Julius

What a poor showing from us. The board will point fingers at Conte, and while he can certainly be blamed for getting the tactics wrong today and at other times this season, the biggest problem this season have come from a clear lack of conviction from the higher-ups. We needed to sign more players. I wonder if winning the FA Cup would prove anything to the board? Well done to Liverpool for qualifying for the UCL, because they’ve had a brilliant season with some spectacular football. The same goes for Tottenham too, even if they have fallen off in recent weeks. Oh, and thank goodness City scored that last minute winner. Nothing would have annoyed me more than them drawing to a relegation candidate on the final day of the season and not being the first team to reach 100 points in PL history. Its been a great season with some great moments. The FA Cup final and the final round of the season in all of the other major European leagues next weekend, the UCL final the following weekend, and the start of the World Cup three weeks later should tie a bow on a memorable season of football quite nicely!

Okay, now I’m willing to wait patiently. I love FFVII’s OST (like I’m sure many of you do) for so many reasons, and this has notched my hype for the game (and my willingness to wait a long time for it) up a few levels.

I’m not too worried about today, to be honest. Champions League qualification is now out of our hands (well, I mean, it has been for a few months); all we can do is win against Newcastle and pray to the footballing gods that Liverpool lose to Brighton. It’s not impossible, but I do feel that it will be undeserved if we do qualify, because we took our foot off the pedal for a few costly months and Liverpool have played excellently for most of the season. It’s going to be a real shame if Conte ends up leaving. I’ve said it before, but our squad was far too small at the start of the season, and he hasn’t been backed up in the transfer market like he should have been, which is the very same reason for which he left Juve. Tactically, clearly, he’s one of the best, but our squad has been in need of a minor overhaul for years now, and a major one if he was going to ever have a team suited to his style of play.

Sakurai-san is apparently taking it easy with this game when compared to other titles he’s worked on, only working 10 hour days (from 10:00 to 22:00 with a 2 hour break) and taking two days off a week. Apparently as working over 45 hours per month of overtime can lead to an investigation, so that likely played into his decision to take it easier this time around. I think this is great, and I only hope that it continues to spread in the gaming industry (and every other industry where possible, for that matter). As much as I love games and people who are passionate about what they do, the stress and consequent burnout that comes from being overworked is something that I’m familiar with (heck, and I’m only 19!), and it’s especially scary when you’re the one overworking yourself, because you forget where the brakes are, let alone having the confidence to pull them when you need to. People should always come before the end product. Nice to meet your for the first time on these forums, @LazyBoy this sounds awesome (albeit anxiety-inducing). I’m in!

I think that’s a smart move by them in the long run. With the way things are reportedly shaping up, it always seemed like it was going to be their smallest game of this year; I don’t think they would have been so eager to come out of the woodwork to do the same for the other games which might turn up on their stage this year (reportedly Doom 2 and a Bethesda Game Studios game) alongside Rage 2.

Splatoon/Fire Emblem crossover confirmed?! Or, better yet: a Splatoon Musou game?!

Some more gameplay, courtesy of Game Informer:

I’ve said it before, but give me Kanto set in the present day (i.e. 20+ years after the originals) with some big geographical and ecological differences (I mean, look at just how much Unova changed in only 2 years between BW and BW2, or how much Kanto had changed in GSC and HGSS, 3 years after the events of RBY and FRLG) and I’m game. I mean, if they can throw in Johto and a main story along the lines of the one we saw in Gen V too, then they definitely should. I just don’t want to revisit Kanto in a state that we’ve already experienced before. Let’s see if people settled on Cinnabar again, or if it turned into a tourist attraction. Let’s see some new cities, towns, gym leaders, Elite Four members, etc. What’s Silph been up to? Has Team Rocket come back, or has an evil team with an ambitious goal beyond making money taken their place by hunting down Mewtwo? Or, you know, let’s see what that guy in Vermilion was constructing. Throw in some mechanical adjustments (such as maybe some Kantonian/Johtonian forms, or, again: interactable wild Pokémon in the overworld’s routes, similar to how other JRPGs handle it) too, and voila: a Kanto (and Johto?) most people wouldn’t mind journeying through. I’m all in if we do return to Kanto later this year and we see something like that. But I’m out if all we’re getting is another remake. It probably makes some sense, too. I can see them making something like this with the Gen VII engine making use of full HD assets and having it out this year, before taking a break next year and coming back in 2020 with a more advanced and nuanced engine to bring Gen VIII to life. Financially, I don’t think a pair of games which have included Kanto has sold less than 10 million units, and it was always going to make financial sense for them to return to the region some day. We’ll likely learn something substantial by the end of Nintendo’s E3 video presentation (so, within the next 5 weeks!), and I do think that a Pokémon Direct prior to E3 could be on the cards again. There’s probably a spin-off game or two in the works, and I think they’ll want to clear up how Switch Online will affect Pokémon Bank or the new games’ online functionality. I’m excited

And BAM. Evert ten Napel, a Dutch soccer commentator who has lent his services to EA for FIFA games, has seemingly confirmed that the UEFA Champions League and Europe League licenses are coming to FIFA 19. I was planning on skipping the next game, because of how much I’m surprisingly enjoying FIFA 18’s gameplay when compared to FIFA 15 - 17, and I’m only a couple of seasons into a managerial career mode which is proving a lot of fun. But this sort of throws a wrench into that...I think I’ll be picking this up if it does turn out to be the case Now if they could just finally add the Club World Cup and actually flesh out the manager mode a bit more...

Whilst I'm sure that it's not coming out this year, I do think that it's come along much further than us onlookers think. Like I said above, Sony have commented that they've never seen a game as ambitious as Death Stranding developed so quickly (I feel like that might have been Layden?), and I believe both Cerny and Andrew House have stated that they've played the game to some extent, and were both very impressed by how it was going. Kojima Productions have also teased that the game could release before the fictional events depicted in Akira take place (2019), and Kojima-san has previously said that the game would release prior to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which seems to suggest to me that a PS5 launch release is by no means the goal. I don't think that would make much sense anyway, as I think there's a good chance that the PS5 will be backwards compatible (based purely on my own speculation that Sony have learned from the drought that a lack of backwards compatibility brought about at the launch of the PS4), and the PS4 will likely be nearing/around 100 million units sold by the time that this game would launch. Kojima Productions does seem to be small, by all means (I haven't seen a number thrown about greater than 100 when it comes to staff yet), but I think that there's a very good chance that Guerrilla are helping them with the game. To what extent this could be I'm not too sure, but their presence might explain why this game has seemingly come along so quickly (at least for what it's aiming to be), because I certainly can't see how a studio of less than 100 developers (presumably the majority of which are Japanese) could to grips so quickly with an engine they've never utilised before. I remain optimistic when it comes to Death Stranding, but I think that The Last of Us Part II is going to be the big swansong for the PS4, and that we probably won't see it released until 2020. Ghost of Tsushima early next year and Death Stranding late next year would probably be my guess for now

Here we go. PlayStation time: Kicking off at 02:00 in the morning on the Tuesday over here. Again. I’ll have to miss watching it live this year (I have an exam that morning ), but I can’t wait to watch the trailers and highlights. I have a really good feeling about PlayStation’s showing this year We now have a date and time for all of this E3’s press conferences, which can all be found in the first post in this thread!

I completely agree. At the very least, I think the option should be available for those who want to purchase the games as opposed to renting them. A renting service is excellent for dabbling with games that you might not have tried otherwise, but there are those who do like the security of knowing that they’ve purchased a game and will have access to it for years to come. Not only that, but Nintendo are leaving a lot of money on the table (and disgruntling a lot of fans) by making this the only available option to play legacy titles, at least for the foreseeable future. If they didn’t want such backlash, why begin closing the Wii Shopping Channel without actually revealing a replacement business model to take its place on their current system? If we’re going to be analogising this with a Netflix service: I don’t know many people subscribed to Netflix without some form of permanently owned film collection.

I think this could mean we’ll be seeing their deep dives spaced out quite evenly throughout the show, with any game announcements (first or third party) filling the gaps. It should certainly lend itself to a better pacing than the 100 mph start which we saw last year with the likes of Monster Hunter World and Shadow of the Colossus, which really slowed down after that, and the gameplay at the end just felt like it dragged the show out further. The focus on Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, The Last of Us Part II and Death Stranding is intriguing. We’re getting Spider-Man in September, and I think we’ll get one of the latter three at the start of next year. The phrasing is a bit strange to me: the implication, to me at least, could possibly be that these are the only first party games that we see from the this show — though with Dreams on the way, I doubt that. Then again, maybe that’s more suited for a Gamescom showing? Either way, I think it’s a step in the right direction, as they seem to be going away from blowing their metaphorical load too early. I think I’ve mentioned it elsewhere (probably in the dedicated thread), but Sony have said that Death Stranding is one of the fastest developments of a title they’ve ever seen, and Kojima Productions has teased that the game will be out before the fictional events depicted in Akira, which is set in 2019. It’s honestly probably the event - at least of the Big Three - that I’m most excited for. Now, if they’d just tell us what time the event was actually taking place so that I could update the original post...

As someone who wasn’t born until a few years after the release of the PS1, I only ever grew up with friends who talked about the likes of Spyro and Crash I get the appeal for Spyro, but never quite understood it so much for Crash, to be honest. It’s crazy to think that the majority of the people that I’ve grown up with only think of Nintendo as a handheld/gimmicky home console manufacturer, based purely on what was popular at the time of our upbringing looking back at console/controller designs of old systems probably doesn’t help; whereas PlayStation has been consistent with the DualShock, the majority of Nintendo’s controllers look rather gimmicky in retrospect

One hour of gameplay with dev commentary is up on Game Informer: but it’s not on their YouTube channel yet. Here’s the link to it; I’ll update my post when the YouTube version becomes available. We’ll see another 45 minutes of gameplay with dev commentary today. If I had to guess, they probably want to ensure people that it’s not the train wreck that it could have been. I’ll be sure to update this post with it when it’s released. Again: Game Informer are absolutely killing it at the moment! In the meantime, here’s a Q&A:

Now that’s a good-looking icon!

15 new SKUs have shown up on GameStop’s website ahead of E3 next month under Switch software. The last time this happened, the slots were filled out shortly thereafter by a Direct only a few days later. So, either E3 listings are up earlier than usual (which wouldn’t be too surprising; we saw Wal-Mart do the same yesterday), or there’s a (very) slim chance we get a Direct soon. Elsewhere, Bandai Namco’s latest financial results have teased that multiple original titles are in development for release from this summer onwards. Ridge Racer 8? A new Tales game? A Dragon Ball FighterZ port? The smell of E3 is definitely in the air

Bumped up to June 29th, for those interested

Man, Bethesda really do love a good tease. I’m really starting to feel the E3 hype! I think that Bethesda Game Studios’ next game (Starfield?) is virtually a lock-in at this point. Doom 2 too. Some moon DLC for Prey. Maybe Rage 2? Admittedly, it wasn’t really on my scope until today (I should do some research). Probably some Quake Champions news too, maybe a mobile game will turn up, and I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if we learn about a Fallout game coming to Switch at this point. A month to go!

I actually wasn’t referring to you when I said it might ruffle some feathers, but, in retrospect, maybe I should have been... I think I agree with you on Kanto (for the most part). I’m certainly not against a return to the region (post-game, set like 20 years after the originals with a lot having changed? That I’m up for!), but I’m confused as to why people seem to think that we’re more likely to have a game set in Kanto before getting a true start to Gen VIII. I know that Gamefreak love to play on nostalgia (Gen VI and Gen VII, I think, have shown that they love it a bit too much), but I don’t think that they’re going to throw their potential creativity out of the window for the sake of a cash-in alone. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they practiced with a new/updated engine by recreating some parts of Kanto, but I just can’t see them making it the focus of a game again (disclaimer: yet). I’m glad that you brought up Gen V, because I think that region nailed so much that Gen VI and Gen VII have sorely lacked. It’s a well-paced, linear (but not to the point that it’s detriment) experience with easily the greatest storytelling of the core series, with 156 (come on!) new Pokémon to encounter. Kalosian and Alolan Pokémon were pretty rare in their own games, so I do hope that they focus on having the new Pokémon front and centre throughout the main story. My other big problem with Kalos and Alola in particular is that they’re literally just video game versions of France and Hawaii, as opposed to being inspired by them like previous regions; for example: I think you nailed it: “fresh” is exactly what I’m looking for most with Pokémon Switch. I’m not looking for anything on the scale of BOTW, but I am looking for some new takes on the formula to help streamline the experience, whether it be Pokémon being visible in the overworld or something else entirely. And they also need to stop with these gimmicks. Mega Evolution introduced a power creep which won’t go away now, and while I like the idea of regional variants as a concept, having them all be exclusive to Kanto Pokémon in Gen VII isn’t at all exciting. Z-moves also do nothing for me (and both that and Mega Evolution give me way too much of a Digimon vibe). Even if they do continue with regional variants, why not go back and give us some new evolutions to older Pokémon, something I don’t think we’ve seen since Gen IV with the likes of Probopass, Magnezone, Gallade, et al? Like regional variants, it’s something which could contextually make sense (the introduction of Mega Evolutions/Z-moves has aided in the evolution of other Pokémon, or some nonsense along those lines), and it’s something which I think would be received comparatively well. What brought that to my mind was the recent reveal that Raichu was originally going to have a devil-horned, farmer orange evolution called Gorochu. Even if it doesn’t come out this year, I do hope that we learn some things about it this year. At the very least, I just want some of these silly rumours to be proven wrong

USGamer seem to be riling up a lot of people with their latest opinion piece: Their main points for this potential disappointment are: I’m really unsure about all this. I definitely think we’ll get it by the end of FY19 (which ends 31st March 2019), because I think “2018 or later” seems to point to that being the case; I can’t see them intentionally misleading shareholders with the goal of 2018 for it to be out later than the end of this fiscal year. In the event that Smash doesn’t come out until October/November this year, I can see Pokémon being pushed into Q1 2019 (heck, maybe that’s why we don’t have a release date for either of them yet). I’m also seeing a lot of debate about this game being Generation VIII, with some pointing to the fact that the anime still has a seemingly long way to go in Alola. I mean, what defines a new generation? Is it just the large amount of new Pokémon, new starters, and a new region? My own opinion is that a change in game engine/art style plays into this; every initial pair of mainline Pokémon games on a new platform have started a new generation up to this point, and each has an art style/engine change which makes it distinct from the generation precedent them. A lot of people seem to be on the boat of “we’re returning to Kanto” (whether it be remakes or sequels), so would a new pair of games set in Kanto on Switch be a continuation of Gen VII, or would they begin Gen VIII, despite supposedly not having a new trio of starter Pokémon, etc.? Going in line with my previously voiced opinion, I do think that a return to Kanto on the Switch could still be the beginning of Generation VIII, as I assume that the engine will have been modified somewhat from Gen VII’s (even if only to fully cater to models and backgrounds which are presented in full HD). I’m interested to hear what you guys/gals think of this. It’ll probably ruffle up some feathers, but oh well

GIF version (the video is only 15 seconds long anyway) for those who want it: This game really does look gorgeous. Those particle effects on the snow look great, and I really love the way that the water reflects. I was really hoping to play games like Final Fantasy VI for the first time on Switch (guess I’m going to have to go hunt for an SNES Classic or a Wii with a complete VC catalogue...), but in lieu of that coming over to the platform, I think this is one of the games which is attracting me most to the platform. It seems that the names of the final two party members are Cyrus and Ophelia, so, going clockwise from their starting locations on the map: Ophelia Cyrus Tressa Olberic Primrose Alfyn Therion H’aanit

Man, the gameplay of PES 2019 looks gooooood... Also, Konami have had their most profitable year since FY12. Getting Kojima and co. off their books, moving to mobile, pachinko/gambling, etc., seems to have really worked for their bottom line. I can’t think of any reason that they’d want to return to creating AAA games outside of the annual PES cash-in. A Metal Gear Solid FOX Engine collection also seems like a great shout for a potentially massive cash-in. But, good lord, I wish they’d, at the very least, let other developers do something with their engine and licenses. Having something like the FOX Engine gathering dust over in the corner besides occasionally using it for PES seems a waste, and having IPs such as Silent Hill, Castlevania, Metal Gear, Suikoden, etc., gathering dust is also a massive waste. I was reading something quite interesting the other week about how other companies seem to be picking up from where Konami left things, though, such as Capcom with Resident Evil VII (Silent Hills) and potentially Ubisoft with Splinter Cell (Metal Gear?). So, at least in spirit, I guess some of their IPs are getting to live on.