Julius

Mexico were very shaky those last ten minutes or so. Going to be interesting to see if they can stave off the German bombardment.

Blistering, end-to-end start to the Germany v. Mexico game. This should be a good one

It’s going to be a long three months... Thinking of finally finding myself a copy of Spider-Man 2 (played it around a friend’s house as a child, but never got a chance to own it myself) and playing through that and Activision’s PS1 Spider-Man games through the summer

Gotta love the Huber Syndrome E3 Special

Well...not really, but okay As for the Croatia match, tomorrow evening’s double billing of Germany v. Mexico and Brazil v. Switzerland should more than make up for it

Well, that’s fair enough. I can respect your opinion, and to be clear, I think they’re equally great. At best, I could probably bring myself to say things like “Messi was better than Ronaldo in the 2011/2012 season”, or that “Ronaldo was better than Messi in the 2017/2018 season”. I don’t think that comparing the number of leagues that they’ve proven themselves in is a fair way to make such a comparison, because Messi was pretty much always going to stay at Barça for as long as he could after all that they did for him to allow him to live out his dream. Ronaldo fits so well as a leader for the Portugal national team because the rest of the squad is fairly shaky, they’re often considered underdogs against the big national teams, his manager is relaxed about him controlling the dressing room, and thus he can improve all of their performances with his own leadership and determination. He also plays as an out-and-out striker these days, which is completely different to Messi’s role, hence why one can be seen as having a relatively larger impact on the international stage than the other. I definitely don’t think that saying “Ronaldo has won the Prem and an international trophy whereas Messi hasn’t” makes him better than Messi — by the same argument, Messi has won two Champions League/domestic league/major domestic cup trebles. How many has Ronaldo won again? Ronaldo being a leader is a plus for him, but it’s not a minus for Messi — some people just aren’t born to be leaders, and while others can grow into the role, he just hasn’t. You don’t have to be a leader to be one of the greatest footballers, and maybe that just says more about his relatively conservative personality. I would agree with you if you were to suggest that he shouldn’t be captain of Argentina, because it just doesn’t suit his playing style and adds much more pressure to his game. I’m not quite sure what he did to make you generally dislike him, but I’ll bite: why do you generally dislike him?

Well, I don’t know about that. Is Ronaldo currently playing better than Messi? I could agree with that. But to say he’s inferior? Don’t be daft we’ll hopefully have to wait a good few more years until they’ve both retired before we can even start fairly comparing them; they’ve peaked at completely different times (so I feel like there’s a bit of recency bias going on), and they’re both very different players, playing the game in a very different way. That said, I think they’re both great examples for the sporting world and anyone who follows/participates in sport in general. Unless it comes to paying taxes

I’m really, really digging the new theme. Especially the epic choral section towards the end. It sounds relatively subdued when compared with 4’s, which I just gave another listen to, and everything seems subdued when compared to Brawl’s I think this is more than made up for, though, with what I feel is a more complex and nuanced track this time around. Just excellent work all around from what I’ve seen so far

This game has had it all. What a beautiful free kick - made even more amazing seeing as it’s very rare for Ronaldo to bend it like that. That’s as many goals in one 2018 World Cup game for Ronaldo as he managed to score in all three of his previous World Cup campaigns combined. He only managed one goal in each of his previous three World Cup campaigns.

THUNDERBOLT! First big matchup of the World Cup is delivering on every level possible. Cracking game

Perfectly executed free kick from Spain. You can tell they’ve tried that one a few times on the training ground

What an excellent first half, with some great end-to-end stuff. This is why it’s called the beautiful game hopefully more of the same for the next 45’ I think it could have gone either way, to be honest. I don’t think it was intentional by Costa, and I think he might have (wrongly) assumed that Pepe was actually going to fight for the ball and jump for it, hence why he was leaning into him, but instead Pepe planted his feet to the floor. Really doesn’t help the referees that of all players this was Pepe, just given his history when it comes to trying to win fouls like this, and he really should have got up. He had a chance to help defend, but he stayed down instead. Either way, it was an excellent piece of skill by Costa to find the space to get a shot off. Quick mention for Isco, too, because he has been dynamite so far in this game, I always love watching him.

Blistering start by Portugal, well deserved penalty (and rightly called). Long way back for Spain - they look like they haven’t even woken up yet.

Figured this might need its own thread? I’ll update this post later on with some relevant facts and information, but for now, I’m going to go watch Portugal v. Spain

Miyazaki-san’s recent interview with Famitsu has been translated. I’m sticking this one in a spoiler tag, because it is long.

Yeah, I’m aware of this. I stumbled upon the code for Manaphy in Pokémon World, way back in the day, iirc, and also found it annoying that it was awkward to get a Jirachi if you really did want one (at least over in the West). But, then again, these examples that you cite were a decade (if not longer) ago. I don’t recall pretending that this is something new, but perhaps I could have been more concise in making my point. This is a pair of spin-off titles in the core series, and so maybe they think that they can get away with haphazardly bungling Mew in with an accessory this time around. It’s worth pointing out, though, that this will have the highest RRP of any core series game to date, and to use the game as it has mostly been advertised would require you to drop somewhere around £100 for the game and PokéBall Plus. Compare that to how events have been handled since your example of Pokémon Ranger: free codes which require a bit of travel time or a download from the internet. You aren’t paying a penny over whatever base price you paid for the game to be able to use it as advertised or as the only way to get a certain Pokémon. I feel it’s especially disrespectful because, if you’re buying this for the purpose of filling your Pokédex, Mew was available not too long ago for free. They wouldn’t have got away with doing something like this if we were still on 3DS, I don’t think. The only saving grace I see here is that Mew has already been available and in circulation as of late, and isn’t solely exclusive to this accessory if you really do want one, but if you do in Let’s Go...well, pay up. This is where I see the potential for a problem. Coming back to the traditional core series games: what’s to stop them from releasing a GreatBall Plus with next year’s titles, which come bundled with a Pokémon entirely exclusive to the accessory, and which won’t be made available by any other means? I agree with a lot of what @Glen-i has to say about this. In the short term, it seems like a nice way to do things, but the long term potential impact it could have on the franchise as a whole isn’t so rosy from where I’m sitting.

I think that’s fair, though I do think that this one will at least be worth a try, just because of how they’re going to be doing so many things differently. I also hover towards TPP over FPP a lot of the time, but I think that this will be a special exception, just considering the quality name attached to the title in CDPR. I love just how immersive they’re trying to make the world, so I do find a FPP quite fitting: this is supposed to be about us viewing the world through the eyes of one of its inhabitants, and feeling like a citizen of Night City. If this were something like a Zelda game, then I don’t think that this approach would work. Then again, I did find it a bit odd initially that there isn’t going to be a choice between FPP and TPP (at least from what we’ve heard so far), and we will have fully customisable characters that we’ll only be able to see during cutscenes and the like, but that’s less of a gripe and more of a “oh, what we heard about the game before wasn’t totally accurate”/it’s been a mixed message up to this point. I really appreciate them coming out and being straight to the point about the way that the game is (as opposed to say EA, who hide everything that could be a potential problem from the limelight). I also wouldn’t bungle yourself in with the ResetEra crowd, just because they’re the same crowd complaining about how the game looks like a complete detour from the Blade Runner, neo-noir cyberpunk game that we first saw back in 2013 simply because of it being daytime. This game is about CDPR pushing the limits of gaming technology and innovating the role playing genre as a whole, not refining it, and I think it is a wise move to make such a grand departure from the third person open world adventure of The Witcher 3 — which by all means is, at least critically, the bar for an excellent modern RPG — with this game, to keep themselves sharp and to show off their vast range of expertise.

Excellent technical analysis as ever by DigitalFoundry: What they suggest is that what we see here is the game, which is seemingly confirmed by Daniel Bloodworth of Easy Allies during their Impressions video for the game: the trailer looks slightly cleaned up compared to the gameplay that he saw, but is not a CG trailer. His impressions can be found here, and it’s well worth a watch — it’s not every day that someone like Bloodworth seems so enamoured by the quality of a game demo, but he clearly is here:

Yeah, wasn’t that revealed during the Direct itself? I think it’s an appalling move for them, and I hope this sort of practice doesn’t somehow weed its way into the traditional core series games.

Haven’t seen anyone post the box art yet, so... ...very much worthy of the Ultimate name!

That’s absolutely disgusting, and the blame can’t at all be put on Lopetegui for this. Even with @killthenet‘s great examples aside, Real are the ones who decided to share it with their players, not Lopetegui, and the Real players are the ones who shared it with other members of the team, which is what resulted in the premature announcement yesterday. By all means, this was supposed to be kept under wraps until Spain’s World Cup was over. I’m reading that Rubiales made the decision simply because he didn’t want players being given less of an opportunity because they are/aren’t Madrid players, but that’s a really odd one, considering that the squad submission date was a few weeks ago; there’s not much that can be changed now about who’s already there, so it’s just odd. Del Bosque could return, but I’m not sure how many would take to it after their two previous tournaments, and I feel like his return could fly in the face of the fundamental changes that have been made to the national team since then. Luis Enrique has been out of action as a manager since the end of last season, but surely he’d also be a good shout? I’m very concerned if they’re planning to go to the World Cup with a sporting director or untested assistant manager at the helm. Based on their time under Lopetegui, and on paper, Spain need a strong and experienced leader to try to steer them back to the top of international football. Anything less just won’t do.

Almost certainly; they’ve been saying this was a possibility for quite a while now, and this seems to be more of the same vagueness. Not that surprising for a developer that puts the quality of its games above all else. I can’t wait that long! but seriously, I’m not shocked at all (maybe more shocked that the rumour that it would be playable behind closed doors turned out to be true?), and I think it’ll be out by the end of next year, probably sooner. You don’t go dark for as long as they did on the game only to come back with a game which is 2+ years off. Plus, they’ve had hundreds of people working on the game for the last year or so. And they never stop talking about their want to do what Bethesda did with its short turnaround from announcement to release for Fallout 4. I think next year’s E3 will be the platform that they choose to really push the game hard and dive relatively deep into the early sections of the game. Wouldn’t be surprised at all if we saw another trailer at TGA in December.

You’re absolutely right, there is a rather significant gap there. I expected much more than we got just because I knew that it was barebones from mid-July to mid-November, and that Direct didn’t do much to change that. I don’t see them putting that right with a Direct towards the end of the summer, seeing as those games would have also presumably been welcome at E3...but then again, we have games like Yoshi that have gone completely MIA, despite being shown off during Treehouse last year, iirc. The pessimist in me says that they’ve messed up, but I don’t really listen to that guy when it comes to video games. The optimist in me says that they’ve got something tied to the deep dive Direct/launch of their Online Service which they’ve kept quiet up until this point. Why else do we have that gap, especially between Online’s September launch and the next major first-party game? It makes me wonder...could their retro gaming catalogue for Online be substantially larger than they’ve let on to date? Or will we see an overhaul of the eShop, with a slew of retro/older games coming to the console in this window? Not to lead anyone on or get anyone’s expectations too high up, but surely there has to be a legitimate reason for that gap, which has currently gone unsaid?

Apparently the Madrid players in the Spain camp were informed of the news, and, rather unluckily, some non-Madrid players in the squad ended up hearing about it, which forced Real’s hand in officially announcing his appointment. You're right though, it really is a weird one!