The Plus & The Minus - E3 2019: Bethesda Conference

This is by far the worst E3 conference I have ever seen that is none EA, honestly felt like they had nothing to show and felt pointless them doing this. Like Square last year except this was WAY FUCKING LONGER.

+ Ghostwire Tokyo

Game seems really cool, but also that woman is the best person out of this whole conference she was amazing and cute and enthusiastic.


+ Wolfenstein Youngblood

Co Op Wolfenstein sounds like a real fun time and the game looks like a whole lot of fun, lets just hope all the story and combat feels as good as it looks.


+ Deathloop

Looks cool and seems really cool. But I wanna know what the gameplay is and how it looks. We really don't know anything about that, which kinda sucks.


+ Orion

I guess this is a plus? I don't know, it's another streaming thing and it's another promise that any of us have yet to see in action in a meaningful way. I still don't believe these will all work fluidly and we just have to wait.


+ Doom Eternal

Remember when they showed that really fucking long gameplay trailer of extended gameplay. I FUCKING LOVE DOOM. IT LOOKS RAD. I can't wait to get my grubby little fingers on that game. KILL ALL THE DEMONS.

- The Crowd

The Crowd fucking sucked I hated them they ruined the fucking conference the most. They made the people on show keep stopping and keep stuttering, they also cheered for things that were clearly boring or not liked by most of the industry. Either these people are plants or they are fans who are too eager to be there and are completely disrupting the show. I hated every fucking second of it. It felt completely infuriating and made the whole experience one of the most mind numbing experiences Ive ever had to sit through.


- Elder Scrolls: Blades

Heard it was bad and it looks bad, stop spending time on this mobile game that no one gives a shit about.


- Fallout 76

The fact that people have to sit and SCREAM about your game having human NPCs is embarrassing. I don't know if it's already too late. I don't mind the idea of the battle royale and the new updates to the game, but it feels too little too late.


- Commander Keen

Why do I want another fucking mobile game. I don't hate mobile games I really don't, but you have to make something that people will care about that isnt riddled with shit in app purchases. I am not interested in this, there is no reason for them to revive Commander Keen for this generation as most of us are younger than the original game. It's dumb.


- Elder Scrolls Legends

Why did you make a 3 to 4 minute live action trailer for your shit as mobile card game! WHY DO YOU TO WASTE MY FUCKING TIME.


- Rage 2 DLC

This is way too goofy to what the game actually is. It didn't live up to the goofy-ness it promised last year so don't try and sell me that again.

The Plus & The Minus - E3 2019: Microsoft Press Conference

Microsoft had a pretty ok conference all round, some cool things in there some boring things in there. All to be expected in the last year of their console generation.

+ The Outer Worlds

Looks awesome, I can't wait to play it, thank god it isnt exclusive to the Xbox! Means I can still play on my PS4. Also a release date, and its soon!

+ Bleeding Edge

Reminds me a lot of cool Overwatch type cartoony characters but 3rd person melee. Sounds right up my alley. Sadly I probably won't be able to play it :(

+ Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order

This was a really rad trailer showing a little more stuff in it than the demo from EA Play. Again I have some worries but it looks awesome.

+ Blair Witch

That was a really cool trailer and if I was into horror games Id be super into it. It kinda looks like theres a time travel concept with the camera, or I'm missing something cause I havent seen the movie.

+ Cyberpunk 2077

KEANU REEVES. KEAAAAAAAAANUUUUUUUUUUUUUU FUCKING REEEEEEEVEEEES. THIS GANE LOOKED FUCIG AMAZING TO BEGIN WITH, I WAS BUYING IT ANYWAY, BUT NOT YOU PUT MY BOY KEANU IN IT AND NOW THERE IS NO QUESTION. WE LOVE KEANU!!!!!

+ Spiritfarer

Look at this wholesome hugging cartoon simulator, I want it. I want my animal friends to love me and I love them and we all live happily on a ship in the sea we all hang out and have a good time.

+ Indie sizzle reel

I liked the look of a lot of those games, but I am specifically interested in Afterparty the game by the devs who made Oxenfree, which is an amazing game that I played a couple of years ago.

+ Double Fine & Psychonauts 2

I need to play Psychonauts. The game looks rad and this new one also looks amazing, so I should just get to it and play it.

+ Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga

FUCK YES FUCK YES, it seems as if there is no talking again which is awesome! Just re release the original games in high res add these new ones with no talking and you can TAKE MY FUCKING MONEY.

+12 Minutes

This seems so scary and frightening and just intriguing, sounds super cool and I definitely wanna get it when it come out.

+ The Elden Ring

Sucks that this got leaked really ruined the surprise but nevertheless it is cool to see.

+ X-Cloud & Project Scarlett

This is all really exciting and cool to hear, can't wait to see what they have to offer next year, this was about as much as I thought we'd be seeing so no surprise from me, but still cool. The most exciting for me is also the fact that the Scarlett is gonna be backwards compatible with all 4 generations of the Xbox. Which is insane.

+ Halo Infinite

I'm not a Halo guy but the trailer was really really cool and knowing now that this is kind of a soft reboot makes me wanna jump right into the game. I own Halo 3 so maybe I'll play that...

- Minecraft Dungeons

It's not exactly a minus but I don't understand why they wouldn't just put designed dungeons in Minecraft itself. I feel like that would've been a way cooler concept than making a whole new game with different gameplay.

- Microsoft Flight Simulator

This is extremely lame. Who in the world cares about this game enough to wanna watch a 2 minute trailer for it in the middle of E3?

- Gears Pop

BAD BAD BAD Mobile game. Also if you're Funko, why is the first franchise you use for a video game Gears? Why not something you already have that is much more popular in every way like Star Wars, or Game Of Thrones or Marvel.

Some Thoughts - E3 2019: Pre-E3 Announcements, Stadia Connect and EA Play

We back again for E3 2019, very different this year, no Sony, no proper EA conference, a Google Gaming platform known as Stadia and next gen seeming very imminent. It seems to be a weird year for the convention, but nevertheless I am still extremely excited by just some of the pre announcements already. Let's go through them in no particular order.


Destroy All Humans! Remake

I didn't play a lot of these games back on the PS2 but I did play it round friends houses and enjoyed what they were. Honetly this is a series I have always been curious in and the announcement of a remake seems like a great time to jump on. The trailer is really fucking cool as well, I think it must be a Rammstein song but it just really rules, the graphics in the trailer look so good, it is definitely just a pre rendered cut scene but if the game looks half as good as that I will be over the moon.


Spongebob Squarepants Battle For Bikini Bottom Rehydrated

AW HELL YEAH, we're getting some good as Spongebob games back, now we just need the flying dutchman game, lights camera pants and the movie game. There wasn't much of a trailer for this so unsure what it could look like but it's still exciting from my opinion.


Yooka-Laylee and The Impossible Lair

Didn't play the first game, but it looks as if this game is going for a side scrolling platformer and a top down styled over world, unlike the first games, 3D platformer collect-a-thon. Seems cool and fun looking!


Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare

Haven't been a big CoD guy in a long time, but after play the first Modern Warfare remake recently and remembering the enjoyment I got from some of those games I actually am interested in this game. Trailer is really good too. I have a feeling that this might still be in a conference, or this beig announced Pre-E3 confirms that Microsoft had no room for Call Of Duty this year, which would be interesting.


Death Stranding

I still don't know what the fuck this about, but there was a lot more shown here than there was last time and it looks really good and interesting. That's about as much as I have to say because idek what it is gonna be especially after all those tweets Kojima made about the game afterwards saying it isn't an action game its a strand game.


Pokemon Direct on Sword & Shield

DYNAMAX, what a cool ass looking game. I love the open world, I love the seeming fous on arena battles, thats the kinda stuff I want to see in Pokemon as someone who isn't massively attached to the franchise. I think it looks like enough of a change that a lot of fans will be really interested in trying it out.


Stadia Connect

Honestly the promise of Stadia continues to be intriguing but the (maybe) death of physical media still upset me as someone who loves to buy and own physical media. I think the pricing and how it will all work is still confusing even though they have announced it all.


EA Play 

Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order

So they showed off an uncut 15 minute gameplay session from the game, and initial thoughts are that it looks really really cool. Combat looks like God Of War, thats the closest I can get to describing it, they kept saying the footage was being played by a 'skilled player' it's a game that hasn't come out yet so I don't know how skilled he is supposed to be, but he was getting hit a lot, and to me that either shows that the game is really hard, the combat is possibly messy or he is purposely trying to show being hit, not sure? Also I found it a little worrying with the way the combat looks, it looked (again) a bit messy, there was only a few cool abilities shown, and it makes me wonder if the game will have a combo list like God of War and a ability tree like God Of War that you can unlock more moves for your lightsaber and the force. This demo made it look like a linear level structure, maybe a little too linear? Not sure maybe I'm just being very cautious about the whole thing? Overall it looks really great. Excited to see more at Microsoft.


Apex Legends

I haven't played much Apex since it came out, not that I didn't like the game, I really loved the game, I think I lost my passion for playing because I wasn't building to anything I really wanted a lot like a skin, like I would do in Overwatch a couple years ago. Well that has changed with what they showed here today, they said 'I think we've upped our skin game' and I agree with that, just with the short few illustrations it looks really cool. Also the new Wraith skin (who is my main) that is out now looks really rad. The big reveal for this was the Season 2 character Watson, which I love everything about, a really different styled character, art direction wise and game play wise, she seems like she might be too over powered but we wont know until we get our hands on her. She has a back story which is the first time this game feels like it's building more of a heavy lore around it, which is what I really wanted out of the game. I always liked the designs of all the characters but Watson looks like they have a made an effort to go out in a different direction. I'm really excited about her and the way the game is going, feels like they understand what made the game less than perfect and aiming to fix that. Overall Season 2 looks very exciting especially with the tease at the end of seemingly a giant dragon!? Very interested and I will definitely playing over the weekend to get that sweet double XP.

Some Thoughts - May (AEW Double Or Nothing, PUP, John Wick 3 and More!)

Just slightly too late with this annoyingly. I've been away on holiday a lot this month so I'm lucky I watched, listened or read anything to be quite honest!

Music

PUP - Morbid Stuff (4/5)

Another amazing album from PUP, truly the front runner now for me, this hits all the right notes lyrically and musically, I can't get enough of it, and I think the biggest knock to this great album is knowing it follows up their last album The Dream Is Over which is one of my favourite albums of recent memory, thus maybe makes this album less memorable by comparison. But every time I came back to it I remembered how good the whole album was.

Fave Tracks: Morbid Stuff, Kids, Free At Last, Bloody Mary Kate and Ashley, Sibling Rivalry, Full Blown Meltdown

Band Of Skulls - Love Is All You Love (3/5)

For a while there I thought Band Of Skulls weren't gonna make a return. After their last album By Default, which I wasn't a tremendous fan of, their drummer Matt Hayward, who I felt was an integral part of the bands sound, left the band pretty abruptly and left the two remaining members in almost a limbo state, the band continued on but it felt like an eternity, lots of silence and lots of posts about one off, every so often, acoustic gigs. At some point during 2018 however it seemed the band had found a friend in Julian Dorio, drummer of The Whigs, and he started to play with the band, it is unclear at the moment if he is on this album or if he is just a touring member for the band. Regardless after this friendship not soon after did an album. Now clearly from an immediate listen, this album is going for a different tone that Band Of Skulls have taken before, a more upbeat, positive sound. However for me, I think although the song writing and riffs are all solid, the positive feeling from the album doesnt hit me in the way I'm sure it's supposed to. Instead of having this album as a hideout from the outside dreary world that is 2019, instead I feel disconnected to the feelings it's trying to give me, or more accurately, the positive aspects of the album feel disingenuous. Regardless I don't think it is an awful album by a long shot, I do think it is better than By Default but it does not reach anywhere near the heights of their debut or Himalayan for me.

Fave Tracks: Carnivorous, That's My Trouble, Cool Your Battles.

Movies

Eighth Grade (4/5)

Eighth Grade is so nostalgic even though I am a 22 year old british male, it manages to encapsulate the feeling of middle to high school so perfectly and life as a high schooler that it just hits me hard. This movie also does something we will talk about more in John Wick, but the movies plot is almost non existent, in favour for an almost exclusive story based movie, the story is just atmosphere and character moments and it allows the movie to be way more endearing to me and focus on capturing that time period rather than giving you an intense story about eighth grade life. It works wonders here and it makes the movie almost comforting. Love, love, love.

Pokemon Detective Pikachu (3/5)

Let's be real, this is a kids movie, it's a highly enjoyable and goofy kids movie, but this is a kids movie, it is very clear that if you DO NOT LIKE POKEMON there will be NO REASON for you to like this even remotely, not to say this is a badly made movie or is incoherent, it is a perfectly solid feature, but what tips over into just plain enjoyable for me is just seeing this Pokemon infested world, seeing that Tokyo-esque Pokemon city, seeing the Pokemon come to life in the great designs and CGI. If you love Pokemon, you gonna love seeing the Pokemon do Poke-Things, if you aren't a Pokemon fan and not a kid, you should probably skip it.

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (3.5/5)

John Wick is a fantastic series, this one is crazy fun, plot is razor thin, lore is laid on thick, action is perfectly choreographed, and directed in an amazing way. These are all must watch action movies, just go, and watch and enjoy. Have the escapism you need.

TV

The Good Place Season 2

The arc of season 2 takes season 1's whole arc and changes it into mere seconds, I love the different directions this show goes, I love how the whole show is just laser focused on how the characters interact and how they change, this is one of the most character driven shows, the plot is all about the characters literally changing. It's a great show and I can't wait to sit with my girlfriend and BINGE Season 3.

One Punch Man Season 1

For no reason whats so ever, I flicked through Netflix, saw this in my list and just stuck it on. I don't think I have fallen in love with a show so quickly. One Punch Man is just the funniest and sweetest piece of animated TV I've ever seen. I love it dearly (even though I don't love this one character that feels very homophobic in nature, I'm unsure when it comes to Japan) and I love Saitama, he is such a cool guy. I LOVE THIS SHOW.

Wrestling

NJPW Best Of The Super Juniors (so far)

The second big New Japan Tournament this year, I've really enjoyed it so far especially certain wrestlers. Specifically MY BOY Robbie Eagles, he's great.

Fave Matches: Marty Scurll vs Jonathan Gresham - Night 1 (13/5/19), Robbie Eagles vs Rocky Romero - Night 2 (14/5/19), Taiji Ishimori vs Marty Scurll - Night 3 (15/5/19), Robbie Eagles vs Ren Narita - Night 4 (16/5/19), Will Ospreay vs Rocky Romero - Night 4 (16/5/19), Jonathan Gresham vs Dragon Lee - Night 5 (18/5/19), El Phantasmo vs Robbie Eagles - Night 6 (19/5/19), Will Ospreay vs YOH - Night 6 (19/5/19), Shingo Takagi vs Marty Scurll - Night 7 (22/5/19), Will Ospreay vs El Phantasmo - Night 7 (22/5/19), Will Ospreay vs Bandido - Night 8 (23/5/19), Shingo Takagi vs Dragon Lee - Night 8 (23/9/19), Jonathan Gresham vs Taiji Ishimori - Night 9 (24/5/19), Rocky Romero vs El Phantasmo - Night 9 (24/5/19), Robbie Eagles vs Will Ospreay - Night 10 (26/5/19), Bandido vs Robbie Eagles - Night 12 (30/5/19), Marty Scurll vs Dragon Lee - Night 13 (31/5/19), Shingo Takagi vs Taiji Ishimori - Night 13 (31/5/19).

WWE Money In The Bank

Money In The Bank was kinda super boring man. Ahahaha! Sorry!

AEW Double Or Nothing

Not as good as All In for me, with their big matches disappointing for me, but regardless, it doesn't even matter, they prevailed on the wrestling buffet that they did last time and the under card basically was  a major success for me in every single way. And OBVIOUSLY seeing Jon Moxley return to the 'indies' in a sense at the end of this show was just the biggest pop I have ever done. AEW is now so exciting and I cannot wait to see where they go next.

Fave Matches: SCU vs Strong Hearts, Best Friends vs Angelico & Jack Evans, Joshi 6-Man Tag, Cody vs Dustin.

Books & Comics

Batman Vol 9 - Bloom

An amazing finale for Snyder/Capullo's run. it has a perfect mix or new things, gritty Batman, Gotham and a little bit of fantasy to just keep it refreshing. I think this is probably the one of if not the best book in this whole run, if you only read this run, a bit like me, it might be jarring for characters to just be added to a story that have not had a proper introduction, but for me I was slightly familiar for who the character was and I just kind of let it in my stride, it didn't really bother me but I know some have that complaint. I love this book and this run, I think it's excellent. 

Get prepared, E3 IS COMING, as always I will be blog posting about my excitment for E3, lots of stuff is different this year but I'm still excited to see what happens. Stay tuned!