CynicalGamer

I wonder how many people use physical vs digital games. I mostly buy physical so it can sit nice and pretty as an ornament afterwards. I also kinda prefer having a couple main games at a time with some complementary multiplayer like FIFA or FF14. I guess if you are completing a lot of games each month, subscription offerings matter a lot. Most gamers I know take a month or more to finish a game. Elden Ring and Horizon FW will last your average gamer months of playtime and both are not in a subscription as far as I know. Subscription games for me then feel kinda irrelevant.

The best devs often think about their future years in advance given their talents are in demand. These announcements can generate buzz and make these types curious.

Yeah the whole bigger is better marketing approach that happens so much gets annoying. This sounds good to me!

I wish there more games in the vein of GTA or Yakuza/Judgement. Not just thematically but in terms of what you can do in them.

Edit: in terms

Star Wars is one of those IPs that are deep enough in lore and scope that it would not necessarily feel like being overwhelmed. In my opinion, it would be pretty much making a whole bunch of different types of games based on the earth. That being said, this would depend on the creativity and efforts of the different development teams.

Sometimes it is the simple-looking development requests that are the trickiest to standardise and supply to a whole customer base.

Sony making big acquisitions will just make it easier for Microsoft to justify making even more of their massive acquisitions. Sony really needs to just focus on stellar first party games. If they need to get developers they should do what they normally do and acquire smaller companies or at least companies with a strong history of playstation specific games

Game length, script length, etc tell me absolutely nothing. I mean, I know kids that can leave all their essays for the last minute that write that much in a few days (and get bad marks). If anything, it is putting me off. Please focus instead on interesting things.

Edit: exaggeration but you get my point

Spoke to some COD-loving friends of mine and Gamepass is kinda meaningless to those who own PS4 and/or PS5s as they already forked out their hard-earned money on these consoles not expecting this Activision thing to happen.

I love my playstation as much as my pc but let's be realistic. Most people don't buy playstations because they want to play games that are nowhere else. They buy it because it is budget-friendly. Therefore most playstation gamers do not care outside of a vocal minority. Playstation is still going to be the cheaper platform to play GOW Ragnarok, Horizon FW, etc. Main reason I even have a pc is mods but I don't know if that matters to the majority of gamers. Also I don't consider piracy as a relevant paying customer base for Sony.

Heh I feel like many of us are part of a gamer demographic on the verge of digital extinction. These companies have prefectly marketed their uh...modern... gaming ideas to the younger generations who in turn completely outnumber the more traditional console/pc gaming demographic. It is what it is, I guess.

Im cleaning up my backlog so finishing Borderlands 3 dlc. Not going to get too invested into new games ahead of Horizon and Elden Ring.

I'm guessing it is very expensive for them to translate their games but would love for them to bring their games to the West quicker. Would have preferred to played this before Cold Steel on ps4 but I'm looking forward to the newer entries. Will prob play Zero anyway.

There are most certainly markets out there in the world where more ps4s will make sense. I know plenty of people who tend to game 1 generation behind. Sony wont make money out of them from PS5s but they can from PS4s. The best part is any of these kinda gamers will not even need new games to be developed given the ps4's massive library.

Optimisation can be incredibly difficult. I'm not seeing the same level of resources been pulled into this game as say FF16. So I'm guessing this game will have less optimisation as a compromise to not take too much of their development resources.

I reckon a good Resistance or Killzone will do wonders for Sony. No reason it can't be the platform's answer to Halo surely?

I reckon splitting by genre or something could give high quality insights. Also maybe splitting by main story, side content/platinum trophy as I wasn't quite sure what game length is referring to here.

I've already finished TLOU2 but not sure why it was necessary to to mention a certain incident in the game in an article about spoilers for a different game. I consider it good manners to keep that level of detail to forum posts or articles that discuss spoilers. But that's just my opinion, I guess. Would suck if a game I have not finished was spoiled randomly in an article about a different game. Spoiler tags are easy to use and arguably create an environment where new gamers in particular don't get spoiled. Already have a couple friends new to gaming who left this site over these kind of spoilers. One of them was planning to play TLOU2. To each their own opinion though, I guess.

I hate this crap. Gaming is not just about playing games but also the hype that comes with following news, rumours, etc for all things gaming. Now I am probably going to avoid YouTube or use a secondary account for non-gaming stuff. I'm guessing pushsquare should be relatively safe for following gaming news.

@kyleforrester87 fair point. Sorry, didn't write it very clearly but was more referring to others competing in the space. I think the likes of 2K will continue to get massive profits but other companies may flop if they try to also target the same market and set unrealistic growth targets.

The majority of companies chasing all the microtransactions, mobile revenue, pay to win/dress, etc are going to make a loss on their companies imo as there aren't enough customers to satisfy the insane growth targets they set for themselves. You can only have so many successful Fortnites, GTA onlines, etc. I guess if 2K absolutely dominates in their space, it might force others to, you know, give gamers what they want. (Not an economic expert so I dunno)

@BritneyfR_ee I could be wrong but I think some of these massive open world games are bland because it is cheaper to code out/generate hundreds of hours of samey content as opposed to something shorter but original. That's not to say Dying Light are going down this route as I have no clue there haha.

I don't care if a game has 1000 hours of content. I do care however if they sacrifice quality for quantity. I guess we will have to see what their methodology is for generating hundreds of hours of content. Naturally they don't owe it to me to cater to my tastes haha. Hopefully the reviews will give a good taste of what all this side content is about. But yeah, not quite a selling point to me as I can get hundreds of hours of content from FIFA or COD or an MMO too.

@themightyant haha I have not even finished the main game but also bought the dlc. Maybe one day I will play it again. (If the next game is good enough to tempt me to catch up on the story)

@Gloamin agree with your examples. I absolutely loved those games. There are good open world games out there and I think the problem is too many publishers hide behind open worlds by using copy paste development tools/code/whatever to generate lots of "content" and show "value". I'm guessing it is more expensive to pay developers to design high quality questing zones so they force copy paste stuff on them.

The worst part of Inquisition to me was the sheer volume of boring content. This obsession with open worlds is a Blight (pun intended) upon the gaming world because most developers suck at it in my opinion.

Maybe add a backlog option haha. Because this month basically means I will finish one or two games in backlog.

For me, the journey you undertake in the game is made all the more memorable by the cargo-carrying mechanics and the related terrain challenges. Few games felt as much like a proper journey as this game did for me. I hope more games try this out but I suspect that other devs won't have the imaginative and creative freedom that Kojima had for this game. Corporate dynamics and whatnot.

Depends on the game. I think Dragon Age Origins had interesting notes. Tomb raider reboot trilogy's notes that Lara verbalises are interesting. Farcry's notes feels more like an excuse to have more collectibles.

@thefourfoldroot It still easily makes my top 3 for the year tbh. Gameplay wise I preferred the sequel but I guess the manner in which the narrative was presented just felt repetitive and clumsy to me and I tend to judge games by their narrative quite harshly as per my narrative preferences. Its one of the few games I platinumed last year so I did enjoy the game a lot. In retrospect "superior" was the wrong word to use. I guess I felt the original was presented better while the sequel could have had some more dialogue refinement.

@ShogunRok Glad to see Tales of Arise get some love! Also agree on gameplay improvements for Lost Judgement. Great game but I think some more subtle, concise showing (rather than tell) plot devices could have made the repetitive parts of the narrative better, particularly in the main quest.

@Nepp67 you make good points. The narrative was thought provoking from a moral perspective and there was a lot of foreshadowing and subtle links I picked up, especially in my legend mode replay. I still think however that the original's narrative was better structured whereas the sequel felt a bit padded with parts that could have written more consisely here and there. Especially the dialogue which sometimes felt repetitive without adding any sort of hidden meaning or something to justify it.

Seems Lost Judgement is getting no love in any of the lists haha. It is in my top 5 of the year but I think it is simply struggling to meet the high standards of the superior original Judgement.

There are three cooperative/multiplayer games which is surprising haha. I think Guardians of the Galaxy and Deathloop were perceived on by many on the site as solid rather than spectacular which is perhaps why they made space for multiplayer games

@PenguinL Just tested and looks the same to me on both consoles. I have HDR off though.

Edit: Seems the same with HDR on but my friend says it is looking blurrier haha.

I think Sammy is on Knockout City's marketing team lol. Jk.

Edit: Hitman 3 is something I should give a go I guess. Which means starting with Hitman 1 probably.

I was counting on Tales of Arise popping up in this particular list!

They maybe mean to make Re Fantasy a pillar of their business but yeah, can't really predict them.

I wonder what this means for FF7 Remake Part 2? Oh well. Should be plenty of stellar releases for 2022 to keep my attention.

Playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider and then also a bit of Deathloop and Far Cry. I must say I am salivating at how good a new Tomb Raider game might look! (Please announce one!)

Meh. I'll respect the choice but while I'm happy to see multiplayer games on the list, I got bored of this one very quickly. Same goes for my friend that asked me try it out with her haha. A bold and honest inclusion though!

I think a current gen sequel (do we still call it next gen?) could be quite good. I think a strong and daring story would have helped overcome its graphical limitations and maybe help garner an audience for a possible sequel. Why stories in games often are such an afterthought is beyond me. Is the available talent pool shallow or something?

Edit: I think the subheadings on this site are far more creative than many gaming stories out there

@the_pathos Same issue here.

Edit: (Final Fantasy VII REMAKE upgrade for PS4 version owners) is the one not letting me buy or download. Maybe PSN still needs to be updated for this

I finished the game but the survey trophies are too RNG-dependent! I do feel that the bosses weren't particularly challenging. Biome 4 and the final boss seemed half-assed tbh. I guess the difficulty came from having the patience to start from scratch more than the actual fighting. Was easy to find the perfect "sniping" positions more often in the various biomes. Maybe that made it easier than intended. Died to bosses and mobs way more times in souls-likes. That said, I enjoyed the game but only because I could finally save progress as I often get tempted to switch to multiplayer games with friends. Surprised about Outriders though. I enjoyed its gameplay loop and keeping to the highest world tier was sometimes quite challenging.

Perhaps for the applicable gamers, learning Japanese will be faster than getting the western port. Haha

Great to hear but they only are announcing news for the new year so chances are they protecting the game's hype with a couple tweets to keep us salivating into the new year haha. Plenty games coming so happy to wait if I'm right haha.

I think many nominees and winners from previous years could have dominated this year. This year was decent but in my opinion nothing truly stood out. If we look at previous years, we had the likes of GOW, RDR2, Spiderman, Breath of the Wild, Horizon, TLOU2, Ghost of T, Doom Eternal, Sekiro, Spiderman, Hades, FFVII Remake, Persona 5, etc. I think this year was average compared to previous years. I see the winners as the best of the rest, rather than generational greats.

Edit: Wrong place to comment lol

I wonder if something is on special if my backlog is so big I may not play it for a few years lol. Probably not. I guess there is a sense of achievement as a game collector maybe haha.

There will be a Deathloop "trailer". But it will be a nominee video lol. These questions gave a good chuckle.

This could be great but why does everything need to be open world? Tight but well designed levels can be just as fun. Just worried that my backlog is just going to keep increasing with all these open world games. First world problem I guess lol.