Julius

Spectacular way to seal the hat-trick from Lookman. Scorcher of a shot. Atalanta deserve this win. Outclassed Leverkusen everywhere on the pitch. Probably the last place you'd want this unbeaten run to come to an end.

Exhausted just watching this Atalanta press, they're winning the ball back on the edge of the Leverkusen box for crying out loud. Their positional awareness is something else.

Half-time in the Europa League final and Leverkusen are 2-0 down to Atalanta – who are all over them. Very curious to see how they react and how their shape changes after the break. Reminder that Leverkusen's amazing unbeaten season could be coming to an end here. Still really not a fan of the Europa League final being played before the Europa Conference League final...

Official: Absurd. Saw we were in for the Ipswich manager? The disrespect. He'll go the way of Potter, too, I'm sure of it. We somehow climbed up to European places - which btw we now seem keen to concede based on fessing up to a bit of FFP malarkey - after a stunning latter stage of the season, with this pick-and-mix of a team, and then this? Look, Abramovich, there's a lot to unpack there on an ethical level (though I feel like you can say this about most Prem club owners these days), but Boehly and his gang of yank swindlers have zero interest in this club doing well compared to that guy. None. It's disgusting. 8 year contracts? Throwing Tuchel out the way they did? Wouldn't be shocked at all if they went to the Barto-Barca school of finance and we get royally done in a few years down the line.

Story trailer for Shadow of the Erdtree: Hypeeeeee

Lucas Vázquez with the legendary response Saying what's on everyone's mind

You're going to need to Re Mind me... ...is this deja vu?

It is being reported that Toni Kroos will be retiring following the Euro's, as there will be no new contract agreed with Real Madrid. If it's true it's the end of an era for one of the modern greats. Football is starting to make me feel like an old man Still remember when he was meant to be off to United and then Real came in for him after the World Cup for something daft like €25m. Anyways, here's your reminder that Modric's contract is also due to end next month. Not sure if he'd retire, but he's reportedly keen on sticking around the Bernabeu on lower wages. Don't know if I'd be able to handle seeing two of the best midfielders I've grown up with bow out at the same time EDIT: comunicado oficial – yep, it's official.

Nintendo have acquired Shiver Entertainment from Embracer, who have worked on ports for Mortal Kombat 11, Scribblenauts, Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat 1 on Switch. Per Nintendo of Japan: Time to start getting some ports ready for that Switch 2 launch window! Seems like a very smart move given that they've worked together before and with the technological gap between Switch 2 and PS5/Series X|S potentially being smaller than that of their respective predecessors, I can imagine that - I mean, assuming they run well - there'll be more demand for ports from the get-go with their next console.

Kyle Bosman uploaded an interview with Mat Piscatella the other day, which I finally got around to watching today: I thought it was a fantastic interview and highly, highly recommend it to anyone even marginally interested in the business side of games. As someone who loves exploring the numbers side of the industry I thought it was a fascinating watch. It adds a lot of context to what we've been seeing lately, highlights the fact that basically everyone is now turning their eyes to Nintendo and Rockstar next year with the Switch successor and GTA VI respectively to dig the industry out of the hole it's currently in, and also goes into how Pokémon was the IP with the highest growth in backpacks in 2023. Yup, ya read that right. Again: highly recommend!

If he wasn't a Spurs player before, I might feel an ounce of pity for him. Maybe. Bayern are a serious mess at the moment with their board, and it's definitely thrown their season off a good bit too, I feel. We still don't even know who's coming in next season! Anyways, great last day of the Bundesliga season though, not only did Bayern lose 4-2, but Leverkusen have now become the first team to go an entire Bundesliga campaign unbeaten! They're now just 2 games away from an invincible treble season. We all saw that coming when the season started, right? There was also a lovely gesture from fans at the 19:04 mark (team was formed in 1904) with a minute of silence to remember those who never got the chance to witness Leverkusen lift the Bundesliga shield. And, elsewhere, Reus played his final game in Germany for Dortmund, scoring one last goal at the Westfalenstadion: He's got his actual final game for them in two weeks against Madrid at Wembley. Would be pretty incredible if he could bow out with a Champions League title to his name, huh?

Yup; honestly, I assumed it was just my phone, so I'm glad you mentioned it

Geoff Keighley has announced an early look at the partners for next month's Summer Game Fest, because his ego loves a proper fondling Essentially: *cue bad guy army music*

New PS2 Classics seem to be on their way to the Classics Catalog after Star Wars: The Clone Wars (yes, another one ), originally released for PS2 in 2002, has been spotted on the backend of the PlayStation Store; it is seemingly set for release 11th June 2024: Not one I've played before from memory, so I'd be very interested in checking it out seeing as the little I know about it has me viewing it as the progenitor for the Battlefront games. Anyways, to me this would seem to suggest that PlayStation have a new PS2 emulator around, especially seeing as the description mentions up-rendering, rewind, quick save, and custom video filters? It is also worth bearing in mind here that there was also that slate of Star Wars classics released back in 2015 on the PS4 which included PS2 games like Jedi Starfighter and Bounty Hunter, so I do also wonder if this is something they've prepped from scratch or if there was anything prepped for that collection, as The Clone Wars wasn't included (though that could also have been the case for a number of other reasons). Again, as a Star Wars fan I love it, but it's odd - especially with seemingly new PS2 emulation involved, or at least a fresh approach to it for PlayStation - that this is the game which would crop up first to lead the charge on a potential wave of new PS2 Classics showing up. Very interested in seeing if any other games pop up in the next few weeks before this will likely launch, and also how we find out about it officially, seeing as May 4th is a good 10+ days behind us at this point, and there have been those rumours of a May PlayStation Showcase for some time now. You could time it with The Acolyte I suppose, which kicks off on June 4th? But they feel too unrelated for me to see that being the case

Ultimately I think it's an issue either way. I agree with you that the people in charge of VAR and their training/lack of ownership over issues is what needs to be improved, but after years of the Premier League consistently getting it wrong and seeing it used generally much more efficiently and accurately in other leagues/competitions, I think this being pushed forward isn't so much a commentary on the technology itself, but rather the people on charge of it. Teams voting against it, as I see it, aren't viewing against the technology, even if a byproduct of this being passed could be it being removed for the foreseeable future; they're effectively making it a vote of no confidence in the current referring leadership and VAR overseers. Because I do also think it's a big step backwards if it gets removed at this point, some of the nice QOL aspects people don't think about and a lot of the right decisions being made are being overlooked in essentially returning to a Wild West approach. Semi-automated offsides like you highlight are absolutely going to be beneficial as far as I'm concerned, and I would have also liked similar checks extended to corners in the future, because the amount of times I randomly tune in and watch a replay of a shot taking a slight but meaningful deflection off a defender, or being finger-tipped over or around woodwork by a goalkeeper, only to then see a goal kick awarded is insane. I'm in total agreement, but I think any retrospective vote would also have questions raised and be a bit of a mess too, for instance the 100 journalists who comprise the voting jury from the 100 highest-ranked nations in the world – are these then going to be the same journalists who would have voted in 2020? Do they still have the full context of that season in their memory outside of a highlights reel to jog their memory? If any nation has slipped out of the Top 100 since 2020, are they still allowed to have their journalist partake and vote, or would their replacement nation in the rankings have their journalist vote? I think you end up with at least one more additional asterisk based on how the vote would be handled. And so on. I totally agree with you, but I guess if nothing else the questions about the vote here aren't around the winner like they should be - the purpose of the vote ultimately is to find that winner - but rather the process and who then comes 2nd, 3rd, 4th...and so on. The other things I see as nice to have – but history will remember who won, and Lewa is absolutely owed that Ballon D'Or in fairness. It's not a serious question for them to entertain which could be why they would be keen to bypass it if they decide to make it happen. Now, how exactly that would track in a year where there were two or more frontrunners, like in the prime years of Messi vs Ronaldo? I'm not quite sure. But hopefully nothing serious enough ever happens again that France Football takes it on themselves to revolve the centre of the football awards universe around the potential early overreaction and subsequent cancellation of the weakest of the five major leagues in Europe

The Dune hype continues with Dune: Prophecy.

Codename Red has become Shadows and samurai, ninjas and Japan mean it might be my first Assassin's Creed...ever? Outside of a few sessions at friend's houses growing up. In fact, I don't think I've ever bought a AAA Ubisoft game before - for a few reasons - so to have Outlaws and Shadows just a few days apart...well, when it rains, it pours Should be a nice stop-gap during the wait for the sequel to Ghost of Tsushima if nothing else

First look at Joel and Ellie in S2: Well, Joel's hair is longer, but I can't say that Ellie looks much older here. I remember seeing some concerns a while back about how they'd age Ellie up for S2 and a few people said wardrobe and make-up would be big, and I'd say they were right; the giant puffy coat swallowing her up definitely doesn't make her look much older at all.

No vote took place, the award and everything it entails got cancelled when the remainder of the 19/20 Ligue 1 season was cancelled (and seasons in some other countries cut short) due to COVID . Everyone is in agreement that that year's award belongs to him, though now that you mention it, I would be curious to see if they formalised it with a vote or just went ahead and bypassed it on this occasion.

Super Mario Land, Alleyway, and Baseball are all making their way to the service as part of celebrations for the console's 35th anniversary.

France Football (the press behind the Ballon D'Or) are thinking of retroactively awarding Robert Lewandowski the award for 2020, following it's cancellation due to COVID and the cancellation of that Ligue 1 season. Source. This comes following an interview Lewa gave a few weeks back about still wanting the award. Would very much be deserved, for me it would be the most deserved given to a player that isn't Messi or Ronaldo during their era – and yes, as big a fan I am of him, Messi probably deserved it more than Modric back in 2018. Think it really says something that even Messi has come out in the past and said that Lewa deserved it that season. Would love to see it happen, and would make for a nice piece of trivia down the line!

Ooo, love things like this my $15 would get spread like... Zelda ($5) - haven't really talked about what I want exactly from the next Zelda at this point, but I think an open world a quarter the size of the land of Hyrule with a much heavier emphasis on setting, mechanics, traditional dungeons, and characters would be the way I'd go. While BOTW and TOTK both drew heavily from Princess Mononoke, I'd want something closer to the film's scale: a major hub town, a couple of smaller settlements maybe, dungeons and battles spotted about with forest and desert, but in a much more focused area to really saturate the goodness. I feel like shorter distances between points of interest tied with the mechanical ideas of BOTW/TOTK would allow for an interconnectivity between different locations that neither of those games ultimately offered. I'd want to feel like I'm having an impact, too, after the lack of that feeling going from BOTW to TOTK. Oh, and more prominent music, for sure. Donkey Kong ($4) - I don't know why but I just think there's so much that you can do with a 3D DK that modern Nintendo hasn't even attempted and which I'd love to see come to fruition. Fills the 3D platformer idea for me. Star Fox ($3) - do something - ANYTHING - new and interesting with the IP. Having not played any of them myself for any serious length of time, most Star Fox games look the same to me from the outside looking in, and I think it's just an IP ripe with so much potential both in and outside of gaming (rides, animated shows, etc.). Galaxy-wide lite-RPG with an upgradeable ship, ground and flight missions, maybe a lite-strategy mode for some easier large scale space warfare which you can hop into at a moment's notice. F-Zero ($2) - technical showpiece and Mario Kart stand-in while we're building up the install base. Rhythm Heaven ($1) - a quirky little rhythm game to give off the impression that Nintendo could revive any other smaller IP at a moment's notice...but then don't. Give them hope and not the reward, that's the genius of it

Athenian Rhapsody - a seemingly very silly RPG grabbing aspects from Pokémon, Earthbound and Undertale - releases today on all major platforms, including the Nintendo Switch. Been following it on Steam a while now but totally missed that it got a release date at ID@Xbox a few weeks ago. The game's Steam page currently seems to be the best place to find an elevator pitch for the game. @Glen-i wanted to make sure that this was somewhere on your radar if it wasn't already

It's been hilarious watching Bayern implode over the last few months, agreeing to have their manager step down at the end of the season despite being making it deep into the UCL, missing out on long-term prospects such as Alonso and Nagelsmann, seemingly getting denied by everyone and their mother for the treatment of their last couple of managers. Seriously now, just sign Mourinho. Give him a two-year contract and he'd clean up in Germany, especially with this squad, maybe just two or three signings (mainly on the wings). Also: it'd be funny