot on my phone and the act of spinning slowly seems to cause a bit of stutter.

Well, while I'm still waiting to hear back from GAME about who is going to be actually delivering the console, they've just taken payment for it. So, yay? This ResetEra thread seems to suggest everyone's delivery courier/service has changed to Yodel, so I wonder if it might be a system issue? Because there are people they've charged for delivery who have also been downgraded. Seeing more tweets about it pop up, but nothing from GAME yet to anyone in terms of a response. Probably still overwhelmed by today's Xbox orders. Maybe. Sucks to read. ShopTo are usually really great, hence why they're so trusted (myself included), then they manage to completely bottle the next gen launches.

Haha yep, and leave them out in the rain. Or don't deliver them at all. Joys. Then again, I don't have a fence for them to throw it over as I've moved into an apartment...so that's a win, right? Unless they just throw it at the wall of the building instead... sent their Help Desk a DM on Twitter too, we'll see how that goes. Otherwise, GAME have been fine, and it's been going as smoothly as I could have wanted it to. Processed payments for my DualSense, Pulse 3D headset, and Media Remote over the weekend, should be shipping today or tomorrow. And ShopTo have processed Miles Morales and Demon's Souls, so those should be here in the next few days too. Only thing which might not arrive from them this week could be the DualSense charging station, but I don't really mind waiting on that anyways!

I don't believe that's true, at least not in this instance, as my original order had Royal Mail Tracked 24 as the delivery type for my entire order - and still is for my accessories. The console is the only item to have its delivery type and courier changed. And, like I said, this has happened even to those paying for DPD 24 and other delivery methods. And I went with them because that's one of the places where pre-orders went up first, straight after the PS5 September event, but above all else, because of the Royal Mail delivery option. I live a 5 minute walk from my local Royal Mail depot, and have never had an issue with them; the latest I've had something arrive is about 13:00, and I'm at work until 15:30 on launch day anyways. Royal Mail is definitely the best option for my location, so that's why I stuck with them. I had initially hoped to get one with ShopTo, but they kind of seemingly blundered their weird queue system, and in hindsight I probably could have nabbed another backup with Amazon or someone else (I mean, I was keeping an eye on it all for a friend anyway)... But it is what it is from what I've seen elsewhere with the updates on the Series X | S deliveries due today, it doesn't look like a different retailer would've necessarily done any better. Out of my hands now anyways, just got to try to stay optimistic I guess. But, based on my past experiences with Yodel, that's not easy

And the moment of worry and stress has arrived. Because of course it has. GAME has changed my console delivery courier/type from Royal Mail Tracked 24 to...Yodel (Free Next Day Year Delivery) Sent a ticket in, hope I hear back soon. I've had a bit of a nose around and from what I can see, it seems the change has been made to a number of other people's accounts, even those who paid for things like DPD Tracked 24. I'm really hoping it's some type of error, or something they can look into, otherwise, I don't really rate my chances of it arriving next Thursday

Hope everything goes smoothly for those of you expecting a new Xbox Series X | S to turn up today, enjoy!

Looks like we'll be able to export PS4 saves to the new PS5 remaster after all:

Launch trailer is out, and I am not going to be watching it. Warning: apparently there are some pretty big spoilers for things we haven't yet seen from the game in the trailer.

Great news today about Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine offering 90%+ protection. They would have been hoping for 70% - 80%, and it could still have passed at 50%. From the BBC: Great news!

10 days! New ad: Worth noting: Gran Turismo 7, Ratchet & Clank, and Returnal are all anticipated for the first half of 2021, and Horizon Forbidden West is anticipated for the second half of 2021.

Just got finished rewatching Hunter x Hunter (2011), having started it the night after I found out that it was available on Funimation. I tried my best to limit myself to 5 episodes per day, to not get caught up and swept away in it, and yeah...it's been three weeks and it's over again. I first watched it last November/December and binged it in two weeks back then juggling work and travel, and I feel just as empty now as I did then. I knew this was going to happen I crave more, Togashi! But in all fairness, Madhouse kicked it out of the park with this adaptation. In my last post about the show I endorsed it, and after rewatching the show for the first time...I have to heartily endorse it even more than I did before, there were quite a few things I picked up on this time around knowing how things were going to play out, and I still found myself on the edge of my seat half of the time in spite of this. Again: awesome cast, an OST which I've listened to daily for the last three weeks and have to say is hands down the best anime OST I've listened to (and is amongst my favourites in any medium - Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, heck, yes, even Star Wars), excellently written characters and character motivations, beautiful character arcs, a power system which is probably alongside the Elements in the Avatarverse (the one with the bald kid with the blue arrow tattoo, not the blue people) as being my favourite, and yeah, it's just awesome. It doesn't take itself too seriously and has some hilarious moments, but has just as many heartfelt ones, and the same goes for epic fights and extraordinary animation. I also love how some arcs are teased multiple arcs out, which, again, is a testament to Togashi's qualities as a writer. Seriously, go watch Hunter x Hunter if you haven't already. I kind of just want to dig into what I thought about the arcs. I don't want to dig too deep, though obviously I will probably mention some spoilers as they're in spoiler tags, but just talk generally about what I thought of each one and what I liked and (in rare cases) disliked about them. I've just checked my list from last year of how I ranked the arcs after my first viewing, and honestly, I'm happy with it being the same now as it was then. If there were to be any changes, though, I think it would be from my 3rd to 5th placed arcs; they're all very close for me. 1. Yorknew City Arc 2. Chimera Ant Arc 3. Heavens Arena Arc 4. 13th Hunter Chairman Election Arc 5. Hunter Exam Arc 6. Greed Island Arc 7. Zoldyck Family Arc

Digital Foundry's final console review is up: As someone who got the platinum in Demon's Souls, I can tell you that this does indeed look a lot easier. Getting the pure bladestone in the original game for the trophy was bullshit. Haven't played the game before but I've heard bits and pieces thrown out on podcasts, is this to do with rare item drops? Because yeah, if there was a trophy attached to that...that is nonsense, and I'm glad it got removed! It's rare I go hunting for trophies anyways, but when I have, the worst ones have been RNG, item grinding related stuff. Which sounds even worse in a game known for its difficulty!

Trophy lists have started going up. Don't plan on having a look myself, but saw someone mention there are only a few additional trophies for the Spider-Man Remaster, and apparently the Demon's Souls list seems less of a grind than its PS3 counterpart? That's pretty cool. We're so close now. Just 11 days over here in Europe, and 4 elsewhere!

I'm not sure I would agree with that, that doesn't seem like a fair comparison at all. This doesn't include figures for Expansion Pass sales and is strictly for the main game, and the SKU for the Expansion Pass bundled with the main game (the only way I guess you could, at a stretch, try to compare "enhanced versions" - but even then, the main game itself hasn't been enhanced?) has only been made available since the cutoff date for these figures. Further yet, DLC is an entirely different beast to a third version, in my opinion. Lower price, sure, but limited to the player base who have already purchased the game meaning that the price of admission is higher per game, and at the end of a day is a relatively smaller offering which only looks to extend rather than replace Sword and Shield - which is important, because while we're getting a separate SKU bundled with the Expansion Pass, are any of us here going to be picking it up if we already have the main game like we would a third version? I really doubt it. This isn't going to be like Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon cannabilising the sales of Sun and Moon. There are then plenty of other factors like the reduced development costs of DLC vs a traditional third version, the shorter development cycle, the lack of anticipation compared to a new pair of games being released, the marketing campaign for the DLC being dwarfed by that of the main games, etc. It's Pokémon, so there really isn't a great analogy I can make to other games in this instance, because they milk the games for all they're worth, perhaps more so than any other franchise out there right now. But comparing Sword and Shield sales to that of main games + third versions in a way which doesn't even include the DLC sales (and again, I don't even think that's a fair comparison either) just doesn't give a fair picture of how well these games have performed.

First teaser image for the game: From the BioWare blog: Original post: GameSpot jumped the gun. Oh dear. Imagine we'll get further clarification shortly.

Confirmation blog post. It's official! More details from the BioWare blog, some of which weren't in the GameSpot article: Original post: Well, looks like GameSpot was trigger happy. Their article just went up before any official announcement, but it's seemingly only a matter of time; imagine we'll see something on the next hour or two. Whoops. Also looks like a new Mass Effect game is on the way. But I guess that will deserve its own thread!

Watched the Digital Foundry video last night, and I am completely torn about whether I'll be playing in Fidelity or Performance Mode. The ray tracing and effects look superb, and I'm a sucker for taking screenshots of a good-looking game, but at the same time, those 60 fps look so damn smooth. Anyone else having the same conflict, or come to a conclusion on which they'll end up playing the game in? Totally agree. Finished a replay of the original last week and it's DLC, and the old Peter model looked like a bit of a mashup of Maguire and Garfield, which I really liked, because it felt like it matched Yuri's voice (I played in the Raimi suit and he feels like a dead ringer for Maguire's Spidey when he's pulling out quips). Having played that quite recently, and planning to dive straight into Miles Morales at launch, got to admit I'm a little bit concerned that the new Peter model isn't going to be in this game enough for me to actually get used to it. And yeah, he really does look around the same age as Miles now. I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually, but the little snippets we've seen so far just haven't been enough for me to adjust!

Digital Foundry have just put up their UI tour: And GameXplain has put up a Q&A: Reading around, it seems the most disappointing thing could potentially be the DualSense's battery life, but mainly because it is going to wildly fluctuate depending on your use of its unique new features and the game which you are playing. I've read that settings such as haptic feedback and adaptive triggers are automatically configured at max settings from the start, and so something like Astro's Playroom (filled to the brim with uses for these new features) will likely be the fastest way to drain the battery, as it doesn't seem like it would last much longer than the length of that game on a full charge (reportedly 5 - 6 hours of playtime from the controller in this particular game). But then, something like Miles Morales, which will have fewer uses throughout of the DualSense's main features when compared with Astro's, apparently can last anywhere from 8 - 13 hours, a slight improvement on the DualShock 4's, but still, I had personally hoped for a bit more. I can only imagine it being a similar case for Demon's Souls, and of course while you can turn these settings down, when they're the main selling points of the controller, it does seem like a little bit of a letdown that the controller doesn't last much longer than the DualShock 4 would. Not the biggest deal in the world, and by no means a deal breaker, but it's the only thing that I've seen brought up which has given me pause. Just means I need to cross my fingers harder that PlayStation bring out their own higher end controller down the line!