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Tokyo Game Show 2022 is now but a distant memory. I played games, I wrote words: Day One Round-up Day Two Round-up Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 Reunion Hands-on Resident Evil Village VR and PSVR 2 Hands-on Exoprimal Hands-on Street Fighter 6 Hands-on All things considered, it seems to have been a successful return for TGS. Of course attendance was down, but that's to be expected given that we're still mid-pandemic and the current gen continues to stall. Anyway, it's time to wrap up coverage with the last of my hands-on impressions, this time for Sonic Frontiers, Like a Dragon: Ishin, and Forspoken. Sonic Frontiers perhaps had the biggest presence of any game at TGS. Or at the very least, the most visible. Sega's was the first major booth we saw as we descended the stairs into the belly of the show, and smack bang in the middle of that booth was a fifteen-foot high inflatable Sonic. Is this 2022 or 1992, you might have asked. Sonic Frontiers received its fair share of fla

You can find all my Tokyo Game Show coverage  here The latest build of Street Fighter 6 was available at TGS, and of course I partook.  I enjoyed it so much that I tried it twice. On day one, I fought against another TGS attendee, and we had our pick of Guile, Juri, Ryu, Chun-Li and Luke, as well as brand new brawlers Jamie and Kimberly.  On day two, when I played on my lonesome, I also had the option of selecting Ken, who may or may not be homeless, but is definitely getting divorced. Disclaimer: I don't really follow Street Fighter. I don't tune in to EVO or have any great interest in getting good. Regardless, I really enjoy the series, and have for years. I've been playing (badly) since SF2 Championship Edition on the Mega Drive, which I played with my 3-button controller. That should tell you a lot about my approach to the series! Some people play Street Fighter for the mechanics. They want to master them, to learn every nuance and intricacy. I'm not those people. W

You can find all my Tokyo Game Show coverage  here Most show-floor demos last 15-30 minutes. Enough time to gather the important details and get a feel for what the game is or isn't. Enough to whet your appetite without eating up too much of your time.  With Exoprimal, Capcom were having none of that. I joined the line and the staff immediately came over to explain that the demo would be sixty minutes and that I would need to stay for the duration. I paused, as that's time I could spend trying other demos, before confirming that I would stick around. While an hour is a big ask at TGS, I'm glad I made the commitment. Exoprimal is a multiplayer, third-person shooter. Hordes of dinosaurs have been pouring through portals and causing mayhem all over the world. As an exofighter, you have been selected and trained by an AI named Leviathan to push back against the reptilian tide. Perfectly nonsensical. Our demo was on PC, and most of it pitted two teams of five against each other,

You can find all my Tokyo Game Show coverage  here I don’t have my VR legs.  I've only experienced a few hours of PlayStation VR over the years. While I've certainly enjoyed what I have played, I've never been close to buying one. I can't accurately compare and contrast headsets, speak authoritatively on specs, or spend much more than fifteen minutes in VR before I need to take a break. However, I do have lots to say about my hands-on with Resident Evil Village VR and the recently-announced PlayStation VR 2! It was the hardest demo to gain access to on both TGS press days. Event staff were pleading with sprinting journalists to slow the fuck down, as they legged it to the Capcom booth as soon as the main doors opened. Those losers should've just woken up fifteen minutes earlier and gotten a spot near the front of the general-entry line, like I did. Doors opened, I walked briskly over to Capcom, got my ticket and was wearing a PSVR 2 an hour later. The PSVR 2 instant

You can find all my Tokyo Game Show coverage here I'd pretty much given up on ever playing Crisis Core again. Originally released in 2007 as part of the Final Fantasy VII Compilation series, it never left the PSP. No ports, no remasters, not even a digital release. It seemed its destiny was to be forever tied to Sony's first handheld and the doomed UMD format. As batteries bulged and units failed, fewer and fewer of us would have access to it. And then something strange happened. Back in June, a multi-platform remaster was announced.  Welcome back, Zack. Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 Reunion was my first demo of TGS Day One. I have fond, but rapidly fading memories of playing the original on my trusty, white PSP back in the day, and of all the FFVII spin offs it was the one that I had enjoyed the most. So when the doors opened at 10am, Square Enix was where I headed first. The fifteen-minute demo was available on PS5 and also on Switch, in handheld mode. You weren't able to s

I'm attending Tokyo Game Show on September 15th and 16th and covering the show here,  on Twitter  and  my podcast Day Two is done. Time marches on. I did stuff. Stuff like this. Games It was yet another productive day. I started the morning off by playing Square Enix's new action RPG, Forspoken. While it wasn't without its charms, overall I was a little disappointed. Resident Evil VR messed me up, mostly in good ways, and I was impressed by PSVR 2. More on that another time. I also had fifteen minutes with Yakuza Ishin! and it's delightful, which I already knew. Just being able to play that in English was enough to make me smile. On the Steam Deck, I tried a few minutes of a bunch of games that you've probably already played, and then I finished off the day with a few more rounds of Street Fighter 6, with the Day-Two addition of homeless-brawler Ken Masters. I wanted to play a couple more games, most notably Alone in the Dark and Wo Long, but the show opened up to t

I'm attending Tokyo Game Show on September 15th and 16th and covering the show here,  on Twitter  and  my podcast Day One of Tokyo Game Show is in the books. One business day down, one to go. And then two more when the general public gets to join in too. I’ll be there again tomorrow, but probably not over the weekend. Probably. It was a productive day and I’m shattered. I was reminded that there are few things more exhausting than walking around Makuhari Messe all day, dodging thousands of other people who are in no way looking where they’re going. Before I crash, here are some musings on the first day. In-depth, hands-on impressions will follow over the next week. The State of TGS The show was bustling, but well short of full capacity. The fourth hall isn’t being used this year, and the indie booths and shops have been moved into the main area. Playstation was very much missed, as their booth always used to dominate the show. There was much less foot traffic from the station to th

I'll be attending Tokyo Game Show on September 15th and 16th and covering the show here, on Twitter and my podcast I've really missed Tokyo Game Show over the last three years. Thanks to you-know-what, TGS went online-only in 2020, and the 2021 show was a hybrid, business-only affair. Both were non-events, thoroughly ignored by the masses.  The big industry shows went away the last two years, and to be honest I don't think they were missed by the vast majority of the game-playing public. Who needs an E3 when publishers can craft their own effective, online events, perfectly focussed and exquisitely timed? Why wait for TGS when you can expect several Directs, State of Plays or Microsoft Showcases each year? I missed it though.  I missed being surrounded by games, and I missed being spoilt rotten. The din and busyness of the show floor. Knowing that for two days, I was going to have the opportunity to play games that were still months, if not years, away from general release

I've been replaying a lot of games of late.  This is partially due to a lack of new games that I've been dying to play, but it's mostly been a conscious decision to revisit experiences that bring me joy. I'm not looking to cast a critical eye, reconsider them from a modern viewpoint, or to see if they still hold up. Fuck that - I just want to play games that mean something to me and I'm guaranteed to enjoy.  You may not be surprised to hear that I've been dipping in and out of Burnout Paradise a lot this year. The remaster is pinned to my Xbox dashboard, available as part of my Game Pass subscription. Any time I'm unsure of what to play, don't have enough time or mental energy to jump into something new, or have had a few beers and want to decompress, I'm likely to turn to Paradise. It never fails to entertain. There's a very small group of games, to which Burnout Paradise belongs, that I choose to replay on a semi-regular basis. They are well-lo

I have some updates for you. Firstly, I finally did that thing I said I'd do: I started a podcast! Eventually Games is a show where I eventually talk about games. I ramble on about something - life in Japan, some long-winded anecdote, current events, pop culture, blacksmiths - before inevitably landing on game-speak. It's a format to please everyone, and please no one. It's a solo podcast for now, and I'm limiting the episodes to around 15 minutes. A bitsized glimpse into my mind, which you can expect to arrive on a weekly basis, and perhaps more frequently on those weeks when I'm feeling extra socialable. It's been an eye-opening experience so far, and I've already learnt a lot in the space of two epsiodes. For example, which side of the mic to speak into, something I discovered between episode one and episode two. Follow me for professional insights into podcasting. Anyway, it'd mean a lot if you gave it a listen and considered subscribing, if you enj