Julius

WARNING: once again, in this Chapter, the developers start to talk about aspects of the game NOT shown in its marketing up to this point; a truly bizarre decision, and given they've spoken about it, I imagine tomorrow's reviews likely have the go-ahead to talk about it too. You have been warned. ETA: It's official news but an interview, and this close to launch and not in marketing, figured I'd still throw it in a spoiler tag. The follow-up tweet quoting the interview confirms something we haven't seen in the game's marketing... Chapter 3 of the Ask the Developer interview for TotK is up. Final two chapters arrive tomorrow saving actually reading through these for when I'm done with the game, but hopefully make a good read!

Damn, given Private Division's publishing record (The Outer Worlds and Hades immediately spring to mind), I'm strangely intrigued by this. For me - now I didn't play Scarlet and Violet, mind you - Pokémon hasn't been about exploration and getting a bit lost since, what, Gen IV caused Game Freak and TPCi to completely overcorrect because some kids kept getting lost in caves? Seeing the concept art, my mind immediately went back to Sugimori's original works, which always to me inspired a true sense of adventure in a livelier world, and make me wonder about what Pokémon could have been had they followed the path they were trying to follow vs the corporate-ified generic schlock we so often seem to get. Pretty crazy lineup Private Division have got at the moment: Kerbal Space Program 2 (releasing this year), a new Middle-Earth game, a new Bloober Team game, a new Moon Studios game, and now a Game Freak game. By far the most interesting division of Take Two, hope this turns out interesting!

Thanks! But if they've actually fixed the tiniest thing I wanted from BotW, I'd love to laugh to myself at being shocked that they did so when I first switch over to the Pro HUD Then again, I guess all the reviews (coming tomorrow?!) will probably answer that question too if there is any change, so...mind grabbing a screenshot for me of whatever the Pro HUD looks like now please? You can also directly transfer them to your device of choice via QR code (instructions from NintendoLife here) it feels like a little bit more of a hassle than it should be, but eh, it's something I guess

Yeah, going to agree with @drahkon and recommend Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood too. It's my go-to series recommendation for anyone new to, or diving further into, anime, because it's a complete story with little filler (at 64 episodes long it's just one episode longer than Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the shows are very comparable), feels familiar enough to a Western audience to get comfortable with it but has hints of (and then fully dives into) glorious anime weirdness, feels like it hits on a glut of anime tropes you'll see crop up in most shows, an amazing cast of characters, great music, and is just an overall masterpiece. For something a bit on the shorter side (26 episodes), Cowboy Bebop is another shout I feel. The soundtrack is whacky and jazzy, the characters are fun, but it can get a bit heavy at times, so it's not recommended for a binge over a weekend if that's your sort of thing. And I mean the anime here (we're in the anime thread after all!), not the live-action remake Beyond that, as a film recommendation, my go-to is Your Name. It's another one that feels familiar enough in that it's basically Freaky Friday, but then that awesome anime weirdness turns up and well...just watch it. It's also jaw-droppingly beautiful, which doesn't hurt it as a viewing experience at all! If you enjoyed the first season, I would recommend picking it up again later this year, as the anime is finally due to end this September/October and has been a great ride. I'm of the opinion the second season is a little bit of a step down, but from the second half of the third season onwards, it's been nothing short of brilliant. Oof, I was actually listening to a podcast talk about horror anime the other day, and honestly? There aren't many - if any - traditional horror anime that I'd say are worth checking out. Which is okay, because I find that anime - thanks to its medium already having you suspend your disbelief - is perfect for psychological horror, which typically comes paired up with being a bit of a thriller, and for that I do have some recommendations. The first season of Psycho-Pass is 22 episodes long and is basically Criminal Minds meets 2001: A Space Odyssey, with futuristic guns that don't fire until they decide, through an algorithm, whether or not someone is likely to commit a crime based on how psychopathic they are. But what happens when someone learns how to play the system? Watch to find out As an anime film recommendation for psychological horror, Perfect Blue is the be-all and end-all of recommendations in this space imo. It's not just a great anime film, or a great film for its time, it is a perfect example of a creator having their finger on the pulse – it basically predicts modern idol culture, the effects of social media and the internet on celebrities, and the boom we've seen in parasocial relationships. Perfect Blue follows an idol as her career progresses, but when she starts to get stalked, the lines between her life as an idol/aspiring actress and her personal life begin to blur. It can be a little hard to follow the first time around, but trust me, it makes the second time around all the sweeter when you start to pick up on so much more of what's going on. Satoshi Kon, the director, in my opinion is one of the greatest modern directors when it comes to purposeful edits, the way scenes and shots flow into one another - or abruptly half, in other cases - is unmatched, for me. Of course they count! Out of curiosity, which have you watched? There might be one or two left for you to love (if you haven't watched all of them already, that is! Because if you have, fair play in advance, I still haven't! )

An Astro plush has been announced, and there's still no new game announcement, so I guess it's going on here Gah, please show up in the next Showcase!

Piggyback have announced that they will be working on the official guide for the game, which is due to ship 16th June:

Yeah, as has been mentioned, looks like they might have jumped the gun a bit. Chapters 1 and 2 are now up through the below Twitter link, with Chapter 3 arriving tomorrow: Sounds good to me

Great question to throw out there, thanks Ashley Given just how many different approaches I'm sure people will have to the game, and just how long it could potentially be in the first place, I'd probably agree with about a month – mainly because I can see people not getting to the final story beats for that long. HLTB lists BotW's average main story playthrough as being 50 hours long, to which I say...I have no idea what they count as the main story, probably just crit path objectives and grabbing the memories? That still seems crazy long if they're just beelining it, but anyways, that's not the point If we take that as roughly being what a main story playthrough for TotK is going to be (based on what we've seen it could easily be shorter, just as long, or waaaaaaaaaay longer, we really haven't seen enough in its marketing to know), across the space of a month, that would be roughly 1.5 to 2 hours of play per day (on average). I know everyone's situation is different with families, responsibilities, etc., but for spoiler tags in a dedicated game thread (which you could avoid), I'd say that sounds somewhat reasonable? And I say that as someone who is going to be taking their sweet time with the game and have no idea if they'll be done in a month and will likely continue to stick anything spoilery in tags anyways Yeah, I'm going to be honest, while I'm sure there are those here that care most about avoiding story spoilers, for me I care at least as much - if not more - about "exploration" spoilers. Discovering new things was at the core of BotW's experience, and given that they've shown decidedly little in TotK's marketing up to this point, I imagine there's plenty left for us to find for ourselves. Heck, we still have no official word on temples returning, let alone every other thing we've speculated about for the last 4 years! I mean, we also don't know if simple things like the Hero's Path from the DLC for BotW are returning, or if they've updated the Pro HUD to get rid of those pesky hearts outside of combat (here's hoping, eh? LET ME TAKE SOME GLORIOUS HEART-FREE SCREENSHOTS AND CLIPS MIYAMOTO I SWEAR TO BOWSER). I think it's a trickier one to track than narrative spoilers, and I do think it takes some self-policing. Essentially, I think, with a game like this that's about exploration and discovering new things, if you think something is incredibly cool when you discover it, just take a sec to think about whether or not openly sharing it would spoil finding the same thing and experiencing how cool it was for others (unrelated but how are we only three days wth)

It's my favourite time of the Financial Year once again, with Nintendo's earnings report for Q4 FY 2023 covering the period of 1st January 2023 - 31st March 2023 dropping today, meaning it's the end of the fiscal year and once again time for their annual report! The Big Takeaways In terms of hardware, the Nintendo Switch across its different SKUs sold 3.07 million units in Q4 (1st January 2023 - 31st March 2023), bringing annual sales up to 17.97 million units sold for the fiscal year (1st April 2022 - 31st March 2023), meaning it missed it's projection of 18 million units sold for the fiscal year (previously revised from 21 million units). This gives the Switch a lifetime haul of 125.62 million units; in case you missed it last quarter, this means that the Switch is the third best-selling console of all-time, behind only the Nintendo DS (154.9 million units sold) and PlayStation 2 (157.68 million uniys sold). For hardware, this marks the first fiscal year since FY20 (1st April 2019 - 31st March 2020) that the Switch has not surpassed the mark of 20 million units sold. Nintendo are projecting a continued drop-off in hardware sales, going into FY24 forecasting sales of 15 million hardware units for the Switch. This isn't surprising given how late we are now into the Switch's life cycle (somehow and some way, 2017 was 6 years ago!), but expect to see that number wind down over the next few years - especially with the Switch's successor likely to release within the next 18 to 24 months. In terms of software, the Nintendo Switch has now sold 1.036 billion units, with 213.82 million software units sold in the year (that's right - 20.6% of the Switch's lifetime software sales have taken place in the last 12 months!); this sees it extend its lead as the Nintendo platform with most software units sold to date (this was previously held by the Nintendo DS - 948.76 million software units sold). Per VGC, President Shuntaro Furukawa has confirmed that there will be NO new hardware releases from Nintendo within the next 12 months. Additionally, he seemed to hint that they aren't confident of hitting their FY24 projection of selling 15 million Switch units. Top 10 Best-selling Switch titles as of 31st March 2023 (new Top 10 entries in bold) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 53.79M Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 42.21M Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 31.09M Breath of the Wild - 29.81M Pokemon Sword/Shield - 25.82M Super Mario Odyssey - 25.76M Pokemon Scarlet/Violet - 22.10M Super Mario Party - 19.14M New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe - 15.41M Ring Fit Adventure - 15.38M Sales figures for other titles of note released this Financial Year (FY23) Pokémon Legends Arceus - 14.83M Splatoon 3 - 10.67M Nintendo Switch Sports - 9.60M Kirby & The Forgotten Land - 6.46M Mario Strikers: Battle League - 2.54M Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - 1.86M Fire Emblem Engage - 1.61M Metroid Prime Remastered - 1.09M Bayonetta 3 - 1.07M

Bit of a PSA I'll stick in here in case anyone runs into this issue with the game in the future, especially while trying to cleaning up trophies / achievements. Seems like such a haphazard bug that it seems like exactly the sort of thing that's going to get missed out in patches. The problem is that occasionally triggers (specifically R1 and R2?) seem to randomly stop functioning. First noticed it in combat when trying to use some of the new Force abilities, but it's become much more apparent trying to complete puzzles (using R1 and another button to interact with the environment, or using R2 to Force push an interactive puzzle element after Force pulling it and dragging it around a bit) where they simply don't work. I've tested multiple controllers and the triggers in the main PS menu and some other games, so I can safely say: it's Survivor, not the controllers (unfortunately). The workaround I've been using is to simply save at a Meditation Point, exit the game, fully close the app, and open it back up. It's happened a few times now and is a bit of a hassle, but yeah, seemed worth mentioning in case anyone here in the future encounters the issue and think it'll stop their progress

Ah damn, that's a shame to hear! I probably won't be catching Suzume until it releases on blu-ray, but I had a feeling it might be a case of that after Weathering With You – while I enjoyed it, I view it similarly to how you described Suzume. I caught a showing of Your Name at a small and cosy independent cinema last month, and it just reminded me how much Shinkai and his team nailed it with that film, but having also watched a film or two of his from before the success of Your Name...yeah, it seems like he's a bit of a one trick pony (I haven't watched Children Who Chased Lost Voices, yet, mind you, which does look to stray from his norm, but that film doesn't seem like it set the world alight). Then again, I thought 5 Centimetres Per was a lovely little film, even if it did tackle similar themes of love backed by great Japanese songs. His films obviously look great, and the soundtracks are fantastic, I just wish he'd tackle something new, because he nailed so much with Your Name that, for me, any project of his tackling similar themes is pretty much guaranteed to fall short. Heck, I love Garden of Words, and I think for many in the medium that would be a career high, so that takes some doing! At this point I can't tell whether it's a case of production companies wanting the guaranteed money of a Your Name-lite film, Shinkai realising he struck gold with a niche (at least in the animated movie space) in a market which he has built a massive fanbase in and is still growing exponentially and so is guaranteed success for him, or if he is genuinely a one trick pony. My guess would be it's a combination of the two former, I seriously don't think you can produce something like Your Name and creatively pigeonhole yourself because you have no ideas. Maybe it's just because we're getting like a fifth final hurrah from Hayao Miyazaki this year, and these types of films seem all but guaranteed to go away with him, but I'd love to see Shinkai tackle something much more mundane and almost slice-of-life just to freshen things up, like the day-to-day of an office job, or a taxi driver, or a farmer in Japan; Garden of Words and 5 Centimetres Per Second are evidence enough that he's interested enough in that kind of low stakes storytelling and can deliver. If he wants to infuse that with fantasy or sci-fi? Well, we've had a film with a protag as a shoemaker (Garden of Words), and another where one's studying to be an architect (Your Name), so how about one about a storyteller, writing or drawing something sci-fi or fantasy? Seems perfect for the medium and his style of storytelling. Heck, on the flip side of that, just go all-out with sci-fi and give us anime's take on 2001, it feels like it's been a good while since we've had a truly original sci-fi story in the medium in a film, and certainly nothing that looks quite like a Shinkai film. I feel like he's one of the few anime film directors actually positioned to make virtually whatever he wants and so it does seem, from the outside, like a bit of a waste of talent to retread familiar ground as often as he does. But yeah, long and short of it: would love to see him tackle something new, even though I still want to see Suzume for myself at some point. Fingers crossed, eh?

Zeltik has put out an hour long lore recap for Breath of the Wild as we're now just six (!) days from Tears of the Kingdom's release! Well, there's another way to get yourself an hour closer to having the game in your hands

The original interview was with MinnMaxx, who deserve some more love, so check them out if you want to watch the interview "How are you so confident pronouncing Kurukuru Kururin?" busts out some Japanese Still need to play Kurukuru Kururin...

It has been announced that Pixelopus (Concrete Genie, Entwined) is being closed down. From their Twitter: Following this, IGN reached out for comment, to which PlayStation responded: A huge shame, especially seeing as they had reportedly been working on a game in collaboration with Sony Pictures Animation. After Japan Studio, this really hurts – feels like yet another smaller and very creative studio being pushed out. I've had Concrete Genie sitting on my shelf for a year or two now. Think this is a sign to dive in and give Pixelopus their due.

Special livestream and Treehouse: Live leading up to the midnight launch this Thursday (local)/Friday (UK time) starting at 02:45 BST, showing some gameplay: Yeah, I'll give this a pass I think

Maybe it's just something I've got used to in other games, but then again, it was an issue I had with Fallen Order when I first played it and that was before I played some of the games I point to as examples of why I'd want it (which, again, are also the same games that the Jedi games are pretty obviously drawing inspiration from) I mean...in only one of the five stances, sure Something I forgot to mention, another problem for me that sprouts from the inability to animation cancel is that you end up getting staggered, but being staggered doesn't immediately cancel Cal being in an animated state, and so trying to dodge after being staggered and knocked out of an attack animation feels delayed (because it is) or, sometimes, doesn't work altogether (I encountered a few instances where I would repeatedly try to dodge or jump away from a flurry of attacks after being staggered out of my own attack animation, and find myself just watching Cal decide he wants to be hit a few more times )

I mean, whether it's intentional or not, for me the combat suffers for it, in terms the type of combat the game seems to be trying to achieve. It just makes what you want - and what the game seems to want - to be fluid and responsive combat feel, well, unresponsive and clunky It makes it a strange thing to have tied to an upgrade in just one of the stances, but even stranger is that I feel like that makes it clear that the intention to have that available here was an afterthought ("what would make a cool upgrade to fill out the skill tree?") rather than an initial design focus ("we should have an upgrade to animation cancel that you have to earn").

I finished the game on Tuesday night after ~30 hours, been chipping away at it to chase the Platinum since, which - unless anything comes up - I'll probably have cleaned up by the end of the weekend. Overall, I really enjoyed it! So let's throw a healthy smattering of the positives out there. The story hooked me much, much earlier than Fallen Order's (which didn't really grab me until the end of it's second act, everything from the end of Dathomir onwards), even if I feel it did struggle with a bit of a slow start – it didn't really grab me until probably towards the end of the first act? I love some of the character work they've done in this game, there are some great emotional and epic beats throughout, a slew of new and fun characters (shout-out to Turgle and Pili, the former is silly and the latter delivered an emotional punch I didn't expect in a completely missable and throwaway line in the post-game), and it felt so good to *FINALLY* see and hear some stuff about the High Republic in this game. I thought that the antagonists in this game were probably some of the best we've had in Star Wars video games (which, uh, I'll admit is not a remarkably high bar to rise above tbf), and Gordy Haab and Stephen Barton once again killed it with the game's soundtrack, building on the solid musical foundation they built in 2019 with Fallen Order. Force Tears range from a bit of fun to much more challenging, spent a good bit of time on one or two of the platforming ones and still got plenty to go (didn't come across many during my blind playthrough of the story, mind you), and this game has one of my favourite boss fights of the last few years outside of a From Software game. Things like Fast Travel, the map being vastly improved, unlockable map upgrades (to show collectibles), and other QoL improvements just make the game a much smoother ride than Fallen Order, which I'll now admit I have zero plans to return to outside of crit pathing the main story, because it will seriously be that hard to go back. The customisation, from Cal to BD-1 to your lightsaber, is awesome...even if it was a bit weird that we can't customise the Mantis like we could in FO (maybe in some future patch?). I'm always a big fan of customisation when it's done right (not too many options, but enough to make something individually unique to show off to your friends), and for me, Survivor more than delivered on helping me build a beautiful lightsaber (which I'll put in the spoiler tag below because I want to show it off in a few colours but don't want to clog the page, but there aren't any spoilers; also, I'll throw a very funny clip from when I was testing out a blade colour for lighting in-game): That all being said, for me - and as someone who occasionally dabbles with 100%'ing games, and was always going to go for the Platinum in this game - there is a bit of that bloat to the game that I was worried about going into it after seeing what happened to Ragnarök last year (and for all intents and purposes, the two are structured *very* similarly). I'm deep into seeking things out now for the Plat, and I'm still randomly running into entirely new segments of the map on one planet that I hadn't even come close to finding before, despite the planet being at 80% completion when I wrapped up the story (I had two planets at 100% and the rest were around 80% when I finished the story, doing most of what I could find my first time going through each planet). Now, I'm all for having a bunch of content in a game - especially with next-gen exclusive tax taken into consideration - but what makes Survivor a bit of a pain at times, for me, is that these wide open areas (and heck, even some of the more linear ones) suffer from some abysmal level design. I'm going to say it again: the places are pretty, the game is fun, but the level design - outside of the occasional isolated puzzle - sucks. What do I mean? Well, we talk often about how some games are brilliant at naturally pointing you in the right direction for whatever they have planned next for you...and Survivor does the complete opposite of that. Following the natural path will get you lost more than once, and I found myself time and time again referring to the map and going "oh, damn, we took a wrong turn and I'm now about a mile west of where I should be". I also turned off prompts for interactive environmental cues (think L2 being prompted when there's something you can Force Pull), which is something I also did in Fallen Order, and this was a huge mistake - there's a reason that's on by default, and that's because the game is incredibly confusing and frustrating to get through without those prompts (which completely shatters the movie-like immersion it goes for). I ended up turning it back on but there were still a few occasions after that where I found myself staring at a dead end and my map and going "okay, game, where do you want me?" Someone might be sitting there reading this and be going "really, Julius, is that such a big issue?", to which I say "yes, absolutely, you son of a gundark", because this game for me commits one of the cardinal sins of a Metroidvania-style game in that it goes COMPLETELY overboard with the amount of teasing it does for areas you'll gain access to once you unlock abilities later in the game. I'm not talking a handful of times here, oh no, I'm talking tens of - if not a hundred or so - instances on my way to completing the game's story where I found myself staring at something I couldn't interact with *yet*, and knew full well I would be later. There is no subtlety to it like you'd expect from games that have helped pushed that style of exploration forwards - Metroid or the modern From Software games, and heck even God of War is much more subtle compared to this - and it almost always ended with me giving the game an eye roll and letting out a sigh. These are issues I had in Fallen Order on occasion but it wasn't as glaring as it was here, likely down to that game's linearity being such a key part of its design. I'll also slip in a mention here about the traversal jank (not new complaints by any means), from how floaty Cal is when platforming, to not really being able to accurately gauge how far you can reach with Cal (probably down to said floatiness), to being able to get to some areas in ways you absolutely weren't supposed to. It reminds me a lot of PS2 and early PS3 games, in both the positive and negative lights. On top of all of that, the game's combat is just...it feels incredibly unresponsive and restrictive, in that once you start an animation you're almost always locked into carrying it out, which inevitably leads to some stormtrooper giving you a whack and staggering you mid-animation which you can't dodge independently of your attack animation. There are times where it works and the combat feels fluid, but this is normally during 1v1 encounters where you can focus on just parrying, blocking, and attacking in one direction, whereas against groups - which are the majority of battles in the game - you are going to find yourself locked into an animation more than once that only they can stop. It's seriously bizarre. Maybe it's heightened for me a bit playing Bloodborne recently, which has some of the best and incredibly fluid moment-to-moment combat I've experienced in a game, but this isn't a new issue, as it was one of my gripes with Fallen Order, too. This game - once again, like Fallen Order - takes SO MUCH inspiration from modern From Software titles, and yet no-one thought to include i-frame dodges, despite some boss battles CLEARLY calling for it? Again, it's just really bizarre: of all the games where you'd think you wouldn't be locked into an animation and have more options to dodge and weave during an animation, or animation cancel, it'd be a game where you're playing as an acrobatic space wizard wielding a glowstick he can recall at any time, but alas. Lastly, in terms of complaints, something that has to be mentioned: yeah, I don't understand why this game only got a six week delay, it should've been delayed until June, if not September, because it's been pretty broken at launch. I experienced a crash five minutes in, I experienced crashes during cutscenes, I experienced crashes after completing puzzles (needing to do them again), I experienced crashes during key boss fights - I probably had ten or so crashes so far throughout my time with the game, and I'm sure there'll be a few more before that Platinum trophy pops. There's also some egregious pop-in at times, the frame rate can drop to the teens (and, to make it worse, is very much reproducible), and I experienced screen tearing for the first time in a newly released AAA title in about half a decade with this game, if not longer? Certainly the first time I've experienced it on my PS5, and in a next-gen (current, now, I guess?) exclusive at that. It's a shame, because I think this game does everything outside of some of its gameplay fundamentals (lack of truly fluid combat and level design) incredibly well, and so once it's polished and up to scratch - hopefully by the end of the year - it'll be worthy of running in a way that the game deserves. Because it does deserve it. I probably sound a bit scathing in some of my criticisms, but again, they're not new, with a lot of them being carryovers from Fallen Order, perhaps more pronounced by more open level structures than the linear ones in FO. Also, without spoilers, it's honestly just so much easier to deep dive into criticisms than it is highlight points of praise, which is why when I talk about games for the first time, I seem like I have a lot more negative to say than I do positive. There's a lot to love here as a Star Wars fan, or as someone looking for just a dumb fun time with a game that's more akin to a blockbuster, but I have to say - and I say this as someone who feels Respawn is worthy of praise for this game, but doesn't care much in general for game critic scores in any serious manner - I do find myself scratching my head a bit looking at some of the scores this game got, and some of the justifications given, in light of the game's launch experience, and also just how it functions as a game vs as a spectacle? To end on a positive note, anyways, for me the bugs are made a little more acceptable - on PS5, can't speak to the PC experience - by it pretty easily being one of the most visually gorgeous multi-platform games delivered by a third party publisher that I've seen in a while. This game's lighting, particle effects and sound design deserve special praise, and it's the first third party game for me this gen where it feels like I'm looking at something next-gen. You just can't deny those views.

One week to go! Brad Ellis from Easy Allies spent an hour the other day thinking back to Breath of the Wild and his history with the Zelda franchise, a fun watch I'd recommend that'll shave an hour off the next week while you wait for Tears of the Kingdom to drop

The game's PS5 version is finally getting a standalone version on the PlayStation Store and an upgrade path from the PS4 version of the game. It was previously only available through the Miles Morales Ultimate Edition or the upgrade path to that from the base game. Per the PlayStation Blog: Looking forward to revisiting this before the release of Spider-Man 2 this... September? Or thereabouts

Hard to say. On the one hand, I'm pretty sure it was around this time last year (late April/early May) that they confirmed their showcase details. On the other hand, it's a Wednesday. I could be wrong about this, and maybe it's just because I feel we rarely get random important news drops from Xbox in general, but thinking back I don't feel like they've given many updates on Wednesdays before. But either way: eh I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm super interested in what's been going on with Redfall or what we'll see in terms of first party stuff from Xbox next month, so if that's what they're trying to do, it's falling on deaf ears in my case.

Finally – a trailer for Dune: Part Two!

More details on the Xbox Games Showcase and Starfield Direct have dropped (previously announced to be taking place Sunday 11th June) – Showcase starts at 18:00 BST, with the Starfield Direct immediately following. No surprises there considering that they've had that 10:00 PDT / 18:00 BST slot on a Sunday for a while now, then!

A prequel comic just got announced for Free Comic Book Day: Think we're about to see marketing start to kick in for this game now, what with SpiderVerse just a month away, and a trailer for the game not being ready in time for that would be a potentially huuuuuuuuuge missed opportunity. Excited to hopefully hear from Insomniac in the coming month or so and finally get a release date and some more details on the game

A new Wednesday, a new game announcement – and a pretty neat one at that! Here's a bit more of an overview from Modus Games: