Amnesiac

The Push Square team has done a great job covering Dreams over the years, going all the way back to your interactive review. Every time I thought I was done with it, one of your articles drew me back to the Dreamiverse and had me falling down the rabbit hole again.

Some of the gripes I see about the game make me grind my molars a bit, because to me it’s a minor miracle that something like Dreams came into being in the first place and managed to stick around as long as it did.

I half agree with the endless parade of “Dreams should have always been free” comments, but only the play portion. Having a low cost barrier to entry for the creation section kept out the riff-raff and made sure that Mm didn’t have to waste money funding a department of dong removal.

Marchewka adds: "We will retain full ownership of our IPs, maintain creative freedom, and continue to operate the way we believe is right.

I wonder how hard it was to say that with a straight face. As with all Chinese companies, the only shareholder who matters is the Chinese Government, and the consequences for ignoring the will of that very special shareholder are quite dire. But hey, congrats on all the money you got to make zombie games!

@belmont Out of curiosity, whose designs do you like? There’s a lot of variation in the comics, from Ditko to Romita Sr. to McFarlane to Romita Jr. and a multitude of others.

Come on, Sony, haven’t you learned your lesson? If you don’t start losing some ground to big green, they’ll have to buy more multi-platform developers. You know, so they can bring more games to more players.

I enjoyed the first one enough to pick up the sequel…but I haven’t gotten around to playing it yet.

Shame, thy name is backlog.

If they were looking for a way to get me to play Karateka again, they’ve found it. A brilliant idea, and hopefully for fans of crusty old games like me, just the beginning.

I thought AI was supposed to help us leave drudgery behind so we could focus on more creative pursuits, but it seems like we’re going to keep the drudgery for ourselves and let AI do art. Well done, humanity.

I wish some company would take a chance and make a game styled more after the comics than the movies. Something like Sega’s Comix Zone, but without the panel gimmick. Imagine running around a Jack Kirby-esque Wakanda fighting a pink and purple Klaw. Marvel Pop-Art at its best!

@DiggleDog Thanks for the reply. I often plop down at the first open cabinet and proceed to get destroyed with my fledgeling Manon. I felt much better after looking at my profile and realizing that I'd been a punching bag for platinums and up, though. Even still, there's almost always something to learn from a good beating!

@DiggleDog Wait, isn’t it Fighting Grounds that lets you fight people of similar skill? I’ve been getting annihilated in Battle Hub but have been enjoying ranked matches in Fighting Ground against other lackluster players like myself.

@Sil_Am That’s a novel idea. Imagine companies assigning office buildings to subsidiaries based on performance. “Sorry, but you’ve missed your numbers so it’s off to the abandoned Borax factory. Try not to breathe too much of the asbestos, our deductibles are high enough as it is.”

@Uncharted2007 What a profoundly hyperbolic response. It seems like a smart move to look at alternatives to Twitter regardless of political bent, simply because it doesn't work as well as it used to. The funny part is, it's gone from a public company beholden to shareholders to a company run by a not-so-random person's whims.

@HonestHick It's funny, I still forget to switch to classic sometimes when messing around in the combo challenges. It would be nice if there were a universal setting. I've had some trouble with high damage modern players, but it feels like they spam special moves and drive impacts until they're blue in the face and ignore their regulars. Also, they seem to forget to block low for some reason.

My biggest challenge with the game has been playing in battle hub against people who have perfected really nasty move strings. I lost repeatedly to a Juri the other day where if I guessed wrong once, it felt like I was locked into a crouching block for an age. I'm sure there was something I could have done, but I'm still learning Manon and don't know the answers yet to a lot of the problems I run into. Still, this is a monstrously good game.

@Majk_SVK I’m not sure that’s a valid complaint. I’ve been waiting for Not For Broadcast, Gal Guardians, and Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge to go on sale, and got the notice this morning. There are far too many games to scroll through in a lot of these sales, so lately I’ve been wishlisting anything that looks remotely interesting and waiting for the PS Store to tell me when there’s a price drop.

@LordAinsley Fantavision is plenty fun, but 202X is a bit clunky. Even without VR, the earlier PS4 release feels like a superior version of the game.

@Uncharted2007 Actually, I waited for a sale before grabbing the last MK. I pretty much stick to the single player stuff with Mortal Kombat though, so it doesn’t seem like I missed much. SF is one of the rare games that I play online, so it feels worthwhile to get in at the ground floor while everyone is still figuring things out. It’s a lot of fun (and sometimes aggravating) to see how people approach new characters and techniques.

@Uncharted2007 You would have waited five years for a “complete” version of SFV, but I guess someone needs to be there to lock up and turn out the lights while everyone moves on to SF6. The “smarter to wait” argument is a sound one for games that have one or two big content drops over their lifetime, but not so much for a constantly evolving juggernaut like SF6. The good news is that whenever you decide to jump in, you’re going to get a great game.

@KAIRU Cool your boots. There’s enough game in SF6 to keep anyone busy for an age with or without a sigh battlepass.

Also, that subheading sounds like me after Taco Tuesdays…

@AndyKazama Yeah, Ninja Wars was fun, but it felt like a good Neptunia Game and a so-so Senran Kagura game. For some reason, my favorite is probably Cyberdimension Neptunia which I played to death. There's no doubt that Compile Heart and If have talent, but they're definitely due to upgrade their assets.

There are some fun games in the Neptunia series, but the releases have been going from charmingly rough around the edges to just rough lately. Hopefully this one flips the script.

Also, this seems like as good a place as any to grouse about the word “waifu”. I don’t think it’s particularly offensive, just kind of gross.

I bought in to the early access and have really enjoyed it. It’s one of the few games that implements live service elements very well…so far. The progression system actually fixes the incentive problem that Mario Kart 8 has, where pretty much everything is handed to you out of the gate.

Oof, come on Push Square. This article is the epitome of the “some people say” stories that less than trustworthy news organizations are known for. I know that articles don’t have a thumbs down button to push, but I’m pushing it anyway. In my mind.

@GamingFan4Lyf It's amazing, but also a little disheartening. A lot of the third party Japanese games that I enjoy have not seemed to evolve much over the past few years, as they need to run on the best selling system. I'd like to see either a more robust Nintendo system, or for Sony to grab enough market share so that Japanese developers find it worthwhile to create different versions of games that play to the strengths of each system.

@Cashews And now I know what ChatGPT spits out when fed a strict diet of Nintendo Life and Gematsu.

@Sil_Am The Gematsu comments are a depressing read, especially for old people like me who remember the mod-chip/import heyday when Japanese developers were cranking out unique and interesting stuff at a breakneck pace. Sorry, I think my rose tinted glasses are fogging up.

Not a bad showing for Sony, considering they’re competing against a handheld in the land of handhelds. And I expect Switch will lock up the charts for the foreseeable future with Mario Wonder on the horizon. I haven’t been this excited for a Switch game since Odyssey.

@Tharsman It’s possible that developers think gamepass is eroding the value of games in the long term, but are more than happy to reap short term profits from big green’s generous terms during their drive to increase subscribers.

It’s also possible that developers speaking to Jim Ryan have been universal in expressing misgiving about gamepass. I hardly think “we love gamepass” works well as an icebreaker with Big Jim. I’m sure the execs at team green hear a different story during their face to face meetings.

At less than a dollar per title for the upgrade, I wasn’t expecting the world, and I came away pleasantly surprised at the variety of GG titles in the package. I’m probably the target audience for this though, since I remember how amazing it was to play a handheld with a color screen after being stuck in a portable pea green world for so long. It was quite a neat little system.

These sales are fun and give me an excuse to revisit games I haven’t played for a while. I really wish the PS Store would let me see all DLC by release date. I’m sure I’ve missed all sorts or freebies for older titles simply because I didn’t know they were released.

@Loftimus I was completely unaware that cycling and photography were queer pursuits. Looks like the wife and I need to have quite the conversation…

They’ve been doing this for years. I remember way back in ‘98 when big green bought out Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net. That really got ugly.

That’s unfortunate, but hopefully they attract some investment in their current project and are able to rehire some of those let go. I picked up Season but it makes kind of a rough first impression so I didn’t get far with it. I’m sure I’ll come back to it eventually though.

@iapaulogise Unfortunately that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s also licensing fees for tools and apps, insurance, rent & utilities (if they have a physical space), and a host of other costs to deal with.

@Tharsman I'll push back just a bit.

'your offer needs to compensate for all sales lost'

I would doubt that this is how exclusivity contracts work, at least for new IPs or offshoots of existing series. I may be wrong, but I don't think Sony is beholden to Square Enix for the sales of Forspoken that didn't materialize on other systems. And obviously, for timed exclusivity contracts it's a moot point.

@Tharsman This is where I lose the plot in these discussions . Why is the method for “blocking PS/Nintendo exclusivity deals” buying a studio outright instead of just making a better offer for timed exclusivity? Why not compete instead of taking the ball and going home?

Toys for Bob does great work, but it sounds like this might be stretched a bit thin. Of course, being a live service game, I would never go near it. I just don’t have time for that foolishness. I mean, one look at my home screen shows that the last three games I played were Street Fighter 6, Gran Turismo 7, and Disney Speedstorm…Hmm…

So if only Sony’s competition had the resources to offer developers competitive exclusivity contracts, they wouldn’t have had to resort to…buying said developers outright. Got it.

Every other generation or so I try out a Nobunaga’s Ambition, but I haven’t really latched on yet. Still, the history and politics of the era are fascinating to me, so maybe this will be the time that everything clicks.

Always a nice surprise to wake up to a sale notice for a wishlisted game. It’s finally Trinity Trigger time.

@RBRTMNZ My guess is that it’s more baffling than troubling. If reviews and discussion of the game don’t mention much about bugs, it would stand to reason that most people haven’t had your experience. Maybe you just had very bad luck with HFW and very good luck with Cyberpunk.

@StonyKL To be fair, if you’re someone who primarily gets their games through a subscription service rather than purchasing them, I don’t think the breadth of selection is a limitation. It seems like you own the big three, so just playing the top releases is a major time investment. Well, for two of the big three, anyway…

@johncalmc I thought it looked interesting as well, but now that I know it’s a weird anime perv’em up thing, it’s been preordered. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Heh.

I skipped 1995, so this is a great excuse to check it out. Just started PR1978 and it’s been a real treat so far. That phone call in the early going was quite a surprise! Also, I’m embarrassed to admit that I got stuck for a good minute because I forgot the importance of looking at your wrist. When in doubt, look at your wrist.

@thefourfoldroot1 I’m of the same vintage, which makes this a must buy for me. The first console I remember playing was an Atari 2600 at a friend’s house. It had that classy faux wood grain finish that matched the wood paneling on the walls. That era really had a style all its own.

@nessisonett Surely there are better places to meet single women than the Summer Games fest stage.

You had me at five bucks for Legendary Wings.

It feels good to ten something, especially when it’s so well deserved.

@naruball Nintendo’s teflon coating has been a mystery to me since the days of the NES, and the only answer I can come up with for why they remain mostly impervious to criticism is “Mario & Zelda.”

@Shepherd_Tallon “ No matter what they show most of the internet will hate it anyway.”

My thoughts exactly. Why spend money and effort on a presentation that will only reach the portion of your customer base most likely to dunk on it? It’s like paying someone to kick you in the groin.

@nessisonett I’m not so sure. How much should the long snapper for the Lehigh Mountain Hawks earn for their likeness? Should players be payed differently based on the size of the school or their popularity? This seems like a bit of a can of worms, but to be fair, it’s a can of worms packed to bursting by the NCAA and the line they like to pretend exists between amateur and professional athletics.