AgentMantis

Genuinely shocking. I can't see how EA justifies Bioware's existence for much longer

The game allegedly cost $700m to make, what did they spend the money on!?

No doubt he'll get a fat bonus for making the "hard decisions"

I gave it a go as it was free but it's not for me, I just wasn't having any fun with it.

PS+/Gamepass changed the AA sphere, everyone just waits for them to inevitably hit the service

@nessisonett games are now taking 4-5 years to develop, imagine how long it'd take if you had a custom engine to build as well. On top of that new staff need to be brought up to speed on the new engine before they can actually contribute. Modern games are so technically complicated that a common industry engine is a necessity.

3 was the peak of the series for me, hopefully we get the remakes we should have years ago.

Cut content for DLC. It's a cynical bare bones launch.

After 3 or 4 entries it's usually better to walk away, let the team re-energise and try something new before the franchise slides into diminishing returns. As much as I enjoyed the Resistance series Sony made the right call, Insomniac has gone from strength to strength while in comparison just look at how Gears and Halo have struggled since their same gen heydays.

It's the series that pushed me back to playstation after jumping over to the X360. I just didn't like it and it was absolutely huge, I just couldn't see a future for Xbox where it wasn't dominated by sci-fi shooters.

I enjoyed the demo but ubisoft games are subscription fodder. I'll carry on slaying the backlog until it inevitably turns up on ps+.

@DonkeyFantasy That's the little extra spice though. Spencer's grubby grand plan not only failed it forced Xbox to pull a SEGA. He now has to sit through interviews confirming just how badly he mismanaged Xbox.

Metaphor and ZZZ

The non-existent marketing and terrible name don't help. FIFA, CoD and Fortnite and all the other live service titles with booming player bases leave very little left over for anyone else, when you add in the high costs of making a modern game it's little surprise that the AA market is essentially non-viable.

Arise and Scarlet Nexus both suffer from "but wait there's more" insane plotting. The core premise of each game was interesting enough. The mountain of half baked plot twists scuppered the second half of each of them.

@KingPev it had been in development for 10 years, essentially rebooted twice during that time. EA and bioware couldn't really agree on the direction of the game and the franchise as a whole. As development time increased, and following Anthem landing with a thud, Bioware was downsized and lost a lot of it's talent. The series lead writer fled and was then critical of the teams culture and EA's hostility towards the narrative team in general. Many assumed VG, or Dreadwolf as it was called at the time, would end up as vaporware and would bring Bioware down, which the less than stellar sales could still do. While I'm not making any comments on the quality of the game, the fact they even managed to get a title out of the door was an achievement.

The fact anything got released at all is an achievement after it's tortured development.

@Oram77 I think it found it's audience, it's just not a game with massive mainstream appeal.

None of the extended universe stuff for FFVII landed for me, most of it reeked of edgelord. AC was the worst offender, it was straight up shonen anime nonsense.

Who has time? I'm locked into my current live service games and don't have any capacity for anything else

It's estimated 75% of all Xboxes sold this gen are S models. MS can't abandon the majority or their already relatively slim user base.They're hamstrung by weak hardware, no wonder they want to push for the next gen to start early.

I got it for Xmas and started it yesterday.

While good, the story hinges on having played most of Kiryu's games for it to hit home. Kasuga's narrative was a big nothing. Push Square has consistently swung and missed with their end of year lists.

ZZZ and Metaphor

I was gave it a go but without the option to invert the Y axis it's basically unplayable for me. How a game can launch without it is unfathomable.

Zenless takes it for me. I'm not sure how yet another Lego game, even if it's a new IP, is even in contention.

"Plucked from their hands" Black Myth was a slightly above average souls-like with good graphics. Nothing it did was original or really stuck with me after the end credits.

As bad as skibidi toilet is, it's still less jarring in Fortnite than Nikki Minaj was in CoD.

The graphics were never the issue with HFW, it was literally everything else. It was just so dull, making a game about fighting robot dinosaurs so boring takes real skill. Easily my biggest disappointment of this gen.

I have serious doubts that those numbers are accurate.

She looks older and sounds older, more aggressive and world weary. Judging by the trailer the new VA will be great.

The game was utterly broken on launch, launching a season 2 when most of the issues still remain is madness

Everything Geoff fronts is genuinely terrible. A half dozen interesting trailers sandwiched between endless filler and ads.

I'm not sure I can afford another F2P

@RagnarLothbrok it's a license to print money if you land a hit. Genshin's top banner generated $46 million in 3 weeks, it's estimated to have made $6.3 billion over 4 years. Executives who have no real clue to what gamers want see those figures and need to change their underwear.

The base game had zero issues, I'm not really sure how you could improve on it meaningfully. I'm really disliking the current tone that the base ps5 is trash and the pro magically fixes everything.

Overall the voice acting is pretty bad, it was the same story with Dragon's Dogma 2.

Paimon's voice has been toned down significantly since the early days. The English voice cast is top tier with Itto being my personal highlight. I fully support the strike, threatening to automate the creative processes behind games will only end in tears for us gamers.

Bloomberg did a deep dive in the summer on the massive problem with peados on Roblox. Some truly awful stuff was unearthed and here we are again. Zero accountability and zero solutions.

Gotta drive those share prices lower for the takeover. Next week it'll be work place harassment and toxic culture.

@thefourfoldroot1 is it a legitimate complaint though? "This character isn't sexy enough for me. I like my women reduced to a single defining aspect that's catered specifically towards my demographic."

Saber is about as mid as it gets, 90% of their output is ps+/Gamepass fodder

The graphics were fantastic and arguably only part of the game that needed no extra work, everything else was crushingly dull. Easily my biggest PS disappointment.

@JokerBoy322 it's nothing to do with Sony, this is squarely on the Devs who released a terribly optimised game and can't bail themselves out without brute forcing a solution

Ubisoft titles are discounted faster and heavier than any other publisher. I fully expect to be able to pick it up on black Friday for less than £30.

This is nothing to do with satisfying gamers, this is all about share price, they can't afford the bad publicity at the moment. If the share price was riding high you could guarantee they'd be willing to serve up a dog's dinner

I'm glad they moved on from Jin, his story was told and I'd hate to see it watered down by forcing character motivation for the sequel. LaD:IW is one of my favourite games of this gen but they had to bend and retcon some of the stuff from the first game to make it work. Besides, I'll sew myself to the carpet if we don't see Jin appear as some kind of spirit guide when the protagonist reaches rock bottom at the end of act 2.

The Plucky Squire, I'm on chapter 9 and hope to finish it over the weekend. I had high hopes but it's kinda of meh, it's nowhere near as inventive or fun as the trailers made out. Its incredibly linear and every puzzle solution well signposted. The only times I've been stuck is when stuff fails to load into the level.

RGG: Gori Majima...
Me: sold.
RGG: but you haven't heard the pitch
Me: Did I stutter?

The new DA was the main feature of last month's EDGE mag and the devs talk about how janky and how many corners they cut during Inquisition's development for various reasons, there was very little faith in it from BW or EA. Personally it was ok at the time, but way too much filler and weak plotting. When the Witcher 3 came out it blew it out of the water, DAI looked absolutely archaic in comparison.