Chimmy1024

I remember when the PSP Go came out and I absolutely hated the idea of it, not helped by almost none of my favourite PSP games actually being playable on the thing.

But as a piece of design? It's gorgeous. I think it's probably the nicest-looking of all the Sony handhelds, even nicer than the Vita in terms of style. I think with hindsight it could have been popular had the store support simply been better - even well after it came out there were still too many UMD-only releases.

I thought for sure this would be the time, actually. I thought they would hold off for the Switch 2 announcement and then showcase it as a Switch 2/PS5/Series X/PC release. It actually wouldn't have surprised me if it was one of their big reveals at the Switch 2 Direct.

I really don't get these choices of Classics. Myst is already widely available to anyone who wants it - you can go on Steam and buy multiple versions of it. It seems like a waste when there are hundreds of genuinely rare, very good and unavailable PS1, PS2 and PSP games out there, especially when we get them at the slowest pace of possibly any enterprise ever conceived by humankind.

I am the precise audience that they should have hook, line and sinker - I love the PS1/PS2 era, there are tons of games from that era becoming rare and expensive now, and original hardware definitely isn't going to last forever. But that price tag for the current level of service is unjustifiable. The cadence of classics should be more like 2-3 per week, as a bare minimum, rather than the tiny trickle we have now, and it should be more inclusive of all the available platforms.

Sony sits on a library of gold. It's frankly baffling why they don't leverage it more.

To make the PS Classics issue even worse, Battle Engine Aquila is actually available on Steam and could probably run on any computer since Windows Vista. Why not use it for some of the many, many inaccessible titles that are unavailable on modern platforms and are rare and expensive?

I definitely agree with feeling like I want to play more short games. My favourite genre is JRPGs but they can be daunting to start because of the length sometimes.

With open world games, I also often find the pacing just doesn't work, especially if it's story driven. A focused, linear narrative can be great when done well.

Now, at the risk of being a massive hypocrite, Oblivion Remastered is calling 😂

I sometimes wistfully think of the glorious alternative reality where the early model PS3 was a massive success, the Cell was a joy to work with and had a bright future rather than being a nightmarish technical dead end, and backwards compatibility was a given in every future PlayStation. Imagine an alternate reality PS5 capable of playing all those disc-based games from the PS1 era onwards. Imagine it with the colour PS badge which could change orientation for extra wistfulness.

In the meantime, I wish they'd at least release older games at a faster rate on the PS Store.

I recently played the Trials of Mana remake and it looks a lot like that, which is to say gorgeous. Falcom have always placed charm and direction above technical prowess, but to have improved technical prowess and the charm and direction is wonderful to see from them (and Sky 1 and 2 remain my favourites in the series, too).

That's just sheer madness and nobody should pay that.

People will of course (rightly) focus on the Blizzard side of this equation but probably some of it has to do with the Japanese side as well - Berserk is within the same family of companies as Shueisha which is also known for exploitative, money-grubbing business practices. Parallels abound - beloved IP under their banners and huge creative talent that let them each get away with a lot more than they should. It's a match made in hell, in many ways (although I guess thematically appropriate for Diablo?)

I was a bit skeptical at first, kind of thinking it was just typical launch hype, but I watched some footage and reviews properly and ordered a copy the other day. Very much looking forward to getting stuck in because Expedition 33 seems to be getting a level of buzz way beyond what would be expected considering the developer's position in the market and especially considering it's going toe to toe with Oblivion and actually holding it's ground.

This generation has been terrible with the price rises, really. There are simply no good options left, with Switch 2 and Xbox also veering on the pricey side and with PC components being in short supply (and Nvidia now arguably being even worse than any of the console manufacturers for awful value...).

While I hope for change I sadly don't expect it with the way the global economy is, at least not any time soon. It honestly makes the prospect of PS6 daunting and it's clear something is going to have to change in the current model.

I wonder what it would have been like in an alternative timeline where Xbox still continued to trade blows with PlayStation over exclusives - those early PS3/Xbox 360 days were essentially the most competitive the industry has ever been, and while the exclusive dice rolls didn't always work out it was quite an interesting time.

If Xbox does end up going full third-party, though, I hope the direction they take involves porting more of their back catalogue, including games like Lost Odyssey or the Fable series to modern platforms and PC.

I got a copy today from a 3rd party seller on Amazon. The buzz around this one is immense - it really was sold out or on backorder in a lot of places. Amazon itself quoted a 1-2 month wait!

@Grumblevolcano Oh for sure I hope they don't go that way through the Switch 2 lifecycle. And it's not like I'd view all their pricing strategies as reasonable (those Switch 2 Edition games and the not-quite-a-physical-release Game Key Cards for example are pretty darned egregious) but in general I'd view price rises as the lesser of the evils as long as we don't end up with all the evils at the same time.

@Cutmastavictory that's what I mean though. You can still enjoy Nintendo games for the most part with non-intrusive monetization, something that isn't possible anymore with a lot of the AAA industry. While they have elements of it there, it isn't anything close to as bad. It's something I generally also appreciate with PS 1st party as well.

This might be a bit controversial, but the pricing strategy of Switch 2 games is, in my view, preferable to the death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategies used by lots of the big 3rd party publishers. Of course, obviously I'd prefer things to cost less money, but Nintendo are basically not all in on microtransactions and I think it's okay to raise the box price if that stays the same.

Obviously it's great that PlayStation hasn't yet raised prices too, but come the PS6 I'd say they probably will and again, that's okay compared to the alternative strategies we for monetization in my view.

Personally I don't mind turn-based or action combat as long as either one is done well. I think there are good and bad examples (and some terrible) examples of both, even within Final Fantasy (for instance, I'd say that FF16 does action very well, but that FF15's is a bit too simple, and FF10 is probably the best turn-based combat ever made, but FF2 is... well... FF2).

I think it's more important to have strong vision and execution than it is to fixate on the issue of turn-based or action-based, although it would be nice if Square Enix would mix it up in the main series a bit more in the future.