AgentMantis

I have zero faith this will turn out well

As time passes I'm more and more convinced that a large part on why no sequel was green-lit was Sony had just had enough of this idiot.

It's not met their sales expectations either, even after they downgraded them following it's luke warm critical reception. I think I know what the lead title in Black Friday sales is going to be this year.

Playstation owners want single player games. It's that simple. Until Sony start delivering on that front, every single live service game arrives with a target on it regardless of its quality. Titles like Concord and Fairgames might of found a much warmer reception if we weren't all starving for what brought us to the playstation in the first place. The rumoured state of play later this month is starting to feel like make or break. Sony needs to lay their cards on the table, they've bungled the entire PS5 generation and need to start giving reasons to stick around.

At this point the number or articles telling me it's flopped exceeds the entire player base. Everyone knows it failed, we don't need hourly reminders.

Trash month. My backlog is full thankfully.

@Arkham24601 because they did when the games went into production, now when they're ready the market is saturated and no one is going to jump from a title they've sunk hundreds of hours into already

I'm still angry about THPS.

I'm not too fussed, as soon as I'm sucked in I can't tell the difference.

Automatically noping you out is always much more preferable than just assuming they can sign you up for whatever. Stars was poorly conceived and poorly implemented. They should just go back to the drawing board with the whole scheme.

Side stepping all the negativity around the game itself, 8 years is just too long and it's not the only game to take that long. An entire career in AAA game development results in 5 games, lessons learned between releases take an entire console generation to be implemented. As much as AI is maligned I really can't see how the AAA continues without it.

The non stop quest for growth, there's a term for that, cancer.

@WizzNL statistically in this case Chinese users would be an outlier and excluded from data sets as it would skew them! As China represents a small percentage of the Steam's user base, its equivalent to the very vocal minority. Outside of China, and within the average user base, the game has had a good but nowhere near phenomenal reception. Using skewed figures paints a warped picture of the reality.

It looks so very dated, both gameplay wise and graphically. This is a series that prints money, has a budget that most games would be lucky to see a tenth of, and it looks like a mid-gen PS4 game.

Crossover media always feels like homework

Looks good? The graphics were ass and it looked packed to the gills with generic MMO filler content.

Mechanically it's much closer to a souls-like than it is to the rebooted GoW but it's much more forgiving than a typical souls-like. Most reviews seem to call it a boss rush with very little to do outside of running towards the next big encounter, that's more my concern.

Solid month, Wild hearts looks interesting

2 and first Tales are decent enough the rest just isn't worth bothering with. 3 was one of the most painfully misjudged games I've ever played.

This is going to get murdered by BG3 comparisons.

With a reported running length of 15 hours I'm holding fire until reviews drop

Baldurs gate 3. Picked it up in the sale.

Game's journalism continues to dwindle towards an IGN monopoly.

Launching a MP title into the currently overcrowded market would have been madness. Things have progressed significantly since their last attempt and you really need to be built from the ground up as a MP studio to even stand a chance. ND should have farmed it off to a MP specialist studio if it was that important to them.

@dark_knightmare2 is everything ok at home? 5 straight replies defending a mediocre at best game seems is coming across as a cry for help tbh

They've given it away on every platform, that's probably a "sale".

Souls-like has been well and truly beaten to death at this point. Creative bankruptcy.

They've run out of time and money trying to get this one over the line. I think this one is going to be a much narrower, more linear DA experience as a result.

I got the Shadow of Colossus one

It looks like it might be worth a shot. I made the mistake of looking at the YouTube comments though, eesh, looks like this one has really stirred up the basement dwellers.

@lacerz Ga-cha-pon, Japanese onomatopoeic word of a capsule dropping from a toy vending machine. Basically you insert premium currency and get a random character. The odds are fixed though you do get a pity system where once you've spent enough you get a guaranteed top-tier drop. Some are super predatory, some less so. MiHoYo games tend to fall on the more innocuous side of things.

I'm really enjoying it. The combat and characters are a lot of fun, while the grind is a lot more streamlined.

You lost me at youtuber loremaster

@Batesy125s Hoyo tend to make their money through fomo and waifu baiting. Premium characters flatten the skill gap needed but almost all content tends to be beatable with free characters. The gacha system is easily one of the most generous ones out there as well, premium currency is easy to come by and the pity system guarantees characters eventually. It's worth checking out, ignore all the hate from people who have never played any of their games.

Zenless Zone Zero

It's flawed, outdated and has baffling design decisions but I was enjoying it right up until the post game, which is genuinely terrible.

6/10, nothing it did was original or hadn't been done better elsewhere

It's a game that became popular as it was basically a meme, not for its quality in any way. The meme is dead and the PS release is far too late to the party.

Scarlet Nexus. Downloaded it on a whim and really enjoying it.

The original was flawed but enjoyable. I'm not a fan of the new art style though.

The biggest issue is the lack of journalists to hold things to account. Publishers get to showcase in a safe, micromanaged format without having to answer hard questions. Starfield looked like GOTY material in Xbox's showcase last year, we all know how that turned out.

It was rubbish. The format is terrible, Geoff is still annoying and the woman couldn't present to save her life! Worse was the slate of games, so few caught my eye.

I'm done with souls- like, the burnout is real

Astrobot is currently on the Southbank, almost certainly announced tonight then

Played the beta, it was so bare bones it felt half finished which is absurd considering how long it had been in development and that it had been spun off of a pre-existing game. The worst thing was it was just mind-numbingly boring, not even playing with friends could improve it.

The subreddit is a proper swamp. Aside from turning on Arrowhead they also like to turn on other players and dictate how they play. There's a lot of armchair generals trying to dictate the "war" and throwing their toys out of the pram when people just play to have fun.

Recent studies claim gen z have an attention span of 8 seconds. Though I'm some what sceptical of that research, bombarding young people from all angles training them to consume media in bitesize chunks has got to have had repercussions.

Expanded universes quickly feel like homework.

It'll be on ps+ before Christmas and will be dead by this time next year.

Genshin hasn't really dropped off in quality or content so I'll be sticking there for a while yet. I only have time for a single LS title.