Julius

First look at the main menu from today's Production Hotline video: This game has been marketed so weirdly.

The 'Production Line' video below has apparently detailed some upcoming updates and plans for the Collection: Should've launched in a better state, of course, but kudos to them for plugging away at sorting the issues post-launch. From the summary I read (the video is in Japanese) it sounds like they teased an upcoming, larger scale event with a focus on new projects. Volume 2, perhaps?

Reminder that this launches on PS5 today! I'll probably wait for a sale, but I'm very much looking forward to whenever I get around to it

Demo dropped for this: Progress from the demo does not carry over to the full release, but you'll get some handy items instead.

We get the first publicly released trailer for The Acolyte tomorrow, and it's teaser poster goes hard. Up there with the teaser poster greats in the series for me of The Phantom Menace... ...Revenge of the Sith... ...and The Last Jedi... Can't wait to see what they've got in store for us with this trailer, the one they showed at Celebration last year was hype as hell it's time to set the tone, Headland!

Finished my animated TLA rewatch last week. Despite rating the season individually as a 10 for forever, I always manage to forget just how excellent Book Two is. Naturally, this has resulted in another LoK rewatch, perhaps forced a bit by wanting to cancel Netflix soon (nothing on the horizon but I have it for now). Finished Book One last night and even if I think it's a glaring step down from TLA, it's still such a solid and fun time. That being said, I'll go to bat for the soundtrack of LoK overall being stronger than TLA's the music in LoK is just so consistently rich and emotive. Onto Book Two today, aka maybe the weakest season of Avatar (and which is still fine, maybe saved a little by the Avatar Wan stuff).

Played a fair bit over the weekend, completing the Sovereignty of the Republic in Galactic Conquest, and then played through all the ground maps in Instant Action. While going through these I took note of the maps I performed best at for War Hero and then played through those a few times, and that's now the only medal left to get to Legendary for the Infantry Class; this normally takes getting to 36 points in one life, but as I'm up to Elite for it I now only need 27 points per life, and I'm averaging 28 points, so it shouldn't take too long! Also maxed out rank to General: After I get War Hero to Legendary it's then a case of moving onto the other classes, and I've already got a few maps in mind for certain medals. While going through what I have so far, though, and just considering the fact these are related to trophies, I'm a bit let down that medals weren't tweaked to be stackable, as I had a few 100+ point lives which only nabbed me one medal, so I would've been better off getting myself killed or respawning to speed it up? But that's not how I feel anyone should really be playing the game if they're genuinely enjoying it also a bit surprised at the lack of trophies relating to environmental hazards in II, like getting eaten by the Rancor at Jabba's Palace seemed like a natural trophy to have, but oh well. The maps brought over from the first game have been fun, as has playing as Kit Fisto and Asajj (previously Xbox exclusive). However, a lot has been made of this considering that a fan mod just got dropped in, flaws and all, to do so: Definitely calls into question Aspyr's originally planned source for the modded content being added to KOTOR II and if they had any plans to give credit to them, before it got cancelled. Considering how this has been handled I'd imagine not? Back to the game, though, Aayla Secura has probably been the highlight hero character for me this time around, and I said it last time, but playing as a hero or villain is just so gloriously broken if you're smart about it. I love grabbing all command posts but one on maps with tight corridors and then just hiding around a corner from the command posts to take out 5+ guys with a single lightsaber throw doing so with Vader on Hoth felt real good. Still having such a blast with this, kind of getting me in the Star Wars mood. I know, I don't really have those that often, do I?

Battlefront II campaign complete, always a great time. Naboo was the map with the most bugs from what I found, with the balastrades missing from a bunch of balconies meaning there were just floating flowers around there was also one occasion where I spawned in on a fenced off balcony above a commando post which I couldn't escape from. I played the original BFII a lot, and had NEVER had that happen before. The AI was fairly temperamental in the original game, but it seems ramped up here, with it feeling a bit more extreme and ranging from a bunch of guys gorming out and watching on as their friends die or 5+ guys executing you Order 66 style. I don't mind it at all, but yeah, just seemed even more aggressive and temperamental than the original game. Some movie cutscenes are missing sound, there's no time to read the text which pops up before a mission because of how fast load times are (seriously, what gives with collections doing this? If you have info on loading screens which go too fast now that it's on a modern console, just make it so I need to manually progress from that screen?), and the camera awkwardly swings in between the load screen and spawning in, as well as during some respawns. Also! The Duel of the Fates victory theme in this sounds SO flat compared to the original, which has irked me a little bit ever since my first victory in this Collection. The Collection aspect of this isn't great, that's for sure, but the game itself still holds up amazingly. I'm having a blast. Jedi and Sith feel as stupidly OP and fun as they should be, it's the right balance of arcadey and skill (and a bit of stupidity with how funny some showdowns become, your guys running in the way of your shots or getting surrounded and savagely ripped to shreds by half a dozen Wookiee Warriors), and vehicles feel so rewarding to play in and extremely punishing to facing off against. Not really sure where I'll go from here, think at least one go through in Galactic Conquest with every faction is a must, but getting all of the awards to legendary is looking like it's going to be a fairly serious grind, so I might get those GC campaigns out of way and play through every map at least once in Instant Action before seeing where I'm up to; if I'm not far off then I'll probably power through, but if there's still a bit to go after that, I might come to it as a relaxing game between other things or switch over to the first Battlefront for some variety.

Insider Gaming yesterday reported on the PS5 Pro specs which have been floating around for a while now, with some additional details: And, kind of hilariously, they think the Pro could end up being pushed out of this year into next with no major upcoming first-party games on the horizon: Where do you guys land on the Pro at the moment? For me, I think it's a pretty easy pass; as we've touched on plenty of times before, this gen only really now feels like it's starting to kick in, with so few true next-gen experiences up to this point. I think the only way I'd get a Pro would be if it was the only way to get 30th anniversary themed plates and controllers, but I have to imagine they'll be sold separately anyways, so

Ah dang, thanks for the heads-up, I think mine automatically updated no problems so far though, so hopefully I don't get impacted! Going to round off II's campaign today I think and then just get stuck into Galactic Conquest as much as is humanly possible. Definitely noticing some technical quirks and bugs from time to time, not to mention the menu fonts generally being gross and low effort, and the default control scheme/being in first-person on first boot just ain't it. This is also the first game since I got my PS5 where I've found myself turning down the adaptive trigger strength to Weak because it feels absolutely disgusting having that on for a game from close to 20 years ago. Anyways, there's a lot to fix here but I'm not sure how much Aspyr will actually bother to take another look at just considering the state it launched in...but, to be honest, so far, it's hard for me to complain. I do wish the monkey paw would stop curling when I get these collections that I ask for (FF Pixel Remasters and then this just seemingly fulfilling their minimum obligation to justify a repackaging and not being as reverent as perhaps they could and should be to the originals), but it's Battlefront on modern consoles, and - so far - it's worked just fine, which is enough for me. Oh, also, I haven't seen a trophy guide go up for the game yet from the usual sources, so thought I'd share this Steam achievement guide I found for the Collection, which has everything you need to know. I was a bit confused by some of the trophy descriptions not listing the game it was referring to, so it was nice to track down some clarification

A whole lot of Weyes Blood the last week and a bit or so. Killer voice (very Karen Carpenter/Joni Mitchell), lyrics, and unique sound. Album covers are stellar too: Yesssssssss, and the stripped versions of Tomorrow is Closed and Overcome are glorious

It's about flexibility So obviously it should be in the fitness thread

Pre-launch trailer: Crazy to think this is just under 6 weeks away. Really hope it delivers the goods

Dropped this game somewhere in Chapter 3. No fault of the game really - I was just starting to enjoy it - but it's just come at a bad time for me personally, and I wasn't totally gelling with it the way I remember gelling with Remake on top of it, which makes me happy to leave it as is and come back to it when I'm ready. Going to move onto some other games for now

Of course! Going to take a quick nap (long day) and then fire it up for the first time very excited to play through the single player campaigns, and those trophy lists look very doable while also forcing a bit of variety on you. Love it. Unfortunately, seems like Aspyr might've misfired in a few spots here, and pretty substantially on the multiplayer front... ...yikes. Will of course be making up my own mind about it - and hang onto it regardless, because Aspyr seem to generally be okay at bringing things back up to par post-launch - but there's no way that they could've possibly lowballed the servers to the point of only having ~200 spots at launch for a Star Wars game people go out of their way to mod online support into. Insane. Also, the file sizes for these games are absolutely MONSTROUS for what they are. I'm not too shocked seeing as Aspyr seem to be really bad at cutting these down (I think when I installed KoToR a little while back it was 15 GB on Switch? Which is insane!), but damn, they need to get a better grip on this stuff.

Dragon Ball. Character design for Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest, and many more. Truly one of the greats. RIP.

Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender has been renewed for a second and third season: Shocked, I tell you, shocked! In all seriousness though, looking forward to seeing how they go forward with it. Casting Toph is going to be HUGE. Really hope they take some of the feedback onboard, some is a bit extreme and mean-spirited which I think should obviously be ignored, but there's clearly room for improvement, so I do hope they try.

Awesome for PC players, loved Ghost of Tsushima. So by the time this releases, PC will have had more first-party developed releases (Horizon and this) than the PS5 itself (Part II Remastered, which is almost certainly coming to PC at some point in the near future) for 2024. You've also then obviously got their first day-and-date console/PC release in Helldivers II which is still going strong. That's pretty bonkers to think about. Nixxes has been putting in the work and then some with these ports and their support work, damn.

And we wonder why people don't come to post on N-E anymore lmao Normal distribution expectations fall apart at the seams in individual cases where people know their own tastes and naturally gravitate towards films which fit their fancy - there's a built-in bias. The only way to counter that and get to a point resembling normal distribution is by either watching everything, watching things truly at random, or by people forcing themselves to watch things they wouldn't want to. All of these options sound awful to me. In any case, I'm glad I enjoy as many films as I do, as much as I do, and I truly feel sorry for anyone whose average film rating is a (weighted) 6.3 or where only 0.1% of the films they've watched is above a 9, as outlined in that link. Let's just be grateful that I at least have a bell curve for my ratings distribution.

Been picking away at a lot of films lately, including a good few from my list that I want to get through for the year (really not in a gaming mood atm, sorry Rebirth ). Anyways, I just wanted to shout out one in particular, which is Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-Ho, Parasite). I've had the BJH blu-ray box set sitting on my shelf for years and am now deeply regretting not getting to it sooner, because this film was abso-freaking-lutely incredible. It's an incredibly tense whodunit based in a small town where a pattern of murders have started to take place, with an MO to boot (my years of watching Criminal Minds, Midsomer Murders, Rosemary & Thyme and the like is finally starting to pay off) but it's balanced so well by the charm and craziness of it's cast. Honestly? It kind of feels like a more serious version of Judgment, the RGG (the creators of Yakuza) developed detective games, just a lot of greatly executed story beats with some chuckles thrown in here and there to mix things up. Unfortunately, it's not streaming on anything in the UK right now from what I can find (go figure), but if you ever see it floating about, I wholeheartedly recommend giving it a watch. It's fairly rare that I rate films a 10/10 (22/380 according to my Letterboxd profile; 5.7% seems fair if you ask me!), but, well, this was absolutely my cup of tea and then some, so I would certainly score it that way.

I got up to the start of Chapter 3 yesterday after around 9 hours yesterday. I'm very torn on this open world. For the most part it has been fairly barren with very little available to do, I'm mostly avoiding open world encounters and just focusing on completing the available quests and other activities before moving onto the next story beat. The activities available to do in the open world are fine, I guess? Not a big fan of the Ubisoft towers, much less activating them not clearing the mist coverage on the map but showing available activities. I touched on it before but the open world just doesn't feel like a well-designed open world, even if it's pretty easy on the eye at times (well, minus a lot of the textures looking like smudged Picasso paintings up close), and I feel like this is most apparent in how much Chocobos judder over the rough terrain, occasionally getting caught on a rock that's sort of out of place. This all ties into a lot of half-baked ideas being realised which seem fairly superfluous, like having "stealth" sections in certain quest lines, or even during the main story (such as early on in Kalm). Like in the first game, I think the gameplay shines most here during the bigger fight sequences, whether it be a boss battle or a mini-boss, or the linear and tighter setpieces. The music is amazing. So far I'm okay with just going through and making it a tick box exercise, but this is one of the weaker open worlds I've explored in a very long time. While there are rewards and activities aplenty, I feel like part of the purpose of this open world was to sell us on protecting this world and it's inhabitants just as much as it was a case of paying homage to how things were handled in the original, but it feels a bit too spread out at times and there's a lot of dead air between said activities. Some of the activities are pretty bizarre too, like pressing triangle a couple of times at life springs to register them, or the summon materia shrine things where you need to time your presses to synchronise feeling so basic. I see the purpose of these things being available as activities from a functional and rewards POV, but the act of completing them just feels so unrewarding. There's a lot of bloat and not very much of it feels good, I'm kind of itching to get back to the mini-games and story. I'll kick on with it today, but yeah, a valley of highs and lows already at this early point for me. I did really enjoy the first game (even if the ending got a bit wacko, I respected the divergence from the original) but looking back I can't help but wonder how much of that was down to it's linearity, and just how much of that linearity was actually down to the development of the game being a bit of a mess until it was brought in-house. Would Remake have potentially been as bloated as this if things went S-E's from the start, I wonder?

Summoning @drahkon (because Andrew Scott)

Absolutely insane if true. Like you say, it's a niche franchise, and 2 is a sequel to an already very niche game, so I imagine it has even fewer fans than the first does. That you say it's worse than the original makes it an even more confusing move. The only reason they're doing this is because of the film, I guarantee it, and even that being in the works is a bizarre move considering, again, the IP being so niche. That they're remastering 2 as opposed to the first game though...were there any glaring technical issues with 2 compared to the first game? The only other thing I can think of is that the first game was already remastered from Vita to PS4 and that's they're justification? But I think it's the film. More importantly, what a slap in the face to Japan Studio. Closed up shop because...? And then revive one of their niche IP with a film adaptation and a remaster. Please, for the love of all that is holy, don't make a Shadow of the Colossus TV show or film... This could totally fall into the launch window of the PS6 too, but I think they're waiting on the film more than anything else; work on a Bloodborne movie has been kicking around for years at this point and I think there were more solid rumours just a couple of months ago about who was working on it. Sony seems interested in pulling a reverse of game licensing like we had in the PS2 era and are basically looking for more synergy between their film and game arms, from the looks of things; yeah I'm groaning audibly about this and think it's a terrible idea too. I mean, we've had HBO's TLOU release not too far off from a remake of Part I and a remaster of Part II, Guerrilla have been working on a bunch of Horizon projects so one will surely be tied to the release of the show in some way, God of War is getting adapted too, the list goes on and on. These are weird times for PlayStation, that's for sure.

It ends, Part One and Part Two are roughly adapting the first and second halves of the first Dune novel, respectively. It's worth noting that the original novel did end a bit abruptly and that these two films are about as faithful as a 500+ page book condensed down into two 2½ hour films can be, so where some people might call it a cliffhanger, the first part of the story is very much told across the two films and I think it's simply a case of trying to stay faithful to the original intent. A "third part" would be adapting Dune Messiah, the second novel in the series which serves as a pretty direct response to the response for the first book (the author, Frank Herbert, wasn't happy that a lot of people seemed to *completely* miss the point, so he basically laid it out for them); I think they will adapt this in just one film, which is doable as it's noticeably shorter than it's predecessor, but essential for rounding off the story and the main character's arc. Denis Villeneuve, the director of the two films, has already expressed his intent to adapt Messiah too, though he's interested in having the actors age up a bit (there's a bit of a gap between the first two books), and he also has a couple of other projects on his lap for now, so I wouldn't be surprised if we're waiting until 2030 or later to see Messiah adapted. Bit scary to type that out But yeah, to sum up, the two films out now are well worth the watch and tell a complete story, and though the "third part" is seemingly in the works, it's likely a while off, so I'd definitely suggest getting around to watching Parts One and Two in the meantime! Hope that helps

Might as well start giving these Xbox events their own threads I reckon, seeing as they look like they're trying to get somewhat consistent with them. Plus, platform equality From the press release: I've actually been really curious about The First Berserker: Khazan since we first saw it at the TGAs a couple of months ago, so looking forward to getting a better idea of what's going on there.