DiscoStuUK

Yeah the visuals look insane, but GTA online has done a lot to dampen my faith that this is an automatic slam dunk. The cancellation of all single player DLC for GTA V and the departure of Dan Houser make me think single player just isn't their focus anymore and I wouldn't be surprised if we get a very pretty, very expensive but fairly short and shallow Bonnie and Clyde story to leave more room for an expanded online mode. I really hope I'm wrong tho.

@VenomUK 1000% you'd be forgiven for forgetting the infected even exist by the last couple of episodes their presence is so minimal, kinda takes away from the whole 'Joel letting his personal trauma get in the way of the chance to find a cure for the infection' thing.

The removal of the action sequences involving Ellie and David also really took away from the reveal that he was a wrong 'un as well, absolutely not enough time spent building their tenuous relationship before his heel turn for it to carry any weight.

Bought this for a fiver on my Steam Deck a few months ago, I'm sure these extra bits will come over to that version for no extra cost and when I eventually cave and buy a proper gaming PC I'll be able to enjoy the graphical upgrades as well. As consoles get more expensive and PCs get cheaper and more consumer friendly, SONY really needs to be careful about the value divide between the two platforms...

I still really think they should have split the first game into two seasons. The latter half felt rushed and lost a lot of its emotional heft, splitting into two would have helped this and also allowed for a couple more expanded character focused eps like "Long, Long Time"

@SleeplessKnight it’s really not that deep bud, there’s no agenda, Ciri is the next logical choice for MC after Geralt’s story finished. There are still plenty of games being made with male leads, why does every female playable character have to be justified? It shouldn’t be the case that any character that isn’t a white male has to have good reason not to be.

I’m stoked for this, Witcher 3 is a masterpiece, but as so many others have said, it’s hard to get excited when we all know it’s so far away. Sick trailer nonetheless.

Really up for this, any horror game that tries something new is on my radar. Reminds me of the 2008 Alone in the Dark, which tried so many different things and failed at nearly all of them yet I absolutely loved it.

Absolutely stoked for this, trailer almost looks too good to be true

While I don't think this is true and seems like a weird statement to make, I'm all for smaller worlds in games like these. I'm really enjoying the fact that Dragon's Dogma 2 has a great sense of scale when you're wondering around, but it doesn't actually take that long to get anywhere. The first KC game's map was plenty big enough.

Gameplay looks great but sad there's no Rafa

Yeah, what we've seen of the remake (which is admittedly not a lot) looks a bit too glossy and soulless. I'll probably play it, but I'm expecting it to feel like it's missing something vital. Though if you asked me what that thing is I wouldn't be able to tell you.

@Sequel In exactly the same boat, although I only went for a month of Plus in case Helldivers wasn't my cup of tea. I now know it really is my cup of tea from the three games I've been able to play since I bought it over a week ago, but I'm still feeling a wee bit short changed.

@Slideaway1983 Ah okay, I never had an N64 or Gamecube so my only frame of reference from back then is PS1/2, had no idea Ninty games retailed for so much more!

I think £70 is pretty fair (even though I don't think I've ever actually paid that for a new game, I pre-ordered FF7 Rebirth for £52) you pay around £25 for a brand new 4K movie on Blu Ray that offers on average 2-3 hours of entertainment, by that metric most games offer a much better value prospect.

@Slideaway1983 Did games go back down in price though? Might be misremembering but as a teenager I feel like I always had to save £39.99 for a brand new PS2 game. Don't think I ever bought a brand new PSone game as I only got one right at the end of its lifecycle and all my SNES games were inherited from my uncle.

@Icey664 Which decisions in particular do you want to support?

While I'd definitely buy this if it came out on PlayStation (love Machine Games, enjoy Indy) I'm not wild about the idea of MS dropping out of the console market completely. SONY haven't exactly been treating their players amazingly recently and less competition won't give them the incentive to improve...

Will be grabbing the upgrade mostly for the zippy load times, haptics and for the excuse to play it again now I have an OLED TV (and because for the extra content the upgrade cost is very reasonable)

@RBRTMNZ You're right I had absolutely no idea Spider-Man was that popular, that's nuts!

@Ralizah I agree on a lot of your points, but to say that buying this game isn't funding JK is just not correct. The people who made it, the coders on the ground, were paid for their time regardless of how well it sold, so buying the game to support them doesn't wash. If the game sells well, the higher ups are the ones who reap the rewards and the main outcome is that more HP games get made, which means more money to JK. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but if Tim Cook personally and publicly started funding hate groups, I would think twice about buying another iPhone. I'll never buy a Tesla because Elon is a dangerous piece of ***** (as if I'd ever be able to afford a Tesla).

I also think you're trivialising the effect that JK has had on trans perception, in the UK especially. It is not just a few questionable comments on Twitter, it is a far reaching and insidious campaign to demonise trans people and minimise their right to exist, which she along with people like Glinner are at the very forefront of. This is not a right vs left issue, it's a human rights issue.

But nobody's opinion is going to get changed on this issue in the comments section of a Push Square article. I didn't buy this game because I was the edgy kid who hated HP for the sole reason that everyone else loved it so I never developed an affection for the series. The movies are fine, they make me feel Christmassy. I don't think I would have bought this game even if I had been a huge fan because of the reasons we are all apparently sick of reading about (despite the fact that the first comment on any Hogwarts Legacy article concerning the issue is always from someone mocking the call from the trans community to boycott it).

@RBRTMNZ I dunno man, I think HP might be up there with Spider-Man etc, the cultural impact of it is unprecedented even compared to those other huge properties... but if we have to agree to disagree on that point, I can at least say I wholeheartedly agree with everything else you've said.

@RBRTMNZ I think people's praise of the game might be skewed slightly by their desire to get one over on the 'wokerati' but as far as sales numbers go I think you're vastly underestimating the popularity of the IP. I was trying to get to Edinburgh when the Hogwarts express 'left' the Kings Cross - the place was absolutely mobbed with people who'd turned up just to hear an announcement.

@Terra_Custodes As if your comment wasn't pretentious enough you then use Nietzsche (the edge-lord's favourite philosopher) as an example of a "deep" and "profound" thinker... did you miss the "/s" off the end of your comment by any chance?

New Indy being pony has nothing to do with the fact that the character has grown and matured and Ragnarok's issues (in my opinion) had absolutely nothing to do with plot or character, quite the opposite. The same people who have a problem with Kratos growing and changing are the same people who thought it was unrealistic that Joel, a middle aged man, could be killed by Abby, a woman in the prime of her life who very obviously knows her way around a kettlebell. People change, they get weaker and stronger, they get less angry and their motivations change based on what life throws at them. We should want characters in well written fiction to reflect that reality, right?

@ROTTIEMAN16 I think for me it's the living room real estate that would be taken up for the sake of one or two games. It's extra space in the TV cabinet, another controller lying around, another HDMI port taken up on the TV. Tried Game Pass streaming on my laptop before and even on a fast hard wired connection it didn't impress.

I came close to getting a Series S in the lead up to Starfield, but from what I've read about how it turned out, I'm not sure I'd even pay full price for it now, let alone buy a whole new machine to play it.

Would I have bought an Indiana Jones game if it was on PS5? Probably on sale, yeah. Will I buy an XBox or a PC to play it? Absolutely not. I'm a little disappointed to not be able to play this or Blade, but system sellers they ain't.

The graphics look nice I guess?

Is there even anyone left at Rockstar from the GTA V days??

Ah okay I absolutely got this mixed up with Star Rail, was playing it last night and wondering when I was gonna get to zip around a sci-fi city like Spider-man...

This looks brilliant. I don't get enough time with my PlayStation to put up with Vampyr's glacial pacing, but this looks a bit more my speed.

If this has a decent story it could wash away the bad taste that FE: Engage left in my mouth, here's hoping!

The Ferrystone system was fine, it meant I did more exploring instead of just zipping around the map, I just need a quicker way to move - mounts would be perfect

Starfield for me looks like the epitome of the kind of game I no longer have time to play. Too many systems to get my head around, too many options and too many menus to waste too much time in. Based on recent output, I also have zero faith in Bethesda to deliver such an ambitious game without it feeling like it's all held together with gaffer tape.

There is at least one game coming out on PS5 per month for the rest of the year that I want to play - that's about all my schedule and my wallet can handle right now so I'm not too bothered by SONY keeping their cards close to their chest. What I am bothered about is that MS's showcase basically said one thing over and over - we've got tonnes of money and our strategy is to throw it at developers until they give us exclusivity. Why else would classically SONY centric titles like Persona and Yukuza be debuting at an MS showcase. So much coming to GamePass day one as well, when MS have been fairly open about the fact that GP is not a viable business model long term. It all reeks of just chucking money at the problem until their competitors just roll over.

I trust SONY to have multiple great things in the pipeline considering the caliber of their first party studios. The vast majority of my favourite titles from the last 5 years or so have been SONY exclusives. If they don't? I might finally start to make a dent in my ridiculous backlog...

This looks brilliant, but I remember thinking the same of Vampyr and really didn't get on with it

Day one purchase provided it doesn't release in the same broken state as the first game, which I absolutely loved once they'd patched it up.

Thanks Ben, great review! Wish I still had the time to sink the same hours into these games I used to - whole evenings and afternoons lost to fine tuning CAWs

I can’t believe they unironically said the words “battle pass” in the Suicide Squad segment like it was something to be excited about

First up yeah, agree with everyone else that the banner and title is a significant spoiler and certainly for me took the edge off what should have been an incredibly impactful moment in the episode, please don't turn into Polygon.

I enjoyed this episode and am still enjoying the season, but I agree it is feeling rushed - the first two games could have easily been adapted into four great seasons of TV without harming the pacing. This was really highlighted in the "you're not my daughter, and I sure as hell ain't your dad" line from Joel. This was a true gut punch in the game, after everything they'd been through and how much their relationship had developed, that Joel would say something so hurtful to a vulnerable child was a real character moment, but here it was just fell completely flat because sticking a "3 months later" up on the screen in no way conveys how much their relationship might have developed in that time. Also, I get that Joel being stabbed is a more realistically survivable injury, but that whole last segment lacked the tension and shock value that it should have had, and the reveal of the knife in his stomach was a total damp squib.

The performances still continue to be outstanding, the casting is superb and the nods to the games are still fun to spot, but if the season ends the same way as the first game, I already know it ain't gonna carry the same weight and that's a real shame.

@Daleaf Not counting my chickens, but I’ve ordered a phone at 2pm on a Saturday before and DPD have dropped it off by lunchtime the next day, so quietly hopeful over here

@Daleaf Same for me in the UK, hoping if it doesn't update today they'll be sent out tomorrow with 24hr delivery...

Great news, I thought this was waaaaay further off than it sounds. Maybe an early 2024 release?

Can't wait to be playing this, RE7 and NMS in VR, plus I picked up a copy of GT7 today. So friggin hyped, I'm more excited than I was for the PS5. Just gotta ready myself for the possibility that my bundle won't arrive until the 28th...

Whoa this snuck up on me! Very excited to take Freelancer mode for a spin!!

@starbuck2212 I don't that's what they're doing at all. They're writing and publishing articles because the majority of their audience seems to be interested in this game. Nowhere in the articles to they take any kind of political stance or try to sway opinion on J.K, but they aren't ignorant enough of current social politics to know that this discussion won't come up in the comments, because people on both sides are extremely passionate about this issue. The logical answer to this is their statement at the top of the comments section in which they simply say the views of the site at large do not align with those of Rowling, that's literally all they've said - nothing about boycotting the game or attacking the devs. If anything it is a statement on their ability to separate the art from the artist. Trans rights are a big deal right now whichever way you swing it, and stances have to be communicated in order to safe spaces to be established.

Folks, literally no one is saying you can't buy and enjoy this game and Push Square are still writing and publishing articles about it pretty much every day, why are you all so upset?

The main discourse that I've seen resolves around the simple statement - "if you buy this game, you will be financially supporting a bigot", this is categorically true, whether you agree with Rowling's beliefs or not. Vote with your wallets people, I know I will.

January and March are way too stacked for me to consider picking this up in Feb, money would be better spent making a donation to the Trevor Project instead.

@theheadofabroom The quality of his American accent and his performances in general have been on a steady decline since The Wire IMO

@PegasusActual93 It changed the way I played the first game for sure. Have been playing these games since Hitman 2 and for each one I ran through each level once, then went back and replayed them as I chose, some much more than others. With the episodic model, I had to play the same level over and over, learning every detail better than I ever did with the earlier games where I picked and chose which levels I replayed after I'd finished them all. Every episode also had to be a large, fully fledged mission in order to justify the wait, they couldn't really do the smaller, simpler levels like Hawke's bay.

@xx_PharsydeChemist_x Oh totally, and the fact that you hold this opinion that loads of other people share just emphasises how sad it is that this creative team seems to be being cut down in its prime. I really vibed with its politics, but the writing and gameplay just didn't quite land for me. Very aware that I'm in the minority and I have every intention of giving it another go if I ever find myself with nothing to play.

Never been able to understand why DE is held in quite such high regard but it obviously struck a chord with a lot of folks and I can't deny it was unique in its approach, regardless this whole situation just sounds gross and messy

Disappointing to have to wait but it's balanced out by getting a solid release date. Really, really buzzing for this.

Hopefully they do a bit more work on optimising the controls for a pad. Used to play hours of M&B on PC and on mouse and keyboard it was fantastic. The PS4 version was pretty much unplayable with the weird analogue stick controls.

I had completely forgotten this game existed until every gaming news outlet on the internet wrote an article about the script memes. I'd call that a marketing win.

@nessisonett Crap story teller or not, Lorraine Pascal's chocolate chip cookie recipe is outrageously good.