Topic: What PS4 Games Are You Currently Playing?

@TheBrandedSwordsman I admire your ability to power through those games, I got stuck on Vicar Amelia which I hear isn't even a hard boss haha. Do you get into Nioh as well?

@TheBrandedSwordsman I admire your ability to power through those games, I got stuck on Vicar Amelia which I hear isn't even a hard boss haha. Do you get into Nioh as well?

@Th3solution Yeah, definitely, I still have not been able to get past Ludwig the Accursed to this day, but, I am hoping, once I am OP and can summon help it will be much easier.
With regard to what you said about the DLC, yeah, it's definitely all high-quality, I think some if not the vast majority of it surpasses the base game. Did you beat the whole of vanilla Bloodborne then?

@TraCuz- I was hell-bent on completing Bloodborne when I first played it, when I went back to it, I summoned help for Vicar Amelia, there were three of us against her including an NPC, we went to town on her and it was pretty easy, she never got a chance to heal! With regard to Nioh, yes, but I found the environments drab and boring, and thanks for what you said about my ability to power through those games, they're definitely a big commitment. However, if you can beat Dark Souls 3, you should be able to beat Bloodborne as well

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Definitely. Rift Apart isn't a game that'd necessarily move me closer to getting a PS5 on its own, but I'd happily pay $20 or so to play it if I already have one.

It'd be even better as a PS+ freebie.

With the PS5, I think, aside from needing to justify the cost of a new console when I'm already paralyzed with choice in games, I'm also not terribly thrilled about the price of games going up. I'm struggling to think of a PS5 game I'd even be willing to buy at $70 plus tax (which would make it almost $80 total where I live). FFVII Remake 2, I guess, although I'm even feeling kind of alienated from that right now thanks to the next-gen exclusive expansion for part one and the fact that they're releasing Ever Crisis as a mobile game, and you know they'll be referencing stuff in that for future Remake games. Bleh.

Also, with the way Sony is handing out PS4 games like free candy right now, I have to wonder if they'll adopt a similar strategy later in this console generation. Or even next-gen. Will PS6 include a bunch of free PS5 games with a PS+ sub?

Horizon Forbidden West will be worth £70 and then some. Some of you people are so bloody cynical lol.

Maybe if you played a game more than once you'd feel you'll be getting your money's worth.

😉

@Col_McCafferty In your opinion. Everything’s worth different amounts of money to different people. I wouldn’t pay £70 for any game because £70 is a week and a half’s worth of shopping. I can write off £40 as a luxury, perhaps £50 if it’s my birthday but I have my limits. Other people don’t.

Value is most definitely a matter of personal opinion. I’ve not been opposed to the current gen pricing so far, but I don’t have a PS5, so it’s easy for me to say it sounds fair when I don’t even have the option to pay it. Although at the same time, I probably search for a good deal to obsessive excess sometimes, depending on the product. Like with games, I will almost always look up what the physical version or pre-owned version costs and compare to the digital before I decide which to buy. And I’ll drive across town if it’s a couple dollars cheaper at another store. I guess I’m weird that way.

But I also like to put media cost into perspective by comparing what the same amount of money will buy in food or other consumables. So earlier I compared buying Metro Redux on the current sale for $6 to the equivalent of buying two tacos for lunch. One of them will be gone in 30 minutes and forgotten, and the other could end up giving me 20-30 hours of memories and topic for discussion with friends. In the realm of cost per hour of enjoyment, video games are actually an amazingly good deal, even at $70 a pop. So I might buy Metro Redux and just make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch tomorrow. 😜

But yes, I am not philosophically opposed to paying $70 for a game if I will find personal value to meet that price. I’ve certainly wasted more money on worse things. [*looks over at designer jeans that no longer fit...]

@nessisonett Well, you are Scottish.

😉

If it's one game a month let alone a week then yeah it's going to hurt but every 2-3 months? Not a problem. I mean some people.can afford to pay £450 for the console itself plus peripherals so not exactly bankrupt.

Leave it a few months and the game will come down in price anyway. On physical though, yet another reason we shouldn't be so eager to move into a digital-only future.

@Col_McCafferty @Th3solution I don't think the price is to harsh to be honest, It is a matter of personal opinion and circumstances and some games are definitely not worth paying £70 for but in terms of games that are the cost, time and effort that's gone in to making it plus the fact you can get 50+ hours of gameplay makes £70 not a bad price, my thing is though I very rarely buy new games because 1. I know I a few month I can pick it up for half price or even less so why would I spend £70 and 2. I have such a backlog that there really is no need to rush out and play the next big thing. That top price mark is what they value their product and there are alot of people who are either eager or willing to play/pay it. The older I've got the less eager/willing I've become simply because 1 I can wait and 2 why pay a higher price if I know I can get it at a lower price some time later, if I couldn't though and they always stayed top price I'd have no problem paying £70

Completed Control last night, it was Ok overall, gameplay was decent enough, some challenging parts, story wasn't as confusing as made out to be but just wasn't brilliant. Some of the abilities where fun to play about with but there seemed a bit to much dependent on the side quests to try get extra abilities that wouldn't be available if you just completed the story which I felt they could of made it part of the story and it would of been better. Anyway glad I've finished it took 15 hours that was full story and about half the side quests done probably another 5 hours if I went for the rest and probably another 5 on top of that for the plat but I'm not interested enough to slog it out.

Next up Final Fantasy VII Remake and I'm really excited for this one!

@MaulTsir Congratulations, I'm really interested in that game.

I'm currently playing through Bloodborne again, just farming Blood Echoes to become sufficiently OP for The Old Hunters DLC, still after those trophies and wanting to complete my Gascoigne/Holy Moonlight Sword Hybrid Build. Got Gascoigne's set early on, now all I need is the sword from Ludwig, planning to get most stats to 40-50 or thereabouts. I've got two of them to 30 already. Farming in the Forbidden Woods. Will take a while.

@MaulTsir I agree that I like the trend toward tiered pricing. Some games seem reasonable to be $70 when they are of sufficient length and quality, but some don’t feel quite worth it to me, even on release. So I appreciate it when a publisher will launch their new game at a lower price point and not just slap on the standard $60 tag just because it’s a new release. I think Sony learned this lesson with The Order 1886. So after a backlash they started sending out AAA quality products for lower prices, like $40 for R&C, Concrete Genie, Dreams, Miles Morales, etc. and I think that’s fair. It’s part of the reason I trust the fact that Returnal at $70 is probably a sensible launch price because Sony has shown us that they are willing to alter the price to fit what they feel the game could or should sell for. If Retunal was a 10 hour experimental title with limited appeal, I feel like the pricing would not have been as aggressive. So I think they anticipate the game is of sufficient length, caliber, and importance to warrant the full asking price. I also trust that, like you said, depending on popularity, the price will be adjusted downward pretty quickly if it doesn’t sell.

I have a bigger problem when annualized franchised charge the full $70. I’ve harped on this before, but to me those seem like the ‘rip-off’ to the customer, when most of these sports games have very little gameplay or developmental changes year to year and yet they always launch at the top dollar price. To me it feels like they are fleecing the public, especially if they include microtransactions. I know I’ve gone way off subject here with my soapbox stream of consciousness, but I don’t prejudge someone who buys the new NBA2K, FIFA, or Madden every year for $70, because like I said, in a dollar per hour cost analysis I’m sure they get a splendid deal for them personally, but for me I don’t feel the price is justified if you’re looking at it from a development standpoint. But it does grate on me a tiny bit to see people throw so much shade at Sony and Returnal but not criticize the same price point for these other less innovative games.

@TheBrandedSwordsman Thanks, i would recommend playing it, I did enjoy it but not enough to ever add it to a top list of anything, the gameplay is good and interesting. I think the fact I used this as a filler game in between some bigger games I wanted to play also played a factor into me rushing through it to just get in done rather than properly enjoying it. I can see some people really liking this game so would say give it a go, I got the ultimate edition from ps plus so nothing lost except my time I guess lol

@Th3solution yeah I agree massively with you on the franchise titles, I stopped playing fifa religiously since 2018 and in general I play NBA2k and The Show but I always give it a 2 to 3 year gap just to be able to feel the benefit of any changes and get my moneys worth, even then I normally wait till a month or 2 down the line, I played NBA2k19 and I only got 21 because it was on sale for £16 last week and they are shutting down the online servers for 19 in April. For a Brit I'm big on my American sports, can't stand Cricket but love Baseball, Don't like Rugby but love the NFL 🤣

@MaulTsir Wow, that’s interesting that you enjoy the American sports. Sammy likes the NFL too, so I guess there’s a few of y’all out there 😄. But yeah, I think most fans will buy one of the annual games every 2-3 years since most of the time not much changed season to season except roster updates and a few touch-ups. That or waiting a few months into the season until the price drop. But amazingly despite that, the games sell like hotcakes every year and are in the top 10 for months.

And to be fair, the sports games are a huge value if you take into account time spent. I played NBA2K20 a few months ago since it was a PS Plus title and it was fun for a few hours, but I can see how people dump dozens and dozens of hours into the different modes and leveling up their character or team. If a person pays $70 and yet plays the game for 200 hours over the year, I can’t criticize that when I might pay $70 for a 30 hour story-driven action-stealth game and then never play it again. But to me it’s worth it since I like those types of games.

Do you play Madden?

@Arugula I agree and would never deny an individual’s personal preference and value extraction from a game or series (I enjoy the janky drivel of Telltale games for example which is probably indefensible 😂), and like I say, it just doesn’t make sense when one game is blasted for being $70 where another is not, especially when the one game (Retunal, Rift Apart, Forbidden West, etc) hasn’t even been played by anyone yet so how can we judge its worth? 😅. But I know there are some people whose opinion is that a $70 value isn’t in existence right now in any game at all, and that’s fair too, considering the sea of options at lower price points. Everyone’s budget is a different place, and so I wouldn’t say that opinion is wrong either. I was just making the comparison that when we look at game pricing, ‘what’s good for the goose should be good for the gander’, so to speak. I don’t know how a person could say Returnal isn’t worth $70 but NBA2K21 is.

My big issue is how many games are released at full price with fundamental issues in place, and often with more content released later on.

In the last few years I have only bought two games on release; The Division 2 to get the most out of the online component and RDR2 as Rockstar are pretty good at releasing products that I think are fine to play day one.

When some games can drop in price within a couple of months of launch, I am happy to wait seeing as I almost always have something else waiting to be played.

It’ll be interesting to see how PS5 games hold their value with so few games out there specifically for the console.

@Thrillho And that’s the other variable right now. The economy is different for PS5 now because of scarcity of true ‘next gen’ experiences and so the asking price is naturally going to be higher because there isn’t competition vying for the gamer’s cash. PS4 has oodles to choose from so there’s less incentive to dig deeper to pay for a game when there are hundreds more for cheaper.