Hero-of-Time

Not long to go now.

Exactly.

Reviews are dropping for the game. Sadly, it doesn't sound like my cup of tea. Apparently the battles can go on for way too long and it seems grinding isn't really helpful, which is a major strike against a JRPG for me.

Sadly, it's becoming more and more common from Western developers/publishers. It lines up with both Sony and Microsoft pushing for an all digital future.

So, one more week until DK64 arrives, right? Hopefully...

Loving the 30th anniversary PS Stars challenges. Getting a little memory card and Polygon Man rewards are great. I wish they would do something more substantial with the service. The thing still isn't even integrated to your console. Saying that, given the problems they have had getting it run correctly on a mobile app, it's probably for the best that they stay the hell away from the PS5.

Have you got Helmsly blocked or something?

About 15 episodes in.

I just went with the standard 30th anniversary theme. I'll write about a couple of the consoles here and maybe a few more later on, if time allows. PS2 I didn't buy one at launch but instead waited for a few games (Onimusha, Escape From Monkey Island, The Bouncer, Gran Turismo 3) to be released. I think all of these arrived the June and July of 2001. I then went to Charlies (independent game store that used to be in Newcastle) and snapped up the console and all of these games. I played the hell out of all of them and GT3 was often talked about amongst the lads at my place of work at the time. Later in the year, Jak and Daxter, Devil May Cry, Simpsons Road Rage, Tony Hawk's 3 and Grand Theft Auto 3 were released. It was a hell of a winter line up. The original Jak and Daxter remains one of my favourite platformers of all time and solidified my love of Naughty Dog. They had managed to combine the colourful platforming of Nintendo games but added some great characters, voice acting and story to the mix. It was a generation where the PS platform outdone Nintendo when it came to platformers. Both this and Ratchet and clank were miles above Mario Sunshine, which was ultimately a disappointment. Grand Theft Auto 3, that game was a cultural phenomenon and went on to shape many games in the industry. At the time, I had played nothing like it and to this day it still remains a magical game. I played and platinumed it a couple of years ago on the PS4 and even though the controls are very clunky by today's standards, the game has a very special place in my heart. Tony Hawk's 3 is a hell of a game and it's still my favourite in the franchise. I never owned any of the first 2 games but only had the demo from the Official PlayStation Magazine. I played this game so much and spent ages unlocking everything the game had to offer. This meant playing through the whole thing multiple times with each of the characters. For me, this is where the series peaked and even though I played a few other entries after this one, they never felt the same. The Simpsons Road Rage was a weird one. Yeah, it was a licensed game but it was stupidly fun. Driving around Springfield, learning the map and hearing all of the sound clips/voices from the show made for a great time. I actually preferred this to both Crazy Taxi and Hit and Run. The following year seen the release Metal Gear Solid 2 and Final Fantasy X. These are two games brought the hype to a whole new level. While not my favourite in the series, Metal Gear Solid 2 was something very special. With the rise of the internet and AI, the message it tells has only got better with age. The fact that Kojima was able to do the old switcharoo with the main character was an amazing thing to pull off. This is something that would be very difficult to do now, what the internet being a far bigger place and people loving to spoil things for everyone else. The game was probably the first bit of software to really show what the PS2 could do. I remember watching trailers over and over again, just being in awe of the graphics and the theme tune, which sadly the can no longer use. This was the game that many people, myself included, bought Zone of the Enders for. Final Fantasy X was another game where my hype was through the roof and the game certainly lived up to the hype. It's still one of my favourites in the franchise. I know a lot of people didn't care for how linear it was but it's something that never bothered me. I loved the pilgrimage/journey that all of the cast went on and the themes of the game have certainly resonated with me more as time has gone by. A lot of the religious themes were kinda of lost on me when I played this a youngster but playing it again when the PS4 remaster arrived, things hit a lot harder and made more sense. I can't talk about Final Fantasy X without mentioned one of my favourite bits of videogame music ever created. The piece is so moving and the way it is used in the game is just perfection. I often toy with the idea of having it as my funeral song. Morbid thought, I know. Those were just a handful of titles that shaped the PS2 for me. Worth mentioning though is the backwards compatibility. Any console that allows for a previous generation's games to be played gives it a massive boost in my eyes. The PS1 had an amazing library of games and having that available on the PS2 was just the cherry on top of a very sweet cake. Oh, and it being a DVD player was also a fantastic addition. The Switch will eventually take it's sales crown but the PS2 will always be king to me. PS4 It's 11 years since the release of this console and I'm still playing on the thing. Yet again, it's a console that I didn't buy at launch but it went on to be one of my favourite consoles ever and has smoked every console since. It was the generation where Sony came back swinging and hit all of the right notes. Microsoft will never forget this... It was console that was priced right, powerful enough, appealed to pretty much every developer, easy to develop for and had an abundance of games, both exclusive and 3rd party. I don't think there has been a console where I've played so many games on it. It was also where I went all in on trophies, after leaving the Xbox/achievements ecosystem behind me. I dabbled on the PS3 but here is where I truly got into it. This is the console that really saw Japanese developers get back in the swing of things. The 360/PS3 generation was a mess when it came to releasing JRPGs and they were few and far between. The PS4 really correctly this probably and done so in an amazing fashion. Dragon Quest XI, Persona 5, Final Fantasy XV, Kingdom Hearts 3, Tales of Berseria, Dragon Quest Builders, World of Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts Collection, Final Fantasy Pixel Collection, Nier: Automata, Valkyria Chronicles, Trails of Mana, Final Fantasy VII: Remake....not to mention the PS Classics range that seen the likes of Wild Arms and Legend of Dragoon getting released. It was fantastic to see the revival of this genre on home consoles. The Yakuza franchise had been around for some time but it never really hit it big. The release of Yakuza 0 on the PS4 changed that. The game quickly found success and with it, the entire franchise was eventually made available to the PS4. It took me a couple of attempts to get into the series but once it clicked, It has now become one of my favourite gaming series ever. The story, characters and writing and unlike anything that the rest of the industry puts out and the franchise only seems to get stronger with each new release. You would think that they would have ran out of idea by now but this isn't the case at all. The PS4 seen the return of Monster Hunter on a PlayStation platform. The franchise had finally come home. I had endured years of the series being stuck on handhelds and underpowered hardware and I had been screaming for ages that it would do stupid numbers if it returned back to a home console. Thankfully, this finally happened with the release of Monster Hunter World and it paid off MASSIVELY for Capcom. The game has went on to sell over 20 million units and another 7 million with the Iceborne expansion. It had proved that there was indeed a huge market on consoles and PC just waiting to jump into the franchise and the game delivered on every front. I'm eager for the release of Wilds to see just how that fares and if the series is still attractive to the console userbase. Another series which I fell in love with on the PS4 were the FromSoftware games. Bloodborne was my first attempt at getting into the Souls games and I took to it very quickly. Years of playing Monster Hunter and grinding in JRPGs pretty much were all the training I needed when it came to playing these games. After Bloodborne, I eventually played Dark Souls 1, 2 and 3, Sekiro and Elden Ring. All of these games have certain things in common but also feel very unique. Each of them were a fantastic experience to go through and really pushed me as a gamer. A lot of games are quite forgiving these days and that's fine because it does make them more accessible to a wider audience but it's great to see a developer who stood by their ideas and simply told people to get better in order to progress. I'll say again what I've said over the years, the games aren't really brutally difficult. It's more about patience more than anything else. Yeah, 11 years on and still going strong. I could probably not buy any games for a year, stop playing my other consoles and still not catch up with PS4 games. Insane.

I did not. I found it far too cheesy/happy go lucky.

That anniversary trailer was great. I just got the update but didn't bother restarting. I was kicking off because it was yet another update for the console. Yeah, I'll allow this.

You Jacknapes on Era? If so, I see you snapped a Portal up recently. Is it working well for you?

Subscribed to Premium for another year. My sub always runs out during the Black Friday deals and so I was once again offered the 30% discount. I was looking at the document I have for the games I've played this year and I'm just shy of 50 games played from PS+ alone. I certainly get my money's worth.

Love it. This City team are a mess at the moment. Long may it continue.

Yup. Should have been easily 3 goals up at this point. Wouldn't surprise me if City come out fighting in the second half.

Nice. Maybe a TGA announcement/drop is on the cards.

Finished the main game this afternoon but still need to revisit all the levels for the collectibles. Also got the trophy out the way for defeat the last boss without big hit. Yeah, it was annoying back in the original release and it was just as annoying here. I've had a quick go of Shadow's campaign and I'm not sure how I feel about it. The levels are a lot longer (Sonic's levels are the perfect length) and I can't do a homing attack by a double press of the X button but instead have to press X and then Square. Probably best to finish Sonic's stuff first, rather than jumping between games otherwise my muscle memory is going to cause issues.

Guess I won't be playing it then. I don't faff on with the eShops from different regions.

Donkey Kong Land 2 is done and dusted. It was decent enough but I probably preferred the first game. This feels like a much like a lesser version of DKC2. Dont get me wrong, it's still amazing what they've pulled off here but the first DKL game pivoted away from DKC1 and carved its own identity. Sure, some of the levels weren't great but it was trying to do something a little different. Bring on the 3rd game! I wonder if they put the Japanese exclusive GBC version of DKL on the service? I've always wanted to play that.

Nintendo UK uploaded a trailer featuring the original trilogy and some footage of this game.

Yeah, it's why i've not watched it yet. I'm waiting for it to all be released before starting it. I'm not sure it's worked out for them. I don't think the viewing numbers have been that great for it and there has been very little conversation online about it, probably due to many opting to wait. I think Netflix plan to do the same with the next series of Stranger Things as well.

We've finally done over Madrid. Love it! Now for us to come crashing down when City inevitably beat us (despite their shoddy form) come the weekend.

Fired this up this evening. It's as good as I remember it being. I honestly thought it wasn't that long ago when I played the original Sonic Generations but looking through my trophy list and it was 2016! Time has no meaning to me anymore. I've only played the first few levels and I'm surprised to find that I still remember where a lot of the Red Rings are hidden. What I don't recall are some of the challenge stages. Did they change some of these? I don't remember Super Sonic Racing playing in one of the levels but I certainly welcomed it. There weren't hidden Chao in the original game, were they?

More chatter about the acquisition from Push Square. Sounds like they are looking/wanting to sell. Microsoft wanting to snap them up doesn't surprise me at all.