Dogbreath

Agree with themightyant in that I do this as an individual.

I've been actively boycotting 95% of the mainstream websites since the mid-2010's as their coverage was openly hostile to consumers and the criteria on which they reviewed games had no relevance to what I personally care and don't care about.

I'm now mostly watching YouTube reviews but even there I subscribe to two or three reviewers (out of tens of thousands) who share my tastes.

There is no point in me reviewing them though, due to the highly subjective nature.

I don't know why people complain about reviewers. If their reviews don't match your experiences, why are you still reading them? There is a wide market of choice out there.

I guess the real evil are sites like metacritic and publishers who base developer bonuses on the scores of a shady selection of irrelevant sites who metacritic assign disproportionate weightings to. That can distort the market in a bad way.

Given that the market for this type of game is at saturation point, a good poll question would have been "which title that you usually play, are you not playing whilst you are playing Highguard?".

I hate these movements where it is fashionable to hate on a game no one has even played. Sometimes they turn out to be right, sometimes they turn out to be wrong and the game is decent.

The problem with the latter is that the game never recovers.

I don’t know if this game is good or bad, but I do know the reason for the hate campaign is the most stupid I’ve seen. It wouldn’t exist if the reveal had been in the middle of the show.

I actually lose a lot of goodwill for titles when the media are given exclusive access to play short sections like this.

Not with all games, but mainly with games like RE that have previously had demos.

I don't believe anything positive I read in such previews, as the industry is pretty notorious for not providing future access to any previewer who says something negative, so I understand why even my most trusted sites and Youtubers would choose their words carefully.

I feel they should have released a demo for everyone to try. That worked a treat with 7 and 8 and built far more hype than media exclusive previews.

It was actually the inventory management system that did it for me.

I'm sooooo done with games that have inventory weight limits. Nothing else in the game is remotely realistic, so why hamstring the gameplay with something so frustrating and irritating?

It doesn't have newtonian space combat physics for christ's sake, but I have to spend 80% of my time juggling inventory weight in the name of "realism".

Not that the inventory is realistic either, because my character visually doesn't have 6 rifles on them in the third person view.

Not just Starfield with that problem.

Makes perfect sense. My brother was friendly with the guy in our local games shop and used to get games ahead of launch all the time. I'm sure these days people are getting them further up the distribution network and far earlier.

Not sure why there would be tears either. This isn't a 12 hour campaign type game that you play and immediately sell. It's a game that makes sense digitally as it is something you keep long term.

Plus as I always say; we see publishers/developers spitting in the face of gamers with gambling boxes, pre-order DLC and other scummy practises, and they still crawl over broken glass to throw money at them.

So I don't seriously believe the hype monkeys who've been frothing at the mouth for this game for years, when they say they will sit there and twiddle their thumbs whilst we are all merrily playing it, as they wait for the physical copy.

They remind me of those Japanese soldiers who were hiding on little islands in the Pacific and refusing to surrender in the 1960's and 1970's!

The war is over boys. You've lost. Physical is dying. Ten years from now it will be extinct. Why deprive yourself? Come in from the cold.

Not good news.

A large number of new AAA releases run like garbage even on a PS5 Pro, and are seemingly designed for non-existent next gen hardware that hasn’t yet been invented.

Delaying the PS6 is only going to make matters worse. We are going to receive a lot of games that were designed ground up for next gen hardware whilst PS5 owners received pity-releases during the cross gen period that run like a bungling mess. Unfortunately, we will now all be PS5 owners given that the PS6 won’t be available.

Essentially, we have multiple PS4 Cyberpunks to look forward to, as far as many new games will be concerned.

I bought the original Rayman on PS1 when it released.

Not going to beat around the bush here; it was utter garbage and a massive disappointment. It could and should have been a lot more.

It looked like a mass market 2D platformer and was released long before the N64 was released here in the UK, and back when something like Jumping Flash was the benchmark for a 3D platformer. So on the face of it, the game was a potential Yoshi's Island/Mario World killer, but in reality was more like Cuphead for its inaccessibility to kids or average players.

But worse it was annoying as hell and unfair. Super Mario Wonder has some really hard levels, but those levels are fair rather than irritating and annoying, and the game itself is still fully playable and completable to a wide audience.

To me, a simple graphic upgrade re-release won't cut it. It needs a far more fundamental overhaul. A proper remake rather than a remaster.

Unity needs some love. Hugely under rated game.

The game got panned as it was designed around hardware that wouldn't exist for 7 years and ran like garbage as a result (granted that's the norm for most new games these days) and in my view does some things better than any of the modern games.

The resolution does need a boost, but top tip - it looks great on Portal with the smaller, lower resolution screen.

Microsoft are going out of their way to quietly kill the Xbox without doing it so obviously as to generate negative publicity and gain a Sega reputation.

Fanboys like me have abandoned Xbox after a quarter century of owning every console.

The audience on Xbox is rapidly dwindling and from the console perspective it will soon cease to exist.

With so many games running so badly lately, it makes sense for developers to limit the platforms that they are supporting and ensure those that do the big numbers, have the best ports.

This game is being compared to some pretty decent titles in the comments, games that are right up my street.

Having watched the video of this game though I do have my doubts. I shall have to wait and see, but I do suspect it may be a 6 out of 10.

The Portal is the future of handheld, not all these devices cropping up with onboard processing, huge batteries, heavy weight and heat dissipation issues.

Makes sense to have PS5 Pro performance for the 99% of the time you are in WiFi range, and accept you cannot use it the 1% of the time you don't have a WiFi.

Versus being lumbered with last gen PS4 performance 100% of the time, for the sake of still being able to play in that 1% scenario.

I'll just take a book or something thanks.

Given that you can pick up a Pro new for £630, and a base model PS1 (not a "Pro") with a memory card was ~£570 in today's money at launch, I don't think phrases like "despite the price" are really fair.

It's perpetuates this false narrative about how expensive gaming is in 2025.

It is still very cheap. SNES games like FZERO were £44.99 at launch. That's £98 in today's money. I'm sure I paid the same for Wipeout when I bought it with my PS1 in Dec 95.

Another one of those "please prove me wrong" games like Crimson Desert.

Want it to be good, but I have serious concerns.

I'm pretty tolerant and e.g. turned into a big fanboy of Avowed. But this one has more red flags for me than that ever had.

@Panic_Attache it is nothing wrong with your configuration or setup.

There are plenty of videos on Youtube, of the latest patch with frame rate graphs clear as day. It's irrefutable. There is no argument, there is no debate, there is no difference of opinion to be had. It is a fact.

It's just plain awful and V-Sync won't fix it.

V-Sync only works if the game can hit the same refresh (or divisible refresh) of your TV and maintain it 100% bullet proof. It's actually worse if the game can't, as you get massive v-sync stutter.

Where as no v-sync gives you less pronounced stutter but with screen tearing.

This game is really PC-only (think it's on GF Now too though), but isn't viable on console unless one is extremely tolerant of stutter-fests.

I'm used to playing these games on Gamepass with no direct outlay.

Having sold my XSX and rarely turn on my gaming PC these days (I'm not pumping money into something that MS are divesting themselves from), I certainly won't pay £70 for the PS5 version and DEFINITELY won't do it if it's not even coming on launch day.

@lazarus11 as you have already seen, other people are experiencing the exact same problems with the PlayStation version, and that’s just on here, let alone all the other threads and performance analysis you can find online.

As I recall from when I was researching it at the time, the game is very much designed from the ground up for PC and not fully designed oroptimised for a PlayStation.

Hence why it runs so badly and needs a massive ground up optimisation. I believe there was some talk of that happening, but I always take with a huge pinch of salt any such rumours I hear from the community or promises from developers.

I talk about this a lot, but there are many games and franchises that have a small but very vocal minority of people being hyped about them on forums, but in reality it's just a handful of dwindling boomers like me who played them since the SNES days.

In reality there is very little brand recognition amongst the bulk of active gamers today.

I say this about a different franchise every week, I think last week it was Speedball when I reminisced about the Amiga days. It will be something else next week.

They ain't gonna sell well. Don't be surprised by this cancellation.

Runs like absolute garbage, even on a Pro, and crashes regularly.

I really want it to be good.

But I smell a 7/10 with poor performance even on a Pro, and lots of balance issues and a totally unacceptable grind.

I sincerely hope they prove me wrong as I have money waiting.

I had some of their CRT TV's back in the day. They were excellent.

But that was up against brands like Phillips or Toshiba in those days.

In the past decade or so I've found their offerings disappointing and lacking key features especially for gaming. They were easily rejected in favour of LG or Samsung's.

I never fell for the promises/lies of some of the missing features being added later via firmware updates etc.

Despite the fond memories, I won't be shedding a tear. They simply weren't good enough. They became to TV's, what Kodak became to cameras.

"honour the legacy".

Pure pretentious marketing tosh.

They've been told from high above in Microsoft to extract extra cash out of the franchise, else they will be closed/sold off and end up driving ubers for a living.

That's it. They want money. They don't give a monkeys about legacy.

They've been disrespecting the legacy on Xbox for well over a decade, so don't believe for one minute they have such lofty and honourable concerns for the PS5 conversion.

Ridge Racer looks and runs great. I have the arcade version on Switch 2 but given how well it runs, my preference is for the PlayStation version due to the additional cars and the nostalgia factor.

My experience of Ridge Racer was exclusively on PS1, as I’d never seen, let alone played the arcade machine in the 90's.

I'm not a technical expert, and perhaps people like digital foundry could pick flaws in the emulation, but it has exceeded my expectations.

People need to stop wishing their lives away.

TES 6 won't be world or life changing.

There are plenty of things to do in the meantime, other games and real life stuff. Spend time with family members who won't be around forever.

Who sits there stressing because a game series hasn't had a release in decades?

Anyhow I agree with others that it is dated. After Avowed I just can't go back to the TES combat. Given Bethesda's history and glacial rate of innovation, it is not likely that the next title will catch up with more modern takes.

I love AC. Always buy them and love the new RPG style.

But they should be rebranded as something else and become an entirely separate non-AC RPG series.

I didn't start playing until Black Flag, so never understood and still don't understand all that Assassin and Templar backstory. It just gets in the way of the main RPG story for me.

Then actual AC should develop more in the direction of the Hitman games.

Anyhow, I don't blame the guy for being peed off if he finds himself side-lined and someone else taking control of his baby.

Although if he was responsible for the dual protagonist design of Shadows, as opposed to the main game being about Naoe and Yasuke being DLC (which anyone with common sense would have done), he probably deserves to have the reins taken away.

First game was ace.

Just like The Matrix, they should have just left it there.

It was lightning in a bottle. Move on and create something new.

Don't destroy its legacy by trying to milk every last dime out of it.

@DrVenture69 it worked fine on my CX.

To get the full support of 120hz, HDR, 4K etc you do need to limit yourself to about 3m in terms of cable length, as even expensive HDMI 2.1 cables can get unstable after that.

But I also recall, and this affects a lot of TV manufacturers and is absolutely brain dead, that the TV comes out of the factory with the enhanced HDMI bandwidth turn off.

You usually have to go into the TV settings menu and turn on the enhanced or expanded HDMI option. That's usually why HDR doesn't work, not sure if it also limits 120hz too. Sometimes it is not where you'd think in the picture settings, but under connection settings or connected device settings etc instead.

I can't remember if all the HDMI ports on my CX supported this bandwidth too. I think so, my Samsung S90d certainly does.

Massive premium over the Pulse Elite. Not sure anyone will hear £200 worth of difference.

My experience of headsets in that £300 bracket is that they are equally as prone to parts breaking off, or the lining of the ear cups peeling off as the £70 to £130 bracket.

I'd think the smart money buys a Pulse Elite with money in the bank to buy another pair if they break.

Edit: I've never experienced connection dropouts or quality issues with my Pulse Elites I have to say.

I'm surprised so many are being harsh about this game.

These releases are surely about nostalgia for those of us that bought this title at launch.

Reminds me of that time in my life, and the Arcade version simply didn't hit that nostalgia spot for me, because I'd never played it before and I wanted to experience the exact PS1 version I had in 1995.

I did miss that extra content missing from the arcade version that I bought on Switch 2.

I'd actually be interested in playing the home version on my PS5, especially if I can play the NTSC version instead of the bungling PAL version I got lumbered with back in the day.

But please, Revolution is a must. We need it.

Need details of what roles the redundant workers were in.

That said, even if it will impact the game, the fact is that games are too expensive and there simply isn't the disposable income in consumers pockets to fund them. Housing and energy are soaking up money that previously was spent on games.

We need cheaper games, and gamers need to accept that they previously received games with blockbuster budgets that were essentially subsidised by shareholders who took a haircut.

They received products that cost more to produce than they paid for them. That's great at the time, but gamers shouldn't have gotten used to it.

Having made it clear they don't want to pay more for games, gamers need to manage their expectations as they can't have the big budget AAAA quality releases they had the past, but for a lower real terms price.

I was a huge fan of the first game.

The problem with the sequel is that it only existed because Microsoft paid for a sequel, and not because there was any compelling reason for it in terms of untold narrative or gameplay ideas.

The combat was noticeably a step backwards, as was the narrative.

The much hyped graphics looked great out in open places, but extremely mediocre once you got into bush/forest type sections.

I was going to jokingly say that when all the reviews described Veilguard as a "return to form", they failed to mention that the "form" in question was Anthem, and not Inquisition.

But this thread has educated me, as I didn't realise by just how far Anthem outsold Veilguard.

Fair play to Anthem in that respect; I'm shocked it shipped that many and there was a time when those would be some pretty tidy sales figures.

Perhaps the sales figures were the lesser part of the damage. Anthem really hurt Bioware due to them haemorrhaging whatever good staff remained at that point, and the reputation damage which no doubt resulted in cautious buyers not rushing out to pre-order Veilguard.

Certainly good business for Microsoft. I don't think that was ever in doubt though.

Their vacating of the hardware business is also good business for Microsoft, but will have severe ramifications for us over time.

The UK CMA investigation was based on concerns of a monopoly position in what is a quite small and niche streaming market, and yet little did we know, that is exactly what happened in the home console market.

@TrollOfWar I think you are looking way too deeply into it.

I was making a general comment about how gamers will crawl naked over broken glass to throw £80 at a publisher for a game, and even throw that money at the developer six months before the darn game is even due to be released, and yet three months after launch would expect a large discount for the exact same product!

It’s psychological on the demand side, nothing to do with the manufacturing costs and margins of the vendor. Yes, we know they can duplicate 200 trillion billion copies at a marginal cost. You knew that when you threw £80 at them months before the game even came out.

Tomb Raider is multiple generations behind Uncharted 4. It has been dated and degraded by time. Avowed has not, it is superior to the game people were prepared to pay £60 for one year ago, and yet has a lower perceived value.

Loved the atmosphere of the first one.

Just found it unfairly hard alone compared to coop. I know it's technically completable solo or so I'm told, but I got frustrated at the unfairness versus the cake walk when I was with a friend.

Same issue with Destiny 1 and why I quit that. Would love to see it tweaked and a super easy story/solo mode added, as it was a super atmospheric game. They did a great job with the world design.

It's funny how games depreciate.

Unlike a car, there is no wear and tear. Actually games get better over time due to patches.

Imagine a car that at one year old was still in showroom condition, zero miles, but the engine had grown more powerful and the seats had changed from textile to leather.

They don't really go out of date either visually unless released just before a generation transition and even those get updated with patches these days.

I guess being the latest thing on YouTube and Twitch, and being part of the water cooler discussions, has a value of its own.

Anyway, good game, well worth the lower price, although still more than you could have paid for a month of Gamepass and a decent streaming service if you'd had a burning desire to play it a year ago.

@Gamer83 I think when you read the comments, almost all of those criticising the game have never played so much as 10 seconds of it.

Reminds me of how it was back in the 00's, when all I heard in the pub were guys arguing about which was best out of the Mitsubishi Evo and the Subaru Impreza, and absolutely none of them had driven either car, and they were just regurgitating what they’ve heard on Top Gear whilst they had some crummy Vauxhall Corsa out in the car park.

Taking anecdotal views from forums, doesn’t really gain us much as 99% of them are just regurgitating the review above.

Those who have played the game seem to say that it’s passable, and maybe be worth trying when it drops to 20 quid.

I've only watched play through videos, and what I’m seeing seems to align with the views of those people who’ve played it.

I will probably pick it up when it’s half the current price.

@Stickleman Yeah cracking game. Everything about it, stories, characters, art, music was just spot on. Combat for me wasn't that great as I'd rather it had no combat at all (outside of bosses) and was more of a walking sim/platformer/puzzler-lite.

Every single one of those overarching zone storylines were brilliant and sad.

@DennisReynolds I think you are right that the game will be forgotten. It's definitely not a zeitgeist like Skyrim was in its day. It won't be talked about 10 years later, when the 12th version/remaster of it is released!

But when reviewers sit down to review TES 6, they won't accept a mediocre combat experience having previously experienced better.

Sure, they won't remember where they experienced that something better and may hit Google or ChatGPT-27 to refresh their memory, but the main is that when they play TES 6, it will feel crap to them if Bethesda haven't hit that bar!

Most gamers are blowhards.

They will buy the game anyway if it's any good.

My advice to any developer is to use whatever tools are necessary to make a good game. Don't even worry about AI generative art assets. Don't worry about mass redundancies either.

Other firms spit in gamers faces, insult their mothers, spill their pints, put boogers in their Big Mac's, shove them games that stutter and barely run, cut out half the content and sell it back to them as DLC, and yet thirsty gamers still rip out their wallets and make it rain money for them.

Do we really think gamers will boycott a game because a bit of AI was used in its development, that no one can spot?

Give over.

I've witnessed dozens of boycott campaigns over the years, and not one of them ever had a measurable impact on a half decent game.

Fantastic news. By far the best first person RPG combat I have ever experienced.

The more people exposed to that, the better.

It will kill off Bethesda's joke of a system. Once everyone has experienced Avowed combat, Bethesda are cooked and will have no choice but to bring the next TES into alignment.

@naruball yes it’s a wonder that these days people don’t complain about war games depicting a sanitised and glorified version of wars. Not just in relation to the portrayal of consenting participants, but also the innocent victims from conscripts to civilians.

They are oddly selective about what they do and do not care about, and which subjects are off limits.

TLoU was about the mutation of a real fungus. I don’t know the details of this game but I’d have no issue with a mutated Ebola infection leading to something more horrifying in a game plot.

Heck, Resident Evil is based on a lab leak of a virus that was being subjected to gain of function experiments…

Hmm….

@naruball quite obviously.

There are websites that give you a highly concentrated dose of it for free, so no one is spending money on a game exclusively for such elements.

It’s like buying a car just because you want a digital radio. I’d just go out and buy a digital radio from Amazon for £50 and save £25k.

But if I want a car, then a car with a decent digital radio, is better than one with a tinny old cassette player.

Never heard of this game before or any aesthetic arguments about it.

So I just watched the MKIceandFire play through.

Looks like a typical third person shooter from 2012 but with better graphics. Albeit retaining the stiff animations of something like RE Revelations.

End Of.

Not remotely seeing much in the way of any sexy elements. Just looks normal to me.

As someone who has been gaming 40+ years, including the 90’s and 00’s, it’s something I’ve seen a thousand times.

A total nothing burger. I’m extremely embarrassed for younger generations of gamers if they find this a big deal one way or another.

Have to say that I’m not really interested in Fable as I think it’s going to be pretty poor.

The small snippet we’ve seen up to now is certainly not promising.

For me, the main problem is that I don’t see where it fits into the 2026 RPG market. Things have moved on dramatically since the originals, we’ve had a lot of damn good games since then, and what was hot back then is not hot now.

I don’t have any faith in them reimagining it for the “modern audience“ without totally stuffing it up.

An Avowed port with a decent Pro upgrade would definitely get my money though, even though I already have it on game pass.

Nostalgia for me having gone to my mates to play Speedball 2 on his Amiga back in the 4th Year (year 10 to all you kids).

Had a cult status back then (1990) in our year at school.

As I always say with a lot of these old IP's though, I wonder what value they really have?

Back then gaming was still a very niche geeky hobby with a bad reputation (you'd get bullied and girls would mock you), and even fewer of those kids could afford what was a very pricey game system for the day: £1000 in today's money.

Of the few who played the game, how many of us are still active gamers at 50? You could fit every single one of us in the UK into a single basketball court.

Not an IP that would bring in many sales on brand recognition. Even in the PS1 days it’s name had faded into obscurity.

Big fan of Isaacs, he was the only redeeming feature of Star Trek Discovery.

Pity to see him wasted in this. As DartLOD said, as soon as Waller Bridge was linked to it, it was game over.

That was the equivalent of when I see my dog stop and coopy down. It hasn't come out yet, but I know what's coming out.

It's clear to me that Microsoft want the Xbox hardware side of things to die naturally and quietly in its sleep.

They don't want to be seen as the killer and get a rep like Sega, having let down the loyal fans etc. They just want it to gradually fizzle out with no one noticing.

My prediction is that there won't be another Xbox console.

The next console that has been mentioned on and off will likely be similar to the handheld in that it's just a third party Steambox with an Xbox logo that can run the Xbox store.

Because that's what they are now. A store front with streaming access. They won't say it, but I think MS would be quite happy with a lot of XSX owners jumping ship, buying PS5 Pro's and buying Xbox games on those for the remainder of this generation.

The fewer people still using Xbox hardware when the final reveal (there won't be another Xbox) is "leaked", the better.

It's become a nightmare at my workplace, where e.g. Engineers suddenly believe they are Commercial experts, and vice versa, because they ask AI and believe they know as much as the professionals. As a Project Manager in the middle, it's costing me more time dealing with the issues than it saves us.

The AI answers are almost always like that one guy who manages to say a lot in a meeting, and it sounds very clever, but when you think about it afterwards you realise he didn't say anything of substance or was entirely wrong. Often riddled with weasel words and not something any professional would take seriously.

Worth saving this and comparing it with sales figures at year end.

Suspect it may reveal a large disparity between forums and the wider market.

I think 007 for example will be a LOT lower down the sales charts.