8bit4Life

I have an XBOX Series X with about 9 months of Game Pass Ultimate remaining. It's hooked up to the same TV as my PS5 Pro.

The weird thing is that I still barely touch my XBOX, and if a few of these games like Indiana Jones or Starfield were on my PS5, I would play them more, even if I had to buy them.

Interestingly, the XBOX seems to play Ultra HD 4K Blu Ray discs better than my PS5 and PS5 Pro. I tested Lord of the Rings 4K Blu Ray movies and Batman: Dark Knight Trilogy discs. I don't know why this is the case, but I'm keeping my XBOX as a Blu Ray player.

Although I reached the top rank in Stars when I was new, it’s still very weird to use, so I don’t bother much.

A much better rewards system would simply to give points automatically to people who login to PSN on their consoles and play games or make purchases.

I’m definitely jumping in to the beta.

Last week I purchased Monster Hunter Rise during the sale and have been having a great time, so my hunting skills should be slightly up to speed.

I almost never fully shut my PS5 down, but I do fully close games when I’m done.

I have never played a single match of COD multiplayer in my life. There was some version of the game on PS3 that I owned and got a few hours into the single player campaign, then never played COD again.

Battlefield 2142 was pretty fun multiplayer back in the early 2000s.

As a former member of the PC Master Race with a decent Steam library, I am not too worried about PC taking away from PlayStation. Until about 2018 I was pretty much a PC-only player, and then I got a PS4 Pro. At that point I realized that the ease of gaming on console, and the good enough experience made a Windows PC unnecessary in my life, especially as a Mac guy. When I realized that PlayStation store sales usually match the deals on Steam, I began building a big PlayStation library, so it is my gaming home now on PS5 Pro.

I bought the disc drive when I pre-ordered the PS5 Pro. So far I haven’t used it much, and oddly it had some initial troubles reading my Cyberpunk 2077 disc, but nothing else, even though there were no physical defects on it.

Hopefully my drive isn’t defective.

I decided to finally pick up Monster Hunter Rise during the sale. Got it with the expansion for $15. It’s been a lot of fun. The goal was to get my MH skills ready for Wilds, so Rise is a 2 month training exercise.

@TheArt I may give it another shot. Right now I picked up Monster Hunter Rise and its expansion for $15 on the Capcom sale. I will use this game as practice for the main event coming at the end of February.

@Majin_Deicide Precisely. I have been a gamer since the mid-80s and never cared about male or female characters, or what ethnicity they were. The game just needs to be fun and interesting.

I finally bought Elden Ring after procrastinating all this time. It was on sale for $30.

After about 3 hours, I realized that the souls-like genre is probably not for me. Glad I didn’t pay full price.

Seems like a quality game, but the controls feel awkward and you die after just a couple hits. Frustration was my most keenly felt emotion while playing this game.

Sony, if you’re listening, just make a couple quality gotcha games with cute anime girls.

Then start printing money.

I won’t play it, but I see the numbers from Genshin and everything else they have been pumping out.

My day 1 launch Nintendo Switch is still going strong, somehow surviving my son who was quite the abusive gamer towards my hardware in his early years. That system always felt cheap and slow, so any improvement with the Switch 2 will be welcome.

I’m a 90% of the time docked player, and I really hope that it upscales nicely on my 4K LG OLED. The other big improvement I would like to see is a more responsive UI and online store.

I came to DD2 late, getting it with my PS5 Pro, so much of the performance bugs were already gone when I played. This game is my favorite of 2024.

In 1997 I liked Aerith much more than Tifa. Not sure if Tifa even made it into my roster back then. So I definitely chose Aerith for the date, and I was absolutely destroyed as a teenager when Sephiroth came down with that sword.

I’m not a fan of subscriptions, with no streaming or music subs. However, if there’s something that I really want to watch, I will rarely sub for a month to binge a series. The same could happen with a gaming subscription if it has content I’m interested in binging and then being done with.

The developers could have gone the 2B route and given out achievements for discovering their Agent’s secret.

Tekken is my favorite fighting series, and Clive is my favorite Final Fantasy protagonist. In a less busy world I would be all over this. Currently it’s on my list of games to play eventually.

The initial impression is pretty good. Will be watching developments on this one.

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds are the only 2 currently on my radar. I would buy a Dragon’s Dogma 2 expansion DLC immediately. Other than that, Switch 2 is coming, and so is Xenoblade Chronicles X.

I’m not playing this game, but my son has been playing it. He’s also an Overwatch player. He says Rivals is pretty decent.

My only take away is that the art style reminds me of the comics, which is a good thing. The game doesn’t appear to stray into the common cartoony / Pixar look that I have been noticing in a lot of games lately.

I would guess that recent laws passed in American states requiring age verification for porn sites has caused many who once used their consoles for such things to stop or switch to something with easier access to VPNs. This adult site in particular has chosen to stop operating in many states rather than set up the more rigorous age verification.

@x3King84 I don’t know if the saves are cross-platform. My enjoyment of Cyberpunk 2077 came from multiple play throughs as both male and female V. There’s so much to see and the style of play with being a hulking brute or a stealthy netrunner keeps it interesting.

My cyberpunk 2077 hours played are so far 100+ on PC, 35 on PS4 Pro, and almost 400 on PS5. Time to add to the count on PS5 Pro after it’s done patching.

I have an Xbox Series X with about 10 months of Game Pass Ultimate left, but I haven’t even turned it on in months. Still trying to get the bad taste of buying it for Starfield out of my mouth. Hey, we all must live and learn. As such, I like the voice acting in the Indy game, but just can’t bring myself to download it.

This game looks better and better as I see more of it. The first game is quite difficult to get into, as I am working to get my armor to sneak out of an early castle.

If KCD2 does well, I would love to see the first one remastered on the new engine, as it looks much more fine-tuned.

One style of gaming that I have never been able to enjoy is the isometric view. Don’t know why, but I just don’t enjoy them, even after trying to force myself to with 70 hours of Diablo IV. It’s the main reason I still haven’t played BG3.

I’m not a gotcha fan, but if the game plays like Cyberpunk, I could be interested to try it. I played a couple hours of Genshin Impact back when it came out, and the same with Star Rail. Those games didn’t have the right gameplay style to hook me, no matter how pretty they were.

FF7 was the catalyst for me to buy the PS1. Prior to that I was a staunch Nintendo guy.

Subsequently I discovered that the games on PlayStation were much better than the poor N64 selection, and though I continued to enjoy some Nintendo games, I was a PlayStation fan ever since.

I’m fine either way. As long as the hardware works well and the games I want to play are on it, and I am not dealing with a PC.

It was certainly a treat when my PS5 Pro restarted after the update. I didn’t know it was coming, and suddenly I was transported to the mid-90s for a brief moment.

I’m back in Night City on my 5th or 6th play through. Cyberpunk has really good replay value because there are multiple play styles and so much to see. Plus Johnny Silverhand is more lovable with every sarcastic quip.

I would place Cyberpunk 2077 in my top 5 all-time favorite video game list.

I was initially on the NO team for PS5 Pro because of the price. Then after looking at gaming PCs for a bit, I came around and pre-ordered the Pro. So far I really like it. GT7 and Dragon’s Dogma 2 are really nice when you pair the PS5 Pro with a 120hz OLED. Not everyone has this setup, but if you do, the experience is noticeably better than the base model.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is definitely my Game of the Year for 2024.

The patched up version.

On PS5 Pro.

I’m still one of those guys who hasn’t purchased BG3. I played the demo and was intrigued, so I will likely add a few dollars to Larian’s coffers once it gets the discount frequented by Divinity 2, which I own but haven’t played much.

After the underperformance of many AAA games in the past couple years, it is reasonable for platform holders and major companies to evaluate what gamers have been buying and what they have been avoiding. It’s just not financially feasible to fund 100-400 million dollar games without a good bet that they will be successful. My guess is that we will see a great number of games currently in development be cancelled, and possibly shuttering of more studios through the next year.

Although I am a RPG fan first and foremost, and not even a racing fan in general, Gran Turismo 2 is the PS1 game that really made the biggest impact on me. I was a teenager who was really interested in cool cars in the late 90s, working a job that saw me pushing shopping carts into the supermarket, and seeing these Gran Turismo cars in real life. GT1 was awesome, but GT2 was next-level and it had so many more cars. It was so much fun to play with my friends after school or work.

I have played a little bit of the first game, and it is one of those games that puts you in the world in a serious sort of way. Due to my backlog, I never made it far, but this is a series that I want to play and take the time to learn.

GT7 has been one of my favorite PS5 games since release. It’s good if more people can get a taste of the game through this option.

I have the PSVR 2, where GT7 shines, but I found that sitting close to a 4K OLED on a desktop like a PC puts you right in the driver’s seat.

@Loamy Yes, LG OLED 120hz is a QOL upgrade like few others in the console world.

@Loamy Yes, a VRR 120hz display is amazing. I barely notice the dips that I read people talking about all the time.

I’ve been binging DD2 ever since my PS5 Pro arrived. Is the game perfect? Not even close. Is it awesome anyway? Absolutely.

This game is pretty short and could use a lot more content. The exploration is great, and I love the Pawn system and combat. So much variety in the various classes.

Even with this game’s flaws, it’s still my favorite game of 2024.

I’ve been playing Dragon’s Dogma 2 exclusively since getting the PS5 Pro. It’s been a pretty good experience, though maybe people are noticing something I’m overlooking. One tiny thing I did notice was the weird shadow effects on my pawn’s back in certain light. Nothing game breaking.

Airship means we may have a means to reach the Knights of the Round summon.

I have a full week of Dragon’s Dogma 2 under my belt, purchased along with the PS5 Pro. This is a game that has been famously criticized for frame rates in some places, but it has been pretty solid for me on a 120hz OLED with VRR.

That bit aside, I absolutely love this game. It’s been the best exploration since my first Skyrim experience, and the pawns are fun to have around.

I think a lot of people will watch this out of pure curiosity. Concord may be infamous for the wrong reasons, but that may draw a lot of viewers to a video series.

Not to sound cold or uncaring towards these people, because I don’t know everything that they are experiencing. However, this doesn’t seem like a good time for their already stressed companies to be dealing with this. It reminds me of the Hollywood strikes recently, coming at a time when almost every movie is underperforming, except Deadpool and Wolverine. Much of the entertainment industry appears to be in free fall.

I have not purchased this game yet. It’s on the radar, but other games are higher up on the backlog. PS5 Pro will be my way to play it.

I grew up playing this series and Final Fantasy on the NES. RPGs were always my choice of game all the way up to present day. That said, I have trouble enjoying and completing retro style RPGs in the past few years. I thought I would love Octopath Traveller or the FF Pixel Remasters. But it turns out that I loved these games for the tales and exploration, and merely tolerated the turn-based mechanics as limitations of the tech at the time. Today I much prefer games like Dragon’s Dogma 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, Zelda BotW, or Xenoblade Chronicles X. My memories are very fond of DQ1, 4, 5, 7, and 8, but I think I have moved on from the formula. At least for now.