Andee

I was interested in getting it, but annoyingly it's still not quite a definitive version that contains all the content of previous iterations — otherwise I'd have nabbed it in a heartbeat.

Stellar Blade looks pretty great — I must confess I hadn't heard about that game before last night; at first I thought it was a new Nier game.

Be interested to see how this plays — I imagine the pixel perfect precision required to play a game like Celeste goes right out the window when you migrate it to N64-era 3D

@kcarnes9051 It's like when they adapted The Hobbit into three films — utterly greedy and unnecessarily drawn out - like butter scraped over too much bread.

@DanteDevilHunter or possibly a Rick Flag.

@NinjaNicky Yeah, same here — I very rarely buy PS5 games digitally, and most indie titles I usually get on Switch, as long as they run okay.

@Martijn87 I suspect they're going to incorporate elements from Advent Children in the Remake trilogy, hence why they're re-releasing it.

@Enuo careful you don't shilly-shally.

I'll likely pick up the PS5 upgrade if I do a replay of both games, probably in the lead up to a Part 3.

There's a discernible difference in the texture of Ellie's clothing fabric texture — you really have slow it down and zoom in, but at its highest resolution, it looks ever so slightly more space-suity than in the original.

We saw the whole story of Bill and Frank over a beautifully succinct hour-long episode — the last thing I want to see is it painfully dragged out over seven seasons of contrived misery that undercuts what was originally a perfect standalone televisual sidequest.

@BeerMonster while that is true, I certainly ain't complaining — I don't think I even buy games full priced anymore; sales are a great time to wishlist stuff and then grab the ones you actually want to play when they inevitably roll around again.

@SoulChimera I believe the PC version will have mog support.

@ralphdibny Yeah, same — not once have I looked at an ad and thought it looked remotely decent; they're all the same garish, AI-image-looking Candy Crush knockoff junk

I feel bad for the dev team that obviously put a lot of effort into it, but I feel that the game was pretty much doomed ever since they went hard in on the game's live-service aspects for 15 minutes during a State of Play

@SgtTruth Grand Theft Accio.

@Brutal Yeah, it's not like TR1-3 told a cohesive, three-part story or anything, and The Last Revelation went down extremely well. Chronicles I could take or leave; even the original developers have stated that that game was little more than a paycheck.

@BeautifulCreatures Yeah but even walking sims, which may sound dull on paper, given the right atmosphere and direction they can be very absorbing and entertaining in their own way — I tend not to discriminate with genre, as long as they're done well. And yeah, I never finished MGSV — I was pretty much checked out with the series after finishing the Ground Zeroes demo; MGS4 was an absolute slog.

@BeautifulCreatures Is Death Stranding decent? I'll be honest, my interest in Kojima's brand of barminess dissipated with each new MGS entry, but I've heard that it's quite a sublime gaming experience.

@Porco I think many being dropped into TR for the first time today would probably have trouble; but the Croft Manor tutorial does a great job in laying out everything required to get through the whole game.

I don't think they're bad controls inherently; they function almost exactly like Flashback, but In a 3D environment. In hindsight I can't think of another game that had quite the same controls, even at the time.

@doctommaso yeah, TLR was a really good "back to basics" entry that felt more akin to the original, but with much more finesse. Hopefully they do a volume 2 or DLC at some point.

@BeautifulCreatures Yeah, playing TLOU2 in the thick of lockdown was a strangely cathartic experience!

I'm not sure if I'm gonna revisit either game any time soon, but if they do announce a Part 3, I think I might do a replay of both (and certainly nab the upgrade); it's been a hot minute since I played the first one way back on PS3.

I'd love to have more reasons to go in on an XBox, but aside from Hi Fi Rush, I don't really have any; the Bethesda games I've tried like Fallout and Elder Scrolls have left me tepid at best. Plus I've never really fancied the idea of Gamepass — I've become way more selective with the games I devote my time to, and don't really like the idea of only playing what available titles a paid subscription service dictates to me.

My only theory that this is a thing is because of a years-old AVGN video that brought the game to light, and now people with disposable income who grew up watching that episode will somehow want to spend actual money on it.

@thefourfoldroot1 Ah, I'm very much not a trophy person myself, but just quickly looking at the criteria for the ones in the first Ryza game, they do seem pretty exclusively non-time sensitive, so you should be good to go!

@mariomaster96 Yeah, I'm all for having the option of Jap/Eng, but when your only option is Japanese, and a lot of the background chatter isn't even subtitled at all, it is a little disheartening

@thefourfoldroot1 I know what you mean — the remake of the very first game has a Pikmin-esque time limit to complete the whole game, however the Ryza series (which I'm currently playing part 2 of) is very chill and lets you go at your own pace - time only really occurs when you're moving around and when you're crafting items, and even then the only "missable" things are timed sidequests (which will reappear sooner or later and are usually pretty basic fetch quests/bounties that have no bearing on the main plot)

@hi_drnick yeah Lost Levels sounds good — a little known fact, did you know The Last of Us 2 in Japan was originally a game called Doki Doki Panic...

@Mad001 Oh cripes no I would never go to those actual lengths — especially when the result would be a 480i image on a 60+ inch TV screen - I'd be far more resigned to just renting the movie/show on Amazon in 4K or something

@Mad001 Yeah, HDD space was never really an issue — I just couldn't be bothered to go through hundreds of discs at 40-60 mins per rip — I'd need some sort of automated jukebox rig to physically change the discs over while I was asleep or something...

@B_Lindz Came here to say exactly this — did they ever implement an upgrade path for the first game?

@Mad001 Yeah I did - I had a whole plan to get my 300+ films and TV shows (many with multiple discs) onto a hard drive before I moved house, but the image quality and the sheer time it took to rip each disc had me throwing in the towel after the fifth or sixth disc...

@Mad001 absolutely — if I'm visiting a town or city I will always check out the local CEX to see what untapped treasures they're hoarding

Any chance of a tat-less edition? I guess £70 isn't a terrible price, but I never go for these big deluxe packages; I just want the game

@Mad001 Yeah, over half of Daria's entire audiobed was peppered with unlicensed music (as it aired on MTV originally), so the DVDs were sadly almost completely stripped of them and replaced with generic background music. A real shame, as the music felt like a real, organic element of that show.

£120 a year well spent

@LiquidouSnake I know, but when you've got over a hundred games it does kind of kill the spontaneity of firing up something you haven't played in a while when it requires a massive update — having an "Update all" button that you could periodically click to do a library-wide check would be a great time saver.

Is there an "Update all" option or do you still have to go game by game like a chump?

So far I've had...

• The game just flat out close down while swinging around between missions
• When I sat on the bench in Coney Island I couldn't get up again
• After a big story battle, both Spider-Men had a flickering "electric shock" effect that refused to go away until I rebooted.
• Out of sync subs during cutscenes like 3/4 times.

...which I guess is to be expected from a game of this size on its weekend of release.

I do find it interesting how "remakes" such as Crash Bandicoot and Spyro can so seemingly effortlessly nail the execution, whereas a "remaster" like the GTA Definitive Collection can go catastrophically wrong.

@PenguinLtd Yeah it is — There are so many great games (like Simpsons Arcade) which are just languishing in limbo because of all the various rights holders that own a piece of it.

@Ultimapunch and with a game this vast, I'm likely ever only going to play it once, and this is what, the third time I've heard "oh now it's been updated, it's definitely worth getting"? How many times can a game be considered "ready" until you're expected to take the plunge and invest dozens of hours into it?

Yeah, it's one of those films that I remember being pretty blown away by when I first watched it, but the novelty of it wears off really quickly and only serves to reinforce the argument that FFVII really works best when contained within the narrative of the main game.

@Jamesblob Yeah, if it wasn't for the filters I wouldn't even go near those sales

@riceNpea They stopped putting that frosting on them.

@Geep Yeah, it blew my mind when I actually went back to Sonic on original hardware and realised just how slower it was.

Will it feature splat-against-the-side-of-a-building damage? I felt that was the area I found myself colliding with more than the ground while slingin' around

@Nem My thoughts exactly — I've spent more money on shorter games, and from what I've read it all just seems a bit mediocre. I'd rather spend 15 hours on a game that really impresses me.

@Gamer83 yeah, there's a tutorial in Lara's gymnasium which is really succinct and will lay out everything you need for the entire game

@Gamer83 yeah the loose trilogy of Legend/Anniversary/Underworld was where the series really started to find its groove in terms of embracing analogue controls, where the first five (and to a lesser extent, Angel of Darkness) were very specific in their control scheme. You ever played Prince of Persia or Flashback? It's kind of like a 3D version of that — kinda rigid and calculated, so not for everybody, but I always enjoyed them