DeepSpace5D

Horizon II is going to sell like gangbusters. The first 10m+ first-party game for the PS5 imo.

Maybe CDPR and Sony are patching things up?

Hopefully an update very soon suggests an upcoming Sony event in June.

Incredibly beautiful! Looks like a clear step up from the original in every aspect, and especially in combat which is exciting to see!

@Areus I have never subbed to PSNow but I surely would if they had PS1 games on there with trophy support!

@Areus That’s what I thought they were planning to do by shuttering the older legacy stores. Adding those older games to PSNow would be enticing to sub anytime someone wanted to play those classics.

Solid month, keep these new releases coming! I love when I don’t own any of the titles.

Thanks for the review @Quintumply. Did you notice any buggy/glitchy trophies while playing?

There’s a number of people saying they can’t get the trophies to unlock even after fulfilling the requirements, while some have claimed they had a trophy unlock when they did not do what was asked for the trophy.

Anyway it looks fun, hope it finds success in the online community.

@Loftimus I just think with inflation it was probably overdue for a general price hike, but I am in the States so I can admit I don’t feel it nearly as much going from just $60-$70.

I think Sony knew this increase was inevitable eventually, but they also realized that they can differentiate their Playstation Studios games from others on the market to better justify the price increase.

I honestly think if you played Returnal you would find something uniquely compelling about it.

It has the best Dualsense implementation since Astro’s Playroom. Everything in the game has a different feel to it with the haptic feedback, and even the guns feel different to fire. You hear them firing through the speaker of the Dualsense. You stand next to a parasite and the Dualsense beats like a heart. Stand in the rain and you feel little pitter-patter raindrops. Fall off a cliff and get sudden strong jolt as Selene screams to her death. It has an alt-fire adaptive trigger that makes it feel like a gun trigger on the controller.

Combine the dualsense with a pair of headphones, especially if you have adjusted the 3D audio settings, and it’s a really immersive experience.

The game plays so fast. Selene runs at a pace that I honestly think would need to be slowed down on last-gen consoles, or at least some type of loading sections would need to be added in by design. There’s no apparent loading anywhere in the game, it’s seamless once you start the game up. There’s not even a title screen. You can even skip the animations for things like picking up items if you want to play even faster. You can run straight through the doors at full speed and have every new area on the map fully loaded and ready to go with enemies and no wait time or loading. The teleportation portals instantly take you anywhere on the map, and the maps are quite big.

If this was made for PS4, there would be compromises that would have to be made that I think would detract from the experience and vision Housemarque had for the game.

So I guess my point is that the price hike is unfortunate, but at least it seems that Sony is trying to give you something that is only possible on next-gen hardware to justify their personal increase.

I’m just going to take it on a case-by-case basis and decide if the individual game is worth it for me.

Two titans in Insomniac and Guerrilla going at it this year. I hope this State of Play reveals an exact release date. Let’s go!! Horizon II is going to blow people’s minds with how it looks.

What’s up with the 5-hour countdown leading up to this State of Play though? The blog calls it, “a uniqely crafted countdown towards the main State of Play”.

Is this some kind of visualizer to keep us entertained for 5 hours? Possibly some smaller anouncements? Interesting stuff.

@Loftimus Look mate, sorry if I came on strong, I’m not just trying to get one over on you.

I’m not here to argue with you the subjective opinion of whether Returnal is worth $70 or not. For you, it’s not, although I would argue you haven’t played it yet to form your own opinion on it.
For myself, it was totally worth it and so far my game of the year.

I haven’t played Resident Evil: Village yet, but it really seems like an apples-to-oranges comparison. One is a highly linear, polished experience that is very short in length. Most people are claiming to beat Resi 8 in 8-10 hours, maybe 15 hours if you are a completist.

Returnal is a procedurally generated rogue-lite bullet hell shooter that many people are taking 40+ hours just to reach the true ending, and 100+ for completists. The two games dont play anything alike.

You seem to have a real problem with the price hike of games for this new generation that companies like Sony and Take Two have implemented, and you are entitled to your opinion.

For me, it’s a case-by-case basis. If it’s a game I really want to play, I have no problem paying full price for it, and I’m very satisfied with my purchase of Returnal.

I have no issue with your personal gripe about the price hike. The only thing that bothers me is how people make up things on the internet these days that just aren’t true, and it seemed like that’s what you were doing putting words in Housemarque’s mouth that they didn’t actually say.

But I acknowledge that the writer for ign was misleading with his headline and don’t fault you for thinking it came from Housemarque.

@LiamCroft Thanks for taking the time to review it for us.

Any reason why metacritic hasn’t included your review in the critic reviews yet?

It’s really hard for me to picture Sully as Mark Wahlberg personally.

@Loftimus Still waiting for you to point out the part where I spin something that wasn’t true. On the contrary, it was you that claimed Housemarque said they were “as shocked” as everyone else about the $70 price tag of Returnal. Then you changed it to Housemarque saying they were surprised.

Then we come to find out that they never said anything of the sort, it was just used in a headline by an ign writer and nothing remotely close to that was said by Housemarque.

So in reality, I cut through the spin YOU were trying to use to bolster your argument, which was false. Either that or you only read the headline without actually taking the time to read and comprehend the article, and assumed it was said by Housemarque.

Either way, glad we could clear that up. You take care now.

@Loftimus Care to explain what spin I used? The word “surprised” came from an ign writer not Housemarque. Sorry if that offends you buddy.

@Loftimus My friend, is this the article you’re referring to?

https://www.ign.com/articles/housemarque-found-out-about-returnals-70-price-tag-the-same-time-as-everyone-else

I don’t see anywhere Housemarque were shocked or surprised by the price of the game.

That was an editorial choice in the headline of the article by writer Joseph Knoop to use the word “surprised” but it did not come directly from Housemarque themselves nor were they quoted as saying that anywhere in the article. Even if you follow the original source which isn’t even IGN, it’s Axios, nowhere does Housemarque use the words “shocked” or “surprised” to describe the $70 price tag.

And I believe you are confusing the intent behind it. Housemarque weren’t surprised at the cost amount of the game, rather, surprised in the sense that they found out the same time as everyone else instead of Sony informing them before the public. There’s a big difference between the two.

It’s not like that article is suggesting Housemarque believe their game is worth less than the price tag Sony set, although it seems that was your personal interpretation of the article.

The only thing Housemarque said was they found out the same time as everyone else, and that they were doing their job to make the best game possible and that’s pretty much all they could do on their side of things.

@Loftimus I would need you to point that out to me because I’ve read that same ign article and nowhere does Housemarque say they were shocked about anything regarding the price. You can’t even find the word “shocked” in the article. I think you are not remembering things accurately with that quote.

@Loftimus Just curious, why did you put “as shocked” in quotation marks? Have Housemarque said this themselves? I have read the articles that they found out about the price the same time as the general public, but I don’t remember reading that they were shocked about it in any way.

Took me over 100 hours to platinum Returnal. Safe to say I got my money’s worth and then some. I just hope more content is made for this phenomenal game so I can dive back in.

Can’t wait to see where Housemarque go from here as Returnal was a huge leap forward compared to anything they’d done in the past.

I’ve got two xenoglyph ciphers left in biome six of Returnal for the platinum.

After that I plan on doing a playthrough of Uncharted 4.

Happy gaming everyone.

@Vivisapprentice That’s true they do like to spread it around, but a possible 4 FF titles along with Forspoken seems a bit excessive.

Just acquire Square Enix already Sony, geez.

They’ve reached the 5’th biome!

I did one run with the new patch so far and the deceased scouts are a nice addition! Be ready for a very difficult enemy to spawn if you try to avenge their death, but its nice to have an extra way to earn ether and other supplies. One of the dead scouts rose up and attacked me as well which was a fun battle.

Also, in that one run since the new patch one of the final two xenoglyph ciphers spawned for me in the Crimson Wastes! Not sure if thats a coincidence but hopefully not. I’m very close to the platinum but the rng for these ciphers has not been on my side. Hopefully the new patch has made them more likely to appear somehow.

Easily my game of the year. Hopefully I can finish it up before Ratchet & Clank.

New content in the works for Returnal is very exciting news!

@Futureshark The 25 games Hermen Hulst was referring to are games that are in development currently. Considering TLoU 3 was confirmed pretty recently to not be in development yet, I’m guessing it’s not included in these 25 titles.

@nessisonett It depends, I’ve actually paid more to watch independent films before, especially when theater availability is limited due to lack of widespread release. Some of those boutique theaters that get the obscure movies larger theaters don’t get will charge accordingly for the experience.

I’m not sure it’s fair to say budget doesn’t factor into Sony’s pricing strategy. It’s probably not the singular deciding factor, but it likely plays a part along with other things to factor such as amount of content, production values, innovation, technical achievement. A Playstation Studios production usually comes with a level of quality that is higher than the industry standard.

The games with the largest budgets are usually always priced at the maximum base price for a new game. Last console generation that was $60, this gen it appears to be $70. If Rockstar games next game that is not crossgen is only $60, then I will gladly say no other game deserves to be more than $60.

@nessisonett So then should games all cost the same because that is the way things are for other forms of entertainment?

Wouldn’t that have made Hades a $60 game if it were trying to go by the most common universal price of a new game regardless of budget? Since it costs the exact same to watch an independent film at a theater vs a big budget film.

I just got full trophies for Fallout 4 before starting Returnal. My goodness was that game a slog. Same old buggy engine felt straight like it was ripped from Elder Scrolls complete with lockpicking and unintentionally hilarious NPC moments.

For a game that’s been out so long and had, I presume, numerous patches by now, I still had the game crash on me at least 5 times while playing. Additionally, there were multiple times where my character just got stuck in the world, hung up on something in the corner of a room, and nothing would release him, forcing a revert to a previous save. I had trouble with a couple missions not showing up after triggering events for them, forcing a reload. I had enemies fall through the ground making me unable to kill them when the current mission required me to clear out a house full of enemies, forcing a reload.

Then they release Fallout 76 after that to even further criticism and terrible bugs/glitches.

Point being my interest has soured greatly for Bethesda games based on their most recent output. Their games are extremely lacking in polish and I hope they can straighten it out for their future releases.

I will say that their games nail it when it comes to atmosphere. They are top notch with that, and also the amount of dialog in their games is seriously impressive.

@nessisonett But unlike those examples, Returnal is a game of high quality.

Also, despite having many episodes, I sure hope R Kelly’s Trapped In the Closet didn’t cost that much to make. The production values are not of high quality, to put it kindly.

@Fuzzymonkeyfunk Hey congrats on the platinum! A respectable one indeed. I have the surveys for biomes 4 and 5 complete, still working on 1-3 and 6. I’m anticipating it to take some time but hopefully the Rng isn’t too harsh on me.

I’m happy that at least with biome 5 out of the way I can skip it and go directly from 4-to-6 via the shortcut for future runs!

Will be working towards the Returnal platinum if I get some play time this weekend. I need to complete most of the biome surveys still.

Happy gaming everyone.

@ItsATM I’d have to agree Ixion is the most challenging overall. Ophion isn’t too bad, but sure is astonishing to look at.

Believe it or not I haven’t died yet during a boss fight, I guess because I wont even attempt one unless my integrity is high and I have a strong weapon. I have though died numerous times throughout the biomes leading up to one. The gold doors in particular can be real tough if you’re not prepared before entering.

Cheers man, been fun discussing the game with you.

@AgentGuapo Nope! I’m aware of it though. Currently replaying the areas hunting down the sunface fragments after beating Act II.

@djape You got this! I avoided pretty much all parasites and malignant stuff, farmed alot of obolites and that was the run that got me to the end.

Keep releasing games on the level of Returnal and the trend is likely to continue. I just beat it for the first time last night and can’t stop thinking about it.

@ItsATM I just beat the 6’th biome! I was in awe the whole time underwater. Playing with headphones and the dualsense, this game is truly something special. That final boss, all I can say is wow.

It truly felt like exploring some ancient alien world. Now I have to replay and find the sunface fragments in each biome. It’s going to be really hard to top this as my game of the year.

@ItsATM Oh I see. I haven’t got there yet. Just picked up the game 2 days ago and I just finished Act 1 and beat the third boss, which was one of the most insane boss battles I’ve experienced in a long time.

I had to force myself to put the controller down and get some rest. What a game.

9/10 only because my very first run crashed and I was starting off strong. This is after the latest patch. Also, the first biome is a bit too dark in my opinion.

Other than that, I’m hooked. This is the tightest feeling action game I’ve played in a long time. Each room with enemies feels like its own little arena that you maneuver with deadly precision. The way the story is done with audio logs, decipher glyphs, and the first-person house segments are quite well done, and I want to find out what’s really going on with Selene.

Incredible game. Like a 3D alien version of The Binding of Isaac. The sense of speed in the game is exhilarating.

RE8 is a game I will wait for a sale for. Hope the rest of you like it though, it’s scoring well!

What’s hilarious is they played through the game and never found out that the quick-swap weapon button was R1? Their is literally a designated button for what they are complaining about.

Looks incredible, was there any doubt the way Insomniac have been on such a roll lately?

Can’t wait for the State of Play in a few days to show more of it!

@RBMango Good news about the framerate for you?

Day one purchase here. Returnal looks amazing, I love anything to do with aliens and sci-fi, big fan of Housemarque, and I personally love challenging roguelikes/lites and fast-paced action in general. This game is right up my alley.

Plus I’m itching for new-gen only content designed specifically for the PS5 instead of all this cross-gen stuff.

@nessisonett Ya native 4k is a waste of resources with such good reconstruction techniques now. I’d rather devs put the extra resources into things like wild particle effects, which it looks like Housemarque have done here.

I don’t normally like to bash Xbox but that is just sad considering how early it was taken down from the PS store and never returned, but was left on Xbox to continue to sell digitally.

@Adge It’s actually a roguelite with persistent elements after death.

I knew Housemarque had it in them to deliver. They have always made very fun games to play, they just needed the bigger backing and a chance to breakthrough.

After leaving Naughty Dog to go work on Avengers he was probably like, “Oh no, what have I done?!”.

@KayOL77 Pretty sure I didn’t say anything of the sort. I said I thought they had some type of plan to preserve these legacy games in the future if they were closing the store.

Mark Cerny has recently filed some patents that had to do with backwards compatibility so I was thinking they would see a return in the future somehow through BC or PSNow or something along those lines. But just walking it back now looks like they had no plan to preserve legacy games and were just making a clearly hasty decision.

Excellent news. However to be fair, I’m going to say the exact same thing I did when Microsoft attempted to double the price of Live only to reverse it after heavy criticism: this comes off as Sony not knowing what the heck they are doing.

I thought they had some kind of plan in place to preserve these legacy games in the future, but turns out it was just a hastily boneheaded decision after all. Glad it’s reversed.