Julius

Just woke up and lo and behold, it is here! Comes with a nice looking double-sided poster. Games are treated as separate entities in the PS4 menu (which looks a bit odd? You get a Shenmue I & II tab just for downloading each game, and then a separate tab for each game to actually access them - I don't know, maybe they've done it before, but it just looks a bit odd to me), so I would assume that pretty much confirms a platinum trophy for each game. For those wondering, Shenmue only requires the quick installation of an update file, whereas Shenmue II is around a 7.6 GB download. Anyway, I guess it's time that I go see about some sailors?

First look at Resistance:

Just received a message that it’s been despatched from Simply Games

Just a quick heads-up to anyone that doesn’t want tie-ins/potential surprises to the rest of the world/Marvel universe to be ruined: stay away from this video. I haven’t seen anyone particularly attempting to avoid those beats, but I thought I’d just mention it. In the event that you don’t mind:

Songbird Symphony, coming to the Switch in 2019. Love the art style.

Well...I’ve made my mind up, and pre-ordered Shenmue I & II from Simply Games — I chose them after reading a number of positive reviews for them on here, so thanks to those that have shared their experiences with them Truth is, I’m in a bit of a rough spot personally right now. I’ve been enchanted by the thought of playing these games ever since I heard about them for the first time a few years ago - don’t bite! The first game is just barely a year younger than I am! - when I really got into gaming, and delved into the atmosphere and communities that come with it. I need a game right now where I can just become fully engrossed in someone else’s story, with beautiful music, and a bit more nuance than outright violence, even if just for a little while. I have more time to invest now than I ever have before, so I’m confident that I’ll be able to complete them before Spider-Man swings around on September 7th. I can’t wait

L’Equipe is reporting that Zinedine Zidane now has his eyes set on a move to England, with Manchester United specifically being linked to him as a result of the current unrest in the dressing room at United, with many feeling that it will be the next major managerial hot seat to become vacant in the Premier League. I think that, if such a move materialised, the Premier League title race would be blown wide open (depending on when he would sign), and the Champions League would be too (again, depending on when he would sign). I have a fondness for Mourinho from his stunts at Chelsea (and I loathe because of his move to United, and how he tore apart our team), but, with his days feeling numbered at Old Trafford, I think that, if Zidane really is interested, United should be jumping at the chance to sign him.

Man, that sucks. I’m personally still trying to figure out if I’m going to pick it up now as opposed to a month or so before III is released, because although I really do want to play Shenmue, I’d like to play them back-to-back. With Spider-Man releasing just two and a half weeks after Shenmue, I just don’t know if I’ve got the time to do that, so I think I might be better off trying to play a different game for that window and picking it up later on. Decisions, decisions I’m sure that there are plenty of others like me who haven’t played the game before and will be checking this out because of the buzz around the games in recent years, and of course it’s original critical acclaim; for me, I’m just loving the vibes I’m getting from them, and the music from the games that I’ve listened to is simply beautiful. But back to the topic at hand: sure, the update will be accessible and easy to download, but it is worrying that some might have their first experience with the series be either an unexpected download, or, perhaps even more concerning, running into problems with a twenty year old game because they’ve unknowingly avoided patching the game. It’s definitely not the best position for SEGA to be in.

Just downloaded it this morning, I’ll be sure to give it a listen later! Thanks for the heads up

I know that I said that I’m not the biggest fan of some of their reviews and podcasts in the past, but IGN have been a stellar example for the industry of how to deal with a plagiarising “video games journalist” since Filip was first found out in the space of the last week. What’s even more gutting is that they, of course, are going to be the ones dealing with the collateral damage that he’s caused in an attempt to fix this, and beyond that, that their trust has unwittingly been betrayed by some scumbag trying to pass himself off as a journalist. It’s utterly disgusting, and he has just made the application process much harder - and longer - for those that follow in his footsteps by trying to work themselves into video games journalism. I said before that Filip was a big problem for me when it came to NVC, and I meant it, because that gap between the end of Jose’s tenure and the start of Filip’s when Peer spearheaded the show alongside Zach and Brian (not too long after the launch of the Switch, in fact!) was excellent. I haven’t listened to them for a while, but I think I’m going to try and do my best to support them in my own little way through this rough spot by resubscribing to NVC and giving Game Scoop! and Beyond another shot for a few weeks, too. Like I said, I listened to them quite frequently until probably a few months ago and stopped because it just wasn’t clicking with me at the time, but I think that their collective maturity and utmost dedication to their work and readers/listeners/watchers deserves to be noticed, at the very least, if not rewarded.

dunkward

Colin Moriarty on the situation:

Yeah, I kind of have the same worry nagging away at the back of my mind (albeit a very small one, because I’m still as hyped as can be), but I think what’s ultimately going to make the towers/collectibles stuff fun is the traversal, and by all means, I think that’s going to be awesome. I think the problem at this stage is that the average gamer hasn’t had hands-on time with this game, and I feel that a short free demo would help appease our fears with regards to this.

Well, this looks promising for Golden Sun fans... ...guess the hype train keeps a-chugging.

My advice would be to not shop for them individually. If you search for “Marvel Phase One DVD Collection”, and then exchange “One” for “Two”, you can currently find both Phases complete for less than £30 on Amazon, possibly even cheaper elsewhere. I highlight the DVD version of the collection specifically, because, as you can imagine, the Blu-Ray variant is still in high demand, despite having been sold out since release; it really shows the full extent of the Nintendo-like valuations that you talk about — I’ve seen plenty of them floating about for over £200, and they originally had an RRP of £35. Even if you’re interested in getting them on Blu-Ray specifically, if value is what you’re going for, I’d recommend getting the DVD variation just for now, because I think we’ll see a reprint of Phase One and Phase Two along with the release of the complete Phase Three some time next year (and probably a complete Phase One - Three Collection too). I don’t really use streaming services, so I wouldn’t be too sure there, but I was using Netflix a couple of months ago and it only had three MCU films, if I recall correctly. Amazon and HMV frequently have offers for MCU films, so that could be worth checking out, and, if you’re not too bothered by the second hand market, I think CeX could really help you out here, too

Agree with @Ganepark32, @Hero-of-Time, @Goron_3, @Fierce_LiNk, and @Sheikah here with regards to how Filip was stupid to do this in the first place (and evidently not for the first time), and that he should be named and shamed accordingly. Beyond that, I of course agree with @Ronnie that going after the man’s family and kicking him down, and especially threatening physical harm and imposing emotional abuse, is wrong — I think we can all agree on that. Also, the guy really doesn’t know how to apologise: a simple “this is my fault, I plagiarised this review”, etc., would have been more than enough. A few minutes of waffle and deflecting not only fails to convey a message well, if he’s trying to get us back on his side...he’s failing. Epically. For me, his “apology” here shares some similar shades with [EA CEO] Andrew Wilson’s “apology” at E3 about microtransactions in Battlefront II: minutes of build-up (Wilson was effectively saying: we’re going to change, but not confessing to wrongdoing, etc.) before a huge deflection (“...but we can all come together and help charity!”) and ultimately not truthfully apologising and accepting wrongdoing. I think Filip saying that “hey, you shouldn’t believe that Jason guy, because he’s wrong — but check out my video and make up your own mind on the matter!” is disgusting, and he’s trying to take advantage of the situation as much as anyone else. @Ronnie, I don’t think that Jason Schreier is going after Filip more than his job allows him to do so. Being a video games journalist for another large gaming journalism outlet, I genuinely think that informing us all — people that watch/read these reviews, the general public, and most importantly, Filip’s next employers — of any prior wrongdoing by Filip, which shares similarities with his most recent, is his fiduciary duty. If facts about Filip doing something, which we can all agree is wrong, fuels the mob, then I think he’s just got to ride it out — the blame is on him and his past self. Jason went as far back as he could to see if something like this had happened before, and, rather unsurprisingly, it’s not the first time that Filip has done this. Would we rather learn this from a neutral video games journalist shortly after the time of Filip’s most recent mess-up, or from some random guy on 4Chan or ResetEra in the coming weeks or months? But to come back around to the threatening behaviour by many on the Internet: whilst it is agreeably out of place and unacceptable, surely, if you’re putting both your name and face out there — in this day and age, when the mob mentality runs amok every single time that something can be pinned on a particular someone! — you would be aware, to some degree, that any poor choices you make when carrying out your work could come back to effect not only you, but those around you? Just a thought; I’m not at all saying that this behaviour is justifiable, but at the same time, I don’t think that we can let him pull a victim card when this is very clearly what would happen if he got caught, just given the extreme opinions and the do-or-die, short term benefit attitude adopted by many these days.

Man, that sucks. Spyro was the only platforming mascot that I interacted with in my formulative years of gaming, with Enter the Dragonfly being quite popular amongst me and my friends in primary school. I guess I’m just going to wait this one out. It’ll likely be at half price (if not less) when Christmas sales come around, so I guess I might pick it up that way?

From yesterday’s QuakeCon keynote:

This doesn’t make much sense, but just to prove that we can make such a comparison. £50 for NES Classic, which comes with a controller (RRP of £7.99), so £42 for the console and the 30 games that come with it. Let’s argue that the cost of the console itself is negligible to price the games up a bit: £42/30 games = £1.40/game. So, at £1.40/game, 20 games would cost £28 — at face value, that’s a £10 saving being made by having Online, which seems like a good deal. Sure, different games would cost different prices in a virtual marketplace, but I chose to use the NES Classic here as a source for Nintendo’s valuation of these games because they chose the games to be included themselves. But let’s compare it now to PS+. PlayStation Plus costs £50/year, and you get up to 24 games per year. Let’s say we choose PS4 titles as are two games per month, because they cost the most. £50/24 games is just over £2/game. NES games are nearing on thirty decades old, and you’re getting games from a couple of years ago and some change for just 60p more per game with PS+ when compared to Online. Just taking PS+’s 2017 offering into account, off the top of my head, both Metal Gear Solid V and Just Cause 3 were available last year as part of their catalogue of free games for PS+ members — they currently have an RRP of £25 on the PlayStation Store...each. Meaning that if we’re going to average everything out, you’re saving ~£23 on the current RRP of those two games alone (I would assume that they cost even more at the time that they were available to PS+ members). The other 22 games that you chose last year would have needed to save you a further £4 for you to have effectively broken even with your annual subscription outlay. Meaning that, in all likelihood, you were practically in the position that PlayStation were effectively paying you in video games to just sign-up for their service. Its not a perfect world, so yes, you are still paying £50/year to our corporate overlords for an imperfect service in the form of some inconsistent servers, and there are plenty of other issues which could be argued about, but I think you catch my drift: PS+, just as an example, is currently of much greater (edit:) objective value to a customer than Nintendo Switch Online is being described as having. Nintendo could have just had a Virtual Console subscription, perhaps even with different tiers, and offer everyone the typical online interactivity (just copy PlayStation and Xbox on this one, because it’s clear that they know what they’re doing) for free, and have still made a huuuuuuuge profit. Not only that, but they would have completely avoid the unarguable divide that their handling of, and plans for, Switch Online have brought about, which I think is much more important than whatever content they decide to include in an online subscription service.

I think it should be taken on case-by-case, because ultimately it boils down to the type of game, the person reviewing the game, when they actually receive the game (for example, Ben Moore mentioned in the latest Huber Syndrome that they only got Octopath a few hours before its release), and a number of other factors. If it’s a game which is driven by a narrative, then I have to agree. In narrative driven games, the end of the game is typically tied to some massive event that the game has been leading up to, and is often a grand showcase of both storytelling and game mechanics that a reviewer really needs to experience to speak about the nature of a game. If, however, a game is driven by mechanics (such as a racing game, or many platformers), I really don’t think that you have to stick around until the end to appreciate what the game does well and what it doesn’t, and I don’t think that the ending of such a game necessarily puts the reviewer in a better position than is they hadn’t forced themselves to play through to the ending. And then there are some extremes, like games that are over a hundred hours long — if the reviewer isn’t enjoying it, are we really going to demand that they waste time so arbitrarily? If a game is driven by a narrative, then I already think that it is something of an industry standard that a reviewer plays the game until the end. However, for games driven by a focus on mechanics, I suppose that letting people know that you haven’t finished the game can’t do much harm — perhaps some onus should be put on the game’s studio to share whether or not they think that the reviewer needs to play the entire game with said reviewer. As for playtime, I think that it’s something that they should mention too, and I really appreciate when they manage to fit that in. Where a game has a substantial post-game, too, I think it’s great for them to just give it a mention, so that players know beforehand that there is more to the game than what they might have seen or heard, or will gather from the (main) game length quoted in such a review.