Bramble

Played DMC2 and DMC3 remastered this year, from a low, low low to a high high from the PS2 era.

Seems to me if you release a well-made GaaS with an appealing (existing or new) brand and art direction, which does something new (i.e. Genshin Impact, Infinity Nikki, Helldivers 2 ...) or fills a void (i.e. Marvel Rivals) and can create enough player engagement from the get-go, you have a good chance of success, since there are players "available".
If you release something well-made which does nothing new (enough), there will be no players "available" because they are likely already engaged in their GaaS (i.e. Concord, Suicide Squad, Redfall ...)
It's like MMO's, MOBA's or Battle Royals from days past, everyone claimed to be a WOW-, LoL- or Fortnitekiller but none or very few succeeded, as players had already sunk a lot of time and money in those games and didn't want to reinvest that time and money again in another game.

I am utterly astonished what this pretty pink princess F2P game achieves - an open world platformer with not only a beautiful large open world, but als a dense open world with so many fun little challenges. I played Hogwarts Legacy last year, and its open world (aside from Hogwarts Castle) pales in comparison to Infinity Nikki.

Shat, came across this just too late for the 20 revelation crystals
-_-
but there still a lot of codes for diamonds tho!

Seems kinda serious for a Borderlands game, but after 3 thats maybe a good thing

Always enjoyed superheromovies, but after Avengers Endgame, I kinda stopped caring for the MCU, and the superheromoviegenre is getting so satured ... Deadpool got it right, but Ryan can't do his shtick forever too without it getting stale

Only played Yakuza Kiwami, thought the FMV parts in the dating minigame were - so - out of place, but also, as the only FMV-scenes in the game, - so - funny

People Can Fly's game are often indeed the best pallette cleansers!
As for the lay-offs, you hate to see it, but after the unbelievable growth in the games industry the past decade(s), the bubble (kinda) popped for the AAA-industry, who were all vying to make that one GaaS to bind all gamers ... It's the MMORPG-craze all over again, but with higher stakes ...
Concord was an expensive lesson for Sony, hope they step away from GaaS and focus on their storybased singleplayergame portfolio as their core

Love the colorful artstyle, never made time to play much Patapon on my PSP, maybe time to catch up on some rhythmbased gaming soon!

Yeah I'm in for a sequel, Hogwarts Legacy was great for exploration and the combat has some good base. But they should focus on smaller stakes, relations with classmates and the school theme. Hogwarts, Hogsmead, Forbidden Forest and the area surrounding it were great, but the south of the map was too big. I want Bully/Canes Canem Edit story vibes in my Harry Potter games, not worldending plots

Only reason I could play the first one decently was because of the pandemic, clocked almost 300 hours on it. I fear for my free time ...

First time I read the name Wario64, but nice little sidestory

Is Diablo 4 playable if you never played a Diablo before? Might wanna dip a toe in ...

Rather than chase a trend it seems more worthwhile to me to be the trend, as it are the trendsetters who most of the time have the most staying power (e.g. Hearthstone, Dot, LoL, PUBG, Fortnite, CoD, WoW, Overwatch ...)

Trendsetters don't always do "it" first, but then they do it first in a polished way

I think that the reality is that the developer just didn't decide to include spiders, and not that the developer decided to not include spiders.

Not every fantasy RPG has to include spiders, wolfs, rats, goblinoids ...

@LuXifer I bounced off of Enter the Gungeon too the first time, but the second time I tried it, it sucked me in for over 100 hours, fantastic game that one.

This seems very similar, but with a fresh coat of paint (and maybe a little less difficult?). I'll put it on my wish list

@MichaelNau I took 2 breaks with GoT, each time I went to a new island, cause the open world, while beautiful, is just too big

@Tsushima I've been interested in that one, like a good point-and-click adventure once in a while, they're great palatecleansers after more sweaty games.

Speaking of sweaty games, still going at the Doom Eternal - Ancient Gods Part I DLC on hard this weekend.

The trailer for this really intrigued me, but I wonder if it is as good without VR ... Back on the fence about buying PSVR2 after this State of Play ... This also reminded me I got Lost In Random installed, gonna play it as my Halloween-game this year I think

I might be interested in this, I just don't know if it would be my jam ...

Got my unplayed PS3 version laying around somewhere, time to dust my PS3 off it seems

So disc drive is now not a basic functionality but optional? Are we really regressing to N64 era? When gaming becomes fully digital, its going to be a dark day for consumers

@Gaia093 Since they're yearly releases, basically never -.-

@Frmknst I have not bought statuettes, or collectors editions with statuettes, as of yet, because I find them not subtle enough. This is one of the better statuettes to put on display I have seen, as it can be seen as a historical eyecatcher

Since I often use the PS app to grab my free PS Plus games each month (since you can claim PS5 games even if you do not own a PS5 that way), I subscribed to PS Stars from the beginning. Didn't really engage with it for years, but got Exit The Gungeon for free from it recently, so already worth it for me. The digital collectibles are neat but baffle me with their useless existance.

@Boxmonkey - true, but they all chase making the new WoW, LoL, CoD, PUBG, Fortnite, OverWatch ... because if you succeed, you just be printing money for a while. Problem is, aforementioned games are precursors in their genre and take a big slice of the pie, and it's not easy to dethrone them, or wrestle enough playerbase away from them.

Every major succes is often a game with an original idea or perfect execution, yet publishers always try to copy those instead of trying to innovate themselves

@DTfearTheBEARD why for both consoles tho? Collecting reasons?

Bit of a weird program, but got Exit The Gungeon out of it for free, so not complaining. Still bamboozled about the 3D digital sculptures being a thing, but it is a nice free side thing going on with Stars - why is this not on console though???

I like this selection, none of them are games I would buy myself, but each is interesting on itself in its own right to at least try. I like to buy the bigger games on disk anyway

I think it's going to be like Hogwarts Legacy, being more than just the sum of its parts. As a person who is somewhat indifferent to Star Wars, the worldbuilding in this game seems topnotch at first glance to me, and seems interesting enough. The combat may be mid, if they can make traversal fun, im likely in

Not everything has to be for everyone though.
The difficulty adds greatly to the atmosphere of FromSoftgames, it can generate a real feeling of fear, angst or dread in the right moments. Take that difficulty away, and you take away an important part of the experience the developer wants their players to have. For example, playing the original BioShock on hard gives it a fantastic horror-survival vibe, whereas playing it on easy it becomes a run&gun boomershooter.
Even so, there are tips, tricks and exploits aplenty for these games to aid you, and if all else fails, you can watch a let's play, or play a soulslike game which does offer a more laidback experience.
Not really gatekeeping if there are so many backdoors or alternatives available imo.

Utterly adored Astro Bot Playroom. Seems like a good successor of the 3D-platformer poster hero lineage:

• PS1: Crash / Spyro
• PS2: Sly / Ratchet / Jak / Maximo
• PS3: Little Big Planet
• PS4: Knack (babbyyy)
• PS5: AstroBot

Nice month, 2 of 3 which I see myself playing, being SpongeBob and SoR4.

As someone who never played a Dragon Age game and knows nothing of the series, I enjoyed the trailer and characters could be cool. As for the art style, I quite like the Overwatch-y character models. Didn't realise it was Bowie till I read the comments, it's mainly a very bland rendition,

I think last year we just got spoiled by the amount of AAA blockbusters coming out. All the games which got (greatly) delayed by the pandemic released that year, and the big players shot their best shots then. In comparison, this year falls a little flat indeed. But I'm kinda glad, got some time to catch up and play some bangers from last year (Baldurs Gate 3, Hi Fi Rush, Lies of P ...)