@themightyant fair enough. I'm not generally a fan of being forced into multiple playthroughs for trophies myself but that's more to do with when they tie them to alternative endings and trophies where it's one or the other person playthrough or missables.

In this case, it's a single player linear 1st person shooter, it's kind of the only way they can add replayability to the game, otherwise you've got a single digit hour game at full price that's probably not value for money.

Challenging platinums are becoming increasingly rare with the diversion towards accessibility and making sure everybody can get it so I'm all for this.

Compulsion have good, unique ideas but have yet to make anything of a decent standard. Quite surprising they've lasted this long tbh. Ninja theory are a polished studio that have ability but never fullfill their promise. So neither of those are surprising to be on the chopping block. Double fine are the stand outs here, they have made multiple quality titles, it would be a loss if they were not allowed to continue.

Would love a return to dead nation/alienation. Would also be a perfect smaller title to bring day 1 to ps+ extra if it was small scale enough. Not sure Sony will entertain the idea of housemarque doing smaller, experimental stuff, they'll want the next money spinner.

Without a doubt the platinum inclusion sways my decision as to whether I play this or not. Good to see, really should be the norm by now. Hoping psi-ops next month has a platinum, loved that game.

There are constant horror stories of horrific bullying, abuse and much, much worse that has social media at the core of it all.

The tech companies have had every opportunity to safeguard their platforms, they haven't so now the government has to step in. Social media is a stain on society, nobody under 16 needs or benefits in any significant way from having it. Banning it is a good move. They'll be plenty of ways around it but that'll be on the parents to actually parent.

Well done to Australia and now the UK in leading the way on this.

The games industry is not crashing, not sure why people keep suggesting that. There are more games and more money being made than ever before and it's not going anywhere. There will be no crash, it simply requires culling in the same manner wild animal populations without predators require it to keep the population healthy. The casualties are a shame, especially if they happen to involve favourite IP but it's neccesary and the harsh reality is, those that get culled are either run poorly or aren't producing anything desirable.

Good recommendations, cursed to golf and risk of rain 2 are the 2 I've played, would recommend them both. Tropical 6 is one that has been sat downloaded for best part of a year without me starting it. Got to weigh up whether I'm in the mood and can commit to getting it done within thr month, feels like something I'll probably swerve then be in the mood for about a month after it's gone.

Grounded thanks to ps+ essential. It has no right being as good as it is. I like the idea of survival games but I don't play a lot of them as they tend to be flawed, unpolished janky games but this is right up there with abiotic factor as one of the best I've played. Been totally hooked. There is actually a tonne of potential easy improvements to make this into a true behemoth which I'm hopefully they implement into the sequel.

It's not a bad month but I don't have any praise for it.

Said at the time it was the best thing out of Sonys state of play. This reinforces that.

Their u-turn will cost them dearly, their way forward was clearly to be the biggest publisher across gaming, going back and trying to chase the old Xbox days in this age is madness. Will cost them billions upon billion and they'll fail regardless. I want a healthy and competitive Xbox as Sony always downs tools when they lack genuine competition but this isn't how you get that.

Remember when ubisoft would have their own lengthy showcase every year such was the strength of their catalogue of games.

This is probably a good thing, all reports on ubusoft is how their overheads are way out of control, reigning it in and having a smaller healthier core is the way to go.

Without meaning to sound cold, If the people losing their jobs are talented, they'll find more work, there are more games being released than ever before.

Pro's and cons to it. There will be times where you get a game earlier than expected at a time where you're looking for something to play and you'll see it as a positive and they'll be times when the game you want is at the end of the month.

Personally i prefer how it has been, dump all the games on the 3rd Tuesday of the month and let the players do as they please. Above anything else, it just seems like unnecessary extra work to be constantly uploading games every week in different regions. Bound to be cockups along the line.

Are we to presume removal dates will also be spread out? That will lead to people not getting to finish games because they mistook the removal date.

Feels like some suit at sony has decided to complicate a simple process to create work.

Last few years we got the monthly refresh and we got 2/3 extra titles that came to extra as part of the days of play event and they were usually bangers, another crabs treasure and dredge coming to mind as examples, disappointing we didnt get anything as part of that this year.

Bog standard solid enough offering this month without being anything great. Blades of fire the only one that I'm definitely going to play, that's a prime ps+/gamepass title. Few others i may be half tempted to play but never likely to actually play them.

@James_42 if you cannot play something without being entirely reliant on another person then of course it's a substantial barrier to entry.

I simply do not understand why any dev would choose to make their game in a genre with such a substantial barrier to entry. Liked goose game but no interest in playing something that requires other people.

Blatant lying from aaron greenberg just makes it look worse and eradicated all credibility he may have had. If he's willing to make up such rubbish why would we believe anything out of his mouth such as his claims this and clockwork are exclusives and not timed exclusives.

@VenomUK anybody bothering to watch the state of play is clued in enough to know it's coming and probably watches the Xbox one anyway. It's an Xbox owned IP so it gets shown at the Xbox showcase.

Makes no sense. They were always having their own Xbox showcase so why would they even contemplate showing it at a state of play and not their own showcase?

This is the most promising as yet unreleased game that we know about imo so it's a big blow it's not coming to Playstation.

I don't get the decision, it's a new IP, from brilliant devs but devs who don't have history in this genre, it's never going to be a system seller so it doesn't make any sense to make this exclusive. Especially when they're releasing halo on ps5 next month which is about as synonymous with Xbox as it gets.

Feel sorry for thr devs, theyre game is going to be skipped by millions regardless of how good it is. Gears of war makes sense to be exlsuive, this doesn't.

Played wo long fairly recently and loved it, feel like it doesn't get the recognition it deserves, I liken it to the sekiro of the nioh world, great to see it get a sequel.

Xbox by a million miles for me. 1st party stuff i'm not that bothered by, both had big titles on show but the third party stuff they shown was miles better than the 3rd party stuff Sony or Geoff had to show.

Some actual variety, some unique interesting stuff as opposed to the safe, known and outright boring the other two showcases brought.

They've backed themselves into a corner and cannot get out of it, they are frantically making it up as they go along.

This hybrid, Case by case model is the absolute worst decision they could possibly make. The phrase "dont half ass it" springs to mind. You either go all in on exclusivity which includes all Xbox studios games going forward, creating a crazily strong 1st party exclusive catalogue and make a huge play to regain some relevance as a platform which would be exceptionally costly and risky, or, you go all in on the "we're a games publisher now" approach, put everything, everywhere and make as much money as possible from that and the console is an afterthought.

This hybrid makes them insignificant amounts of money whilst remaining fairly insignificant as a platform.

Everyone will get it free soon enough when it's on ps+ within the year as the last shot at getting any kind of value from it.

Thought it was rubbish personally. I acknowledge there was big titles there, Just none of them interested me.

Felt like a personalised curation of the biggest titles in gaming that I don't care about in the slightest.

It also all just felt very samey, and very eastern centric, nothing that stood out as different, unique or interesting amongst a sea of similar type of games. Cuphead announcement maybe the only thing to buck that trend but given it was just a "we're still doing something" i don't really count that. Xcom star wars the onky real thing of interest to me but we knee about that.

Literally struggled to keep my eyes open for the last 45 minutes and I suffer with insomnia. The constantly out of sync audio was deeply annoying.

Big swing, big miss.

@Frmknst there was stuntman so not strictly true but your sentiment about a lack of surprises and new stuff is fair and i echo that.

The thing is, that isn't really sonys fault, we don't want new announcements that are half a decade away for thr sake of having something new and in an industry now where absolutely everything gets leaked beforehand, it's near impossible to keep anything secret.

Without the leaks. We just saw the next previpusly unannounced mainline gow game, that is huge, regardless of personal opinions about the direction they're going with it.

Everything about this game seems great and well done it's just never, ever going to get the player base it requires just to survive nevermind thrive purely because of the genre. This was obvious to all when the game was announced. Insane decision to sink this much resources into it. Signed their own death certificate just a matter of time.

Regardless of your opinions on Laufey, it would have been a monumental moment if it hadn't been leaked previously. There needs to be an industry wide backlash towards these serial leakers who make a living out of spoiling things. They offer nothing and deprive us of memorable moments.

Stuntman Hollywood by a mile for me. Only thing that genuinely got a surprised reaction from me. Great to see that IP come back. Gow might have got that reaction if it hadn't previously been leaked. Schreier and his ilk are a stain on the industry, bringing nothing to the table themselves and ruining surprises for everyone.

The man who created something huge doesn't like the big directional change others have taken with his creation. What's the issue?

So many comments dumping on him because he doesn't like it, he is perfectly entitled to feel as he does without no marks berating him for doing so.

One last thing, highguard relaunch.

Marathon is the only game already out, and even the new season they were showing is out, no need for anybody to go back and watch the trailer when they can literally go play it so should be no surprise those numbers are substantially down on the rest.

My prediction is that Kratos becomes playable midway through GOW: Laufey in a twist similar to GOW 2018 when we got the blades of chaos midway through.

Psi-ops is an absolute banger, delighted to see that added. Just hope they give it the full treatment and add trophies.

Nothing more than okay for me. But not Sonys fault. I don't want to see a bunch of games that are many years away from release so they're limited to what is just around the corner and we've basically seen it all before meaning there are no surprises.

Stuntman Hollywood was the only surprise and best thing in the show. Gow: Laufey would have been a surprise were it not for scumbag leakers ruining it.

Servers closed within 24 months.

None of them are particularly strong offerings on their own but collectively they're even worse for the fact that they're all essentially multiplayer games. They do a poor job in general of offering variety within the monthly games. I'll play grounded in think, won't touch the others. Disappointing month.

Big fan of accessibility options but trophies are disabled if you use them. That is how to properly cater to people who want a challenge and like hard earned trophies and those who want to avoid getting stuck and want a quick skip.

Strongly dislike healing vials that take an eternity to use though. My biggest gripe with nine sols that I recently platinumed was that healing was pointless in boss battles, took too long to do and if you got hit, you're probably getting combo'd and are dead anyway. Essentially turned the boss fights into no hit runs. Healing in that should just be instant, the description here makes it sound like a similar issue.

@Stocksy it's by all accounts a fully complete title, there is no reason to think we are entitled to anything else for free. If you want proper, meaty dlc, it'll cost.

That isn't even what I want, it's very rare that I bother with any dlc, I typically play things, finish them then move on and never go back so I would prefer they simply moved on to a sequel but I appreciate that might not be for everybody, dlc can come faster and cheaper.

Literally the first time I've ever heard of it. Another example of a huge side of gaming I'm completely oblivious to even as somebody who considers themselves fairly switched on.

Is there a story/purpose to it or is it purely just "here's something technically impressive and pretty, you do the rest" kind of game?

Solid start i'd say. With it being a single player game, there's always more potential for better lifetime sales and a decent word of mouth boost. No idea what the targets will be but I suspect it will do well so long as they're realistic.

Great that they're supporting it but feels like a game/franchise where you just want to get straight on to the next one, either a direct sequel or big paid dlc and waste as little time with anything else.

Just move on and make the sequel. This is a game that should have a quick turn around from game to game. The dlc is great but if it sets the next game back 6 months. I'd sooner they simply moved on.

The surprise here is that they're only at iteration 4. Reached a stage where they're all indistinguishable to me anyway. Haven't touched COD with any significant playtime since the ps3 days and not at all on ps5 and have no interest in changing that.

Nice list of games. I'm sure they'll be of use to someone and hopefully some nice loght shined on games that might have gone under the radar. I've never bothered with a demo or trial though.

This has just reminded me that they do usually give extra stuff away for extra/premium members during the days of play, hopefully that's still to come and announced during the showcase and this isn't it.

Not saying this won't be great or is undeserving of the scores in any way but there is without doubt a heavy bias towards indie titles scoring exceptionally high in reviews that triple A titles simply never see regardless of how good they are and that trend does in turn devalue the scores somewhat.

Not sure we will ever find out some of this information but it will be very Interesting to see how this does in both numbers and ROI and how happy they are with those figures. Always good to see new approaches and releasing fully fleshed out dlc for a game well over a decade old is a new approach. Hope it does what they need it to do purely for the fact that they've taken a new, risky approach.

An incentive for the new subs they're looking to attract during days of play sale presumably? Can't knock it, just one of those things where I'm sure it's perfect for a handful of people that benefit from it but completely useless for the rest.