Balaam_

I love the PS5 gaming experience, but aesthetically speaking it is the ugliest hunk of plastic ever created by mankind. These Yōtei plates are like putting lipstick on a pig.

None of the 4 Microsoft games in the Top 5 have an actual, legitimate physical release. Disgusting

Interested, but last I was aware this game has crippling performance issues on all platforms. If those haven’t been ironed out yet, ‘PS5 Pro Enhanced’ doesn’t mean much. I love my Pro but if a 4090 can’t run this without issue, no way the Pro will.

Growing up, I never had any interest in trains. Then recently I started watching some YouTube channels where the camera is basically just showing what the conductor sees as the train chugs along. It’s oddly enjoyable to watch. Pretty sure some of the footage is from the UK, with amazing views of the surrounding countryside. Is that what these games are all about? Are they ‘train cozy’ games, or are they more like ‘sim city but trains’, with micromanaging the little annoyances of daily operation being the main focus?

This changes EVERYTHING

In other words, ‘Yes gamepass is profitable. Asomg as you don’t factor in the massive revenue losses we incur with our own first party stuff. If you squint really hard and pretend that doesn’t exist, then we’re profitable.’

By Phil’s estimation he’s smarter than Stephen Hawking. As long as you don’t factor in theoretical physics, cosmology, basic maths etc.

Prohibitively expensive? Tough. One less ivory backscratcher for Herman Hulst, Phil Spencer, Yves Guillemot etc etc etc.

This legislation needs to go full speed ahead, and then maybe we’ll get legal eyes focusing in on ‘physical discs’ with a few MB’s of data that force downloads and those god awful switch keycard things. Stamp that trash out and make the world a paradise for physical collectors and people intelligent enough to prefer to own in perpetuity rather than lease digital code.

At this point Michael Scott from The Office would be more competent and morally upright than anyone holding an executive management position at Microsoft/Xbox

Give these guys a raise simply for not shoehorning this expansion into the main trophy list. Any trophy hunter completionist who doesn’t have the time, inclination or ability to go full 100% here won’t have their completion percentage for the main game butchered and can thus bypass this entirely. Brilliant call by the dev team. Not that it makes a difference to me personally, as I really enjoyed the main game and will be playing this one too. It’s simply nice when devs consider all aspects of all audiences. Trophy hunters are the only people who care about trophies to begin with, so logically they ought to be the ones catered to when designing the lists. Pity more developers aren’t as competent.

I’ll reserve final judgment until I’m looking at my 100%+Platinum, but this looks exponentially better than the previous game’s list. That platinum was a mostly fun experience, up until the multiplayer specific trophies and horrifically tedious grind to level 100. Leaving that trash on the chopping block was the best decision they could have made. Multiplayer is here for those that want it, but it isn’t forced down trophy hunters’ throats. Absolutely the right call.

Edit—almost forgot to mention the fact that the PlayStation servers for online multiplayer were down for LITERAL YEARS without any acknowledgement whatsoever by Activision. Calling support basically earned a “F You” from the customer service rep, and aside from Reddit posts lamenting the issue there was zero official statement. Sometime in the past 6 months the servers did indeed come back, but it was a tense few years for anyone still needing the online multiplayer specific trophies. Yet another reminder of why there should be no online, server dependent trophies in any game unless that game is online only.

Not enough poll options. We need one expressing the knowledge that Sony publishing the port of a live service game which thrives on player count does not signal a shift in business strategy, as if the floodgates are about to open and tentpole first party franchises embodying brand recognition are now magically on their way to Xbox as we speak.

Where is that poll option, the ‘It makes sense for live service games but I needn’t worry because if Sony goes out of its way to refute the idea of dropping 1st party exclusives into PS+, there’s no way it’ll port them to Xbox’ option?

I’m not a sports guy but I think this would be a nice thing to do, brining the avatar back. A nice way to show appreciation in the face of the sad news.

Watching Destin’s video I write this. Man…he’s like a complete different person. The smug smile is gone, the ‘this is good for gaming’ attitude regarding his bullish support for the ABK buyout has faded into nothingness. It’s almost like he finally realizes this level of industry consolidation is a bad thing after all, and that Microsoft is probably the worst umbrella to consolidate it under 🤔

I sincerely hope Stop Killing Games becomes an unstoppable force, a juggernaut that tramples and annihilates corporate anti-consumer greed and educates the ignorant, pro-digital masses about the benefits and value of control&ownership for the end user. Only a fool flushes money down the toilet to perpetually rent something when one can buy something once and own it forever.

Rare ceased to be the god tier SNES developer I knew them as the moment they were sold. Perhaps a little before, actually, as I found their N64 games very hit-or-miss. Didn’t most of the good talent leave/get poached at some point prior to the company being sold in order to join Retro Studios?

All this AI machine learning stuff is such a perilous two edged sword. We’ve seen the amazing and profound benefits it can offer gaming in the form of DLSS, FSR, XESS and now PSSR, all with varying degrees of success.

But then there’s the dark side. All that god awful copilot, google overview, hey meta trash. I see these commercials highlighting the dregs of humanity, the stupidest of fools who actually consult an artificial intelligence for advice on serious matters like medical care or child rearing decisions. That level of utter incompetence is on par with the bad guy at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade who was stupid enough to let the girl pick the cup for him. Un-freaking-believable. My point is, I hope that offensively intrusive aspect of ai is kept far away from the PS6 end user experience. No way in hades I’ll ever utter the phrase “Hey PlayStation…”

Let’s just hope if it ever happens, Kojima comes back a little more psychologically stable than The Fury in MGS3.

Interesting how relevant this has become. We should always be concerned for the human element in layoff situations like these, but we now have something else to consider: If a given Xbox studio gets shut down, there’s an almost 100% likelihood that any given game they would be working on would also have released on PlayStation. It’s no longer ‘too bad for them’, it’s now a loss for us as well.

Personally, I sincerely hope the only people that lose their jobs are those anti-consumer individuals making the decisions to not release physical disc versions of games where the entirety of the game is on-disc, without any internet download required mandate. Those people can be purged from their positions, thank you.

I’m on OG subscriber, back from the ‘wow games with gold is trash—look at the crap they’re giving away! PS+ gives out much better titles.’ days. Hated that they eventually forced everyone to pay to play online and that became all entwined with PS+, and there have definitely been some dead months over the years but all in all it’s a fine complimentary service to my main model of gaming, i.e. Buy the game on disc to own it forever.

Sometimes we criticize decisions in a hyperbolic manner, calling various things ‘stupid’ simply because we don’t like them. I contend this ‘ultra expensive edition aimed solely at the most hardcore collector but not including a physical disc version of the game’ decision is legitimately stupid. Just a plain old incompetent, poorly thought out choice. The people who these types of special editions cater to almost universally want to actually own the game physically. To elect not to include it makes absolutely no sense. It’s not about saving money; the cost of minting the disc and the added weight of it in the package relevant to shipping costs is inconsequential.

This is so blatantly tone deaf. It’s the equivalent of Bugatti or Ferrari making one of those $1million+ supercars aimed at the ultra rich high end automotive enthusiast and using cheap plastic, fake leather and a Honda civic engine. If you’re targeting a specific audience, then cater to that freakin audience’s expectations.

I would have liked a poll option ‘I was never interested in it anyway, but after this I’m definitely not even going to try it’

There has yet to be a good 3D Sonic game. That said, don’t confuse this with plain old hating. I prefer to live in a world where Sonic Adventure exists; but the amount of effort it would take to make it good would be staggering. Everything from fundamental character movement to camera control to core gameplay design/level layout would need a radical overhaul. I’d love to see it, but I’m inclined to agree with the executive thoughts that it just doesn’t make business sense. It’s a shame, really—Sonic deserves at least one good 3D title. Mario has boatloads, even Sony has a resounding success with Astrobot. It’s a pity the blue dude with attitude never got his moment in the sun in the 3rd dimension ☹️

At the end of the day, they’re ‘free’ so it’s hard to complain. I would put Diablo’s needling microtransactions and always online requirement on blast, or KoF’s trophies forcing players to play online for the platinum being quite trophy hunter unfriendly, but those are issues with the games themselves and not reflective of the quality of Sony’s PS+ selections.

This is like the modern day equivalent of The Ship of Theseus paradox. How many Xbox stickers and logos need to be on a completely unrelated product before it ceases to be that product and actually becomes an Xbox🤔

Capcom has been on a roll lately, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, but I’m going to need to see more about specifically how the girl sidekick functions gameplay-wise.

Anything resembling protecting or escorting a weaker ai controlled teammate that can’t defend themselves is a cardinal gaming sin. Gameplay designed around needing to keep one eye on what you’re doing and one eye on the ai character is a tedious, laborious chore (the worst parts of RE4 are when escorting Ashley, we all know it). You either wind up on the receiving end of countless cheap deaths, or if the ai character is invincible like in TLoU you’ll almost certainly get some awkward, immersion breaking instances of them racing out into clear enemy view but without getting noticed, because they’re computer controlled.

The only workable solution is the ‘backpack’ character, like your Clanks or your Kazooies. Two characters for storytelling purposes, but functionally just a single character (most of the time). So if the girl kind of rides piggy back in gameplay and only ever walks around by herself in cutscenes, I suppose that could work. We’ll see.

I propose a compromise. Let the 1,000-2,000 potential layoffs keep their jobs in exchange for terminating the individual(s) responsible for deciding Indiana Jones only gets a few MB’s put on the disc for the ‘physical version’ and Oblivion Remastered gets none.

Too lazy to author unique assets? Gee, I’d love to buy your game on PSN, but having to punch in my cc info—boy, that’s a big ask. I’m afraid I’m just too lazy to bother.

“Well, well, well. How the turntables…”

60fps is nice, but the real draw is the ability to legitimately own this. Full game on disc without any ‘internet download required’ BS? Sign me up.

Streaming anything vs playing it natively is strictly worse. If you’re recycling and rehashing TLoU until you’re squeezing blood from a stone, you can do the work and put in the effort to port at least the S-tier games still marooned on PS3 to current gen consoles.

Platform holders really ought to institute a segregation between the single player and multiplayer portions of trophy and achievement lists. This is a perfect example; I’d love to play through the campaign and go for those corresponding trophies, but I have an infinitely-less-than-zero interest to even touch the multiplayer. Since it’s all one homogenous trophy list, the only solution to this problem is: No Buy.

EA won’t get their 70%, Sony won’t get their 30%, and I won’t get to experience the game, all because they force multiplayer trophies down the throats of those who may not want them (inverse also applies for those who want the mp but won’t touch the campaign). Lose-Lose-Lose

Depends which version we’re talking about.

If it’s the original PS4 version with the perfect trophy list and no extraneous game modes like that horrendously awful roguelite slop they shoehorned into the Remaster, I’d put it at a solid 9. If it’s the butchered, anti-trophy hunter version they try to force feed everyone on PS5, it’s unplayable. I’m not staining my account with potentially unattainable trophies attached to a mode based on random chance that has no business being bolted on to something that was already finished and perfectly fine as-is.

@ValhallaTactical if you go by actual historical myth then literally hundreds of gods, goddesses, demi gods and adjacent beings not mentioned in the first 3 games. But more realistically, I’d expect either a prequel or side story set around that same timeframe.

Let them cook. I have so much stuff to play already, between things in my backlog and the recent wave of Xbox stuff ported over that I’m more than ok with the delay.

Has Sony ever directly responded to anything Xbox ever did, hardware wise? The closest I can think of was increasing the ram in the ps4 and/or that god-tier ‘here’s how you share discs on PlayStation’ Shuhei Yoshida infomercial. But both of those could be argued as simply adjusting something that was already in place, not pivoting dramatically to stave off some perceived new threat. My point is, I don’t think Xbox transitioning into a wannabe pc will have any impact whatsoever on the trajectory of the PS6.

Well, this stinks. Not Marathon, I don’t give a crap about that—it’s just now my YouTube feed will be flooded with innumerable sensationalist videos by F tier ‘tubers like DreamcastGuy, PSReady, TCMFGames and MBG (that’s a B not a V; I love MVG’s channel) with titles, captions and attention grabbers like ‘Shocking News!’ and ‘Unbelievable!’. Thank god for 3rd party extensions which clean that trash out of my recommendations.

Story was a bit on the simpler side, but nothing necessarily wrong with that when the primary focus is on the fantastic moment to moment gameplay.

As a trophy hunter completionist, online server dependent live service games like this are a cancer to be avoided at all costs. I’m not risking ruining my perfect account I’ve had for close to twenty years with a game that, due to its very nature, I won’t be able to rely entirely on my own skills to 100%+Platinum. Alternatively, servers be shut down at any time (look no further than Concord), in which case I could theoretically be stuck with a sub-100% game permanently staining my trophy list.

If Sony allowed us to remove (not just ‘hide’) selected titles from our trophy lists, this would be a complete non-issue. As they don’t, they can enjoy my utter refusal to spend money on games like these.

Kojima really is one of the few remaining god tier devs that truly understands what gaming is all about. When your biggest fear is that your game is being too well received by the ignorant masses, that’s a dedication to the craft like no other.

“…some argue the port is too expensive for an older title, others claim they’ve been soured by Sony’s console exclusivity.”

Possibly.

Or maybe it’s because the userbase has been conditioned to ‘play it free in gamepass’ instead of buying, combined with Square’s lousy downgrade of a port with blurry, smeary resolution circa an upscaled 720p. Add to that the target FF audience is the hardcore gamer who likely isn’t thrilled with the gradual move away from turn based perfection to frenetic button mashing DMC-style real time combat.

Still too expensive.

Fingers crossed the multiplayer gets the axe for this remaster, and it’s only the fantastic single player story. Those god awful multiplayer trophies made the og release a tumor I didn’t want to touch, but if they treat this as well as the RDR1 remaster and leave that mp on the chopping block, trophy hunters the world over can rejoice.

I’m not in the habit of applauding for when a company does its job, but when they fail so often regarding something so simple and then finally do the job right, I’ll give it to them.

[slow clap for Microsoft]

No go back and fix the miserable failure of not releasing Indy or DoomDA properly, or Oblivion at all.

@Medic_alert Couldn’t have phrased things better myself.

Someone needs to tell Nintendo that the console business is a rapidly dying dead end and releasing on every device with a full multiplatform push is the only way to make money in this economic climate as success is impossible to obtain any other way. Oh, wait…

I’ll be interested to see which are actually on disc and thus worth considering buying. Of course, not everyone is capable of forming their own opinion as to what business practices they prefer and what is unacceptable. Believe it or not, some users are so infantile they need their corporate overlords to tell them it isn’t a problem to have their ownership rights removed, and are incompetent enough to believe it. Apparently ‘more choice is best’ doesn’t always apply. Happens more often on the sister site, but I’ve seen the foolish idea floated now and again here as well.

I would gladly have bought both the original and the remastered version, except they butchered the trophy list by forcing all that non-story related extraneous mode garbage. It’s trophy hunter poison. The horde mode stuff, all those tedious challenges, survival+ plus ultra turbo permadeath crap, etc. It’s just a pity 40 people who probably had nothing to do with determining the trophy list get laid off when both problems could be solved by simply firing that one person who curated the list.

It just doesn’t look like a very good game. I felt the same way when Outer Worlds 1 came out and never bothered to play it. Maybe they are good games, maybe they aren’t, but I know one thing: If after seeing it and being so unimpressed I wouldn’t bother to waste the time to download it for free on gamepass, I certainly won’t be wasting $80 on it.

It’s a solid game, despite performance issues and some rather bland side quests (here, take this item to that peasant standing over there. ~Side quest Complete~). I’m vastly more interested whether the Team Green fanbase will put their money where there whining, anti-exclusive mouth is. FF16 isn’t on Pay-to-rent pass, so the only option is to plunk down cold, hard cash. If it doesn’t sell, what will their excuse be? Who will Square blame for lackluster sales if their ‘multiplatform push’ golden boy doesn’t pan out?

Does anyone know whether the trophy list on PlayStation will match the original 360 achievement list (but with a platinum)? I’ve seen those mp trophies and that’s an instant ‘avoid this like it’s cancer’ warning, if so.

I really wish these platform holders would segregate the single player/multiplayer portions of trophy lists into two separate sku’s so as not to screw over trophy and achievement hunters who hate the low iq, tedious mindless repetition of multiplayer.

Phil dropped a lot of weight. He was looking borderline unhealthy the past couple shows, but he looked trim here. Lots of time to exercise staying out of the spotlight after that dreaded Business Meeting way back when, with the announcement of ‘just these 4 titles’ crossing over.