Balaam_

‘Can’t wait for Microsoft to buy [insert Publisher]—it’ll be so awesome, we’ll get [insert nostalgic game from back catalog] on Gamepass! Haha PlayStation Ponies!!’

This warms my heart. Preferential treatment for those who prefer superior physical media and permanent ownership, while the lesser digital caste stands idly by waiting. It’s 10 o’clock in the world, and all’s well.

Great games, trash trophy lists for the majority. Multiplayer trophies, forced multi-playthrough trophies, tedious collect-a-thon trophies…all are a cancer to trophy hunters. On the upside, I met many players in LFG posts to slog through the garbage uncharted multiplayer dlc’s and these people are still on my friends list. A reliable, like minded group of people to play with is a valuable asset so I suppose I should thank whoever designed ND’s trademark atrocious filth trophy lists.

Yotei is phenomenal. BF6 is great for what it is, but I need more than running around in circles shooting, dying and repeating. That loop gets incredibly stale incredibly fast. Yotei offers the depth and engagement I require at this point in my life; perhaps once I begin my post-lobotomy life BF6 multiplayer will be enough.

Shoe-hei Yoshida approved ✅

The only game I’d even consider aside from the obvious best choice that most people here seemingly have the good sense to vote for would be Dragon Quest 1+2 HD2D.

Every single PC oriented YouTube channel I’ve seen all complain how poor the optimization of PUBG is. I imagine it’s the same on console. I wouldn’t be surprised if a more skilled team could squeeze out better performance on base PS5, but 1440p is sharp enough already. It’s when resolutions dip down toward 1080p that it looks fuzzy on a 4K set.

@Scottdevine53 those games definitely need full on remakes. The player control/camera control is horrendous in all of the titles you mentioned and a complete overhaul to where those systems aren’t broken jank would do them a world of good.

Anything looks better than the grotesque aberration they settled on. Whoever designed the exquisitely beautiful launch model PS2 and PS4 systems must be spinning in their grave at what the final PS5 design turned out to be. If I had the technical know-how I’d certainly build a custom plastic shell for this monstrosity. Love the interface, love the games, love the ecosystem; hate the look of the thing.

Ghost of Yotei, without a doubt. For what it is, it’s practically perfect. Expedition 33 is a technical mess and I personally can’t get past the hideous visual aesthetic they chose. Those things really drag it down despite other areas it excels in. Death Stranding 2 is phenomenal but too niche, and KCD2 has some awkward controls and bad trophy design that lessen the experience.

@Daleaf it’s a great game to be sure. The Saga voice actress was awful though. Constant accent bleed through to such a severe extent that I’m surprised she wasn’t replaced. Like an ice pick in my ear, truly. I resorted to muting the tv whenever she talks and relying on subtitles. I can’t imagine how the first table read didn’t weed her out immediately. But yeah the rest of the game is absolutely fantastic

I can think of an infinite amount other things I’d rather do than try Fortnite for the first time.

Just watched the DigitalFoundry video on Outer Worlds 2 and can honestly say this isn’t PSSR’s fault for once. Every version of this game is hideous. The foliage is a joke. Ghost of Yotei has trillions of exquisitely detailed blades of grass delicately fluttering in the wind and yet OW2 has a couple tufts of bushes that wiggle back and forth when you get within 6 inches? The foliage animation cascade is truly pathetic. The whole game is blurry, constantly fizzling with splotchy, artifact ridden reflections (particularly on the Series X version’s more glass like reflective surfaces for some reason) and just aesthetically ugly all around.

Played Stray at launch, it’s a great game but I feel like it was part of PS+ extra or premium for a long time as well. There’s nothing new here for me so it’s a poor month.

Clicked “Unsure” only because it’s technically possible they could continue to charge for mp and yet offer some sort of compelling side benefit to make it seem worthwhile. Do I think they will? Absolutely not. But if I’m wrong and that’s what happens, I could see a state of affairs where it’s not as big a deal as people might think. I would prefer no charge of course, as no one in their right mind wants to waste money when they don’t have to, but I’m not so sure Sony feels the same way…

@Czar_Khastik I lost it when you started praising the nonexistent virtues of that waste of virtual life Chadley 🤣

The more corporate feet that unite in pressing down on the throat of ai, the better.

I was just thinking about the Raiden games earlier today without knowing anything about this collection’s existence. What a nice coincidence.

Xbox fighting against phantom TikTok apparitions, PlayStation waging war on Tencent, Nintendo hunting down Palworld…whatever happened to ‘Know Thine Enemy’? 😆

I appreciated most of what RE7 tried to do (minus the horrifically trash dlc’s). But 8 was a major step back. Way too action set piece oriented and nowhere near enough creepy, foreboding dread. I’m tentatively hopeful with 9, but I’m holding off until a decent number of reviews pour in.

Is this all based off an assumption that people who enjoy gaming automatically also enjoy scrolling through TikTok and TikTok-adjacent entertainment? Is it simply because they both utilize electronic screens? By that logic why aren’t casino slots considered major competition? Sitting in place pushing buttons staring at screens for hours on end—that fits the criteria, but no one’s making that claim. I’m not so sure this TikTok crap is actually competition.

Should be a ‘Refuse to buy a game that could fit on a disc, the publisher mints said disc, but stupidly decides to only put 1.3GB’s on said disc’ poll option. Well that’s probably too long, but you get the gist.

Venus flytrap boss somewhere in there, calling it now. But seriously, this looks neat. If price and trophies are fair, I’d consider picking this one up.

What’s that old saying? ‘One ill conceived, trophy hunter unfriendly trophy will spoil the whole bunch’? Yeah that.

This is another textbook example of an otherwise great game tanked by a bad list. Far too many games fall victim to inane developers deciding ‘hey let’s make the game so brutally difficult and/or excessively tedious that either way anyone interested in full trophy/achievement completion will need to devote an inordinate amount of time solely to our game, instead of curating a clean and concise list that respects gamers’ time and shows we understand there are many other games these players would also like to work through in a timely manner.’

Voted 2, Bad.

Cautiously optimistic. I have no real interest in Chinese mythology and while there are some sick monster designs here there are also some decidedly ‘Chinese dragon’ looking aspects to a few of them. I suppose it’s to be expected considering where the team is located, but I prefer my fantasy monsters more ‘medieval traditional’ and less Asiatic.

That minor quibble aside, the gameplay looks promising and the underlying tech appears to be orders of magnitude better than the other recent exclusive Lost Soul Aside.

Thank goodness they lacked the technical resources.

Auto pass. My time is too valuable to waste on this. Trophies shouldn’t be a cakewalk, but there’s a fine line between impossibly difficult/absurdly tedious and well thought out criteria that respects a trophy hunter’s time.

‘Are you disappointed by Halo: Combat Evolved’s lack of multiplayer?’ should have a poll choice of ‘I prefer it didn’t and I’m happy it won’t’.

As for whether or not I’ll be buying it? As always, it all depends on the trophy list. Leaving repetitive multiplayer on the chopping block is a good start as it handily bypasses all those god awful achievements connected to the mode, but there’s still plenty of room to make bad anti-trophy hunter completionist decisions with just the campaign. If there’s any of that ‘do a LASO campaign run without getting hit once on a Tuesday when mercury is in retrograde and without jumping’ BS then count me out. I have better things to do with my time than squander it with a thousand checkpoint restarts just to fulfill poorly thought out criteria. Far too many other games of equal or greater quality deserve my time more than that.

But if the list is trophy hunter friendly? I’ll definitely be there.

“It’s a bit of a wishy-washy answer really, and it doesn’t really clarify Halo Studios’ position.”

^This. Thank you for this. I just read the companion article over on pure Xbox and I expected an actual answer based off the article title, but was left scratching my head at some rather dubiously drawn conclusions. There is nothing in the above quotes directly addressing the lack of PvP at all, and strangely it doesn’t seem the relevant question asking why PvP isn’t included is here either.

Played them all on their respective Xboxes with the exception of Halo Wars (no interest in that style of game). I’d be happy to pick up 1-3 and ODST, and I’d possibly consider Reach and 4, but after that I’m out. 5 is just not a quality title and Infinite screams LIVE SERVICE first…with a token campaign thrown in almost as an afterthought.

No multiplayer?? It’s a dream come true 😃 If they actually put the full game on disc I may pick this up after all. I had written it off by virtue of the horrifically designed multiplayer achievement criteria, but this looks to potentially correct that mistake. Fingers crossed 🤞

Other games need your attention, I’ll mark them on your map.

There’s only 1.3GB on the ‘physical disc’ version. I’ll pick this up when it’s $1.30 in the bargain bin. Turnabout is fair play.

Meanwhile Nintendo and PlayStation executives are laughing harder than the J. Jonah Jameson gif

Is there a reason why Sony went from listing the patch notes on the screen prior to confirming the update to putting one of those QR codes there instead? All this does is force people to get out there phones, point it at the screen and take a picture, creating an extra step in the stupidest way possible.

Not yet, but eventually. The self-absorbed trophy list sliced and diced any urgent desire to actually play it ‘for real’ on my main account, so I’ll pick this up for pennies at some point down the road and play it casually on my alt, where all games with poorly designed trophy lists abide.

As far as I’m concerned, this is peak Tekken. I’m not a fan of the flashes and particle effect overuse on the newer Tekken, I find them extremely distracting. T3 has just the right amount of visual stimulus for hit recognition/parries etc, and it’s nice to have this available on a modern platform.

No trophies > Bad trophies

I completely forgot about the little orange guy. You guys are so good with the puns, I suppose you could have used ‘Fogotten, but not Gon’ as well ^_^

Fortnite, Roblox and a racing game that could have been made to be played offline but instead got shoehorned into the ‘always online’ category? I say leave the outage be.

Haven’t played the full release, but managed to play a beta. I’ll play a game like this once or twice a year with friends, and for that short burst I’d say what I played was definitely solid; the problem is games like these simply don’t hold my attention. There’s no substance. There’s no gripping narrative or immersive sim elements or half-life 2-esque brilliant gameplay mechanics—the main focus is just ‘run around in circles killing, dying and respawning ad infinitum’ with the campaign (when there is one) being an afterthought. That’s all there is to it. There’s just nothing there.

Hope they remove anything Chadley or Chadley-adjacent. That battle arena stuff reeks of immersion breaking, low effort asset reuse and needs to go. Easily the worst part of the games. I’d also settle for being allowed to limit break Chadley.

Lmao that instantly killed any desire I may have had to get this. Way too many other games of similar or higher quality out there for me to waste my time on this, particularly when they refuse to cater to the demands of the hardcore user and put the entirety of the game on the disc. If it’s ever on sale for $1.30 maybe I’ll pick it up

Is traditional single player story content without any gimmicks too much to ask? No rogue lite modes, no wave survival modes, no multiplayer anything, just plain old story content. Elden Ring put out one of the best DLC’s of all time, and it was 100% single player and didn’t even force additional trophies down everyone’s throats. Copy that model.

Tekken 3 is one of the best fighters ever made, certainly on the PS1. Accidentally clicked Nah, Not Really when looking at the related poll choices; I intended to push Yeah, I’m Happy

Unless this effort spills over into guaranteeing any formerly online-only trophies are still attainable, this is a half step to nowhere. Either flip a switch and auto pop any online-only trophies when a server closes, or build in redundancies to ensure they’re obtainable offline.

Rumor has it a Sony executive poked his head in a hallway door and saw pre alpha footage of The Final Remaining Ones of Us and then called off the mobile adaptation.

So my choices are to play from the comfort of my plush armchair watching the action unfold on a gorgeous 4K@144Hz OLED…or hunched over this thing with one eye on the battery indicator and the other on a fuzzier resolution with cut down settings?

I only hope it’s better than the ‘third person modes’ in Bethesda’s games (Skyrim, oblivion, fallouts). Those 3rd person modes feel horrrendously bad. It took me longer than I care to admit until I pieced together exactly why they feel so bad—it’s because when in third person, you aren’t actually controlling the onscreen character model. You are still controlling the reticle.

Test it out for yourself and see. They literally just overlay a representation of a character model atop the standard first person mode, slightly off center, and call it 3rd person. Movements all feel off, as if there’s a disconnect between your inputs and the character model. If you cover the portion of the screen with the onscreen character, it is identical in behavior to the first person mode.

This is different than most other games built from the ground up with an actual third person perspective. Play something like MGS5 and note the precision movement, inverse kinematics, terrain positioning and reorienting etc etc and you’ll notice the difference between a legitimate 3rd person mode and faux 3rd person.

Yeah, this isn’t the same studio making Outer Worlds 2, but it’s under that umbrella. Hopefully they do what Bethesda either can’t or won’t.

Silent Hill 2 and Tekken 3? Good month.