Carnage

@RunGMhx My mistake. I said I See You but the game I was thinking of was Before Your Eyes. I remember the game better than I remembered the title.

I enjoy my PSVR2 (played Lumines Arise, V Racer Hoverbike and GT7 this morning) but clearly PSVR2 in particular and VR in general has not caught on with the mainstream.

While Sony owned developers not named Polyphony Digital have little appetite for PSVR2 it is a nice piece of hardware (OLED is a beautiful thing) and it has a lot of fun games in its library (RE4, Synapse, Rez Infinite, No Man’s Sky, Humanity, Tetris Effect, Before Your Eyes, Moss Books 1 and 2 and Pistol Whip spring to mind) and some promising ones on the way (nods towards Roboquest VR, Thief and MS Flight Simulator).

If VR ever catches fire it won’t be this generation (the tech will need to get cheaper and smaller) but as with everything stuff can be fun before (or after) it’s genre or what have you is popular.

Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders are two very recent massive multiplayer hits who probably target a lot of the same people CoD does.

Things are not going to be any easier for CoD next year if GTA6 (now a multiplayer driven franchise) isn’t delayed again and hits in November.

I don’t trust the government much but happily its intervention doesn’t seem to be necessary since the market is speaking and CoD sales are trending well below those of its predecessor

CoD is huge and has been for a long time but nothing is indestructible. Slop (not just AI slop but slop in general) has damaged the sales of a lot of once huge franchises. I don’t think the average gamer cares much about AI (nods towards Arc Raiders) but design decisions that negatively impact their experiences drive gamers away.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/christopher-dring-call-of-duty-black-ops-7-had-a-smaller-uk-retail-physical-launch-than-battlefield-6-61-down-when-compared-to-black-ops-6.1356259/

I feel bad for Tango Gameworks. They released a game most of the people who played it (including Phil Spencer) but they were out of step with MS’s reorientation so they got the chop. Tango were then bought by another big publisher who has subsequently announced a vision which seems to be incompatible with them.

Well deserved. There are a wealth of great games out there catering to a wide range of gamers and many people just want a hassle free way to play them, so while I get other spheres of gaming such as mobile are growing faster there are a lot of console gamers out there. Sony has remained dedicated to the console vision so it’s unsurprising it reaped the benefits. Developers flock to the system (by all accounts the cheapest/easiest to develop for) and gamers flock to the system (not the cheapest console but it has the widest developer support and the price/performance balance is reasonable).

As a fan of Returnal, Horizon Forbidden West, Helldivers 2, GT7, Astrobot, God of War Ragnarok, Spiderman 2, Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2 I’d argue Sony haa offered a better lineup of games than some on the internet give it credit for. Games generally take longer to make this gen but they usually have longer tails in the form of paid and free post launch content.

I love the Disgaea series and enjoy action games but this trailer didn’t do much for me. The main character looks like he is from a different world than everything else (which might be part of a running gag) and the action looks kinda ‘meh’.

I am surprised Art Dink is still around. Never cared for Tail of the Sun or Aquanaut’s Holiday but I absolutely loved Carnage Heart (a game where one built and programmed mechs).

Broadly speaking their PS1 games were spiritually similar to modern indie games (low budget and often experimental). While there are ginormous indie successes it’s worth keeping in mind most such games fail because when you do something outlandish maybe you find out there isn’t enough of an audience to make your game profitable no matter how well it executes its concept.

I remember reviewers rubbishing the original Carmage Heart for not offering direct control of mechs like Armored Core did and clearly most gamers agreed with that position.

I don’t think Artdink found much of an audience outside of Japan so I don’t blame them for skipping a system whose marketshare in Japan is marginal at best. I doubt I’ll play any more of their games but I wish them.

I just spent two hours playing Luminees on PSVR2 (I took the day off but it didn’t unlock until 9 in the morning). Astounding audio visuals.

As I did with Tetris Effect once I fail (falling block puzzlers are not my strong suit) I just restart from the beginning just so I can see all the weird stuff again and try to do better on prior levels. Some really bizarre stuff goes on with the audio visuals. There are a lot of stages and while each has a theme, they often go through massive changes mid stage. I keep forgetting to look at the upcoming blocks due to all the stuff going on but as a fan of Luminees and Tetris Effect I am enjoying this immensely.

For me this was a pretty VR heavy weekend. I put a couple hours into Of Lies and Rain, an action heavy adventure set in a world destroyed by an evil AI. While it won’t win any prizes for originality so far it’s very fun.

Reloading guns is nerve racking business in the middle of a fight. Each gun loads differently but for an empty pistol you have to eject the spent clip, grab a clip from your backpack, slap it into your gun and rack the slide. To save a bit of time you can pop the empty clip with one in the chamber and spare the second it takes to rack the slide. You can also just grasp a clip and hold it in your free hand until you need to reload it and eject partially full clips (and pick them off the ground later after the fight). I’ve died trying to reload a few times. That being said death doesn’t set you back real far (the start of a room).

Also I started VRacer Hoverbike. It’s Wipeout with hoverbikes and exactly the sort of over the top arcade racer I’ve been waiting for. I think it feels quite a bit different though I confess I only used stick and trigger/button controls in Wipeout (IIRC there was some sort of motion control option). In VRacer I use a mix of stick and motion controls (I steer with the stick and brake and accelerate with the triggers but I lean to get my biker to lean).

In a nice touch you can choose if and how much your camera is tied to your racer (who moves around constantly and is often leaning to one side) as opposed to just being positioned behind the vehicle and remaining stable. My time dramatically improved when I went balls to the wall and fully tied the camera to character. There are a lot of tracks (I think 15) and race types and of course all the tracks have reverse modes.

There are extensive visual customization options which I dipped my toe into despite not having any drawing skill. You can paint anything you want, write text and slap it on the vehicle or just do what I did and just set the colors of bike parts.

Given that the studio formerly known as 343 decided to toss the old Halo engine aside for UE5, laid off a bunch of people and rebranded itself it would be shocking if they continued support for Infinite.

Master Chief is iconic even among non-gamers but as Lara Croft can tell you, a high level of character recognition doesn’t necessarily translate into game sales or continued engagement (a key metric in live service games).

Shrugs A lot of developers/publishers and fans want franchises to live forever but eventually a majority of one of those two groups (each key to success) gets their fill and moves on. That doesn’t lessen the significance of past games.

I enjoyed FF16 and the two released parts of the remake but they didn’t become phenomena the way turn based rpgs like BG3, Persona 5 and Clair Obscur did.

I am fine with Squenix going multiplatform but I suspect something else needs to be done if Squenix wants to make their rpgs more appealing to more people.

I fell out of love with the GTA series after 5 (whose campaign disappointed me and whose multiplayer never interested me) but I can’t imagine this delay means anything more than ‘Rockstar is taking its sweet time’.

GTA5 despite my indifference is a mainstay on sales charts and I’m sure a lot of shark bucks are continually being bought.

Whether or not GTA6 has the insanely long tail of 5 is up in the air but a ginormous launch whenever it hits is a certainty.

I don’t pay much attention to announcements of years away games since they often change, slip or even die in the interim.

That being said while I respect Hennig as a writer, writing and leading a project are separate skill sets and Hennig hasn’t managed to get anything out the door under multiple publishers.

I played some Pursuit Force via streaming yesterday. It chugged for a couple seconds in one of the stages but it otherwise felt just like playing it on my PSP back in the day.

I love Ghost of Yotei but I am glad other games enjoyed strong debuts as well.

No benefit to me (I drive to work) but new, free functionality is nice. I use my Portal on a daily basis to play strategy games on the lving room couch (my Pro is in the den) in the afternoon.

Shrugs I can’t be the only one that remembers how weird some of the old PlayStation ads were. Seems to either work or (more likely) do no harm. I could say much the same about outlandish game ads in general.

https://youtu.be/YWmbUMStlGI

https://youtu.be/xRwgdZxYL-E

https://youtu.be/gqkNPcUMffU

I preordered the deluxe edition right after playing the demo (the audio visuals being even trippier than Tetris Effecf was what sold me) but the presence of Astro Bot is nice.

It’s too bad the demo doesn’t support VR but given Enhance’s long track record with VR I have zero concerns in that regard.

@Westernwolf4 Thanks. I finally got past that boss.

Fighting a late game boss in Ghost of Yotei. I’ve come really, really close to winning but just came up a bit short.

Played two rounds with different full squads of randoms in Helldivers 2 in which we took down a Hivelord (a giant acid spewing worm the size of a train, covered in armor heavier than that of a tank which is essentially the boss of wherever it is). There is a suborder for killing 50K of them and it looks like the community is going to achieve it with time to spare thanks in no small part to patriot exosuits being the bonus strategem. The major order for taking one of bug planets is still up on the air though because resistance is crazy high. I’ve seen a swarm of bugs force even squads of well armed Helldivers backwards because ammo is limited and reloading sometimes necessary. On a related note a big part of cave exploring is knowing when to retreat and rearm and/or find an alternate pathway.

I started Propagation Paradise Hotel. It’s clearly an indie game in terms of its visuals but it’s well designed and the controls feel great (it’s a motion controlled VR game which is very committed to its bit). I’m still early in but thus far it reminds me more of RE1 (suspenseful yet cheesy, some action but lots of exploration and light puzzle solving) more than either of the survival horror games I’ve played recently (Silent Hill F and Cronos).

Halloween isn’t a big deal for me anymore but I enjoy horror year round (mostly books but also a few games and movies). Recently I played Silent Hill F and Cronos: The New Dawn. To celebrate the holiday I’m going to pull a horror game out of my backlog (Propagation Paradise Hotel) and start it.

Impressive. This particular game isn’t for me but I’m glad it has found success. Not surprising given all the positive stuff I heard from people who participated in the betas and servers slams and suchlike.

Sony and Nintendo have both made lots of mistakes over the years but both stayed squarely focused on dedicated hardware and their ecosystems in part because gaming is a core and profitable business for both of them.

The Xbox division was a speculative investment for MS and never important for the central division/shareholders. That was beneficial for the Xbox division for a while but that wasn’t going to last forever. MS is willing to extravagantly invest in hot trends but it did not become the biggest, richest company in the world for several years (I think Nvidia passed them recently) by letting divisions bleed infinite money indefinitely.

I have been hearing nothing but good about Arc Raiders for months so while PvP (I know there is an E in there too) isn’t my thing anymore I think it will launch strong.

This weird trend of the people on the internet going for likes and ‘cool’ cred by embracing long dead franchises they probably never touched in the first place never ceases to amuse.

I bought and played all the Killzones bar Mercenaries (which I didn’t see anything in) at launch and the only two I thought were great were 2 (which was partially overshadowed by Sony’s infamous fake gameplay trailer) and Liberation (which almost nobody played).

Helghast designs are great (I often use KZ armor in Helldivers 2) but the franchise doesn’t need to come back. If the most interesting thing that can be said about a franchise is it once was intended to kill another franchise there is clearly nothing to be said.

I am continuing to love Ghost of Yotei. I’ve got over seventy hours in but I trying to tackle everything I can find so half the Yotei Six are still alive though a lot of other, lesser evils have been addressed. The Onryo effect (which terrifies enemies for a few seconds and maybe calls the wolf to you) is a thing of beauty in heated close combat though I am also fine with surreptitiously cutting throats or killing enemies from afar with a bow or a rifle.

Today is Liberty Day in Helldivers. One can visit Earth and watch fireworks from orbit, but you can only read about the parades and public dissident executions. The traditional free gear seems to be tied to a damn near impossible major order though I don’t think for a second we will leave Liberty Day empty handed.

The current major order sets a sadistic one day, 40 million kill target for the constitution (an antique bolt action rifle with a bayonet). Most are ignoring it and using modern weapons but some of us are picking up the gauntlet so it’s not outside the realm of possibility we will defy Arrowhead’s expectations and win the major order.

I played the original Halo many times in local and online co-op but never attended a LAN party and I strongly doubt more than a single digit percentage of Halo 1 owners ever did.
It’s true Halo like almost every other ongoing fps eventually came to be utterly dominated by online competitive MP (Halo 4 and Infinite couldn’t even be bothered to include split screen co-op) but Halo 1’s big draw was its excellent co-op enabled campaign.

That being said I suspect another reason for the omission is MS has some sort of online only Halo they are planning, but that’s fine by me since I liked Halo when it was focused on campaigns rather than competitive multiplayer. Very few games successfully do both because online communities are very passionate things that devour everything you put before them and ask why it isn’t better, why there isn’t more and why it isn’t coming faster 😋.

Looks good to me. I played Halo’s campaign in co-op (online and couch) many, many times. Great stuff. Not sure I’ll pick it up the remaster at launch but I’ll pick it up eventually.

I’m not surprised by the low quality of the PS Pro port given the PS5 port itself was a late in the game decision.

As I said recently in the context of the announcement that the PS5 port of the upcoming Forza Horizon would be be late, I think it’s reasonable for developers to initially focus on optimizing for a platform or two rather than port everywhere all at once. Polish/playtesting is very time consuming.

The big patch has finally hit. Not sure how well it fixes the issues PC gamers are having but it buffs a lot of light penetration guns (think rifles and SMGs) and melee weapons and brought back the slightly nerfed but still very nasty burrowing enemies.

I’ve long believed gamers in real life don’t care about exclusivity. A game people view as unappealing won’t become more appealing just because it’s exclusive. 99.9999% of multiplatform games don’t come anywhere near the success of Minecraft, CoD or Roblox.

I’m not opposed to exclusive games by any means. From a tech perspective they often benefit from focus on a platform (or two). As I pointed out in a Forza ‘late PS5 port’ thread spinning a lot of plates can be tough for developers so it’s perfectly reasonable for developers to prioritize rather than port everywhere at the same time.

Along those lines show me a multi format game and I’ll often be able to to show you a subset of its fans (often PC gamers because that landscape is so incredibly varied) lamenting that their system of choice drew the short straw. Still, barring extreme problems most gamers don’t worry too much about tech issues and just play the games they want to play on the system they own.

Not surprised H2 is a hit on Xbox. I have almost 1300 hours in and H2 is just great, chaotic, arcadey fun that is easy to play with randoms (the communication wheel allows one to quickly say the important stuff though of course text and voice are options too).

Playing on PS5 Pro the only problem I run into is the odd crash (3 crashes in 20something rounds in the past week). It was a lot worse a month ago but improved without a patch so I assume there was a server issue that got sorted out. Still PC gamers are having a lot of issues so I hope the patch releases sooner rather than later. The more divers the merrier.

I mostly play on my tv, but I use my Portal as a second screen device in the evenings (mostly for strategy games).

In regards to AA and smaller games the PS5 and every other modern platform has an embarrassment of riches (nods towards games like Clair Obscur, Absolum, Peak, Sea of Stars, Balatro, Silksong, The Last Spell, The Alters, Hades, Stray, Cult of the Lamb, Promise Mascot Agency and Shinobi Art of Vengeance) due to cheap development costs, the low cost of distribution and of course commercial success in the space.

If someone legit only enjoys smaller games that’s cool but I don’t see why one would ignore all the quality smaller games that are out there and get stuck on the fact that the ‘right’ publishers or developers aren’t making them.

Nice. I’m kinda surprised SH’s cumulative sales are so low. Konami is happy with the recent numbers so clearly they are budgeting for the market Silent Hill has rather than burning a big pile of cash to try to mainstream the series. I enjoyed the first four games and the last two.

I knew SH4 was widely disliked but I didn’t know its sales were that bad. I personally enjoyed it and remember the creators were very enthusiastic about it because it was a big deviation from the formula but clearly most SH fans didn’t share their thirst for change, or at least the specific changes The Room made.

I’m 43 hours in and the popularity doesn’t surprise me. Ghost is a fast moving, beautiful game whose world is a joy to explore due to its beauty and its design and whose brutal combat system boasts a lot of depth (playing on hard I’ve had many opportunities to see fights play out differently depending on how one tries to tackle them 😅).

Given all the commercially successful single player games we’ve seen recently (including but not limited to Silent Hill F, Silksong and Cronos:The New Dawn) it’s not a surprise Ghost of Yotei (which improves across the board on its very popular predecessor) has joined their ranks.

Last of all, as I tend to note in sales threads fans people who genuinely enjoy something and want to see more of it should focus on absolute rather than relative performance.

Given the new Ubisoft-Tencent partnership now helming what used to be their biggest IPs (including AC) I think the longtime lead’s departure and more interference by investors mean things will likely get worse.

Interesting rumor. I’m going to start setting aside a dollar a day. Hopefully that will cover the PS6 and a full priced game or two.

I enjoyed Modnation Racers’ campaign but didn’t get much out of the UGC (which I played with my kids a bit though they preferred LBP2’s UGC). Maybe if I was playing the best tracks competitively with randoms I would feel differently about it.

I was fine with Metaphor before the big non-event and I am fine with it afterwards.

I played a a lot of Ghost of Yotei and a little bit of Helldivers 2. Yotei’s combat is glorious, gory fun.

Given that Roblox is bigger than Steam I’m not surprised someone is coming for its UGC crown. I didn’t care for base Genshin and while I spent hundreds of hours playing UGC in LBP and later Dreams (damn near perfect IMHO but in hindsight it’s decision to not charge anyone for anything past the point of purchase while noble, was a fatal mistake) so I am sure some talented creators will surface in Genshin.

@Leinad7 The internet abounds with people unhappy with the PS5 and the Switch 2. That is reasonable because tastes vary. Objectively the PS5’s user engagement and game sales are high.

There are big spending gamers who own every platform under the sun and only care about games if they are exclusive to a platform but the vast majority of gamers own one dedicated gaming system, buy roughly ten games a generation and view consoles as game delivery devices. For such gamers the appeal of the likes of Clair Obscur, Unicorn Overlord, Silent Hill, CoD, Helldivers 2, Cult of the Lamb, Black Myth Wukong, Forza Horizon 5, Stellar Blade, Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, Balatro, Genshin Impact, To a T and Metaphor Refantazio and suchlike has everything to do with the games themselves rather than where else they can or can’t be enjoyed.

All that aside I completely agree with your statement most people won’t but the PS6 early in when it launches in a few years’ time. That has always been the case with dedicated hardware. The majority of sales take place over years, not in the initial months. Price cuts (not a thing this generation sadly) and expanding libraries increase sales over time.

I only played through the new SH one time so far (too many games and too much work) but based on my playthrough Silent Hill F is dark, twisted stuff.

The video mostly went over my head but it sounds like the PS6 is still a few years off, which works for me. Most games live well within the limits of current gen hardware and those pushing the edge don’t seem to be hobbled by it.

@Leinad7 The Switch 2 (like the PS5) is a linear sequel to its popular predecessor which early in its life has benefitted heavily from B/C (Switch sales tanked once rumors of the Switch 2 started swirling). Furthermore the Switch 2 has seen a historically strong launch in part because it launch with more systems available than any prior system (great for gamers and the game industry, bad for scalpers).

Which parts of that statement do you disagree with and on what basis?

As for the certainty of a future PS and the probability of another Xbox, I think there are too many unknown data points (release dates, libraries, prices) to start predicting anything though that has never stopped the internet before.

https://gamerant.com/nintendo-switch-lifetime-sales-2025-slowing-down-forecast/

The internet hating or loving something has little connection to the popularity of the thing in the real world.

Given the massive popularity of the Switch and the fact Nintendo positioned the Switch 2 as a linear follow up (B/C, no big design deviations) it would be shocking if the Switch 2 wasn’t a huge success.

PS5 sales seem to be holding up well given that its price has risen a bit (as opposed to the old console norm of falling sharply).

This rejected protagonist/setting doesn’t sound too far off from that of AC Liberation (which I loved because like Black Flag it revolves around battles at sea). I haven’t played an AC game in years because they cranked them out ridiculously fast on a wide variety of platforms for a hot minute (I tried to keep up for a while) and eventually it became clear there was no coherent plan (kinda like what happened with Star Wars).

I’ve got nothing against the AC games as games but I don’t know if I am ever going to get back into the series.

Ten games per system was what the PS4 averaged and that was considered healthy back then. I get more games than ever are being released but the amount of free time (or money) people have isn’t increasing.

On a personal note I buy roughly a game per month but I get that’s very unusual.
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2019/01/ps4_has_a_very_high_software_attach_rate_average_player_owns_around_ten_games