Julius

Shadow of the Erdtree previews be dropping: Some clarity on the separate levelling system: Just 2½ weeks to go, and I'm still totally undecided about how - and if - I want to go about playing this DLC at its launch. Do I hop back in a day or two before to get back into it and perhaps re-spec? Do I start a new save like a week out and just focus on taking out Mohg and Radahn? Or do I give it a pass for now – am I even in the mood for this? Guess we'll need to wait and see

Man, this sucks, but yeah, it definitely seems to be heading that way. If they can somehow ride it out to next year they'll probably be able to get by a little longer with the foot traffic a new console launch would bring with the Switch 2, as well as the potential release of GTA VI. Kind of crazy just how much of the industry is currently hinged on the Switch 2 and GTA VI releasing within the next 18 months.

It's finally official: Julian Mbappé is joining Real Madrid. Hilariously, this announcement was leaked earlier today, thanks to Mbappe's personal agent, Macron:

Reminder that The Acolyte drops tomorrow in the US and in the early hours (02:00 BST I think?) over here in the UK: Yeah, I'm going to be silly and probably stay up to watch it Anyways, wanted to highlight some of the meat stuff that's been going on with The Acolyte marketing ahead of its release. Mainly, this: So: Amandla Stenberg can play violin, loves John Williams enough to end up being given a music sheet made just for her by him, and she came out on stage at Celebration last year in London in Episode II Padmé cosplay? Always love when someone wears for their love for the franchise on their sleeve Leslye Headland also had a brief chat with Dave Filoni, which I'm sure will be expanded on with a Disney+ Gallery special for The Acolyte at some point: She's talked a lot about pulling from Legends (the old EU), her love for the prequels, Clone Wars, etc. Seems like we've very quickly moved onto prequel fans getting their shot at Star Wars and I'm super here for it. We also got a Lee Jung-Jae feature in his character, Sol: Yeah, it's pretty safe to say I'm hyped for this to drop. We are finally - FINALLY - going to be free of people working in and around the Skywalker Saga eras and be starting up with something new!

After a tumultous few months for my gaming habits, I think it's past time for a bit of a catch-up on my Gaming Diary entries. Going to try to keep this relatively brief as I've talked about a number of these games before or in their own dedicated threads. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening | 2019 The 2019 remake of 1993's Link's Awakening was an absolute blast to play through. It's overflowing with an ensemble of charming and memorable characters, plenty of whimsy, and so much vibrancy and life, whether it comes from its bright colour palette to just how animated so many of its characters are. Being a fairly faithful remake of a Game Boy title, it dazzled me as part of the first 2D Zelda outing I've seen through to completion just how much content was packed into what is such a relatively short and small game, and just how much impactful it is at times, especially towards the end; what I really want to highlight here is that as someone whose proper entryway into the franchise was newer titles such as Breath of the Wild (after having admittedly dabbled some in older 2D and 3D entries in the past), just how easy it was after the original hump of going from 3D to 2D to transition into a game of those style because of how much is consistent across the titles. Its myriad of temples and secrets are a joy to explore and seek out, with every newly introduced item adding another layer to the exploration of its world, and this was helped out massively by some Quality of Life things included in this remake, such as getting to pin things on the map, which backtracking and figuring out how to get those pesky heart pieces so much more inviting a prospect than I feel it otherwise might have been. These QoL features paired with the game's condensed world just feels like you're - generally - being catapulted through the game at such a brisk yet inviting pace, and I think this game turned out to be the ideal length. Now, I don't want to overstate this, but this game is host to some technical jank and weirdness that feels more befitting of a game such as Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl rather than a gorgeous Zelda remake, and I think it would be poor form to not mention it. First and foremost, I knew that the game launched with the framerate being a bit all over the place, but that this is still the case today kind of boggles my mind. The depth of field also goes a bit too hard at times, and to not have an option to tone it down seems like poor form on Nintendo's part - in fact, this game has surprisingly few options to change in its settings, which I was a bit surprised to find. We discussed it at length in the game's own thread but not being able to tell whether things like BowWow snapping back to Link is as a result of poor thinking or just trying to keep things in line with the original to an absurd degree does raise questions about some of the ideas behind certain decisions in this game as a remake, but when coupled with some other things in the game (like hard-headed Bidoof creatures suddenly doing a 180 and protecting themselves despite appearing to look off in the opposite direction, or overworld music following me into a cave and having its audio overlap with the music in the cave) certainly makes me lean towards some of these being oversights or poor thinking rather than by genuine good design. And it's a bit of a shame if that is the case. To finish on a high note, though, this game's soundtrack is SUPERB. Whereas the music in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom leans hard into subtlety, and Ocarina of Time leans into classic heroic music tropes, the diversity ranging from whimsy and silliness to outright bombastic in Link's Awakening is a true highlight of the game for me. I think that this great variety and ability to successfully capture the ideas of the original and flesh them out this much is apparent in no track more than the Staff Credits: As the first 2D Zelda I've played to completion, Link's Awakening cerainly makes me hungry for more of the same, as well as some more of that Game Boy-era charm. A brilliant game. This is also the first game we can cross off from my list of 10 pledge games for the year! Final Fantasy VII Remake: Episode INTERmission | 2021 Final Fantasy VII Remake: Episode INTERmission is DLC which released for VII Remake way back in 2021, as a way of tiding us over until and teasing what was coming next in this year's Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, while also introducing Yuffie and a bit of her backstory. Yeah, I don't have a great deal to say about this when compared with the base game - it's..fine? I didn't mind Yuffie all that much, though I know she tends to split opinion amongst fans, but not much of great interest happens story-wise until the DLC's latter half, which is incredibly short as it is, so while a fine intro to the character, it doesn't really do much to truly grab your attention in the same way that I feel Remake did. The highlights of the DLC for me were some more great tracks being added to the ridiculous catalog of tracks already in Remake, the boss battles, and also Fort Condor - a lovely little strategy game, though it probably verges on being a bit too easy and a bit too short to feel fully fleshed out. Star Wars Battlefront II | 2005 I have talked about this game several times before, but playing through Battlefront II as part of Aspyr's Classic Collection to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the franchise was ultimately a bit of a mixed bag. Look, in terms of the actual gameplay? It's the same Battlefront II I've always known and loved: the campaign is still great, Galactic Conquest is still addictively fun and brilliant, and this is still probably my "stuck on an island with 1 game for the rest of my life" game. Getting new content added to this release of the game, such as new hero and villain characters, as well as maps being copied over from the original game, added more content to a game I already loved. The mixed bag aspect comes from Aspyr's release of the game. It was a mess at launch, many - myself incldued - lost progress at multiple points due to bugs, the added content seems to have been transplanted from an outdated fan mod, and this all ultimately boiled over with me losing enough progress to feel - for the first time ever - frustrated with the game. Which, for me, when re-releasing a game, simply isn't acceptable. Star Wars Battlefront | 2004 Going back to Battlefront after revisiting Battlefront II and actually having not touched the game for about a decade was an interesting experience. The game is so much more methodical, the camera so much closer to your character who can't sprint, you can't play as heroes or villains, the maps seem to be oriented more around elevation variety and strategy compared to the run-and-gun, condensed maps of Battlefront II...and yet, it's still brilliant. I will always hold Battlefront II in much higher regard than Battlefront, but it is the basis on which the second game was built, and it's crazy going from the first game to the second and seeing how much changed in just one year! Lost Judgment | 2021 Lost Judgment is a massive improvement on the first Judgment game. From a gameplay perspective, the overall number of tailing missions have been greatly reduced (and the ones which still feature are tweaked to be far less annoying and tedious, and long gone too is the alarm noise as soon as a character leaves your eyesight; instead, the music just picks up a bit), the new Snake style of combat is brilliant with its focus on fluid locking and countering (and, I'll be hones,t is what I used for 80%+ of my playthrough), and there's a skateboard to help you get around town much faster, which is definitely needed seeing as this game stretches across both Kamurocho and Ijincho (the latter first introduced in 2019's Like a Dragon). From a story and quest perspective, the title has moved on from its explorations of the various ailments of the mind to bullying, which is front and centre throughout the game. Yagami goes undercover at a school to investigate reports of serious bullying and typical RGG hijinks ensue which will ultimately leave your jaw agape and your heart crushed, before patting you on the back with some great levity to pick you back up. The content of Judgment felt generally much more serious than the Yakuza games released before it, and Lost Judgment feels it goes a step beyond that, focusing not only on the challenges of taking on bullying in high school (and, similar to Judgment, doing a great job of educating the player throughout) but also just how far bullying can push someone - it deals with suicide and suicide attempts, not in an overly explored way, but in a way which would make me suggest scrutinising if that's something you want to be handled in that setting in a video game; I think it's well handled, but depending on where you are in your life, this might not be a great game for some, and it's not exactly something they can throw on the box. The returning cast of characters were brilliant, as were plenty of the newly introduced ones, and some characters from the first game even return in the background as unvoiced cameos, which I actually quite liked. The story deals with other heavy subject matter, too, mainly taking aim at the concept of who has the right to judge others and what actions could be taken to bridge that gap when said judgement is unfair or unjust. With the story as captivating as ever and the gameplay pretty much exactly what you'd expect from an RGG brawler, the game dabbles heavily with side content; not only are there the usual Side Cases (this game's substories) making a return, but there are also School Stories; with Yagami accepting an undercover role at a school by joining as a counsellor for the investigative Mystery Research Club, he has the option to help out numerous clubs and students, and while this is generally handled well, these side activities boost certain personality stats, and certain stat requirements or story progression is required to unlock certain clubs, and beyond that some of their next story beats, which means there are some which you don't unlock until quite late on. This all means that, not for the first time, RGG has a game which I think has a bit of a side content-story balance issue: while both are great, the full effect of the story is dampened when its pace is dragged along by some great side content, and despite being a large part of the initial story, there is a bit of a disconnect at the end which might be a bit too wide for my own personal liking. What's more, the quality and quanity of these school clubs vary greatly: some might take the length of two or three substories to wrap up, whereas others, such as boxing - yes, there's a complete boxing mini-game in this - are much more involved and drag on much longer. There's then another which involves talking to some girls and drinking at a bar, but due to the drinking gauge in the game, there's a cut-off point you'll then be driving down for a while after unless, like me, you go off and drunkenly stumble over towards another activity. One of my favourite club activities was the motorcycle battles, which feel like a successor of sorts to the taxi races back in Yakuza 5, and it's definitely one of the wackier highlights of the game; also, tiny tidbit I really appreciated, was that I couldn't take part in the races when I was drunk! Lovely touch, a message comes up on screen if you try to do so. Anyways, on the flipside, one of the club activities involves robot battles and customisation, and up to a point this is fine - but there's a pretty stark spike in difficulty which is all but guaranteed to have you seeking out a guide (I strongly suggest this one) part of the way through, and it's such an unnecessary one when you think of the sheer volume of School Stories activities that are already available. The crazy thing about it is that School Stories - and the story proper - both have some EXCELLENT payoffs, so it's a bit of a shame to me that it feels like a bit of a pain at times to actually get through the stupid pile of content. Ultimately, this ended up being the first RGG game since 5 (where I think I only had one quest line left?) where I didn't 100% complete all of the substories/Side Cases (32/42) because I was simply done with them by the time School Stories wrapped up, and it added little to the game by comparison; I would absolutely recommend prioritising School Stories over Side Cases if you ever get around to playing this game, because it has the Avengers-esque cap-off Side Cases did in the first game with its final quest line! Say what you will about Yakuza 5 and its crazy amount of content spreading it thin, I think a similar approach should've been made here to side content. 5 is fairly linear and introduces you to a new type of side content, allowing you to go through as much of it as you want before moving on (unless you return to it later on), whereas Lost Judgment has you running all over the map like a headless chicken, waiting for certain stats to increase or other attributes to lower before carrying on, and at the cost of the Mystery Research Club and School Stories - which is great stuff - feeling so separate from the main story by the end. Really grated my gears, too, that the final part of the quest needed to be started at noon (the game also has afternoon and evening) when you don't have a way to change the time until after completing the game (which, if you've played enough of these games, you'll know is an option which normally becomes available ahead of the final gauntlet at the end of the game), and with the final stretch of the game only taking place in the afternoon and evening (and when it's not, areas are gated off), for the first time ever, I had to continue with a completed save to get back into the School Stories action! What was that about RGG?! Overall, this outing was a noticeable step up from Judgment, but in the wider spread of RGG titles? It's probably at the top end of the middle of the pack; both Judgment titles are well worth the time invested, but are by no means the best RGG has to offer, from where I'm sitting. And with that, I'm caught up once again on Gaming Diary entries. It's been a weird past few months for me in terms of gaming, starting some games off but not seeing them through to the end (so hopefully I'll get back to them over the summer) and even with Lost Judgment I'm gutted that I didn't get to try out the Kaito Files DLC...but I was ready to move on by the time credits rolled at the end of the game, so maybe I'll get back to that at some other time. Regardless, I'm finally starting to feel in the mood for gaming once again, and am looking forward to what I pick up next!

Ubisoft Toronto have now joined in the fun that is this game's development. See y'all in another 2 or 3 years I guess.

It lives? IT LIVES!! Coming this Fall!

The PS VR2 PC adapter is launching 7th August for £49.99/€59.99/$59.99. The ability to expand this thing with a bunch of SteamVR titles including Alyx is massive, but I can't help but wonder what it means for the state of VR2. It feels to me like it's flopped and this move is the only smart way to appease people from feeling like they've invested poorly.

Oh yeah, totally - to be clear, I will very happily pay £70 for this game if that's how much it ends up being I guess my question is coming less from a consumer "want" in terms of people potentially wanting it to come in at a lower price (I mean, that would just be nice for everything, and I doubt anyone would disagree ), and more so trying to understand what PlayStation might want to do, considering they've been keen to position games at so many different (and sometimes confusing?) prices throughout this gen. So me saying "£50 will be an easier sell" isn't saying that that's the case for me, but more trying to think that I could see PlayStation seeing it that way if the aim is to get a wide range of people picking up this game at full price. Do we think that PlayStation themselves hold Team Asobi and Astro Bot to the same potential pricing as a new God of War, Last of Us, or even Ratchet & Clank? I think it's also worth asking because Astro has never been in a full price game before, and I think that also gives PlayStation a bit more to think about when pricing this game. The Playroom was a free download for PS4 owners if I'm remembering right, the same was true with Astro's Playroom for PS5, and Astro Bot Rescue Mission comes in at £35, which is below a lot of big name offerings like Iron Man VR and Skyrim VR, despite being viewed as one of the best games released for the PS VR platform. I think that PlayStation will have the numbers from Astro's Playroom to support whatever they decide to do in terms of pricing - I feel like just going off the number of Platinums and completions, and even downloads will be more than enough data to get a fair idea of what they should be expecting in terms of interest - and while maybe not the most fairly representative way, on the PlayStation YouTube channel it is currently the third most-watched of the new trailers from the State of Play (behind Monster Hunter Wilds and...Infinity Nikki? Holy heck that game currently has nearly as many views as the State of Play itself!) so I don't doubt that there are eyes on it, I do just wonder what their sales expectations are for a game like this. I mean, especially for launch, where the price is going to be a big sticking point for a number of people before it inevitably drops, as pretty much every non-Nintendo game is known to do. Where Astro has been included in games or experiences before which were unique pack-ins or smaller scale in the case of Rescue Mission, added to being on a platform with a relatively small install base, how do you scale up sales projections based on those previous outings? I don't know, I hope this game crushes and then some. But we all know just how fickle PlayStation has been these last few years, moving on from an amazing selling game like Days Gone because it wasn't up to snuff on Metacritic, and where I don't doubt for a moment how much quality will be packed into this game, I can't help but wonder about its sales potential and their expectations for it, and what might happen if it doesn't perform

Been watching the trailer some more and man, that electric guitar riff towards the end just gets wild. Anyways, I've also been thinking about the game some more – just realised that there's no word on the speed run mode from Playroom returning. Maybe it's still to be announced or it'll be patched in (or even unlocked as a type of post-game?) but I had a blast with it in Playroom and would love for it to make a return here. Very curious about how this game will be priced, too. Part of me expects Sony will want this at their premium £70 tier, but another part of me says that it's a much easier sell at £50. Anyone got thoughts on pricing for this? I was catching up on Kyle Bosman's reaction stream and he asked his chat if it made sense that Astro has this affinity towards hardware in a standalone title like this compared to Playroom (a fair question, I think, due to it being packed in purely to sell some of the new PS5 features), to which someone in his chat responded "Astro's learning about his heritage" Gave me a good chuckle

Trailer for Friday's Summer Game Fest: Didn't cotton on at all to the fact that this was on Friday (and at 22:00, no less!), so not sure that I'll be tuning in live as I've got to be up and out bright and early on Saturday

Been rumblings of this the last few days, and now it's official: Jose Mourinho will be taking the reins at Fenerbahçe next season. So, I guess it's probably not a good idea to visit Istanbul any time over the next few years...

With the curtain all but closed on the European club football season following last night's Champions League final - well, all but Atalanta and Fiorentina playing Matchday 29 today due to their involvements up to and including the Europa League and Europa Conference League finals, respectively - I figured it was time to whip out a new thread ahead of this year's Euro's. This year, the UEFA European Championships return to Germany for just the third time, following West Germany hosting the tournament in 1988 and Germany being one of the locations used last time out for the multinational Euro 2020/2021. Interesting tidbit: this will be the first time that the Euro's make its way to what was formerly East Germany, with Leipzig set to host a number of games, and it's also the first time that reunified a Germany will host the tournament as a solo nation. Anyways, onto the tournament itself, which will see 24 national teams compete across 10 German host cities over a 31 day stretch from 14th June to 14th July for the chance of being crowned the Kings of Europe at the Olympiastadion in Berlin. And talking of the teams, here are the groups: And talking of the groups, here's the tournament tree: Not sure about everyone else, but I've been foaming at the mouth in anticipation of this competition over the last few months. The 2020/2021 edition of the competition was one of the most electric international football tournaments I can remember watching, and the 2022 World Cup only seemed to up the ante from there. So, will we get a third consecutive international tournament involving European teams as explosive as the last? Or are we doomed to slouch into the couch as we're privy to a bunch of goalless draws? Either way, the tournament kick-off is just 12 days away on Friday 14th June at 20:00 BST, when tournament hosts Germany will be facing off against Scotland in the Allianz. Will be looking forward to talking about and following this tournament in the coming weeks with you all!

Inevitable.

Again Dortmund had their heads down and turned off. Completely lost concentration, and the pressure has been mounting from Madrid. Smart and obvious pass from Bellingham, textbook for what you should do, another goal for Vini in a CL final even if he held it a moment longer than everyone probably wanted him to. Going to be surprised if Real don't score a third at this point.

As soon as Dortmund lazily gave that corner away with the deflection it took as they slowly wandered away from their goal you just knew that something was coming. Turn off for a second in a final and you're screwed. Even more so against Madrid. Really poor from them.

Hummels and Schlotterbeck were immense that half, with Madrid not really getting much of a look in, but it's hard to not come away from it feeling like Dortmund will be regretting not putting the ball in the back of the net at least once. Second half Real Madrid in Champions League finals are often a different beast. Seriously! Always shocks me when the good performances from refs in the semis rarely seem to be rewarded with a chance to ref the final, not the first time it's happened at a UEFA tournament mind you.

Embarrassing from Kobel to go down like that after the challenge from Vini (which he had EVERY right to go for), the replays aren't particularly kind to him either

One-way traffic from Dortmund, Real's defence looks like it's being pulled every which way, and leaving it too late to make a challenge. Very unlike them.

Very embarrassing from a security perspective Anyways, excited for this! Would love to see a Dortmund win but Real just seem inevitable

Watched the trailer a couple more times, and yeah, it's hype as all hell. Crazy that they went that hard with the first trailer, though I guess we are just over 3 months away! Only just realising they pulled a bit of a PIXAR with the PlayStation Studios logo in the standalone trailer, neat touch Anyways, this shot in the shuffle of all the action towards the end has cracked me every. single. viewing. It's not even Wander and Agro, it's the fact that there's another bot who has been roped into playing Mono and just lying down for eternity

Totally forgot to mention before that PlayStation committed the cardinal sin of these types of events by telling us how many games they were showing off going in. Way to pull an Xbox, guys. Anyways, this made me chuckle re: Concord I mean, he's not wrong, and we were all thinking it! Boo, how dare you be interested in any of these games! But seriously, tell us about it. This thread could use a bit of positivity after all my nagging

Great write-ups as always @Glen-i, especially appreciate the write-up for Eiyuden had to put it down myself for a bit but I'm sure I'll get back to over the summer. Now we just need to wait for that Suikoden collection to hit so we can get you hooked on those first two games from Murayama

Gladion's theme from Pokémon Sun and Moon is such a banger: Been having a lot of Pokémon videos start to turn up in my YouTube feed, and yeah, I'm watching most of them. This also means I've stumbled across the gym leader theme for Scarlet and Violet, which also goes hard: As someone who loves Pokémon in their jazz (you're damn sure you read that right!) it's hard not to love that intro that clap transition is INSANE! This all means I'm definitely starting to get in the mood for a Pokémon game. Now, just to decide whether I finally get around to the DLC for Sword, finally boot up Let's Go, Pikachu! or pick up Scarlet...

First gameplay trailer (because apparently our look at the game at the TGAs doesn't count) from last night's State of Play: Still listed as coming in 2025. Some additional details courtesy of the official site: Still looking good, though I don't think this was a great showcase of the game in a weird way? Felt like it barely expanded on the footage we saw at the TGAs. Anyways, I'm going to make a point to be there Day 1 for this (assuming it doesn't pop up at the same time as some other big game). Still have regrets over not going back to World but having started the game with friends and them not being willing to get back into it (despite loving it themselves!), as well as with everything else there is to play, I don't see myself returning to it before Wilds drops.