Balaam_

It’s one of the worst, but easily eclipsed by the e-waste, the pure unadulterated slop known as FF13. It is quite literally everything I don’t want from a mainline FF game. The first two thirds are the most boring, linear “level design” (and I use that term loosely) I’ve ever suffered though, teetering on the border of being classified as an actual walking simulator. Mediocre combat system, crap characters I was hoping would get killed off over the course of the story so they’d stop talking, bad voice acting and a forgettable plot round out the rest of the experience. It was pretty for the time, I will give it that, but utterly worthless in every other respect. Compared to 13, Dirge of Cerberus isn’t all that bad.

If this were a game I intended to play, this would be irritating and I’d say something like ‘Then they won’t get my money at first either, not until they allow me to buy and own it’. But since they insist on forcing the online component (of which I have less than no interest in) into GTA’s trophy list I have zero intention to play it anyway. Take it a step further, don’t release it at all on disc, makes no difference to me.

Jury’s still out on the frenetic over the top action part of the gameplay. RE8 was a lousy game, like an awful B grade action movie with stupid unrealistic set pieces. 7 mostly nailed the creepy unsettling dread, that sense of foreboding the series used to be known for. I’m hoping they dial back the stupid nonsensical action in favor of true survival horror. Less RE5/6/8 more RE1/2/3/CV/7

Super happy if this proves true. I’m a big fan of longer console generations and of squeezing as much out of a machine perfomance-wise as we possibly can.

I enjoyed the quirky British humour in the original Fable, but that’s all anyone keeps talking about in reference to the game. There needs to be more to it than that. The systems and mechanics and character development/plot better be good or this will still be a letdown, humour notwithstanding. I’m hopeful, everythinf we’ve seen so far holds promise, but I wish people would focus on the more important stuff instead of what basically amounts to the cherry on top.

Don’t worry, if the full game is not completely on-disc I’ll have no problem waiting till it’s a few dollars on sale years from now. Too much to play to bother with greedy publishers that try to wrest control away from the end user.

If they insist on forcing that horrendously repetitive Chadley wave survival slop into this game too and thereby butcher the trophy list (again), just call it Final Fantasy 7: Rebarbative.

Great Platinum. Sony has a serious recurring problem shoehorning poorly designed, tedious trophies into their DLC’s after the fact which force completionists to slog back through something they had already finished and buried and moved on from, but referring strictly to the base game’s platinum, well, it’s a joy. Very fun to complete.

Let’s just hope whatever incompetent intern they had hand-picking the trophy list for the first two games gets replaced for the third entry. I can only imagine seeing

Win 1,000 games of Queen’s Blood in a row without losing a single round: Bronze

and immediately passing on this in favor of games with other, better designed lists.

$20 says the usual people try to spin this into a nefarious, shady, secret black magic pact Sony somehow orchestrated to steal the game away from other platforms.

Deserved to be the top seller, but with all the… ahem “gamers” playing live service slop, No. 3 isn’t to shabby!

Shame Sony spun off their tv segment. I was hoping for a tiny screen I could watch instead when I sit next to my 77” 4K OLED

Got my eye on this one. Didn’t understand the hate the character reveal initially received; people come in all different shapes, sizes and colors. If she’s written well and likeable, I don’t care what she looks like. I’m more concerned with whether this will recapture the quirky nature of the original Fable, or if it’ll be more like the lackluster sequels that kind of dropped the ball. Hoping it’ll be good!

This says it all as far as the mass public is concerned. There is a negative infinity chance E33 is better than Elden Ring, yet it inexplicably has more awards. It’s the Skyrim 2011 vs. Dark Souls debacle all over again.

“Anime-Inspired spin on slay the spire” say that ten times fast

Methinks I’ll give this another try. I played the demo and wasn’t impressed, but in all honesty I didn’t give it a lot of time. Maybe it’s worth a second chance

Anyone with any business sense should have anticipated this. It’s the timeworn strategy of releasing a smash hit tv show, then waiting until after it’s off-air and consumer interest has fizzled before releasing tie-in material. They can’t lose!

This gets a 60fps patch while Bloodborne languishes in 30fps purgatory 🥲

Almost time to tip the hourglass over and begin the rumor cycle anew

I’m fine with this. It’s shovelware slop that fake ‘trophy hunters’ use to pad out their lists and artificially boost their trophy score. There’s really no redeeming value in the these titles, like reading the nutritional information on a package of pixie sticks.

Square has already formally apologized for the god awful trophy design—is this an attempt to compensate for it?

I slogged though the nightmare of tedious garbage it took to unlock the platinum years ago, and have less than zero intention to ever return, so it means nothing to me now. But this could conceivably be a way to mitigate their terrible curation of the trophy list if it doesn’t conflict with unlocking them. As far as I know, adjusting the actual trophies is a major undertaking but enabling features like this would circumvent Sony’s cumbersome process of amending trophy criteria.

It’s mass market palatable, no surprise. Both are great games in their respective genres, but I personally need way more than driving around in circles to hold my attention. Yotei had a great story, character development and fantastic gameplay; I played it far more than Forza 5.

Some of the greatest games of all time were born out of extremely tight budget constraints and looming deadlines. Other times hundreds of millions of dollars and years of polish are just what the doctor ordered. Either method (and everything in between) can produce fantastic results, if the developer(s) are passionate and skilled. And that’s a big IF

It’s been almost 16 years and still nothing has come out that’s better than Bloodborne.

I hope not. FF13 is far and away the worst mainline entry in the entire series. Bland, unappealing characters and boring, linear gameplay for a huge chunk of the game. It’s astonishing they actually greenlit sequels to be honest, and I’m guessing it was only to recoup what they invested in the engine and try to squeeze some extra money out of it. 13 is the only FF game I haven’t completed a second playthrough of.

No one will own this unless it’s minted to a disc, fully and completely and without any ‘internet connection required’ BS

Decent games, but I have far less nostalgia for either of these janky glitch fests than I had for Oblivion. I’ll pick these both up if they get legitimate physical versions—that means full game on disc no internet connection required BS—but if not, I’ll have no issues letting them rot on PSN. There’s simply too much other, better stuff to play.

Never heard of either of these. I’d like to think both are secretly made by the same developer under shell corporations and this ‘controversy’ is a marketing strategy to create awareness. That would perhaps be the best use I’ve seen of ai to date.

We’re so close to that perfect future where ai can play games for us, watch movies for us, read books for us, do pretty much everything for us instead of us wasting our time doing it ourselves, all so that we can finally do what we’ve always wanted to do: Sit in a chair and stare at the wall!

Seriously, there’s also this to consider: Why is Sony allowing games to be made that are so difficult people need artificial intelligence to help them even be able to beat them? Wouldn’t Sony’s time and money be better spent creating a well thought out set of criteria developers must adhere to if they wish to release a game on sony’s machine?

In other words Sony is permitting a problem to exist and then trying to mitigate it with ai. Solve the problem in the first place.

I wanted to cast my vote for Octopath 0, but Square continues to rabidly push in every direction I despise as far as gaming is concerned. Terminator 2D is exactly what it should be and is not weighed down with corporate greed and incompetence. In many ways it’s the ideal plane of what all developers should strive to create when they make their own games.

You know it’s serious when the Top Slop himself issues a statement.

Less grindy trophies. The games aren’t particularly difficult but they’re long and grindy and the trophies reflect that. As an avid trophy hunter completionist, it’s a turn off knowing I’ll need to devote an obscene amount of time to 100% a list which could have been designed in a much more streamlined way if the devs respected gamers’ time better.

That, and perhaps more unique anime visuals. So many of these games look alright in most ways, but the characters themselves all have that generic 2010-2020 era anime look. Flat, low detail character models. If they somehow emulated the old school hand drawn aesthetic like in Neon Genesis Evangelion or Akira or something, that would instantly elevate the presentation.

For me, same as I posted on PureXbox but admittedly less of a worry on this platform.

Play less live service games (I really only play a couple intermittently, but the ideal goal is zero).

Only buy games physically, on disc, where the full game is entirely on disc without any need for internet connectivity or downloads. This is getting more difficult but it’s still easier here and on Nintendo than on Xbox. Last year I gave in a couple times and bought digitally for various reasons, but again the ideal number of digital purchases would be zero.

Play some backlog titles.

Most of these were in the positions I anticipated, with one exception. I’m surprised to see this many people excited for the 007 game. I like James Bond as much as the next person, but the game looked rather blah. Not bad per se, just very middle of the road. Maybe it’ll be awesome and I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Definitely not how I voted. I put one of the many more deserving titles in the #1 spot.

It deserves a spot on the list. A much lower spot. Great battle system (bonus points for being turn based 😍), epic soundtrack, bland characters, ugly graphical art style. Just repugnant to look at. Numerous other titles easily outstrip this “indie” darling by simply doing each individual thing better and combing into a more compelling whole product. E33 is by no means a bad game, but it’s overhyped and does not deserve the top spot.

2025 was full of ups and downs as far as gaming went. Lots of highs regarding game releases, and lots of lows as far as price increases for various gaming related things. Maybe things will improve as we all start our New Year+ playthrough

All good scores. Can’t really go wrong no matter what order these are assigned to, they’re all really high quality soundtracks that add a lot to the experience of each game. Hats off to the dudes and dudettes plonking at synthkeyboards and conducting orchestras and mixing in the background; job well done!

Kojima or Sucker Punch Productions. I leaned more toward Kojima, because that team upped the ante more than SP did with Ghost of Yotei, but either one is an acceptable pick. These are technically proficient studios that understand how each piece of game development interrelates with each other piece and forms a cohesive whole.

The battle system in E33 was awesome, and the soundtrack too. But the visual design language was like staring into a public toilet. Hideous and repugnant. There were technical issues, performance stutters and a general lack of polish in a few key areas that holds the game back from phenomenal and keeps it simply great.

Neither Death Stranding 2 nor Yotei pushed absolute cutting edge tech (Yotei had minimal Ray traced GI, although their pc releases might go a step further), but the end products were both astonishingly well crafted by any metric one could throw at them. Each individual aspect of these games stands on its own, with nothing dragging down the whole. Same can’t be said for E33, and that’s why I’d toss that aside and put a more deserving developer in that premium position.

I prefer this scenario. We haven’t really seen what the current gen machines can do, we’ve mostly received ports of last gen games with better resolutions and/or framerates. We need a lengthy stretch of time where a bunch of high profile games release that could not possibly run on PS4 before we should even be thinking about a PS6.

In a perfect world where E33 resides at the spot it should in these lists, Yotei would indeed sit higher. Not saying it should be #1, although I consider that a far more valid discussion than E33’s overpraised assessment.

Each other game on this list has a better story than E33. E33 is not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it didn’t wow me either.

Everyone will ultimately pick what appeals to them most, and that can’t really be faulted. That said, it’s hard to defend E33 being in the top spot here. There are 3 other titles on this list plus half a dozen that aren’t which all exceed E33 in various ways; scope, technical prowess, fun factor, visuals, score, replayability, bringing something new to the table etc.

E33 is a good but very flawed entry in an established archetype. It’s the ‘Olympic bronze medal’ game this year, a game good enough to be on the podium but outclassed by other standouts.

There seems to be a resurgence of games getting honest to goodness demos as of late, and I’m all for it. I’m leery of how developers handle “Game Trials” on PSN, as the possibility of trophies being unlocked during the trial has meant I’ve avoided them all thus far (Not going to start a trial then pop a trophy only to find I don’t like the game, with a lone trophy now permanently attached to my account). A simple, straight up demo is a hassle free experience and much preferred to ‘Game Trials’.

This is more indicative of reality. E33 is a great rpg (major points for being turn based!), but it’s simply outclassed by KCD2.

‘Level-5 soon to be creatively bankrupt’ would be a more concise title

Well, on the positive side of things at least there’s no Fortnite or Roblox here.

Again, LMFAO no. This is the single worst aspect of E33. The visual design language is hideous, grotesque. With the exception of Trails’ bog standard generic anime presentation, literally any other game on this list has better art direction, hands down. It isn’t even close.

I misclicked and got an extra answer right when it should have been incorrect. Thanks, sausage fingers!