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My brain can't comprehend how it's throwing these visuals around at 60fps. It's mind boggling. I've made it as far as Sargasso and will resume later tonight or tomorrow night. It's just breathtaking stuff. The music might just be the best in the series to date too. I spent an age just soaking up the atmosphere and that tune playing in the club.

Wow, early FedEx and everything. It's arrived! Gonna take an extended 'lunch' break today

There’s a significant part of me that actually wants this and the other part is giving the first part the side eye.

Round-up of today's conference:

This looks fantastic!

Well I finished it up with an epic Saturday marathon session. It's joyous stuff that I really couldn't pull myself away from, and by far my favourite in the series. Amongst the goofy humour there's just so much heart to the story, with Rivet and Kit (and Glitch!) really helping to bring the franchise to new heights from a narrative perspective. I always liked the characters from these games, but this is the first time I've be charmed to the point to where I can say that I absolutely love them. As Romier wrote above, you can absolutely feel the progress they've made in storytelling and character with the Spider-man games paying dividends here. Visually, and from a level design perspective, every planet has something new going on, and the levels kind of have the illusion of being larger than they are. They're just big enough for you to enjoy exploring and discovering little things, but not so big as to feel overwhelming or distracting enough to steer you off the main path for too long. It's all just executed with such confidence you feel completely at ease in the developers' hands, and I love that feeling. I dare say the wow factor will ware off for some. It's very much a Ratchet and Clank game when you get down to the mechanics of it, but for fans I can't imagine it not being considered a series highlight. I really can't think of a more fun experience to have won my tenth Platinum.

My copy officially arrived! I'm finishing up Castlevania Lament of Innocence on the PS2 and then I'll be hopping in!

This features remasters of Monkey Ball, Monkey Ball 2 and Monkey Ball Deluxe. I'm ludicrously happy.

The first new 2D Metroid in 19 years! I'm guessing this is being developed by Mercury Steam who did the Metroid 2 remake.

The multiplatform trailer:

Chapter 3?? Try Chapter 5 or 6, where they're still introducing major mechanics

18 years of Obsidian! They have put out some amazingly well written RPG's. It looks like they will get to continue that pedigree under Microsoft's umbrella and I'm quite happy to see that happen. Here's to many more!

Yep, I'll be buying this: https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/14/22533223/turtle-beach-velocity-flight-one-sim-2020-pc-xbox-series-x-s-recon-controller-price-features

This might have been my favorite thing at the show:

Pretty cool looking.

I said deal with it. You're not dealing with it, Joey.

This. It's basically a whole new chapter - new town, new gangs, new main characters. There's some passing nods to the previous games, but they're far from critical to the story. I've thoroughly enjoyed my play through of this outside of a couple of boss fights that are major grinds to get past. Outside of them, it's been non-stop fun with this great gang of characters.

Fuckin’ Brits and Canadians, right, Joey?

Inter-industry love.

Evergreen tweet.

All together now: The Best Deal in Gaming.

Ray tracing mode at 1800p60 seems like a good deal to me.

Seriously, this is the thing I was most excited about during the Xbox Showcase. More than Halo Infinite, more than Psychonauts 2, more than A Plague Tale: Requiem. I’m so stoked to play this. Despite the fact it’s coming to Game Pass, I may end up buying the game outright. Or at the very least buying the Platinum upgrade for the base version. If they include any DLC expansions like they did with FH4, it will be well worth the extra money.

Next Generation upgrade announced for PS5/Xbox and releasing June 29th: Next-Gen Update Features Breakdown Xbox Series X Performance Mode: 1800p – 120 FPS Balanced Mode: 2160p – 60 FPS Ray Tracing Mode: 1800p – 60 FPS Xbox Series S Performance Mode: 1080p – 120 FPS Balanced Mode: 1440p – 60 FPS Ray Tracing Mode: Not Available PlayStation 5 Performance Mode: 1584p – 120 FPS Balanced Mode: 2160p – 60 FPS Ray Tracing Mode: 1800p – 60 FPS PC Ray Tracing Mode: Availability and performance depends on a user’s PC hardware.

if anyone asks, is it OK if I tell them you went fishing, to the shooting range, or something more manly and less embarrassing?

So we beat Pandemic Legacy season 0 yesterday. Final scoring was 800+ for the "best" ending, and we were at 1200 or so. Spoiler-free thoughts: it's better than S2 in a lot of ways, and it's another great co-op experience. There's more variety in the objectives, and I think more chances for branching story and lasting impact. There's a few things along the way that seem a little arbitrary, but they change up the gameplay in some interesting ways. Spoilers for those that have played it (or don't care about spoilers):

I'm really rooting for the Xbox team today. I hope they can turn around the Halo situation in the eyes of fans and critics, and it would certainly be nice if they have some exclusives that might end up coming a little sooner than we're expecting. It'll be interesting to see whether the Bethesda slate can take some of the weight of expectation off of other MS studios being so early in development on a lot previously announced titles that are still some way off. Also a new Forza Horizon would be nice.

So, its pretty good so far....

You can buy cute little hats for the Rot to wear. GAME OF THE YEAR.

More:

Insomniac ....are.....wizards. (This was covered briefly in the recent DF video)

New patch coming Monday! The additional scout log locations and cipher fixes are great to see! I still want to get the platinum so they will help for sure.

Well this is just everything I hope it would be and more. The Dual Sense is a major player here, from the great haptics (different firing modes on one button) to the "cling cling" of collecting bolts to feeling the music in night club(s). Visually it's stunning. Have been playing in quality mode and love it. May try performance and see how I like it.

This looks really good in FPS Boost mode on the Series X. I finally got past the forced gun combat section (see, foogledricks) I shelved it at last time I played apparently. $20 for all three Tomb Raiders + DLC right now on Xbox store.

The music in this game really has it all. I didn't know Mark Mothersbaugh was the composer! There's already an album available too!

A Director's Cut has been revealed to be coming to PS5 on the Game Fest stream. Keighley added that we'll be seeing more in the coming weeks, which presumably means Sony's summer event stream can't be far off. I forgot I hadn't even played this yet, so this and FF7 are the two big PS4 releases I still have to catch up on.

Control and Genshin Impact are free this week. Overcooked 2 and Hell is Other Demons next week.

Lawd... PS4: PS5: PS4: PS5: ...and it runs at double the framerate and near zero load times to boot.

Now I know what to get Tom Hanks for Christmas.

So I finally tried a few tracks this morning in Atmos (just the obvious ones from Apple's own playlist). It sounds neat, and the obvious separation is cool, but it feels like a re-engineering of the music and while the gimmick is cool, I'll be going back to 2-channel stereo for most -- if not all -- of my music. For a two reasons, not unlike others expressed here. First, as I mentioned, it feels like a re-engineering of the music that wasn't intended by the artist. I know this sounds pretentious, and it probably is, but I like to listen to albums all the way through, in the order it was intended, in the way it was originally recorded, produced, and mastered. Sometimes those original recording are poorly done, and, yes, I'll listen to remasters, but I'm not of the opinion that Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" needs a remaster so that the percussion section is further separated into a presence speaker. Second, and related: I don't feel that pushing an instrument into its own physical channel is a good idea when it comes to overall sound quality. Sure, it means you can hear the hand claps in "Here Comes The Sun", but the producer doesn't know where that speaker is in relation to the listener. A good 2-channel stage is relatively stable. A 5.1-11.1 home system introduces an almost infinite number of idiosyncrasies. Don't get me wrong: If you sit in the right place in the center of an Atmos array, this stuff is gonna sound really cool. But I find it unnecessary and even distracting. I'll probably show it off to some friends -- already had the wife sit down to listen to some Herbie Hancock. She wasn't overly impressed. Sample size of one, I guess.

If they're slapping 2022 on it six months into 2021 then I'd actually be quite confident about it arriving next year. Honestly I think that were it not for the pandemic we'd be seeing it close out the series' anniversary year, but it's not to be. All three consoles are going to have an incredible 2022.