It's obviously going to get worse with Xbox retreating from the market. Sony have always behaved identically when in a position of market power.
You don't have to pay for Gamepass and can buy the games separately as you would any other title, but what will you all do when Sony whack up the price of the PS6 and even their basic level of PS+ that you need for online play? That's going to be doubled sooner or later.
@Kidfunkadelic83 yup played them all since I got the original Xbox at launch getting on for a quarter century ago.
Totally agree that I got some entertainment out of them sure, but “they ain’t all that”.
Never understood the hype. They 7 or 8 out of tens. Just “good”, but not the legendary system selling classics they are made out to be.
The original was ruined by copy-paste repetitive padding scenery, where you appeared to run down the same sections dozens of times, and performance issues were terrible, I remember 3 chugging to a slide show.
Half Life 2, Titanfall 2, or the first of the Wolfenstein remakes in the 2010’s they most certainly are not.
As a lover of AC-type games, and now that I've seen more reviews, I may consider buying it rather than "waiting for a sale" as I previously planned.
Trouble is, and very similar to Casco's situation, we are going off for a weeks holiday, so if I buy it now and start playing, I will have forgotten the controls by the time I get back.
I took a long break from GoT for some reason or another and when I went back a few months later I couldn't remember how to play, or what all the darn things in the menus that I'd been upgrading were about.
That said, if you think a crime was committed, you can report it. The police will tell you it doesn't constitute an offence.
As for my ex, or my current partner, and inciting me to "stalk" them, what an "odd" thing to come out with. Not cool.
I mean I could ask my missus "are you making me breakfast in bed tomorrow"? If I ask her twice, is that "menacing and stalking"?! The only crime will be when she slaps me.
Let's keep this in context. We are talking about a guy politely asking video game developers in a public place, when their next game trailer is coming out. Completely legal to film and do that, as there is "no expectation of privacy" in a public place. To me that's just "journalism".
As usual with the internet, there is no nuance or middle ground. Everything has to be blown up to or portrayed to extremes.
I'm going to have to disagree here. That is not "harassment". I actually disapprove of that word being used/abused in that manner.
It diminishes the seriousness of real harassment, in the same way over-abuse of the word "racist" has turned it into a meaningless phrase.
What I saw in the linked video wasn't harassment. It seemed like comedy. Non-aggressive, non-threatening, non-abusive, polite, no boundaries crossed.
Actually asking someone questions in the street like that was common practise for mainstream journalists back in the days before they copied and pasted everything from Twitter.
Roger Cook would laugh at that and any suggestion that was anything other than harmless light-hearted fun.
I smelt the brown stuff back when the original story was published in May.
The suspicions only grew over time, and certainly factored into my decision to not buy the latest game.
These are not people I'm going to trust with my money. If they want me to pay full-whack at launch, I need some guarantee that the product will be supported and issues fixed.
Otherwise they encourage gamers to develop a habit of waiting a year and buying the game when half price in a sale. That's not in the best interests of the industry is it, as it costs them 50% of revenue.
I have bought and buy many games on the assumption of future support via Pro/Next Gen patches, and when not in perfect shape at launch, on the expectation of patches that will rectify it.
That's something I need to stop doing, or at least selectively stop doing depending on the developer/publisher involved.
@kmtrain83 I currently have my PC and NVidia Shield Connected via Ethernet.
I've tried the Shield and my TV's built in App with Wifi (5Ghz) and couldn't detect any difference versus plugging in an ethernet cable.
That's with them in the same room as my router.
I've had an expensive gaming router of the type with 6 aerials on it, and am now just using the Virgin Hub, and I've noticed no difference between the two.
I don't think distance from the router makes a massive difference so long as you aren't on the edge where the signal really starts to breakdown.
E.g. I took my Portal to my brothers house, and streamed from my PS5 that was back in my house. His router was upstairs and I was downstairs and Fallout 4 ran sweet at 60fps. That's "sweet" by Portal standards.... GF Now feels generations ahead of Portal in terms of latency and image quality/compression/stability. It's reached the point where I will now happily buy PC games exclusively to play via GF Now. Won't even install them on my PC.
@KoopaTheGamer Yeah Stadia was dead in the water the day it was released. I however have GF Now Ultimate.
It absolutely kicks the living brown stuff out of my PS5 Pro.
The business model is good too (unlike Stadia). You can pick up PC copies of AAA titles for £40 to £50 at launch, and a month of GF Now Ultimate is £20.
So a game + month of GF Now is less than the cost of the PS5 version of the game. Plus you don't have to spend £800 (4 years worth of GF Now Ultimate) on a console when you can use an app on your smart TV, or pay £60 a year rip-off subscription for Cloud Saves and Online Play.
Oh and it's not sucking tonnes of electricity out of the wall or pumping out heat/noise.
With ADSL now being phased out in favour of Fibre, it won't be long before most UK homes have the ideal connection for cloud gaming.
Pachter may not be wrong. Sony's has some great IP's and in my view should be following after Microsoft and focussing on being a publisher.
The walled garden hardware model/PSN network ecosystem is very shaky and getting more unstable by the day.
@ilyn sounds like there is minimal software dead zone in that game.
Basically your pad is in the early stages of stick drift. You don’t notice it in other games because by default the developers have configured it with a small software dead zone that is wider than the drift deflection of your sticks.
The less dead zone the better as it makes controls more predictable and responsive, but can lead to drift issues with those pads that are in the early stages of failure.
A lot of games have an option to increase or decrease the dead zones in their control settings, if your stick is starting to drift, and it sounds like it is, then you will need to adjust these settings in games that have a minimal dead zone by default.
One of the reasons I prefer the Xbox controller and use them with my PC/Shield in preference to a PS controller.
Got a double battery pack and charger plus extra batteries from Amazon for pennies, and each charge will last the equivalent of 6 PS pad charges, and you can swap the battery in ten seconds.
The other thing that is bad about the PS5 pad is the battery management system that lies to stop you topping it off. You know the pad is down to 60% but it will report full and won’t charge. Presumably to extend battery health.
Then suddenly it dive bombs after an hour of play the next day. Hope a removable battery wouldn’t behave that way.
For me, Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit is about going on an adventure.
I didn't like the Shadow of Mordor due to the small self-contained world.
Hogwarts is a classic example of that design, but that for me was well suited to the franchise which did take place in a relatively confined area.
Rather than a big open world, I'd want an LOTR game to be set along a narrow corridor that for example was one tenth of the height of Skyrim's map, but 30 times wider as you journey from one side to the other, and encountering a wide variety of terrain, impasses and strange creatures along the way.
The "minor" revisions to the PS4 and PS4 Pro were actually very significant, to the point that I sold my old console and purchased a new one.
The money I lost during that process was well worth it for the reduction in fan noise. A good value upgrade in my opinion.
Fortunately, the fan noise on my PS5 and PS5 pro is so low that I don’t notice it. At no point is it intrusive.
So in this case an improvement in efficiency isn’t something that interests me to the point that I’d ever be looking to buy another. That's if it even reduces heat and noise.
Bully honestly wasn't that good, or rather to be fair, it was decent but just didn't have as widespread appeal and that cultural zeitgeist thing that GTA has.
Resources are going to be focussed where they offer the best return for investors.
Plus yes, it's a minefield given the current social politics situation. I think they'd have to pull their punches and it would therefore fall short of the game it could have been.
That's actually a concern many have RE GTA 6, let alone a game based in a school!
I've always felt EA was in a risky position, as they were highly dependent on Sports licences that they could potentially lose each time the rights come up for renewal.
If you buy Bethesda, you own the IP's permanently, but if you buy EA, their big IP'S are only on loan temporarily.
Not sure I'd want to invest, not unless I had other motives.
I consider it a lightning in a bottle type game, where the stars aligned and it all came together just right at the right time.
Attempts at creating a follow up will never quite hit the mark. The original brains are better off pursuing a fresh new idea, rather than iterating for the sake of it in the pursuit of an easy pay day.
You smell a 7/10 in these situations, slightly detracting from the legacy of the original.
Different genre but I felt thats what Tacoma did with Gone Home.
@Questionable_Duck Sony aren't leaving money on the table. If they can shift a few hundred thousand copies of an old game on Xbox at £70 plus micro transaction sales, that's a tidy bit of revenue.
That's a whole lot different to launching a prime time, genre leading AAA title on a dying backwater system that will only be a small fraction of total sales.
You want the big explosive release on the top platforms.
As someone who sold their XSX recently, I find it odd they are releasing first on a dead platform, that even hardcore Xbox fans from 2002 like me are offloading, and that no one is buying at the new jacked up prices.
The original was a thinly veiled AC game, that gamers gave a pass due to pretentious up-its-own-backside artistic elements.
The veil didn't fool me, and I saw through their attempts at hiding the underlying systems.
Sorry to point out the emperor's clothing situation.
Not that being a thinly veiled AC game is a bad thing, just not something I'm paying full whack for when I have countless similar games on backlog and can wait for discounts.
Not sure why everyone is attacking the Pro. Maybe jealousy?
Base PS5 games ran like absolute trash in most cases, we desperately needed more power. Yet no criticism of base PS5, just rose tinted specs acting like games aren’t a bungling catastrophe on it.
Of course the Pro is badly supported in the same way the base model is/was badly supported.
The best running PS5 games were cross gen PS4 titles after all.
It’s a developer issue in both cases. Stop rewarding them with your money.
As someone who does not buy games on launch day, and has limited gaming time anyway so I am slow to complete them, spoilers are always a risk irrespective of retail copies leaking or early paid access.
I don’t really view gaming content on social media outside of YouTube at least, and most spoilers for me are via YouTube thumbnails in my home (not sub) feed. My solution is simply to click the option to not recommend channels anymore when I see them doing that.
@Darude84 Push Square usually say games are fine or run nice and smooth, then a day later Digital Foundry show frame-rate and frame-time graphs of an absolute bungling slide show catastrophe.
If Push Square reviewers who are insensitive to such problems (which is fair enough), are noticing an issue to the point they'd mark it down, I'd say now is the time to sit up and take notice!
Still waiting for the promised PS5 Pro patch that this site reported would fix the busted Silent Hill 2 on my system.
Not going to hold breath on the hitching in this game being fixed. Think in this case I will sit back and they can wake me up when they’ve fixed their game. Same with Borderlands.
@Rich33 agree. The product is fundamentally broken.
If you got home from the shop with a new Blu Ray movie and it stuttered and often turned into a power point unless you reset your Blu Ray player, it would be returned to the store for a full refund.
That would be a 0/10.
Why are we in the gaming world so tolerant of this?
This is not the no-brainer "why didn't they put something so obvious in from the start" issue people think it is.
The game is already struggling to run and hit its frame rate targets. Even without the memory leak that leads to slide show frame rates, benchmarks on fresh loads show the game is quite commonly dropping below 60fps, albeit staying within the PS5's narrow VRR window (dropping to mid-50's etc).
The problem is that narrow FOV's are often used as a cheeky way of reducing the load on the system. Less of the world is rendered at a time, thereby reducing how intensive the game is on the console.
So if you increase the FOV, the frame rate drops, and in this case it could start dropping it down below the PS5's VRR window leading to judder.
@Dimey you have to view in terms of "Economics" rather than your "perception". How it looks from the ground level in our shoes, is not what is happening when you step back and look at the macro picture.
From the "Economics" perspective you have to consider that during the pandemic, the Government borrowed/printed large quantities of money.
That made the pounds in your pocket worth less.
You perceive it as everything going up in price. But it is not! The cost of a PS5 isn't going up, rather than the value of your money is going down so you need more of it to buy the same things!
You would have obviously had pay rises over that period too of course, I had around 4% per year so yes my salary didn't keep up. My salary is therefore about 10% down on spending power versus 2020.
So yes you absolutely are poorer as a result of economic decisions made from 2020 to 2022. That sucks, but it is not Sony's fault.
Their PS5 is the same price or cheaper than it was at launch. It's just that you are poorer now and your money worth less, because you took on billions in debt during the pandemic and are paying it off the easy way - via the "inflation tax" rather than a direct tax.
@Shepherd_Tallon I still maintain that the SNES version of MK was the best.
From MK64-on it was ruined by ridiculously large and wide tracks and lost that karting feel and the need to power slide to get around tight corners - now you power slide around gaping wide turns, whilst yawning just to get a boost.
It's all about RNG weapons, boosting and short cuts now. You aren't really "driving" anymore.
The "world" sections of the Switch 2 game are just pure unadulterated garbage. Nintendo have taken everything I didn't like about recent games and made it worse.
What did I pay for my original PS5 Digital at launch?
£360?
Thanks to the rampant inflation post-pandemic, that is £460 in today's money?
Correct me if those numbers are wrong.
So paying £339 for the Digital model today is a significant price cut versus launch.
That's a 30% price cut or something?
I'd also note that the same math demonstrates that the "price increases" everyone is complaining about, are actually lower than inflation. So Sony haven't increased the price of the PS5 at all. It's always been cheaper than it was at launch in real terms.
When ever broken games are released, there are always a small group (<10%) who miraculously don't ("claim" they don't) experience issues even when the developers acknowledge they exist.
It's a big coincidence that so many game reviewers fall into that group
I would like to see some challenges under the UK sale of goods act as to what constitutes "fit for purpose" in game.
Having to restart it would seem to fail that test. I'd like someone to test issues like stutter and screen tearing too, as they would absolutely apply under the act if it was a new television exhibiting those issues due to a fault with the panel.
*Televisions *DVD and Blu Ray Players *DVD and Blu Ray discs *Streaming Boxes *Cable/Satellite Boxes
All would be deemed "not fit for purpose" under the act if the image juddered or tore.
*Gaming
As long as it reaches the menu screen that's enough...
All the problems were known long before launch. No one seriously believes that the developers only just discovered this.
The notorious issues with the engine go back a long way too.
This was sold in full knowledge.
Yes we all know the old adage about when you buy at launch you pay the highest price it will ever be, for the worst version that will ever exist, but that doesn't make this behaviour from publishers and developers any less unethical.
@Ken_Kaniff yes actually old-fashioned television is the only way you can currently play it on PS5.
I didn’t read the article properly, downloaded the demo, and was bitterly disappointed to discover that it wouldn’t work with PSVR.
Hopefully push square will let us know when the virtual reality patch for the demo goes live, because I have uninstalled it and won’t be randomly checking. I will soon forget all about it otherwise.
I wonder how many people realise or care that unlocked frame rate modes in games increase power consumption and heat etc?
Probably no one.
I suppose power only matters if one is playing in an RV or something whilst running on battery, but I can't imagine people wasting their precious power on a PS5 versus just having a Switch in that scenario.
I already had a native 4k, 60fps Ultra version of the original unmolested game on PC.
I was after more than just a few additional modern graphical techniques layered over the top.
Appreciate the purists who only had the 1080p 30fps version on PS4 wanted the PC version with brass knobs on, but I at least am happy with a significant redesign.
By chance I watched a Digital Foundry video about the PC version and they mentioned that once you get into the open world on PS5 Pro, the frame rate plummets.
The early-game footage I saw in some benchmarks clearly wasn't reflective of the later-game experience.
A lot of people are reporting a memory leak too, such that you have to keep rebooting the game (like Oblivion) otherwise it enters slideshow territory.
Add me to the list of "picking it up half price in the sale", but even then, only IF it is fixed and IF I am even still interested by then (new games are releasing all the time, so if it misses the boat....bad luck Gearbox).
I've actually gone back and been playing Borderlands 2.
If the game ran properly, I'd have had no issue with £70. As I say, I was about to buy it right now.
The main game is just way too big for me. I'm still going back to Valhalla and Mirage, and will be dipping in and out of Shadows for 5 years + no doubt.
Heck I have not even started the Syndicate DLC's yet. Still playing that game as well.
Too many side activities and collectathons, which I find quite enjoyable but it's not compelling enough to stop me diverting to other new games.
So I tend to play on and off sporadically over years.
@themightyant exactly and these drives are very likely to be transferable to the PS6, and even if that is not the case, one can buy a USB adapter/housing and use as a high speed external drive for ones PC/Laptop.
When I upgraded my PS expansion from 1 to 2tb, I put the 1tb in a new Mini PC that had only come with 256gb.
So a pretty sound investment when as you say, it's less than the cost of a game.
Those who install one or two games that they are currently playing, and delete them when they are done.
And
Those who like to install practically everything and have many many games on the go (me).
I suspect the latter group all buy a 1 or 2 TB expansion drive anyway because the internal storage is inadequate regardless of whether Sony have trimmed a tiny bit off.
I suppose you could argue that the first group don’t really want to incur a price increase on the console and would rather sacrifice a tiny bit of storage space that they wouldn’t use anyway.
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Re: 'Told You So': Ex-FTC Chair Lina Khan Is Having the Last Laugh Over Xbox's Activision Acquisition
It's obviously going to get worse with Xbox retreating from the market. Sony have always behaved identically when in a position of market power.
You don't have to pay for Gamepass and can buy the games separately as you would any other title, but what will you all do when Sony whack up the price of the PS6 and even their basic level of PS+ that you need for online play? That's going to be doubled sooner or later.
Re: Talking Point: Are You Getting Sick of Sony's Supposedly 'Samey' Approach to Story Telling?
What games?
Only Sony first party games I've bought this gen are Forbidden West over three years ago, and I took the gamble and just bought GoY.
Even if they told identical stories, I'd hardly find it repetitive!
They'd have to release a lot more games that interest me before we'd ever reach a point of too similar story themes!
Re: Halo: Combat Evolved Remake Could Be the Final Frontier for Xbox on PS5
@Kidfunkadelic83 yup played them all since I got the original Xbox at launch getting on for a quarter century ago.
Totally agree that I got some entertainment out of them sure, but “they ain’t all that”.
Never understood the hype. They 7 or 8 out of tens. Just “good”, but not the legendary system selling classics they are made out to be.
The original was ruined by copy-paste repetitive padding scenery, where you appeared to run down the same sections dozens of times, and performance issues were terrible, I remember 3 chugging to a slide show.
Half Life 2, Titanfall 2, or the first of the Wolfenstein remakes in the 2010’s they most certainly are not.
Re: Poll: Are You Playing Ghost of Yotei?
As a lover of AC-type games, and now that I've seen more reviews, I may consider buying it rather than "waiting for a sale" as I previously planned.
Trouble is, and very similar to Casco's situation, we are going off for a weeks holiday, so if I buy it now and start playing, I will have forgotten the controls by the time I get back.
I took a long break from GoT for some reason or another and when I went back a few months later I couldn't remember how to play, or what all the darn things in the menus that I'd been upgrading were about.
Re: Don't Be Like This GTA 6 'Fan' Who Flew to Scotland Just to Harass Rockstar Staff
@Aeralto "menacing" and "stalking" strangers?
What video did you watch?
He just asked some people some polite questions!
That said, if you think a crime was committed, you can report it. The police will tell you it doesn't constitute an offence.
As for my ex, or my current partner, and inciting me to "stalk" them, what an "odd" thing to come out with. Not cool.
I mean I could ask my missus "are you making me breakfast in bed tomorrow"? If I ask her twice, is that "menacing and stalking"?! The only crime will be when she slaps me.
Let's keep this in context. We are talking about a guy politely asking video game developers in a public place, when their next game trailer is coming out. Completely legal to film and do that, as there is "no expectation of privacy" in a public place. To me that's just "journalism".
As usual with the internet, there is no nuance or middle ground. Everything has to be blown up to or portrayed to extremes.
Re: Don't Be Like This GTA 6 'Fan' Who Flew to Scotland Just to Harass Rockstar Staff
I'm going to have to disagree here. That is not "harassment". I actually disapprove of that word being used/abused in that manner.
It diminishes the seriousness of real harassment, in the same way over-abuse of the word "racist" has turned it into a meaningless phrase.
What I saw in the linked video wasn't harassment. It seemed like comedy. Non-aggressive, non-threatening, non-abusive, polite, no boundaries crossed.
Actually asking someone questions in the street like that was common practise for mainstream journalists back in the days before they copied and pasted everything from Twitter.
Roger Cook would laugh at that and any suggestion that was anything other than harmless light-hearted fun.
Re: Silent Hill 2's Overdue PS5 Pro Fixes Now in Konami's Hands
I smelt the brown stuff back when the original story was published in May.
The suspicions only grew over time, and certainly factored into my decision to not buy the latest game.
These are not people I'm going to trust with my money. If they want me to pay full-whack at launch, I need some guarantee that the product will be supported and issues fixed.
Otherwise they encourage gamers to develop a habit of waiting a year and buying the game when half price in a sale. That's not in the best interests of the industry is it, as it costs them 50% of revenue.
I have bought and buy many games on the assumption of future support via Pro/Next Gen patches, and when not in perfect shape at launch, on the expectation of patches that will rectify it.
That's something I need to stop doing, or at least selectively stop doing depending on the developer/publisher involved.
Re: Sony Is a 'Terrible Company' That's 'Blowing It in the Games Business', Says Michael Pachter
@kmtrain83 I currently have my PC and NVidia Shield Connected via Ethernet.
I've tried the Shield and my TV's built in App with Wifi (5Ghz) and couldn't detect any difference versus plugging in an ethernet cable.
That's with them in the same room as my router.
I've had an expensive gaming router of the type with 6 aerials on it, and am now just using the Virgin Hub, and I've noticed no difference between the two.
I don't think distance from the router makes a massive difference so long as you aren't on the edge where the signal really starts to breakdown.
E.g. I took my Portal to my brothers house, and streamed from my PS5 that was back in my house. His router was upstairs and I was downstairs and Fallout 4 ran sweet at 60fps. That's "sweet" by Portal standards.... GF Now feels generations ahead of Portal in terms of latency and image quality/compression/stability. It's reached the point where I will now happily buy PC games exclusively to play via GF Now. Won't even install them on my PC.
Re: Sony Is a 'Terrible Company' That's 'Blowing It in the Games Business', Says Michael Pachter
@KoopaTheGamer Yeah Stadia was dead in the water the day it was released. I however have GF Now Ultimate.
It absolutely kicks the living brown stuff out of my PS5 Pro.
The business model is good too (unlike Stadia). You can pick up PC copies of AAA titles for £40 to £50 at launch, and a month of GF Now Ultimate is £20.
So a game + month of GF Now is less than the cost of the PS5 version of the game. Plus you don't have to spend £800 (4 years worth of GF Now Ultimate) on a console when you can use an app on your smart TV, or pay £60 a year rip-off subscription for Cloud Saves and Online Play.
Oh and it's not sucking tonnes of electricity out of the wall or pumping out heat/noise.
With ADSL now being phased out in favour of Fibre, it won't be long before most UK homes have the ideal connection for cloud gaming.
Pachter may not be wrong. Sony's has some great IP's and in my view should be following after Microsoft and focussing on being a publisher.
The walled garden hardware model/PSN network ecosystem is very shaky and getting more unstable by the day.
People don't want to hear this of course.
Re: Rumour: New PS5 DualSense Controller Will Feature a Removable Battery
@ilyn sounds like there is minimal software dead zone in that game.
Basically your pad is in the early stages of stick drift. You don’t notice it in other games because by default the developers have configured it with a small software dead zone that is wider than the drift deflection of your sticks.
The less dead zone the better as it makes controls more predictable and responsive, but can lead to drift issues with those pads that are in the early stages of failure.
A lot of games have an option to increase or decrease the dead zones in their control settings, if your stick is starting to drift, and it sounds like it is, then you will need to adjust these settings in games that have a minimal dead zone by default.
Re: Bethesda Finally Announces Oblivion Remastered Physical Edition Is Real
The argument I use for not caring about physical media, is that you are only preserving a broken incomplete version of the game on the disc.
In this case though, the current live version on the servers is no better!
Appalling how they haven’t fixed it, whereas as Borderlands 4 was sorted in a couple of weeks on PS and runs like a dream now.
Re: Rumour: New PS5 DualSense Controller Will Feature a Removable Battery
One of the reasons I prefer the Xbox controller and use them with my PC/Shield in preference to a PS controller.
Got a double battery pack and charger plus extra batteries from Amazon for pennies, and each charge will last the equivalent of 6 PS pad charges, and you can swap the battery in ten seconds.
The other thing that is bad about the PS5 pad is the battery management system that lies to stop you topping it off. You know the pad is down to 60% but it will report full and won’t charge. Presumably to extend battery health.
Then suddenly it dive bombs after an hour of play the next day. Hope a removable battery wouldn’t behave that way.
Awful pad.
Re: Rumour: The Lord of the Rings Is Getting a Game to 'Compete with Hogwarts Legacy'
For me, Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit is about going on an adventure.
I didn't like the Shadow of Mordor due to the small self-contained world.
Hogwarts is a classic example of that design, but that for me was well suited to the franchise which did take place in a relatively confined area.
Rather than a big open world, I'd want an LOTR game to be set along a narrow corridor that for example was one tenth of the height of Skyrim's map, but 30 times wider as you journey from one side to the other, and encountering a wide variety of terrain, impasses and strange creatures along the way.
Re: Revised PS5 Pro Model Reportedly Coming Soon in Europe, But Don't Expect Much
The "minor" revisions to the PS4 and PS4 Pro were actually very significant, to the point that I sold my old console and purchased a new one.
The money I lost during that process was well worth it for the reduction in fan noise. A good value upgrade in my opinion.
Fortunately, the fan noise on my PS5 and PS5 pro is so low that I don’t notice it. At no point is it intrusive.
So in this case an improvement in efficiency isn’t something that interests me to the point that I’d ever be looking to buy another. That's if it even reduces heat and noise.
Re: Why Did We Never Get Bully 2? Rockstar Co-Founder Dan Houser Explains
A lot of posters have hit the nails on the head.
Bully honestly wasn't that good, or rather to be fair, it was decent but just didn't have as widespread appeal and that cultural zeitgeist thing that GTA has.
Resources are going to be focussed where they offer the best return for investors.
Plus yes, it's a minefield given the current social politics situation. I think they'd have to pull their punches and it would therefore fall short of the game it could have been.
That's actually a concern many have RE GTA 6, let alone a game based in a school!
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? - Issue 600
Purchased Borderlands 4 following the recent patch a day or two back.
Looks and runs like a dream on my Pro, with the classic addictive Borderlands gameplay.
Having a good weekend with it. Amazed they fixed it so quickly.
Re: Publisher EA Poised to Go Private as 'Advanced Talks' of $50 Billion Buyout Emerge
I've always felt EA was in a risky position, as they were highly dependent on Sports licences that they could potentially lose each time the rights come up for renewal.
If you buy Bethesda, you own the IP's permanently, but if you buy EA, their big IP'S are only on loan temporarily.
Not sure I'd want to invest, not unless I had other motives.
Re: The Last of Us 2 Is Now Available on PS Plus Extra on PS5, PS4
If you have never played The Last of Us games, or never watched The Matrix movie series, take my advice...
Do the first one and then quit. You will never know how much you owe me for that advice. Do not be tempted by the sequels.
Sony are just like Nick O'Teen and will try to tempt you into giving it a go, holding out an open packet of Extra and saying "go on, just try one".
Do not listen to them! I can see the harms those products will do to you.
Re: Controversial Disco Elysium Follow-Up Zero Parades Confirmed for PS5 in 2026
I consider it a lightning in a bottle type game, where the stars aligned and it all came together just right at the right time.
Attempts at creating a follow up will never quite hit the mark. The original brains are better off pursuing a fresh new idea, rather than iterating for the sake of it in the pursuit of an easy pay day.
You smell a 7/10 in these situations, slightly detracting from the legacy of the original.
Different genre but I felt thats what Tacoma did with Gone Home.
Re: Poll: Are You Playing Silent Hill F?
I passed on this one. Not finished SH2 yet as I'm awaiting a Pro patch.
Was disappointed by the Pro support in this one too.
But to be honest it's mainly the setting and protagonist. Doesn't give me that Twin Peaks kind of vibe.
I'm sure it has a good atmosphere for those who are into that kind of thing, but it's not the atmosphere I was looking for.
Re: Forza Horizon 6 Announced, But Not on PS5 at Launch
@Questionable_Duck you are getting hung up on semantics.
There is a difference between being a dead platform in terms of the lead platform for a timed exclusive release of a massive AAA game…
And…
Being a dead platform for being a dumping ground for old third party titles just to milk a few final bucks out of them.
The XSX is not a dead platform for the latter, but it absolutely is dead in the water for the former. That’s why I dumped mine.
This launch strategy will harm Forza, not help it.
Re: Forza Horizon 6 Announced, But Not on PS5 at Launch
@Questionable_Duck Sony aren't leaving money on the table. If they can shift a few hundred thousand copies of an old game on Xbox at £70 plus micro transaction sales, that's a tidy bit of revenue.
That's a whole lot different to launching a prime time, genre leading AAA title on a dying backwater system that will only be a small fraction of total sales.
You want the big explosive release on the top platforms.
Re: Forza Horizon 6 Announced, But Not on PS5 at Launch
As someone who sold their XSX recently, I find it odd they are releasing first on a dead platform, that even hardcore Xbox fans from 2002 like me are offloading, and that no one is buying at the new jacked up prices.
Re: PS5 Is the Most Successful Console in PlayStation History, States Sony
Congrats to them.
As others have said I'm not sure how sustainable this is in the long run but like MS, they have a decent software catalogue in their stable.
Still amazing PS5 has done so well during the "lost generation" as I call it.
Suspect the collapse of their rival helped a lot.
Re: Ghost of Yotei (PS5) - The Greatest Sucker Punch Game Ever
This is a "wait for sale" for me.
The original was a thinly veiled AC game, that gamers gave a pass due to pretentious up-its-own-backside artistic elements.
The veil didn't fool me, and I saw through their attempts at hiding the underlying systems.
Sorry to point out the emperor's clothing situation.
Not that being a thinly veiled AC game is a bad thing, just not something I'm paying full whack for when I have countless similar games on backlog and can wait for discounts.
Re: First Wolverine PS5 Gameplay Is Incredibly Gory, Set for Fall 2026
Zero interest in this. Not into comics/Marvel so the big reveal falls flat.
This remains the Generation of Third Party titles to me.
Re: Is This the First Tease of Next-Gen PS6 Graphics?
Not wishing to be the kill joy.....
A PS6 won't do anything a high end PC isn't doing now.
Just spend £20 on a month of Geforce Now ultimate and you can experience it now.
Plus, as others have said, I see the same things every generation, and they never deliver.
Re: PS5 Pro Users Starting to Feel a Little Shortchanged After Poor or Absent Support
Not sure why everyone is attacking the Pro. Maybe jealousy?
Base PS5 games ran like absolute trash in most cases, we desperately needed more power. Yet no criticism of base PS5, just rose tinted specs acting like games aren’t a bungling catastrophe on it.
Of course the Pro is badly supported in the same way the base model is/was badly supported.
The best running PS5 games were cross gen PS4 titles after all.
It’s a developer issue in both cases. Stop rewarding them with your money.
Re: Beware! Silent Hill F PS5 Spoilers Could Soon Start Seeping Online
As someone who does not buy games on launch day, and has limited gaming time anyway so I am slow to complete them, spoilers are always a risk irrespective of retail copies leaking or early paid access.
I don’t really view gaming content on social media outside of YouTube at least, and most spoilers for me are via YouTube thumbnails in my home (not sub) feed. My solution is simply to click the option to not recommend channels anymore when I see them doing that.
Re: Silent Hill F (PS5) - Brutal Survival Horror Walks a New Path
@Darude84 Push Square usually say games are fine or run nice and smooth, then a day later Digital Foundry show frame-rate and frame-time graphs of an absolute bungling slide show catastrophe.
If Push Square reviewers who are insensitive to such problems (which is fair enough), are noticing an issue to the point they'd mark it down, I'd say now is the time to sit up and take notice!
Re: Silent Hill F (PS5) - Brutal Survival Horror Walks a New Path
Still waiting for the promised PS5 Pro patch that this site reported would fix the busted Silent Hill 2 on my system.
Not going to hold breath on the hitching in this game being fixed. Think in this case I will sit back and they can wake me up when they’ve fixed their game. Same with Borderlands.
Rarely do such issue get fully rectified.
Re: Borderlands 4 (PS5) - A Chaotic Return That Shoots Straight, Even if Its Performance Stutters
@Rich33 agree. The product is fundamentally broken.
If you got home from the shop with a new Blu Ray movie and it stuttered and often turned into a power point unless you reset your Blu Ray player, it would be returned to the store for a full refund.
That would be a 0/10.
Why are we in the gaming world so tolerant of this?
Re: Borderlands 4 Dev 'Exploring' FOV Sliders on PS5 Following Player Feedback
This is not the no-brainer "why didn't they put something so obvious in from the start" issue people think it is.
The game is already struggling to run and hit its frame rate targets. Even without the memory leak that leads to slide show frame rates, benchmarks on fresh loads show the game is quite commonly dropping below 60fps, albeit staying within the PS5's narrow VRR window (dropping to mid-50's etc).
The problem is that narrow FOV's are often used as a cheeky way of reducing the load on the system. Less of the world is rendered at a time, thereby reducing how intensive the game is on the console.
So if you increase the FOV, the frame rate drops, and in this case it could start dropping it down below the PS5's VRR window leading to judder.
Re: Sony Puts PS5 on Sale for Once, a £90 Saving in the UK
@Dimey you have to view in terms of "Economics" rather than your "perception". How it looks from the ground level in our shoes, is not what is happening when you step back and look at the macro picture.
From the "Economics" perspective you have to consider that during the pandemic, the Government borrowed/printed large quantities of money.
That made the pounds in your pocket worth less.
You perceive it as everything going up in price. But it is not! The cost of a PS5 isn't going up, rather than the value of your money is going down so you need more of it to buy the same things!
You would have obviously had pay rises over that period too of course, I had around 4% per year so yes my salary didn't keep up. My salary is therefore about 10% down on spending power versus 2020.
So yes you absolutely are poorer as a result of economic decisions made from 2020 to 2022. That sucks, but it is not Sony's fault.
Their PS5 is the same price or cheaper than it was at launch. It's just that you are poorer now and your money worth less, because you took on billions in debt during the pandemic and are paying it off the easy way - via the "inflation tax" rather than a direct tax.
Re: In Spain, the PS5 Is Starting to Outsell the Switch 2 Again
@Shepherd_Tallon I still maintain that the SNES version of MK was the best.
From MK64-on it was ruined by ridiculously large and wide tracks and lost that karting feel and the need to power slide to get around tight corners - now you power slide around gaping wide turns, whilst yawning just to get a boost.
It's all about RNG weapons, boosting and short cuts now. You aren't really "driving" anymore.
The "world" sections of the Switch 2 game are just pure unadulterated garbage. Nintendo have taken everything I didn't like about recent games and made it worse.
Re: Sony Puts PS5 on Sale for Once, a £90 Saving in the UK
What did I pay for my original PS5 Digital at launch?
£360?
Thanks to the rampant inflation post-pandemic, that is £460 in today's money?
Correct me if those numbers are wrong.
So paying £339 for the Digital model today is a significant price cut versus launch.
That's a 30% price cut or something?
I'd also note that the same math demonstrates that the "price increases" everyone is complaining about, are actually lower than inflation. So Sony haven't increased the price of the PS5 at all. It's always been cheaper than it was at launch in real terms.
Re: In Spain, the PS5 Is Starting to Outsell the Switch 2 Again
I've been underwhelmed by mine. Mario Kart especially was a total bust. Played it for a couple of hours and quit.
Came with the console but I'd have cried if I'd paid full price for that dross.
Didn't buy DK as I don't like the franchise and it was obviously a Switch 1 game that was reheated in the microwave for a minute.
Not seeing many reasons to buy one at the moment.
Re: 'Quit Game and Restart': PS5 Pro Has the Worst Version of Borderlands 4
When ever broken games are released, there are always a small group (<10%) who miraculously don't ("claim" they don't) experience issues even when the developers acknowledge they exist.
It's a big coincidence that so many game reviewers fall into that group
I would like to see some challenges under the UK sale of goods act as to what constitutes "fit for purpose" in game.
Having to restart it would seem to fail that test. I'd like someone to test issues like stutter and screen tearing too, as they would absolutely apply under the act if it was a new television exhibiting those issues due to a fault with the panel.
*Televisions
*DVD and Blu Ray Players
*DVD and Blu Ray discs
*Streaming Boxes
*Cable/Satellite Boxes
All would be deemed "not fit for purpose" under the act if the image juddered or tore.
*Gaming
As long as it reaches the menu screen that's enough...
Really?
Re: 'Quit Game and Restart': PS5 Pro Has the Worst Version of Borderlands 4
All the problems were known long before launch. No one seriously believes that the developers only just discovered this.
The notorious issues with the engine go back a long way too.
This was sold in full knowledge.
Yes we all know the old adage about when you buy at launch you pay the highest price it will ever be, for the worst version that will ever exist, but that doesn't make this behaviour from publishers and developers any less unethical.
Re: The First Silent Hill F Review Score Is Now Live
I constantly got stuck on terrain in Hell is Us and rage quit last time it happened. My character is probably still there now if I load it.
Not sure how much more patience I will have for a repeat in Silent Hill. Hope a day one patch resolves it.
Re: Creepy Viral Hit POOLS Takes the Plunge on PS5 in November, Playable Demo Out Now
@Ken_Kaniff yes actually old-fashioned television is the only way you can currently play it on PS5.
I didn’t read the article properly, downloaded the demo, and was bitterly disappointed to discover that it wouldn’t work with PSVR.
Hopefully push square will let us know when the virtual reality patch for the demo goes live, because I have uninstalled it and won’t be randomly checking. I will soon forget all about it otherwise.
Re: PS5 Firmware Update Out Now, Brings Power Saver Mode, DualSense Controller Pairing
I wonder how many people realise or care that unlocked frame rate modes in games increase power consumption and heat etc?
Probably no one.
I suppose power only matters if one is playing in an RV or something whilst running on battery, but I can't imagine people wasting their precious power on a PS5 versus just having a Switch in that scenario.
Re: Rumour: Assassin's Creed 4 Remake Makes Big Changes, Drops Modern Day Story and Adds RPG Elements
I'm all for the changes.
I already had a native 4k, 60fps Ultra version of the original unmolested game on PC.
I was after more than just a few additional modern graphical techniques layered over the top.
Appreciate the purists who only had the 1080p 30fps version on PS4 wanted the PC version with brass knobs on, but I at least am happy with a significant redesign.
Re: Poll: Are You Playing Borderlands 4?
I was about to buy it this evening.
By chance I watched a Digital Foundry video about the PC version and they mentioned that once you get into the open world on PS5 Pro, the frame rate plummets.
The early-game footage I saw in some benchmarks clearly wasn't reflective of the later-game experience.
A lot of people are reporting a memory leak too, such that you have to keep rebooting the game (like Oblivion) otherwise it enters slideshow territory.
Add me to the list of "picking it up half price in the sale", but even then, only IF it is fixed and IF I am even still interested by then (new games are releasing all the time, so if it misses the boat....bad luck Gearbox).
I've actually gone back and been playing Borderlands 2.
If the game ran properly, I'd have had no issue with £70. As I say, I was about to buy it right now.
Re: Sony to 'Advance Position as Creative Leader in Single Player Experiences'
You can't design a smash GaaS game. It just seems to happen organically and by chance, and no amount of planning and polish can manufacture it.
There is no text book formula, otherwise everyone would do it.
Best leave the risk to the third parties, and produce those titles (SP) for which you do know the winning formula.
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows' Claws of Awaji Expansion Has Arrived on PS5
The main game is just way too big for me. I'm still going back to Valhalla and Mirage, and will be dipping in and out of Shadows for 5 years + no doubt.
Heck I have not even started the Syndicate DLC's yet. Still playing that game as well.
Too many side activities and collectathons, which I find quite enjoyable but it's not compelling enough to stop me diverting to other new games.
So I tend to play on and off sporadically over years.
Re: Creepy Viral Hit POOLS Takes the Plunge on PS5 in November, Playable Demo Out Now
This is nightmare fuel for me.
I've been having nightmares about swimming pools for 30+ years now.
This could be a form of therapy, or it could go the other way...
I wonder if the developer was inspired by similar dreams and they are quite common?
Re: Nerfed PS5 Console Silently Releases with Less Storage Space
@themightyant exactly and these drives are very likely to be transferable to the PS6, and even if that is not the case, one can buy a USB adapter/housing and use as a high speed external drive for ones PC/Laptop.
When I upgraded my PS expansion from 1 to 2tb, I put the 1tb in a new Mini PC that had only come with 256gb.
So a pretty sound investment when as you say, it's less than the cost of a game.
Re: Nerfed PS5 Console Silently Releases with Less Storage Space
I guess there are two types of people.
Those who install one or two games that they are currently playing, and delete them when they are done.
And
Those who like to install practically everything and have many many games on the go (me).
I suspect the latter group all buy a 1 or 2 TB expansion drive anyway because the internal storage is inadequate regardless of whether Sony have trimmed a tiny bit off.
I suppose you could argue that the first group don’t really want to incur a price increase on the console and would rather sacrifice a tiny bit of storage space that they wouldn’t use anyway.
Re: 'It Was a Little Callous': Hell Is Us Dev Bemoans Impact of Hollow Knight: Silksong
Not sure there is much cross over and that many gamers were in a "one or the other" position.
I purchased Hell is Us and have bounced off it hard despite enjoying many aspects.
I actually think their own design choices cost them far more sales than any coincidental releases of other titles.