Julius

A handful of Metroid Dread icons have dropped, available in three waves until 9th July: EDITED TO ADD: they've also added some for Prime Remastered, too; available in two waves until 2nd July. Some of those look real nice, and think I'll be picking them up just to have them as future options...but I think it's going to take something beyond S-tier to replace my current black/gold background TotK Link icon

You just had to say it -- first goalless game of the tournament

Yep, this pretty much sums up Spain v Italy last night... Gave me a good chuckle

Spain look the real deal. Great match between the two, once again, and Spain looked keen for a second goal to kill the game off - but couldn't find it amongst the Italians. You still sense the passing DNA of the Spanish side of a decade ago is still here, but this is by far the most direct and attacking Spanish side we've seen in a long time. Really fun to watch.

Polished off the rest of this last night. So, yeah, the grind got way more stupid than it already was. Played Extra Ops 10 and 11 and nauseam after finishing off a couple more of the prisoner extraction missions, kept them going and Zadornov kept escaping, that was fun. Especially loved Snake wondering if he had an escape fetish anyways, got to the point where I was waiting on the last Zadornov escape mission to turn up, and it just...didn't. Go back and check everything I'd read up on...I've got Intel close to Lv 50 now so we've completed 13+ missions with them at Lv 40 for sure, I've got ZEKE fully built (including railgun) and not out on a mission, and it looks like I've got two plants. Mother Base rank is at 5 by now, way above the 2 I'd been quoted. I continue on with Extra Ops 10 for another 15 minutes. Nothing. Turns out, the Mother Base Data page has more data available rather than just the Mother Base rank I could -- I found this out by accidentally clicking X, because it's one of the few pages in the game which doesn't give you an idea of what buttons might do things on the page, and so I assumed that was it. Nope! Every separate section of Mother Base is at Rank 0 -- and as it turns out, I need to get Support Rank to 2. So how the hell do I manage that? Turns out you need to get to Mother Base to Level 6, which then unlocks the ability to level up separate sections, and the way to do this? More missions. Do some more and finally see numbers climb because some people seem to think that the only way to build out Mother Base is with a certain amount of GMP in your pocket, which I'd been spending on R&D like a madman. Anyways, replay a bunch of missions, get an actual second plant (the one you start with doesn't count) with Mother Base at Level 5 and Support Rank to 2, and then, FINALLY, we get Zadornov going MIA again. Said it before, but the way to do this and the lack of direction is simply silly. Now the big question -- was it worth it? I'm not totally sure...but I sure as hell did enjoy that "true" ending. Let's talk about it. All of it. And that's that for Peace Walker. Not perfect, seemed a bit restricted in some ways by wanting to find an excuse for repetition at some point, and it's a shame it decides that point is the penultimate stage of the game. At the same time? Stellar soundtrack, engaging story, and pulled that MGS heartstring I've had growing since playing the first game back in 2020 for the first time just perfectly. Now that my time with the HD Collection is done, and with only Ground Zeroes and V to go in terms of the "main" games, I wanted to share my ranking of the games I've played so far. Snake Eater - no question. Best story, one of the best soundtracks, pretty huge shakeup in terms of mechanics pulled off with complete aplomb, I love the Bond-esque vibe and approach to it all. Snake Eater is up there as one of the best vocal songs in gaming, period. Metal Gear Solid - it is absolutely insane what Konami had cooking in their kitchen in the late 90s. It's not the easiest game to go back to, but good lord, is it still worth checking out today just to see the ideas they were working on -- showcases more originality and ideas than most modern releases. Sons of Liberty - insanely ahead of its time in themes, and I'm going to argue that it's got the best individual soundtrack of the bunch. This game gets nutty - and feels like the absolute best balance of how meta Kojima likes to get with the player, while also still being a great game. Still looks freaking spectacular for a game from 2001 too, by the way. No lie, this is probably the MGS which randomly drifts into my mind the most. Peace Walker - I'm kind of shocked to say this, but yeah, I think this is my #4? I love the short, episodic snippets of gameplay. Love the style of cutscenes and their interactivity. Loved the base-building aspect of Mother Base, stupid grind for the true ending aside. A more than worthy epilogue to Snake Eater. Guns of the Patriots - Kojima and MGS at its most unhinged and fan service-y, and probably the one with the most hype moments. Hype alone doesn't make a great game, mind, and though I don't mind the number of or length of cutscenes in this game, I don't think it's quite as strong and, perhaps most importantly, not as focused as the games I'd rank above it. Very excited for when I get around to Ground Zeroes and V now -- especially the latter, very curious to see how I feel about what I hear is a middling story when Peace Walker has shown I love the episodic approach. Until next time, MGS

Excellent, excellent, excellent first half from Spain. But no goal.

Now this is interesting -- there's going to be a new mission with some sort of narrative connection to BG&E2. Probably worth also pointing out that this is coming to Switch, too; not touting the 4K 60fps being touted for current gen consoles, mind you.

Spain really showing their intent early on, Williams has been running riot on the left. Also, anyone want to point out to Clive Tyldesley that Carvajal is Spanish? Because he's called Di Lorenzo (Italy's RB) "Carvajal" about five times already he made some similar errors in the buildup, too. Bad night of sleep, Clive?

Trailer is up and 25th June is confirmed: Only took them 8 years after announcing BG&E2 to get what looks like a fairly basic remaster out. I'm curious and will surely give it a look in a sale at some point, but with us living in the age of remakes, I can imagine some fans might have wanted a bit more.

Absolutely. Gary's giving a mini masterclass on exactly what Kane should be doing when coming short, too. Awkwardly half seated and half standing, mind you Yeah, it'd be so easy to fake but you can really tell that he genuinely cares about the result. Not that they all don't, but I absolutely think some play it up as part of their on-screen(/in-ear?) personas a bit much, whereas Shearer's frustration seems pretty absolute and very understandable. Unrelated, but just realised this means Spain vs Italy is on ITV. Fml...

We'll have men on Pluto before England make it out of a group with all 9 points. Why the hell were we passing it centrally instead of pushing the ball into a corner to cross it in at the very end there? Speaks volumes.

Made it to our first final in 55 years and lost trying to protect a 1-0 lead for 120+ minutes that we got in the 2nd minute and no longer had in the 67th. I mean, if you don't learn from that, I don't think he'll learn from this either

Beautiful goal from Hjulmand. Yeah, no-one can be surprised we dropped deep and then conceded after scoring. It's our MO at this point. It's what lost us the Euro's final in 2021, and it's coming back to bite us now. I can't help but think that it's a mental thing where players are looking at their captain dropping deeper. Kane scores plenty, but he's a bit of a snail these days and drops deep a lot, which works great with pacey wingers but not so much when we hate fizzing the ball around and over the top (for some reason). So he comes back, the midfield then I think comes back too, they see him playing a bit slower, and everyone else slows down too? He's a great goalscorer, so obviously he needs to be on the pitch, and his time with Spurs and even Bayern this past season shows him dropping deep can be very effective because he's a great passer of the ball. When he drops, though, we lack players on the wings who are willing to run back and forth to make those sprints to make use of those passes -- and, again, fizzing it over the top and around diagonally doesn't seem to be part of Southgate's plan anyways. Anyways, grateful I'm not needing to listen to Lee Dixon and the ITV bunch, but I'm not sure what surprises me more: Southgate-ball and how stupid it is, or people - including the BBC commentators and pundits - expecting him to not play Southgate-ball and being surprised when he does. Like, have you seen England play at the last few major tournaments? This is us through and through. Hopefully it picks up but I'm pinning most of my hopes on Spain v Italy to give us something fun to watch. It's not even tense watching England in the group stage, it's just boring; imagine not taking any risks or making any changes when you're the big boy in one of the easiest groups in the tournament. Urgh.

Someone at Ubisoft jumped the gun with a tweet which has now been taken down, but no matter: this is arriving June 25th -- that's this coming Tuesday! Guessing this was saved for LRG and was maybe meant to be a shadowdrop? Can't help but wonder if this has faced a mini delay, because I can't think of any other reason you'd save it for LRG over Ubi's own show.

Here England go again, then. Would be nice if we could score more than just the one goal tonight boys

Launch trailer for Shadow of the Erdtree: Way more interestingly, though: the latest patch, 1.12, has updated the base game's final battle to include Torrent – you know, that FINAL BATTLE IN A MASSIVE ARENA WITH CERTAIN ATTACKS CLEARLY DESIGNED TO BE TAKEN ON WITH TORRENT?! Kind of insane to not only see it added, but to see it updated this far out from the game's initial release, and tied to the update going live before SotE goes live – I wonder if that's a hint that there might be another big boss battle where you can do this in the DLC?

Funnily enough, this happened back in 2012 as well - when they met in the group stages and then again in the final. They do tend to cross paths a lot, though -- and checking on it now, they've played against each other at least once at every edition of the Euro's since and including 2008 (so this is the 5th competition in a row!), and Italy haven't beat Spain in any competition since they did so in the knockouts of Euro 2016. Should be an interesting one. Definitely two of the favourites and their clash on the semi-finals in Euro 2020(/21) is still one of the best international matches I've seen.

To me visually it looks like a shinier version of what we saw in Prime Remastered (based on the trailers and the first few hours I spent with the game), but I do agree with @killthenet that it seems a little early to make the call on it. What we see in the trailer, for the most part, I'm guessing is the absolute start of the game, and from my limited time with Metroid games up to this point, it looks par for the course? There's still plenty of time to show off new mechanics and a greater sense of identity, but this trailer was to reintroduce Prime 4 after not hearing anything about it officially since they restarted development in 2019, and before that we only had that generic logo reveal from 2017. There seems to be a portal behind Samus in the stinger -- so maybe we're saying some type of space/time travel this time around? Which is a cool thing to tease but absolutely shouldn't be where you go with your first trailer for a game like this. Anyways, hadn't commented on it before, but so happy to see Sylux turn up here. I had a friend who played Hunters when we were younger on the playground back in primary school and I spent countless hours just staring at character trophies in Smash Bros. Brawl, just wondering what these characters were all like in games I didn't own/had no way to access, and Sylux just always looked really cool to me.

Metroid Prime Remastered is 30% off (down to £24.49) and Metroid Dread is 33% off (down to £33.29) on the eShop until 30th June, following this week's Metroid news in the Direct. If you've been holding out for a digital version of these games for whatever reason, I guess now might be the time to pick them up!

Really professional handled game by Germany to get the win over Hungary, who on another night could've drawn or even won -- they just couldn't take their chances. Musiala has been great once again, in last tournaments there were flashes of brilliance but he's so far been very consistent in the opening two matches. Germany's defence looks like it could be there for the taking against a better team, though, but I'd say the same about most of the defensive back lines at this tournament; football is seriously lacking in quality centre backs and defensive-minded fullbacks these days, similar to how we don't see many traditional 9's.

Really professional handled game by Germany to get the win over Hungary, who on another night could've drawn or even won -- they just couldn't take their chances. Musiala has been great once again, in last tournaments there were flashes of brilliance but he's so far been very consistent in the opening two matches. Germany's defence looks like it could be there for the taking against a better team, though, but I'd say the same about most of the defensive back lines at this tournament; football is seriously lacking in quality centre backs and defensive-minded fullbacks these days, similar to how we don't see many traditional 9's.

Hungary are chomping at the bit early on in this match against Germany. Nothing to show for it yet, but in less than 10 minutes they've already had a few more chances than Scotland did across the 90 last Friday.

As someone who enjoyed TotK but found the menus to be even more stuffed than they were in BotW... ...yeah, I totally agree. The approach they're taking is an interesting one but it absolutely looks more in line with some of the ideas from TotK's Ultrahand and the general BotW/TotK approach of doing things your own way vs a hard set of solutions to puzzles as I think you'd expect in a 2D Zelda. This game feels to me like Nintendo are going "trust me, WE HEARD YOU! kindofmaybe HERE'S THE 2D ZELDA LIKE YOU ASKED FOR intheartstyleofLAremakewhichsomepeoplewerespliton AND HERE'S PLAYABLE ZELDA LIKE YOU'VE BEEN ASKING FOR butwithanon-traditional2Dapproach ANYWAYS GIVE US YOUR MONEY NOW K THANKS BYEEEEEEEE". I'll be shocked if this game doesn't split opinion when it releases. Personally, I like the idea they've got going on - and I think if you're not going to give Zelda a sword it's either this or a pure magic-casting system, and this seems way more in line with the idea of open experimentation popularised with BotW and TotK, in fact it really reminded me of that 2D Zelda demo we got for BotW back in the day at GDC - but I think the look of it, like you guys have been saying, is going to remind those who weren't fans of BotW/TotK a little too much of those games, whether it's the approach to puzzle design or even just the UI. Which means the game might not start off on the right for some people already. Happy to be proven wrong, though. I think there's a lot of cool stuff they can do with this Echo system, but I guess we'll need to wait and see!

Me in the Direct thread just after it was announced: there's no way Ashley spends time anywhere else on the internet, right guys? Obligatory You Will Know Our Names