Julius

Just passed the 11 hour mark, and now have six badges. While I'm not quite feeling the excitement I might have a few years ago for this game still, I'm starting have a real warm and cosy time with it, which is what I was hoping for. Loving some of the new Pokémon designs, as well as some of the Galarian forms. Had a lot spoiled for me trying to figure out how to evolve one of my current team members, but alas, it's not that big of a deal, because I'm getting to that point in the game where I want my party ready for the final stretch, so I ended up doing a bit of research and have a few picked out to keep an eye out for. I also really loved how they changed things up on that fifth badge. Oh, and all I'm going to say is that the two minutes or so we spent with Howse in that hotel room should have been the type of underhanded humour we got throughout the game, or at least in longer and more frequent bursts, as it genuinely forced a smile out of me. Even with my head now turning the other was, I do want to place a special emphasis on how poorly paced I think the opening 5 hours or so of the game were - the game since getting the third badge has been much closer in pace to the typical Pokémon experience, albeit a much easier one; as pointed out several times here, the constant party heals and handing out of items is a bit much. It was so slow that I turned off battle animations for the first time in my life. Also want to scream from the rooftops that it's nuts not being able to wear the different uniforms we can buy in/receive from the gyms (EDIT: in the gyms themselves) - what the heck is up with that?!

Interesting follow-up to last year's Designing for Disability series:

Just finished Chapter 3 of The Mandalorian. Oh my goodness – easily the best episode yet in my opinion. Screamed everything Star Wars.

Update on the sales figures: turns out it was 6 million units sold in the first three days (Friday 15th - Sunday 17th).

That looks awesome. I've never considered buying into VR before (well, yet?), but there was a definitely a moment during that trailer where I considered it for the first time. Hmm. Also, interesting interview with Keighley:

Some sales figures to glance over: • Pokémon Sword & Shield have sold over 6 million units worldwide in first week of release. • Fastest selling Nintendo Switch software to date. • Pokemon Sw/Sh have sold 2M copies in Japan. (1.35M physical copies sold were reported by Famitsu on 11/20) • These figures are double what Pokémon Let's Go achieved - 3 million in its first week. • This is the record opening for a Switch title globally, beating Smash Ultimate's record of 5m. For comparison: X/Y sold 4M in around the same time span; Sun/Moon 7.2M in roughly 12 days. While this is awesome...unfortunately, I guess Game Freak won't be learning any lessons anytime soon to take into the next game. I got three badges in a few days back and have struggled to bring myself back to the game – sadly, I'm just not having much fun with it, and I'm finding it very bland and repetitive. I'll probably force myself to finish the game, but unless something drastically changes, I can see myself finally walking away from the franchise after rinsing some of the flavour out with another entry. But hey, it was fun while it lasted. Glad to see that most others here are having a good time with it, though

Ah, Mourinho's journey to flip off every fan of his continues. Got to imagine he'll be hitting up Milan or Juve in a few years, followed by Barça and then finally retiring at Benfica. Isn't he the one who said that love is lost between a manager and club when the manager arrives at a rival? And he's done that to us twice now. As much as I'll always love him, mostly for that first stint at Chelsea, it feels like he's desperate to burn bridges. He's got us and United coming up next month. Hoping we can show him a thing or two.

Valve leveraging Half-Life for their VR initiative? Smart move, but always seemed kind of inevitable. I highly doubt this is going to be what Half-Life fans have been waiting for, in which case, I'm going to be keen to avoid the impending onslaught heading Valve's way

The gamer's plight Honestly, as much as I enjoyed playing both Shenmue and Shenmue II for the first time back-to-back last summer, I'm not sure if I'll ever go out of my way to return to either of those games (besides potentially for the forklift racing, which I had way too much fun with). If you've already played through the first game, I honestly think that reminding yourself of the story through watching the cutscenes and then playing through Shenmue II will give you enough of an idea of how that game played out from both a story and gameplay perspective Definitely appreciate the feeling that there are too many games and a lack of time; the list of games that I want to play are probably 70% JRPGs

Nice! And yeah, love the DualShock changing colours, definitely a great touch. Love BD-1's light on the back of his head changing with the status of your health, too! Pretty sure it's one tomb on Zeffo, a very small area on Dathomir, and literally like one tiny room on two of the other planets (both at 98% I think?) which I couldn't for the life of me track down yesterday - I'm guessing they're echo-related, seeing as I've got everything else in those areas think my plan for now is to take a break from this with Sword, then platinum this before moving onto Shenmue III Like we talked about before, I don't mind the lack of fast travel during the main game, so long as there are things to do when you need to backtrack, but man, it's such a pain post-game. Kind of wish they'd let you toggle chests, echoes and secrets on and off on the map too, just so you have a vague idea of which direction you've already fully explored in an area. To tell you the truth, as much as I enjoyed this game, I now have a real hankering to play some Force Unleashed!

Pretty close to the platinum now, just cleaning up some of the exploration aspects, but it's become a bit of a grind beyond an area I purposefully left for after finishing the game, so I'm going to swap over to Pokémon Sword for now, as I've got a real hankering for some turn-based goodness. Going to let the story and game fester in my mind a little while longer before rounding off my thoughts fully, and I also kind of want to see the improvements that the update/s will bring to the game.

It has arrived! To be honest, not sure when I'm going to start this. Finishing off some of the extra stuff in Fallen Order before moving onto Pokémon Sword, so hoping I'll get to this by the weekend. Hope everyone else has a good time chasing after Lan Di with Ryo and Shenhua!

Yeah, I'll be giving up on the platinum until they fix the trophies and completion aspects of the game explored one area of one planet numerous times, still down to 92% exploration for that area, despite having every secret/chest for that area. Same on another planet but that's at 96%. Looked around the maps and it looks like both areas should be complete. Still going to clean up a few other trophies and explore a bit more before moving on to Pokémon tomorrow, but that's a pretty broken and confusing mess of a map completion system that they're using, at any rate

Probably 5 hours or so from that point. Hopefully you'll find the story is really about to pick up, and there's a bit less of the needless backtracking - honestly, all of my favourite story moments happened not too long after that and continue until the game's end, so hopefully you have a good time with it! how have you found the story so far? Also, 100% agree on the fast travel point. Getting back to the ship is a bit of a chore during the main story, though it's not too bad when the environment changes or new enemies are introduced and there's a reason to traverse it again, and whilst I agree @Ronnie that it's to push the exploration aspect, it seems a little odd to me that there isn't an option for that post-game. Like, not even between save points? It's a bit baffling, and it's forcing me to go through some areas again for my trophy hunt where I'm finding out some pretty odd things about the game. For example, and I'll keep it vague: chase music remaining when traversing through an area where there is no longer a chase happening! I don't mind the pseudo-open world, reminding me a lot of last year's God of War in many ways, but you're right H-o-T: it feels a bit rushed, and nowhere near polished enough. While I think this and BFII's redemption are some of the best things to come out of EA in quite some time, it's still clear that their bottom line is being prioritised over the quality of the game. It really could e waited until January/February with the amount of Star Wars we've got going on right now, but you're 100% right; they want those boosted tie-in sales. Also, some of the character models look like they've returned from earlier EA Star Wars games, and boy do they look like early PS3 models. @Hero-of-Time I know you love your trophies, but I've got to warn you, some of these trophies are absolute nonsense one or two are phrased in such a way which leads you to believe that a certain action might unlock it, but you actually have to do something entirely different. And while I'm quite enjoying the hunt for chests, echoes and secrets, the 100% holomap completion trophy is some next level kind of garbage - I'm having difficulty figuring out what exactly I've missed out on the map in certain locations, even after referring to other players' maps! I'm going to stick with the hunt for now, but we'll see how long my fuse is I guess

Watched Chapter 2 back on Friday...WHY WAS THIS EPISODE SO MUCH SHORTER THAN THE LAST ONE?! Ahem. More great costume and character designs, more great tracks. Actually, I must have listened to Chapter 1's OST a good ten or fifteen times before getting a chance to see this episode, and so the fact that the show's themes were still standing out to me says a whole lot. Don't think we've had too many callbacks, if any, to Williams' scores yet, which is both awesome and a bit mystifying. Speaking of which, my favourite cue of the show so far is very easily the one which can be found at 02:34: Anyways, not much else I can add before digging into spoilers. So... Very much looking forward to seeing which direction Chapter 3 takes us in next week. And then we've got IX next month. And then The Clone Wars season 7 in February. What a time to be a Star Wars fan! In other Star Wars-related stuff, I've just seen credits roll on Fallen Order. Need to sleep on it, but overall, I thought it was very good - especially the last five hours or so!

Credits are rolling after 15-20 hours! While it took a while too long to get going for my tastes - the story and characters didn't really click for me for the first 10-15 hours - I really ended up enjoying the game in the end, and what I would consider the final act (the last 5 hours or so) is excellent. The music is great for the most part, though a little too derivative at times, and the sound design is, as always, as immersive as it can be. There are winks and nods to all corners of canon, but what makes it so great in this case is that I can't recall an instance where I felt like it was out of place or forced. In terms of gameplay, Stig really wasn't kidding about the God of War and Soulsborne influence...seriously, this feels like a Star Wars-themed God of War/Metroidvania amalgamation, and it works great - for the most part. Because while I'm positive on this game as a whole, there are definitely some flaws which I hope Respawn will be given the opportunity to iron out in the future, as I enjoyed the game. Look, the controls aren't the tightest, and the technical performance of the game is a serious issue (note, I'm playing on a base PS4): constant frame rate drops, the game pausing to load the next area, some egregious pop-in (i.e. the design of some characters' faces, important details in cutscenes, etc.), and the game actually stopped and came up with an error on what I would call the final level. Way to kill momentum I don't feel Pokémon's call just yet, and I'm bummed to be saying goodbye to this game after waiting for so long and having such an interesting time...so I guess I'm trophy hunting for the first time in a long time tomorrow! I've got a lot more to say about the game, but I'm going to take tonight to sleep on it before I dig into my thoughts and flesh them out. That'll probably be tomorrow. But, I suppose, the key question for now: would I recommend this game? I'm going to be honest: if you're a Star Wars fan, of any degree, you're probably going to have a good time with this game, and there are absolutely parts you will want to see and experience without having spoiled for you.

The game has arrived! Won't be playing until Sunday or Monday, as I'm playing Fallen Order, and I'm pretty sure that'll probably be the shorter of the two. Hope everyone has fun with the game this weekend, and while I'll probably be steering clear of this thread to try to avoid spoilers, I look forward to reading everyone's impressions of the game! After the reviews and negative backlash, honestly, I just hope the game's a cosy and upbeat ride

Can't take my word for it as my brother installed it for me before I got back last night, but he said it was only a 5-10 minute install. My paranoia about how long EA games take to install is why I asked him to install it for me in the first place, so it was kind of funny to learn that

Sobble all the way. Little guy's adorable. I've been able to avoid all of the leaks so far, thankfully, but I think Sobble has the best design of the three, and I feel like I have a rough idea for where the evolutions of the other two are going to go in terms of design, but I'm pretty stumped when it comes to the little dude's evolutions. Really excited to see which way it goes!

So, apparently this arrived a day early and my awesome little brother has installed it for me for when I get back from work. Might be a late night

Just finished Chapter 1 of The Mandalorian. Non-spoiler thoughts: Great introduction to the titular character, a very strong and diverse Star Wars-sounding spaghetti western soundtrack by Ludwig Göransson (which is up pretty much everywhere, in case you're wondering!) with heavy influence evident from Ennio Morricone and (obviously) John Williams, and a lot of mystery to hook you in. Excellent cinematography, sets, and costumes, too – and, as ever with Star Wars, a wink or two which I'm sure will bring a smirk to any fan's face. In terms of gripes? CGI was mostly brilliant, but there was definitely a vehicle or two looking pretty undercooked in terms of post-production processing, but it's very easily the best looking CGI I've seen outside of Hollywood's highest budget blockbusters. And that's about it. In terms of spoilers... Roll on Chapter 2 on Friday, along with Fallen Order!

Yeah, I'm sticking to my original tinhat theory on this one: this is the way that they always had Sonic designed, and the atrocious design in the original trailer was a way to generate a lot of conversation through controversy around the film before -surprise!- they turned around and promised a redesign within a few days, and have followed through accordingly. It's a stroke of marketing genius if that's the case, because it would have worked as planned.

Easily one of the better trailers for the games: Not long now!

So, apparently the BBC reported earlier today that we in the UK would be getting Disney+ in March.

New trailer for The Mandalorian from Vanity Fair: Yep. Ben Burtt is a god.