Topic: Playstation 4 Backloggery and most wanted!

@Th3solution Rebirth looks like the sort of game I've wanted from Square-Enix. Action mechanics, but with party control. Big budget, but still retains its Japanese identity. And with actual large environments to explore, unlike Remake, which was fun, but, like the beginning of the original FF7, very tightly paced.

I actually looked up what they did with that plot point at the end of the game just so I wasn't anxious about being spoiled by it.

Oh god. Unless they're super telegraphed with a visual cue or something, I SUCK at parrying. Couldn't parry for the life of me in either Dark Souls or Breath of the Wild, which made life harder in both those games (the former significantly more, in fairness) There goes my interest in Stellar Blade, I guess.

I'll probably get a Switch 2 eventually, since Nintendo actually keeps their exclusive games exclusive (whereas pretty much everything from Sony is playable on my PS4 or PC right now), but the truth is I'm just sorta... bogged down in hardware and games. I own a Switch OLED, Switch Lite, PC, Steam Deck OLED, PS4, PS Vita, 3DS, and Wii U, and variously play games on all of them. Oh, and I still have my retro devices around as well, so the NES, SNES, Gamecube, PS2, Xbox 360, etc.

That's a lot of devices and games to go with all of them, and I'm heavily considering just selling off large swaths of my collection to streamline it, since I rarely replay games anyway. Although I'll probably keep my 3DS and its games, since it's going to become increasingly difficult to access them with the eshop shut down and Nintendo shuttered development on the biggest 3DS emulator while they were going after Yuzu. And unlike the Vita, most of its library is exclusive to it still.

@Th3solution Funny, I was also swayed to get Nier in spite of being less than enthused about it, but I've yet to try it. Will be interesting to see if I end up loving it, too (though that one is a bit further down on my backlog)

@Th3solution @Ralizah I thought the window for parrying was on the generous side in Stellar Blade, and beat the Boss in the Boss Rush mode on my first attempt. I wouldn't consider myself some kind of parrying master either, but am able to do it if called upon.

@FuriousMachine Yeah, that is a bit disappointing, but I get it since it's a first person game. There's a couple of times in the game where you see your character model, other than the option of looking in a mirror in bathrooms which is readily available, but those 1 or 2 moments that I remember were "cinematic" scenes.

I'm also in the camp that is disappointed in the combat of Stellar Blade. I fully expected another Bayonetta or something along those lines from the initial trailers, but the style of combat they chose for it isn't what I usually enjoy. I still play on trying the demo at some point, but I did cancel my pre-order because of the combat (and the fact that I'm not going to be done with Rebirth for a while). If I end up liking it better than expected, then there's always someday down the road when there's not so many releases.

@KilloWertz Ah, when I played it the mirror images was severely blurred and only served to open the character creator. Glad to hear that there at least is a scene or two later on. That character creator should be adopted by third person games... I can only imagine what my femshep would have looked like with options like that!

I haven't completely written off Stellar Blade either, but it's not anywhere near my playlist for now. Maybe one day, but, considering my backlog, that day is far off

@FuriousMachine That's weird. I don't remember that, but I guess it was at the very beginning. I do know that's not an issue now as you can make faces in the mirror while standing there.

True, it would have been great to have a character creator as good as that for Mass Effect. I was lazy and went with the default FemShep when I played as one a few years back. Blasphemy, I know.

@KilloWertz @FuriousMachine I really love a good character creator.

Having just started Midnight Suns, the creator suite for that is lame. Basically choose one of two body types, one of 4 faces and about 10 hairstyles, and that’s about it. I usually don’t get too crazy with the fine tuning of earlobe size and small tweaks of cheekbones, etc, but I like to mess around with noses, chins, lips, make-up, tattoos, scars, eye color (love it when I can make different colors for the right and the left), jewelry and piercings, hair color (especially when you can do base colors with different colored highlights) and lots of hair style options. I usually go with no facial hair if I spend a bunch of time on personalizing a face, but sometimes I give them some stubble or a goatee. 😄

@KilloWertz @Th3solution It's funny, I always turn into a hairdresser with these character creators. i like to tweak some things (eyes, noses, make-up, tattoos and accessories here as well) but the hair has to be just right. If the character has bad hair they will not receive my love... I'm a cruel creator

Edited my previous post as my next game after wrapping up Demon's Souls will now be Rise of the Ronin , which I aim to plat, and then to cleanse my palate after the Souls/Action RPG games, RE2 Remake , which I also aim to plat, with the infinite ammo dlc downloaded as an extra string to my bow, with regard to obtaining further assistance for hunting down that aforementioned plat.

Edit: Completed Demon's Souls and now eyeing up Rise of the Ronin , which I'll get around to next weekend/next week sometime, after reveling in my victory for a few days! 🤣

Edit II: Started Rise of the Ronin as I said elsewhere on the site, and have now added Nioh 2 Remastered: Complete Edition as the next game to play after that. RE2 Remake will have to wait! .

Edit III: Actually for a change of pace Resident Evil 2 REmake will be my next game after Rise of the Ronin
Edit IV: Beat Rise of the Ronin now playing Elden Ring

So the new list, but not necessarily in this order, is now:
Lake: Special Delivery
Nioh 2 Complete Edition
Death Stranding: Director's Cut Digital Deluxe Edition
Silent Hill 2 Remake Deluxe Edition
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Deluxe Edition
Shadow of the Erdtree DLC
Eldest Souls
Presently Untitled Upcoming Jedi Survivor Sequel
The Witcher Remake (presumably coming out in 2026 or later)

xD I hope you have fun.

I'm about half way into The Witcher 3 after having played for three months, so I'm reticent to make any decisions on my backlog right now, but, for once, my next three purchases seem fairly clear.
I have such a massive backlog of already purchased games that buying games at full price week one is something I rarely do and when I do, it's typically mostly because I want to "vote with my wallet" on the types of games I want to see more of. So I'll buy them, full price, week one, even if I probably won't get around to playing them for a while.

The next three games I'm rooting for are
Nobody Wants To Die
Star Wars: Outlaws
Dragon Age: The Veilguard

These are all dependent on reviews being decent, of course. There are many question marks hanging over all of these and I was very lukewarm towards Dragon Age until very recently. None of these will need glowing 10/10 reviews for me to buy them, as long as they are playable and deliver the experience I'm looking for (which they may, even in the 6-7/10 range of things).

@BlAcK_SwOrDsMaN Update on The Witcher 3: I'm still absolutely loving it! I have just reached Skellige, but will likely spend some time hunting down some sweet Witcher gear before continuing on with the story. I'm happy to say that I'm not experiencing any fatigue with the game yet, which is always a danger with games of this size

@FuriousMachine Yeah! I know what you mean regarding the fatigue, and I, myself, want to get that most-coveted plat for Elden Ring! . Anyway, I actually decided that with my Witcher 3 playthrough, because the game is so long that I would play it for at least eight hours a day, still took about a month to finish at that speed, and that was only like the second half or final third of the game, WITH keeping side missions to a minimum! 🤣

@BlAcK_SwOrDsMaN Yeah, this game is massive, but, impressively, it hasn't felt bloated (at least not yet) and it feels lovingly and painstakingly created instead of just "generated", if you know what I mean.
That's why I really liked hearing the same sentiments from the team behind SW: Outlaws in the video PushSquare published the other day: They didn't want to expand the game beyond meaningful content with lots of generic busywork just to pad out the playtime. It remains to be seen if they pulled it off, but I'm hopeful

@FuriousMachine I had intended to comment on your post a couple days ago, but am just now getting around to it —

I’m with you on Star Wars Outlaws, although I’ll probably not get it on release and instead will likely wait for a sale. But if reviews are glowing it may move up the priority list. The videos have looked great to me and it seems like it has potential to be really great, especially for fans of the original movie trilogy.

On the other hand, the Nobody Wants to Die video didn’t really sell the game for me. In fact, I found it rather boring, but it can be hard to judge sometimes.

And Dragon Age: Veilguard falls somewhere in between — probably something I’ll get to later down the road when I have more of the backlog cleared. I’ve got quite a few other “fantasy world third-person swords, bows, magic, and dragons” narrative RPGs to get to.

Besides Outlaws, the only other possible new release purchase is maybe Astro Bot. It’s one of those “vote with my wallet” situations, just to encourage the diversity for Sony first party (same reason I bought games like Dreams, Rift Apart, Returnal, and Concrete Genie at release for full price). I assume the God of Wars and Last of Us’es will have plenty of revenue support.

But you can see how my support didn’t have much effect, especially for Dreams and Concrete Genie. At least I can confidently respond that I’ve done my part when the naysayers do their complaining about “all Sony ever makes is gritty narrative third person action adventure games.” 😅

…Although, even those criticisms have mostly abated lately, probably because first party hasn’t released much of anything in a while. The last couple years has been, what — Spidey 2, GoW:R, Helldivers 2, MLB, GT7, along with the ND remasters/remakes. And the only imminent announced games are Astro, Concord, Fairgames, Wolverine, Marathon, Lego HZD, and Until Dawn. That’s reasonably diverse. So perhaps the ‘Sony is too one-note’ arguments are finally dying down.

@Th3solution Yeah, with Astrobot in there, I feel there is quite a bit of variety in the first party lineup going forward And, absolutely, GoW and TLoU will probably always have a fairly large built-in audience both for pre-orders and day one. I feel that both SW Outlaws and Veilguard most likely will have a solid audience day one as well, but if they turn out to be the type of SW and BioWare game I've been hungry for such a long time now, I dare not take the chance that they may be perceived as flops knowing that I didn't put my hard-earned in to signal my approval. Probably won't move the needle, but as you point out, I'll feel a bit better about it

Veilguard is probably also the one who will be on the backlog pile the longest, as I've yet to play through Inquisition (though not for lack of trying; have two unsuccessful attempts behind me) as well as plenty of other large RPGs to tackle

@FuriousMachine Ditto on not ever making it all the way to the end of Inquisition. Seems there are a lot of us out there.

I had forgotten about Lego Horizon which is also a first party property that is targeting a younger, wider audience. So with Astro Bot and the new Lego game, coupled with several first party FPS games and online PvP shooters… methinks Sony may have over-responded to the complaints about them having too many third person narrative action games. Now their tentpole genre has almost no announced games. Wolverine is all, unless I’m mistaken. Unless you count Death Stranding 2, which is second party of course. We assume there’s a Ghost of Tsushima sequel and another Last of Us coming, but I mean, we know about several shooters, service games, and now these platformer/family friendly titles… but little else.

@Th3solution Lego horizon will slowly rebuild the franchise’s reputation.

@Yousef- It will be very interesting to see. The Switch audience is enormous, and so I wonder if this game will outsell all the other first party games. I have no idea how well these Lego games usually sell, but they keep making them so they must do well enough! 😅

I don’t think the Horizon reputation is all that tarnished, is it? Forbidden West was well-received overall, although I think it fell short of expectations commercially. (I still need to play HFW…) The main complaints I’ve heard about the Horizon franchise is that they seem to be driving it into the ground with too many projects — the Lego game, the rumored MMO, the TV show, the third sequel game, and then the remake of the original game (although I think we might know now that the remake of HZD is actually maybe this Lego game…? Not sure if that’s confirmed). I think there was just too many Horizon projects in development too soon. These franchises need a little room to breathe!

But to your point, the expansion into a Lego
and Switch audience will certainly inject new life into the series

@Th3solution

(Sorry to deflate you but my comment was a Lego building pun)

@Yousef- 🤣 Ah, well played!