Julius

Bah, sorry to hear that @Hero-of-Time how many hours in are you at this point where you're nearing the end, and what's been your general approach to the game with it being open world vs the linear nature of Remake? I'm curious because I'm only 5 hours in (haven't played since Friday, apparently I book time off and then my life gets infinitely busier ), but after seeing the trophy guides saying it'd potentially take a couple hundred of hours to Plat (only checked out of curiosity after XVI's), I bailed and stuck to my original plan of just doing the story and mini-games, which is what I did for most of Remake. The mini-games I love by the way, Queen's Blood rules! I LOVED the first chapter, which was definitely more on the linear side (also: heroic Sephi theme ftw) and took the hardest knee I've ever taken in a game in Kalm (just let Cloud stand around for a couple of minutes while the music started to choke me up), but I got to the open world and...eh? I'll get into more once I'm further in the game but I'm a bit confused by it's design at times, in that I immediately ran into multiple instances where the terrain climbs up and I struggle to see over it, and it just seems a bit empty? I'll reserve judgement until I'm further on in but the linear sections so far have been the highlight for me, whereas I beelined story beats once out in the open world to pick up a Chocobo. There's weird lighting issue adjusting to the dark coming from the outside too in a lot of cases, I've found. Oh well, I'll get back to it today, but I definitely didn't feel as compelled to return to it over the weekend, but maybe that's just down to where I left it off

Glad to hear you two enjoyed it! @bob It's funny because despite giving it the lowest score of us three, I also definitely want to see a second (and third) season of this. Just go all the way with it at this point! @BowserBasher I'll be shocked if it doesn't get a continuation personally, the numbers it's pulled in have been pretty crazy; per Gizmodo, it had a debut of 21.2 million views (the One Piece adaptation had something like 18 million?) and got to the Top 10 in 92 countries, which is bonkers. What's more, while they continue to have the original ATLA in a number of countries on Netflix, there's a positive trickle down effect where there are people like me who have decided to watch the original again (more than anything because, well, why only stop watching at the end of S1, right? I think I even saw the original started trending in some countries off the back of the live-action release!); people who haven't watched the original, or just haven't got back to it in a while, might skip the adaptation after seeing the mixed-to-positive reaction and just go to the original (I have a number of friends who did this one); and I imagine there are a bunch of newcomers watching it for the first time who have checked out the animated series after being introduced to the series by the live-action adaptation. There are too many reasons to not continue, so I'd be shocked if we don't get some type of confirmation in the next few weeks, especially with financial end-of-years coming up for a lot of places.

Dune: Part Two was freaking incredible.

The game's event was hosted today, and the previews and impressions coming out for it have been looking real strong. Definitely going to be keeping an eye out for this game's full release.

If it makes you feel any better, Balatro is my personal favourite game for you that you've played this year so far

A 20th anniversary program for Monster Hunter is scheduled for 12th March at 11:00 GMT. It will not feature any updates on Wilds.

Man, that sucks. I was just reading earlier about copies in Japan I think it was where they'd mixed up some of the Play and Data disc printing, so you'd actually need to download data with the one labelled 'Play Disc' and play with the one labelled 'Data Disc'? Really weird that this game seems to be having multiple issues crop up on disc across different regions. (thanks @Ike for sharing the source ) I'll need to check but I also think Persona 3 Reload had some issues in SEA a few weeks back with the physical English language release just straight up not being the physical English language release? Something's up with the disc printer in Asia, that's for sure. Glad to hear it's been sorted at least Just setting my out of office email and it's time to mosey

I finished this the other night, and have been thinking about it a fair bit. Overall, I think this adaptation of TLA is fine. If I were to score it /10, it's slap bang in the middle a 5/10. There are some excellent original moments and scenes which are good enough to be added to the original, but there are large swathes of the show which just feels like the people working on this missed the point. There are so many times where we're just told and not shown what characters are feeling, and so it feels like a simplified take on an already pretty simple (at surface level) animated children's show. The exposition is pretty terribly handled, the writing is just straight up bad most of the time, the quality of the music shifts from EPIC ORCHESTRAL COVER to super generic incidental epic stuff, and it only hits at times because of the original underlying musical score from the animated series. Zuko was the highlight for me, I think Dallas Liu nailed it; actually, I think most of the time, the Fire Nation side of things was infinitely more interesting and better delivered than what we saw going on with the Gaang. A lot of these main characters are child actors and I think they all did pretty well, there's room for improvements in places (one of the blessings, I guess, of not shooting it all at once is that they can go get more acting chops between now and a potential second season) but these characters improving going into the next season is ultimately reliant on better dialogue than what we ended up with in this first season. Think it's time for an animated ATLA re-watch now, feels weird just leaving the story off at the end of S1.

My copy has just arrived Can't believe today is the day! Got the install started but got a busy day ahead of me, and then I'll need to round off the end of INTERmission (had a weirdly busy few weeks and played way less lately, go figure ) before I get started on Rebirth. Thankfully I'm off tomorrow and next week, though, so I imagine I'll be putting a lot of time in over the next few days EDIT: the reversible cover is still *very* much off-centre, as it was with Remake. S-E, WHY?!?!

Agreed with much of the rest of your post, but my fingers are itching to type an answer to this one. Because boys and young men from ages 10-25 are statistically the most vulnerable audience when it comes to what this industry preys on: free time, escapism, and disposable income. This isn't to say that women or younger children or older folk can't have addictions, or any other myriad of problems, at all, but there have been a LOT of growing trends over the last decade which more and more papers have been published about and has research has been completed on, and it's so scarily obvious why this industry targets this particular demographic. It's late so I'm not going to go for the most relevant or up-to-date findings, just what I can find relatively quickly: Here's an old graph from 2020 showing just how many more women are attending university than men. Here's an article on men's mental health which suggests a bunch of reasons why male:female ratios of depression and suicide are probably inaccurate, and it's largely down to men being more likely to avoid reporting or trying to find a solution to the problem, and being more likely to look for some form of escape. Here's a piece on men being nearly twice as likely to form an addiction than women, and being more likely to abuse that addiction. Men are more likely to be competitive than women. Again, to be clear, I'm not highlighting these articles to say that one side has it worse than the other or what have you, but to highlight that men - and young, developing men, for obvious reasons - are a prime audience to aim your products at if you're a game publisher. More likely to have free, unstructured time (relatively fewer men in and graduating from university)? More likely to become addicted? More likely to be competitive (and thus spend said aforementioned free, unstructured time getting better at something)? More likely to look for an escape than to tackle a problem? It all forms this horrible cycle which makes a certain male demographic a hotbed of potential whales for these companies. This is before we even get into the systems at play (mechanically) in and around (microtransactions) gaming which rewards the players (sweet monkey lizard brain dopamine) in ways which makes certain games so difficult to move on from. There's also now an additional element these days of compulsion and FOMO as games are very regularly updated with new and exciting challenges on an increasingly regular basis. League of Legends, Call of Duty, Fortnite, FIFA, and so on and so forth, there's a reason that they're all as big as they are, and large swathes of the rest of the industry (AAA obviously in particular) is at best guilty of following suit by following their lead and going for the same demographic with the same tactics, or at worst, recognising the vulnerabilities of this demographic and launching at them full force. In most AAA cases, it's probably a bit of both. I simply don't think there's as much money to be made from targeting a female or older audience in particular, and so much of what a younger audience can access is determined by their parents or guardians. I think of it as being similar to how Nintendo marketed the Switch completely right: their ads include older teens and young adults, not children or older adults, because there's that "they're cool, I want to be like them" factor to it (obviously it's an ad and it's effect differs from person to person, but that's absolutely their strategy with their marketing). For the female demo? It's often either a case that girls are included in the ads or there's an air of "I can do that, too. And maybe even better" if they're not, which can persist because of the way in which young women have been raised over the last decade or two in a world with a huge increase in feminist movements, causes and efforts – you don't even really need to target a female audience in some ways (and I don't think you'll win a new-to-gaming female demo over for countless reasons, the first of which being your ad probably won't even get on their radar to begin with). Unless the game is targeted directly at a female demo (which often, unfortunately, falls into some sort of stereotyping), I don't think women care nearly as much about a game not being aimed at them as men might (this is anecdotal, obviously). I've gone on long enough, but basically, well, they're just preying on the statistically more vulnerable demographic. It's disgusting but, well, shareholders mean this kind of has to be the aim for most these days

Thanks for the thread @Dcubed, definitely think it's warranted at this point. To comment on probably the smallest aspect of this first (and the least to do with the layoffs), the Star Wars FPS by Respawn cancellation kind of sucks considering, well, it's Respawn and they haven't made a new console-based FPS in...forever, at this point? Despite clearly having the talent to do so. There were also some expecting/hoping for it to be a Republic Commando spiritual (or actual) successor, so yeah, bummer as a Star Wars fan. More importantly it reads like a lot more layoffs are going to be heading their way. As for the layoffs overall, I don't really have much to add in terms of the current conversation around current development cycles and goals being unsustainable and unnecessarily costly, but this is just the point we've got to. Gaming appears to have ended up in a similar place to where films were about a decade ago where, despite a healthy-ish indie scene by comparison, sequels/remakes/reboots completely rule the roost simply because it is the safest and most cost effective ROI for these big companies. I've got to hand it to Shawn Layden here, he was very transparent about where this was clearly all going and saw the writing on the wall; it's not hard to see why PlayStation no longer wanted him around. Obviously I wish the best for everyone being laid off, but, selfishly, following the industry and these rounds of layoffs these past few years makes me feel like I dodged a massive bullet by not following my evident passion for the medium and trying to find a way in, which is something I'd personally been toying with as an idea for a while – and I can't help but wonder how much this news being so front and centre might impact future waves of potential developers, and just how many others it might've put off already. It sounds like a horrible industry to be in, whether it be the crunch, the lack of job security, the constant acquisitions (furthering the lack of job security), the rampant power struggles and corporate schlock as well as some fairly heinous things being done and said in certain corners...you have thousands of some of the smartest and most talented creative minds in the world, in the most lucrative entertainment industry, being laid off year after year. Bloated budgets and investments from COVID are definitely partly to blame for all of this, but I also think it is clearly a cultural issue, too: loyalty and hard work are rarely rewarded, and, if anything, actually seem pretty foolish traits in terms of furthering a career in the space as things stand. Especially early on. And I touched on the indie scene before, but well, this is exactly why it's oversaturated. There is too much talent and not enough jobs going around with the stability needed to support it all. Someone needs to compare the 70s push of indie films to what we've seen in the games industry over the last decade, because while in film it seemingly came from wanting more creative freedom in order to break the mold and pattern of the big studios of the time, in gaming lately going independent genuinely seems like a move being made out of a search for some solid ground under people's feet, and for the more experienced folk around it seems the wiser move, even if it is an incredibly risky one. It honestly saddens me to see what the industry has morphed into even in just the short time I've been around actively following it. Games are better than ever, the industry is making more money than ever (obviously with a huge COVID bump it might be down relatively in some spots), and yet thousands of jobs are being lost because..? Oh, because it's not those same creative minds - or the minds of people who respect creativity - at the top anymore, like it might have been a decade ago. It's Business Grad Joe remorselessly maximising profits and reducing costs in the name of his shepherds, the shareholders.

That is an absolutely terrible trailer. And Z-A is a terrible title (but brings us back around very nicely to Gen VI's focus on endings and beginnings). But! Hype? Kind of. Of all the games I've played X and Y felt the most barren, and Kalos genuinely deserved a third version rather than just hamfisting Zygarde into Sun & Moon. Lumiose is such a great city in Pokémon and it felt like there should have been so much more to do there, so I'm very intrigued by the idea of a Legends game set entirely in one spot. Shady alleyways? Rooftops? Could see this being the first Pokémon game in a minute with *actual *exploration** based purely on the setting. I also just can't wait to have another Legends game to play around in, seeing as I really enjoyed Arceus. On the other hand, though, what is up with Unova being shafted and skipped? Have they just accepted that another trip to Kalos was needed way more than some poor and misguided attempt to return to Unova? In which case: release the games on Switch already you [Pilo]swines!!!

Six episodes in now and I'm very, very torn. Very easy to make sense of which additions and changes were from the minds of Bryke and which were from Netflix's side, I feel. One or two times the trio of episodes condensed down into one kind of works, or is tweaked to work pretty well, but other times it misses entirely. Curious to see how the last two episodes were handled...

Have to agree with many others here, in that I think it's an essential feature of the Switch's successor. I genuinely don't think anything outside of very early Switch sales records get broken otherwise, and I honestly think it would struggle to get to 100 million units sold without backwards compatibility. Oh, and I think it needs to be backwards compatible in every sense of the word when it comes to Switch titles – both physical and digital. Man, imagine the uproar if it were just the one For me personally? I think it's the deciding factor on whether or not I decide to pick one up on Day 1, outside of a Switch 2 launch exclusive killer app – and I'm talking Game of the Generation/Decade buzz akin to what we had for BOTW at the Switch's launch here, more so than "just" a Game of the Year contender.

Watched the first two episodes, so really not far enough in, but some things have stood out already (both good and bad). It's a weird one where this is an adaptation of a very accessible cartoon, but I'll try to keep things in spoiler tags when comparing the two as well as for major beats in case there is anyone here who has yet to watch the original and is checking this out first. Some non-spoiler thoughts first though: Ian Ousley as Sokka is kind of nailing it to a degree which is seriously surprising me, at least so far. Some of his new lines have given me genuine chuckles and laughs. Dallas Liu as Zuko and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as Iroh were great castings, and so far very good performances from the latter. It makes going between the two sides feel interesting and evenly balanced in terms of keeping my attention. There was one shot of Zuko which is going to become an overused and hilarious GIF, though All of the cast looks the part. We knew this already from casting announcements and trailers beforehand, but seriously, they've nailed the look. Not really a fan of the score so far. The reorchestrations of Jeremy Zuckerman's original score only hit because of their sheer underlying melodic quality and nostalgia, but they sound incredibly generic when compared. The new, original score so far has been flat and boring. Set design has been great. I think the pacing is a bit messy, and I do think it's down to blending and distilling three 20+ minute episodes into roughly an hour each. Some of these aren't necessarily three-episode arcs, and the gap between ending one episode in the animated series, getting the credits, then moving onto the start of the next, getting opening credits, felt like it broke it up better. Here, you're getting Appa swoop out of a shot where he'd normally be capping off an episode...but then swinging back in almost immediately after in what would introduce the next. It's the nature of the adaptation, but I'm not a fan so far – and I think this particular move to have episodes serve as condensed examples of multiple episodes is actually going to fly in the face a bit of not having filmed everything already (which is a fine decision to make in terms of finances and production, but as a story, it's going to be odd). It just already feels like it's moved on too fast once or twice already. The bending feels like it's at 0.75x speed and there has already been way too much slow-mo. Gordon's smile and goofiness as Aang shines through a lot. Perfect casting. And then to get onto some of the spoiler stuff/changes... It's solid so far. It's a weird one: my expectations are pretty low (like I said before, just want to see a few scenes realised in live-action), but some of the changes they've made so far have been drastic in terms of how they approach the underlying themes, mini-arcs and very nature of the first season. Some of the writing changes more than performances are probably my main hang-ups so far – I'm only two episodes in like I said before, though, so perhaps they're approaching certain topics at other times/in other ways. Some of the performances are a little stilted, nothing worth seriously flagging so far, but I think it's just the nature of having child actors. Looking forward to seeing how the rest pans out.

Don't listen to him, @EEVILMURRAY. Please say less. please

My favourite of theirs, gets me every time. It just hits like a ton of bricks. Good thing I'm careful to not listen to it too much... *is my most played song on Spotify over the last 6 months* Whoops Glad to hear you had a great time! Will definitely need to. I've actually never been to a concert before, probably doesn't help that my friends don't really share my taste in music all that much so I'll find some NBT-listening strangers and drag them along instead I guess!

Honestly, I think Gen III might be my favourite overall when it comes to starter designs? Not counting Mega Evolutions (to make it a fair comparison) I really like/love 6 of the 9 starter line designs this time around. As a quick aside - because I hadn't thought of tracking it that way before - for Kanto it would be 4 of the 9 (Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Wartortle and Charizard), and for Johto it would be 4 of the 9 again (Bayleef, Totodile, Feraligatr and Typhlosion). I'll try to keep on top of this list to create a mini-rankings for myself as these go on! Anyways favourite line of Gen III is the Treecko line. PMD aside - which is a pretty big thing to put aside, all things considered - I just have a pretty unique history with the line in the games. I've mentioned it on here before, many years ago (holy cow, six years ago?!), so I'll just quote myself from that other awesome Glen-generated thread So Treecko is definitely the coolest one to choose off the bat of the bunch for me, and I'm sure that Ash's always having a twig in its mouth in the anime only upped the coolness. Grovyle is again the coolest of the first evolutions, and in terms of final evolutions, I think Sceptile is on par with Blaziken for being the coolest (and as a Mega Evolution, too). After that, for me, it's the Mudkip line. Mudkip and Marshtomp are adorable. I mean just look at lil barista Marshtomp here. Idk what happened with Swampert - definitely the line to suffer from ugly final evo syndrome this time around, yet it's not even cool! - but Mega Swampert looks hilariously jacked and I love it. Torchic looks dumb. Combusken looks even more dumb. Blaziken and Mega Blaziken look awesome. Real ugly duckling thing going on here for a Pokémon based on a chicken... I'm not too sure about Treecko leaving - if he did, it certainly wasn't for very long, as it felt like Ash had it in his team a good amount of the time, and as a Grovyle even longer! He also ends up becoming a trusty Sceptile, too, but yeah, he certainly could've left at some point...a lot of Ash's Pokémon do choose to take a sabbatical or go AWOL at some point May getting Torchic was so...strange, in hindsight. Just doesn't suit the idea of a contest Pokémon at all (at least in the way that May approached contests) after being a cute little Torchic and going into an ugly and streaky Combusken, and then into the cool as hell Blaziken. Beautifly always felt like it was more appropriate as a contest Pokémon for May, and so it felt like her starter got shoved off to the sides a lot of the time The coolest use of the line in the anime was actually Harrison turning up with a Blaziken towards the end of Ash's journey in Johto, felt like a great tease for what was to come next I'm Hoenn. Really loved whenever the anime would do that sort of thing. And then yeah, you're right, Mudkip - and then later Marshtomp - was just kind of...there, and Lotad/Lombre/Ludicolo certainly got centre stage as his main Pokémon in Hoenn. Again, just another really strange choice for that one.

To be clear, I wasn't trying to call you or anyone else out as not thinking ahead by saying that, so I'm sorry if it did come off that way – more highlighting how utterly bonkers it is that Atlus and SEGA are getting away with some increasingly anti-consumer moves, like Atlus with this and Persona 5, or what SEGA recently did with NG+ and some other content being locked behind a certain (more costly) edition of Infinite Wealth. Totally get that, and totally agree that Atlus can get stuffed when it comes to this sort of thing

It's a really interesting price for DLC honestly (£34.99 who hasn't seen the UK pricing for it yet), and yeah, I do think everything we know about it - and it being in development for nearly two years now - certainly points to it being incredibly substantial. The Eurogamer interview with Miyazaki revealed that, based purely on surface area, the location it takes place in will be larger than Limgrave; there will be more than 10 new bosses; and 8 new weapon types, which is certainly a lot. Miyazaki also talks in this IGN Japan interview about there currently not being plans for a sequel or any further DLC - makes sense, we've waited nearly 2 years for this as it is - so I think it's reasonable to expect it to be pretty sizeable considering they're taking a one-and-done approach to DLC this time around. I've seen some say they think this will weigh in at 50 - 70 hours...which seems pretty preposterous, to me. I think realistically we're looking at something more akin to the length of their more linear titles with this all - seemingly? - taking place in the size of a larger region, so it all being condensed and focused in one area, with a bunch of legacy dungeons, etc., so I think it'll be something like 20 - 35 hours, obviously depending on skill level, how much you explore, etc. Anyways, still waiting for Vaati to turn up with a breakdown, but Quelaag had an awesome breakdown on the new trailer that's worth checking out if anyone else likes to speculate: And, additionally, I found Ratatoskr's (and the more widespread) idea on the origins of Messmer's title as "the Impaler" (the boss front and centre of Shadow's marketing) pretty damning: this dude totally impaled Marika. Seriously weighing up whether I want to replay this game before the DLC drops, because otherwise I think I've got an incredibly hefty re-spec on my hands, as playing Bloodborne and Armored Core VI last year sold me on a completely different approach to the combat in these games that I hadn't tried out in Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, or Elden Ring before (speed and dodging vs traditional sword and board). Hmm.

Pretty big news via the PS Blog for PS VR2, which says PlayStation are currently testing the ability for owners to have access to additional games on PC. Could be huge for the platform, considering that it launched without backwards compatibility for original PS VR titles and the funding just hasn't been there to really draw newcomers in when it comes to new titles. Good stuff, looking forward to any updates on this.

More details on Vengeance: These details are a summary of yesterday's Vengeance Spotlight stream: Essentially - and it's not exactly a new perspective to have if you've followed their releases over the last couple of years - if you don't want the least definitive version of an Atlus game, don't pick it up at launch and be willing to wait 2-3 years for a definitive version. Which absolutely sucks. At least for Persona 3 Reload they had the decency to add that stuff as DLC (that's not confirmed but leaked, mind you, so that's not been communicated yet), but SMT V and Persona 5 have both now had definitive editions with content not made available through other means.

Reviews are starting to drop, and while it's very early on and these numbers will probably come down a little in the coming days as more reviews release, currently sitting at 93 on OpenCritic and 94 on Metacritic! Obligatory Digital Foundry tech breakdown: Seven Days till the End [of this nearly four-year wait!]

Kyle Bosman delivering on yet another Easy Allies bet...nearly three years on. By walking around a park dressed as Batman. A true man of his word

Megalovania in the style of Persona 5 is S-tier stuff