Julius

Starring Ichiban Kasuga, who was revealed to be part of the New Yakuza project in August 2017, the game has just been confirmed to be coming to PS4. From Gematsu:

Cool, it's launching this year. Let's wait and see. With Microsoft heading in a similar direction, it'll be interesting to see how their approach is different to Google's.

So we have Stadia Games & Entertainment as Google's first party development studio, which is great...but can we please see something? Even just a tease?

Seriously. They actually even paid more for Marvel and Pixar individually than they did Star Wars!

State Share is a cool concept. Having your guy explaining it come along and say "I can't talk about the game that I just mentioned, you'll see it later this year" is a totally non-plus point.

No worries, it's my bad: I've just got back from work and I'm a bit tired, which might be why I initially perceived it that way They're showing a lot of "proofs of concepts". If they actually have some exclusives of any kind to show today, this is a terrible way to build up to it. It feels like they're still selling the concept to developers -- and if that's the case, even if at GDC, I don't think it's a great idea to be going public yet.

Yeah, I'm more than aware. It was clear to some extent that that would be the case prior to the announcement, but the start of this conference straight up confirmed it. Despite that, there's still a reason why myself, others here, and much of the press were expecting to see a console. Regardless, I don't need see your need to put your point across to me in all caps; it might not have been your intent, but it comes across as aggressive and quite condescending. Anyway, hope they start showing some more games soon...

The Stadia Controller is the least interesting name possible

This is pretty incredible. Gutted we haven't seen a console (so far?), but this is seriously impressive, even in a closed system on a stage.

They've actually invited quite a lot of gaming journalists to their announcement this year.

Sundar Pichai opening with "I don't really play games other than FIFA 19" and "cricket is like baseball, but better" is the most middling way possible to open this

Google's Gaming Announcement starts in just over half an hour: Should be an interesting one! Wonder if they could end up taking PlayStation's place at E3 this year...

Gaming Announcement at GDC starts in just over half an hour...

At 05:02 GMT tomorrow morning, Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox will finally be complete, in a move which will cost The Mouse $71.3 billion -- this has been inflated from the $52.4 billion originally reported in December 2017, due to a rival bid by Comcast during this period.

Really hoping we see some more of CrossCode on Switch -- hopefully a release date/window too? I think it's well positioned to be one of the biggest upcoming indie games coming to the console.

Went to the local ODEON to watch Captain Marvel with my brother this afternoon. I've got to say, I was quite surprised by just how full our 14:00 showing on the film's second Sunday was -- can't help but wonder if the Endgame trailer has something to do with. They showed the Endgame Superbowl TV Spot during the trailers, so that was great. I thought that the film itself was...okay. The tributes to Stan Lee were beautiful, and I couldn't help but smile for the first few minutes of the film just thinking about his legacy. Unfortunately, I think it only went downhill from there up until the final act, bar the occasional chuckle (mostly aimed at Fury and/or Goose -- easily the best parts of the film, and I think I could have done with some more Coulson). It felt as bland and as by-the-numbers as a superhero film could be, which is a real shame, because Brie Larson is a super talented actress and I can't help but feel that this character -- and Marvel fans, specifically younger girls -- deserved much better. There were far too many moments where my eyes rolled into the back of my skull due to how hard they were trying to beat us over the head with the whole "Women can do anything" feminist rhetoric -- while I feel like every gender and race should be represented in a positive light with their own role models, my problem is just with the way that they handled it. It felt like a marketing campaign by a marketing film director aimed directly (and very poorly) at feminists, and there's literally a scene where I had to ask myself: is this scene just a feminist ad set in the MCU? It felt like it was saying "Women can do anything" without really saying anything, and so the message completely fell flat on its face in my eyes ( @LazyBoy's sentiments on the matter, as far as I'm concerned, are spot on). Maybe I missed it, but I was under the impression that this film's production went smoothly, so I have to question how the film could be so poorly paced for its opening hour: it's absolutely all over the place! One minute we're here, the next we're there, then we're back in that other place but in a flashback...seriously, for me, it's probably the choppiest opening hour or so of any MCU film to date. Add to that an uninspired score (albeit, some decent songs made up for that fact), a poorly written, directed, and executed plot, and absolutely zero wow moments and you end up with what is, in my eyes, the worst Marvel Cinematic Universe entry since Thor: The Dark World. Then again, it's been a while since I've seen that film, and I'm getting the niggling feeling that it was better than what I saw today...

Don't think I've seen you around here before, so a belated warm welcome to the forums! Onto the topic at hand: I've only played Blue Rescue Team and Explorers of Time/Sky (a few times each), but to sum it all up: easily the best stories told in the Pokémon franchise. I was quite young when I first played them, and maybe because of that, they've probably had the most profound impact on my everyday life of all of the video games that I've experienced. Great music, excellent casts of charming characters, and wonderfully crafted stories make it a series well worth getting into. I think I know someone else that might happen to like these games... I choose you, @Glen-i!

Yeah, for sure, but that's not exactly what I'm saying. The time management aspect of the game is great, because it's challenging in an interesting, almost puzzle-like way, and I'm not saying that you should be able to do everything in the game in one playthrough. My point was more that there was certainly "space" for more time slots in the game, such as four slots as opposed to two on Sundays/days off, which make sense in the way that the game is set up: morning and lunch are slots on school days, so why not have those two slots available on days off? There's no real reason that you shouldn't be able to do more in a single playthrough using the logic laid out in the game, I guess, is my point. And cool. I know that I could have maxed out of all of my confidants (think I ended up maxing out seven or eight of them?), but then I wouldn't have achieved/spent some more time with the other things that I enjoyed in the game, and there are undoubtedly things that I managed to get done in my first playthrough that you couldn't with yours due to the different choices that we made. Thing is, I think that if someone truly "balanced" their time by splitting it evenly between different activities, I get the feeling that you wouldn't max out anything in a single playthrough, which I think underlines my point. It's a small bullet point on a very short list of things that I think could have made the game better as a single playthrough experience, but like I said, I loved the game and really enjoyed my time with it, so... EDIT: I've just read my post back @Magnus, and I don't know if it's just me, but for some reason it seems like it comes off as being a bit mean-spirited? That certainly wasn't my intention, so apologies if it comes across that way. To sum it up: I wholly agree with you, and I completely get why they had to make it this way. I -- quite selfishly -- just would have loved to spend even more time with these characters in that world without having to start a NG+, because while I have no doubt that I'll one day return to this game, I guess it's just easier from my perspective to swallow the pill of spending another twenty or thirty hours with them than I did, as opposed to having to start all over for another roughly 100 hour endeavour!

So, I actually finished this last Sunday, but wanted to take some time to gather my thoughts before posting. This game was awesome. Killer soundtrack, which is probably my favourite video game soundtrack period; intriguing story; a great cast of characters; an excellent gameplay loop between the monotony of daily school life in Tokyo, and the abundance of choice that would bring, as well as the way that is broken up by the excitement brought forth by Palaces and their stories. Seriously though, just to gush about the soundtrack some more: Shoji Meguro is a damn genius, with the soundtrack being so great and nuanced in its astounding variety. Lyn brings to the soundtrack a voice which has me half-convinced that she's a siren, her voice is that alluringly beautiful. Minute-to-minute gameplay is great. Like I mentioned last time, the UI is so snappy and intuitive that you can be in and out of a battle -- without running! -- in thirty seconds, maybe even less. The UI is a real feast for the eyes, and personifies the game's style, which perfectly compliments the art style found in the game. Whether gaining Personas through negotiation or decimating them with All-Out Attacks, I feel like this is turn-based gameplay virtually mastered. Animated cutscenes are almost always a plus in my books, too, and the voice cast was absolutely stellar (I instantly noticed it and it took me out of the game for a moment, but I'll take Suzuha as Makoto any day of the week!). My single complaint regarding the UI is that during Baton Passes, trying to select who to Baton Pass to can often be a bit of a pain, as attempting to toggle through characters from left to right seems to instead cycle you through the turn order of characters. I've seen some complaints around the internet levied at the battle mechanics not changing much from the beginning of the game through to the end, but I feel like this is justified somewhat by how becoming familiar with the mechanics results in much shorter battles, which, given the length of the game, can only be seen as a positive, in my opinion. I myself also didn't find the need to grind at all in the game, but if that's something that you need/want to do, again, the speed of battles here are only going to be working in your time's favour. As I've mentioned before, the oversexualisation of some female characters made me feel uncomfortable, and in Ann's case, completely went against her arc from the early parts of the game. I certainly didn't appreciate my player character trying to catch a peek down her top with some of the other guys in the group, and it resulted in a lot of eye-rolling on my part. Look, game, I get it: some teenage guys can be kind of pervy. But given the context of the game's first ten hours or so? Ann's definitely not the character that this should be directed at -- at least not by her closest friends. I've got some more spoilerous thoughts, so: So, all in all, my first Persona experience was a massive success: it undoubtedly has some minor flaws, but honestly, I'm happy that it does, because it means that there are areas for Atlus to improve moving forward and when it comes to Persona 6 -- and the thoughts of them improving on a game which for me was a 10/10 experience that I lived for around a month has me very excited. So I guess Persona 4 Golden and a Vita are on the horizon for me...

Hell yes. I'm so tired of creative people such as Gunn having their reputations torn down by their past. I'm different to the person I was yesterday, let alone the person that I was a decade ago, and I doubt it's any different for him I'm guessing that Feige went to bat for him with the Disney higher-ups, and rightly so, because he's a great filmmaker with an excellent vision when it comes to this set of characters. They were stupid to react as quickly and destructively as they did. On the Endgame trailer: it's awesome. It's just 147 seconds of goosebumps. Heck, I overheard someone play it waaay too loud into their headphones on the train to work this morning (seriously wondering how he hasn't permanently damaged his eardrums...) and had goosebumps all over again. Noticed some here talking about how it's been nearly 11 years since Iron Man, so I'm curious: does anyone here remember what they were doing roughly 11 years ago? I was in Year 4 of primary school, less than half the age that I am now

Interesting interview from Inside Xbox with Kareem Choudhry on Project xCloud, where he reveals that public trials are coming this year:

To absolutely everyone's surprise (read: no-one's), an Episode IX panel has been announced to be taking place on Friday 12th April at Star Wars Celebration Chicago. So yeah, I guess now we know the day when we're learning the film's title and seeing it's first trailer. Now we just need a time...

Gameplay trailer 'Ryo & Master' from MAGIC 2019! Not much in terms of gameplay to be honest, but it's nice to finally have a hint of context for where the story might go. Suzuki also teased onstage that though this trailer focuses more on a look at the combat, more is coming soon. Also...that thumbnail should absolutely be rearranged for use as box art.