@RoomWithaMoose Video games are a multibillion dollar industry. It is a mature and serious business and as such the professionals who write about and report on it should be of an equal calibre - today, moreso than ever.
If I want amateurish reviews and uninformed opinion pieces there are a million and one Youtube channels I can get them from. If I want authoritive, trustworthy and informed reviews and opinions I should be able to turn to the professionals in much the same way I can do with any other form of media or news yet there are very few outlets actually doing that.
The reason I want professional integrity from professional sites is thes same reason I want it from a doctor or plumber or electrician: because if I need the opinion of an expert I like to know they're trustworthy and and know what they're talking about...but I guess that make me weird.
@LiamCroft That may be the case but corruption casts a long shadow and in an industry where professional reviews and player experiences are frequently at odds, it does lead gamers to question this disparity and, given previous unethical behaviour in the industry, it would be foolish to discount bribery in lieu of any other reason (Though, asserting it as fact without evidence is.)
Such aspertions may not be pleasant but they are a natural consequence of the industry's prior behaviour and its open door policy that allows anybody to become a games journalist regardless of aptitude or integrity.
@get2sammyb Bribes don't just come in the form of cash monies and there is ample historical precedence of games journalists accepting gifts and whatnot so it's not in the slightest an absurd assumption to make .
Publishers may not ask you directly for certain minimum scores but they know damned well that if you give people things for free, lavish them with goodies and generally blow smoke up their arse, those people will be more inclined to have favourable opinions and be less inclined to say things that might upset them.
I can see where he's coming from as unlike other forms of media, there is a distinct lack of standards and professionalism when it comes to games journalalism leading to professional reviews being a wild west that cannot be taken at face value without added context.
Without naming names, there are reviewers I generally trust and others whose opinions dismiss immediately but beyond that very small number of known sources, I can't know if a review from source can be trusted without knowing more about them.
I have recently been wondering how the hell David Cage keeps getting to make games as he writes the most godawful fiction with embarrassingly poor characters and bizarre, nonsensical narrative turns.
I'm grateful that he does keep making them because they're so terrible they're entertaining (in the same way The Room or Neil Breen movies are.) but the guy is an absolute hack who by all rights should have been laughed out of the industry after Heavy Rain.
a) Food waste (such as garbage) fed to animals.
b) Excreted body waste
c) Thin tasteless drink
There is a reason it has become a synonym for high volume, low effort, low value content.
AI generated content by its very nature is low effort and is produced in high volumes meaning it has no significant value, ergo describing it as AI slop is perfectly apt.
So if the shoe fits, why should anyone stop using the term? After all, you can rebrand manure as organic fertiziler but it doesn't magically stop it being a load of **** and the same applies to AI slop.
Atlus titles maybe niche but artistically and thematically they are peerless in the games industry. In an industry that is determined to be as safe and bland as possible, Atlus have remained defiantly edgy and esoteric.
It would be a real shame to abandon those qualities in favour of mass appeal.
4/15 and good! It means I still have enough of a life that I haven't memorised every last detail of the gaming industry in the last year like a right proper nerd.
I was put off Silksong due to the hype, followed by the talk of its punishing difficulty but I picked it up on a whim and whilst it is brutally difficult its still probably the best game I've played all year.
It's impeccably designed from level and creature designs, art direction, sound design and combat and traversal mechanics that all combine to create a world that invites curiosity and wanderlust that makes the brutal difficulty and punishing runbacks tolerable...if not always forgiveable.
@DenzelDM I never said AI wasn't going to screw things up
What I said is that luddites are ultimately going to make things worse through their fearmongering and attempts to control things beyond their control.
In essence the luddites are enacting a self-fulfilling prophecy where AI is almost guanteed to screw things up for humanity whereas if they took a more pragmatic approach it only has a 50/50 chance of ruining things.
And ultimately the only thing generative AI is a threat to is capitalism and those who cannot (or refuse to) adapt to a world where money just isn't as important as it is right now, which frankly, isn't a bad idea given how badly capitalism screws people over already.
Little do the anti-AI crowd realise that they are ultimately pushing more and more people towards AI use due to their hardline stance that forgoes reason, rationality and nuance in favour of zealous ideology.
After all, if all use of AI is evil, unethical and immoral to these people then they are clearly irrational and their arguments dismisable without discourse making no use of AI off-limits to anybody considering using it.
Not only this but the more people are told what they are and are not allowed to do and attempts at reason and discourse fall on desaf ears then the more they will be inclined to those things anyway.
So thank you very much Luddites, your utter lack of reason in this debate is helping to doom mankind just as much as the pro-AI group despite your good intentions.
Independent simply means something is produced and distributed independently of existing means of production and distribution.
Early on, the indie scene was made up entirely of micro studios and bedroom coders because the larger independent studios such as Bullfrog, DMA Design, Id Software, Obsidian Entertainment, Monolith, Raven Software, etc, etc...were making games funded by and published by corporate publishers.
Then those developers started getting bought up and then shut down leaving the creatives the opportunity to go independent again only now in a world where going it alone is a genuinely viable option.
At the time they released Half-Life 2 they were a small independent games studio who built their own distribution system for the sole purpose of releasing the game independently and whilst Steam itself is an absolute behemoth today, Valve themselves are still a modest, privately owned company...which would technically make Half-Life 3 (should hell freeze over one day) a potential contender for Indie game of the year one day.
That's all well and good but if I want a cinematic experience I'll watch a damned movie.
I'm old enough to remember a time when video games strove to be cinematic as the industry was young and trying to take after its older, more mature sibling – Hollywood.
This led to all kinds of weird and wonderful games that pushed technology and evolved what video games could be as an art form.
Now games have technology to equal Hollywood it's no longer interesting. They're not pushing boundaries or evolving the artform. They're just doing what Hollywood does and – most egregiously – doing so at the expense of gameplay.
These days I'm far more interested in video games that are, primarily games instead of movies with the odd bit of interactivity thrown in to differentiate it from something I could enjoy for a fraction of the cost using exponentially cheaper hardware.
On the one hand, I feel for these artists who find themselves on the pitchforks of the anti-AI witchhunters.
On the other, I hope it pushes some of these artists to be more original and less derivative and develop their own unique styles so their work is less likely to be confused with AI slop.
@BecauseBecause Mistakes happen. Sometimes they find their way into the finished work because nobody notices it, other times there's no time to fix them and they're minor enough to go unnoticed by most people.
I can understand instantly assuming AI if its meant to be a realistic or semi-realistic image but when the image is cartoonish or stylised its equally likely to be a mistake or a deliberate design choice and dismissing the notion (if it even comes to mind at all) just highlights the lack of intelligence, sanity or reason in the froth-mouthed anti-AI zealots.
@somnambulance If someone considers art and artists so insignificant and without worth they're willing to replace it with computer generated slop, I'd consider losing work from them a benefit.
There will always be plenty of businesses and individuals who understand the value of talent and human creativity and treat artists and their art with due respect. All AI has done is filter out the bad employers nobody really wants to work for anyway so moaning about it putting people out of work just feels like whining for the sake of it.
Turok 2 is such a frustrating game. It has some of the most satisfying gunplay of a game from that era and the death animations never get old no matter how many dino heads I pop with the bow.
But dear god, those levels!
Actually, no. The levels themselves might be large and labyrithian but having to hunt down certain things hidden in each of these stages in order to progress can make the experience like pulling teeth.
@rjejr It's not too disimilar to Dragon Quest 11 - another in the series which is deceptively mature and gets pretty dark in parts.
I think when they talk about the game being dark and mature, they mean in relation to previous DQ entries, which are incredibly light and simplistic in narrative terms compared to the Final Fantasy games.
And to be fair, Japan has history of combining cute and dark - I think its a cultural thing stemming from the Buddhist philosophy of conjoining opposites that flies over the heads of most Westerners.
@rjejr Dark and mature doesn't have to mean the visual aesthetic has to match (a perfect example of this is Raymond Briggs' When the Wind Blows.)
Akira Torayama's DQ designs are a defining hallmark of the franchise. You don't get rid of them or change them to make them edgier without stripping the heart of the series out.
It seems people forget that games consoles are not meant to be cutting edge technology but affordable consumer technology (as opposed to expensive home computers, which have traditionally been the realm of dedicated enthusiasts.)
Saying the PS5 is underpowered because it's not as powerful as a PC at the time of release misses the point of the console existing in the first place: to provide general consumers the ability to play the latest games. After all, if you cared that much about graphics, you'd buy a PC.
"The human brain can only process a certain amount of information at any time.
When we look at things in real life, we ignore about 80% of the information our eyes pick up unless we narrow our focus to a smaller area, allowing us to pick up fine details at the expense of seeing a wider area.
Our brains seamlessly abstract the world around us until we need/want to focus on something.
This is why it baffles me that game studios insist on cramming as much visual information as technically possible into games: because the vast majority of it is unnecessary most of the time as moment-to-moment you're not paying attention to fine details but observing the game environment as a whole.
We have reached a point with video game graphics where its nice to know we can render fine details on the fly but its time for developers to learn how to abstract visual information.
Not only will this dramatically reduce development time and free up system resources that can be used elsewhere but it can make games more visually impressive as, by reducing the amount of visual information our brains are looking at, it allows us to notice the details that are there.
It seems that those studios porting games over to the Switch 2 are doing this already with some fantastic results. It would be nice to see developers in general adopt a similar approach and focus on what's actually important to the experience instead of wasting time and resources on superfluous details your average person isn't going to miss."
I really do miss proper game manuals. Part of the enjoyment of buying a new game was taking in the manual and boxart on the journey home from the shop.
And if we go far enough back, those manuals were works of art in themselves: filled with artwork and fiction that fuelled the imagination and fleshed out the gameworld.
I understand why those kind of manuals went away but it really feels like something has been lost along the way. I'm not interested in overpriced collector's editions with cheap tat destined for a landfill. Just give me gorgeous artwork and a well-made manual that builds on the game world and I'll happily pay £70 to own games on disc again.
Given the number of mouthbreathers who find Bioshock Infinite offensive, I can understand their reticence.
However just because a group of people might get be offended is no reason not to do it...unless their money is more important than integrity — which, as we all know, corporations have in abundance.
I buy between 2-5 games a month but those are either indie titles or games on deep discount. I buy full price AAA titles maybe once or twice a year.
However, I'm one of the lucky few to have both the time and resources to play so many games. I'm sure if I had a wife, kids and boss demanding most of my time, I wouldn't be gaming at all so I can understand why those numbers are so low.
It's not just Sony but Western AAA devs in general. I have been reading through Clive Barker's The Scarlet Gospel and its a well-written, entertaining book...but it is incredibly generic and a far cry from Barker's earlier works in terms of storytelling.
The reason I bring this up is because it struck me early on just how much it reads like a video game. This in turn lead me to realise that's genre fiction in a nutshell: It's not looking to re-invent the wheel but offer those who consume it easily consumed entertainment and escapism.
That is triple A videogaming in a nutshell.
That in itself isn't the problem, however. The problem is that gamemakers seem to think they're doing something special when all they're doing is regurgitating the same genre tropes and cliches and quality of writing that have existed in other forms of genre fiction for decades.
The other problem is that in other forms of genre fiction, there are those that buck the trends and do interesting things whilst still being resolutely within their genre. This just isn't happening in the western AAA game space (at least not outside of Eastern Europe.)
@GloriosaDaisy As others have pointed out, there's nothing problematic in the game. These are teenagers from a rural town who don't spend their lives attached to social media, that has a profound effect on their ability to understand things that exist outside of societal norms and how they react when faced with them.
As someone who spent my teenage years in a rural town before the rise of the internet, I can tell you that I said and did a lot of stupid and hurtful things (to others and to myself) simply because I didn't know better. Age, however, bought experience and wisdom that allowed me to grow as a person.
Likewise, the characters in the game learn and grow from their experiences and become better people because of it.
Expecting characters who's culture and cultural reference points are different to your own to be changed to satisfy your own values and beliefs because you find them distasteful says more about your own intolerance and close-mindedness than it does the game.
Don't mind me. I'm just sat here surrounded by great games from independent devs and publishers like its 1986 all over again watching the empires of old burn and tumble.
So...the reward is I earn the right to give Sony more money for the opportunity to let the world know I'm both a sad trophy-hunting loser and a moron with more money than sense?
Bloodstained is a shameless clone of Castlevania with damn near every enemy and location being ripped off. That its in 3D doesn't change the fact that to an uninformed person, they could be mistaken for the same series.
Everyone saying that they're visually similar and therefore Sony are in the right... would you side with Microsoft if they decided to sue the makers of Path of Exile because of its similarities to the Diablo games?
And surely Konami would be right to sue the makers Bloodstained for its similarities to the Castlevania series?
i look forwards to hearing people's excuses why its okay for these titles to clone other games but not this one.
However, looking at the bigger picture, it seems it has had a neglible impact on their review scores with their high scores generally falling in line with rest of gaming media.
As for Sibuya Scramble, it seems the game recieved high praise even outside of Japan so there's no reason to assume its perfect score is the result of corruption, given Japan's love of the genre.
Even assuming their scores are artifically bumped up between 1-4 points and the review text itself massaged, at no point does the end result push credulity.
The reality is that if Famitsu review Japanese games higher than Western games, its probably for the same reason 8 out of 10 of the AAA games I've played in the last 5 years have been made in either Japan or Poland: Because they're generally more interesting and fun to play.
@SeaDaVie Orr...and this might seem wild — maybe Japan just happens to make better AAA games and therefore get reviewed better.
Here's the thing, both Western (Apart from Eastern Europe) AAA games and Western games 'journalism' are a joke. Western AAA games are thematically and mechanically safe, uninteresting and uninspired and the gaming press enable them through a lack of critical reviews (or if reviews are critical tend not to be reflected in the overall score.)
The hows and whys for this is are far too much me to go into here but it is a very real issue that many people inside and outside the industry are aware of and are not happy about.
For some reason, Japan and Eastern European publishers are far less affected by any of this and review scores tend to reflect this worldwide even if Western consumer habits do not.
That Famitsu tends to score Japanese games higher than Western games not only says more about the quality of Japanese games but their long-established position in games media makes them far less susceptible to corporate manipulation --especially from Western publishers (because Japan is still incredibly nationalistic, that is true.)
Didn't get one at launch as I was still at school and my family weren't exactly flush with cash. I did, however manage to get one early in '96 when my college grant came in just in time for this obscure zombie game called Resident Evil that I'd never heard of but thought it looked gnarly.
However, a friend of mine bought one with his first paycheck after leaving school and we'd often spend late nights playing Destruction Derby, WipeOut and Battle Arena Toshinden.
Those first few years of the Playstation were utterly glorious and while there have been many great games in the years that followed, its all been downhill ever since.
@KundaliniRising333 You can't just move the goalposts because you don't like the results.
Those are the games the majority of people buy and play. Your idea of a 'gamer' (synonymous with nerd.) are the minority and have been for quite some time now. You might not like it but thems the breaks.
The console wars will never end (because clearly Sony are the best). MS may have waved the white flag but there will always be another enemy to crush, kill and destroy and rivalry to stoke.
I played this when it originally came out and enjoyed it well enough at the time. Its big, dumb fun and hard not to glean enjoyment out of.
...but lets be honest, the only reason it stood out at the time was because Epic figured out how to do a WH40K space marine simulator before anyone else did - a USP that evaporated almost soon as they'd claimed it thanks to everyone borrowing from, and improving upon the formula they laid down.
Gears of War really is a product of its time and while you'd still be hardpressed to have a bad time with it, apart from nostalgia, there's really no point forking over the current asking price unless you have a fetish for crouching behind concrete barriers whilst getting shot at and derivative military science fiction.
@UniBoss75 I mean, I'd be just as critical of FROMSoft if they pushed out committee designed games every 12 months... but they don't.
It's really not so much about the end products themselves as on the surface level there's not a whole lot to distinguish them. But like any artform, video games become imbued with the passion poured into them by their creators that shines through every aspect of the finished product.
When you create art without passion the end results might be superficially impressive but bereft of character, depth or soul.
Such work isn't designed to be cherished or remembered in 20 years. It's designed to part fools from their money (and in the case of video games, keep on parting them from their money as frequently and often as they possibly can.)
And that is the difference between Fromsoft's output (except maybe Dark Souls 2&3.) and Ubisoft's.
Fromsoft make games with passion that is clear in every single facet of the finished release. They're not concerned if little Johnny No-knob can't beat the first level as they're not trying to appease the mainstream in order to rake in all their money (that they've managed to do just that is a happy little accident.)
Ubisoft make games to sell as many copies as possible and meet whatever metrics are necessary to appease shareholders and as such the end products are stripped of any real character or soul to present games that are as bland, safe, banal and mediocre as possible in order to be as appealing and accessible to as many people as humanly possible.
@Northern_munkey Oh I'm well aware that pretty much every word that comes out of my mouth is likely to be met with apathy, denial, dismissal, mockery or – if I'm really lucky – outrage.
But I'm not going to let that keep me from speaking my mind as the moment I fall silent is the moment I let others dictate the rules on what I can and cannot say.
The last AC game I enjoyed was Black Flag. I picked up Origins and about 8 hours in to it before I realised I'd played this game years earlier when I'd played Far Cry 3.
That was about the time I realised that Ubisoft were working from a template and that their output was not aimed at people like myself.
That's the problem with them. Ubisoft make offensively bland games.
They're the video game equivalent of Disney's modern cinematic output: easily digestible slop to entertain the easily pleased pumped out as frequently as possible to keep profits high and shareholders happy.
They're not bad – they can't be by design – but they're so safe and by the numbers that they're actively offensive to anyone who actually engages their brain.
As a fan of TRPGs I'd like to see remakes/remasters of the two Vandal Hearts games. Vandal Hearts was my introduction to the genre and I'd love to revist them but due to their use of polygonal grapghcs, going back to them now is a little bit rough.
This looks about as good John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars.
It should at least have a great soundtrack as whilst Carpenter's talent for filmmaking and storytelling died many many moons ago, his music is as great as ever.
I tried Hollow Knight as I'd heard great things about it but bounced off it pretty quickly (which takes a lot as Metroidvanias are one of my favourite types of game.)
I've been tempted to give it another go...but the insane hype around Silksong has actively been putting me off.
I'll pick it up when it's around a tenner as that's my price point for walking simulators and visual novels.
These kind of games, once upon a time, were considered rentals: solid, well-made games (and yes, this really is still a game. Go look up the definition.) worth playing but not worth owning.
Given that option is no longer available, I'm happy to wait until it reaches a price point I won't miss and won't leave me feeling ripped-off.
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Re: Larian CEO Swen Vincke Sticks His Foot in It Again, Thinks Game Reviewers Should Also Be Reviewed
@RoomWithaMoose Video games are a multibillion dollar industry. It is a mature and serious business and as such the professionals who write about and report on it should be of an equal calibre - today, moreso than ever.
If I want amateurish reviews and uninformed opinion pieces there are a million and one Youtube channels I can get them from. If I want authoritive, trustworthy and informed reviews and opinions I should be able to turn to the professionals in much the same way I can do with any other form of media or news yet there are very few outlets actually doing that.
The reason I want professional integrity from professional sites is thes same reason I want it from a doctor or plumber or electrician: because if I need the opinion of an expert I like to know they're trustworthy and and know what they're talking about...but I guess that make me weird.
Re: Larian CEO Swen Vincke Sticks His Foot in It Again, Thinks Game Reviewers Should Also Be Reviewed
@LiamCroft That may be the case but corruption casts a long shadow and in an industry where professional reviews and player experiences are frequently at odds, it does lead gamers to question this disparity and, given previous unethical behaviour in the industry, it would be foolish to discount bribery in lieu of any other reason (Though, asserting it as fact without evidence is.)
Such aspertions may not be pleasant but they are a natural consequence of the industry's prior behaviour and its open door policy that allows anybody to become a games journalist regardless of aptitude or integrity.
Re: Larian CEO Swen Vincke Sticks His Foot in It Again, Thinks Game Reviewers Should Also Be Reviewed
@get2sammyb Bribes don't just come in the form of cash monies and there is ample historical precedence of games journalists accepting gifts and whatnot so it's not in the slightest an absurd assumption to make .
Publishers may not ask you directly for certain minimum scores but they know damned well that if you give people things for free, lavish them with goodies and generally blow smoke up their arse, those people will be more inclined to have favourable opinions and be less inclined to say things that might upset them.
Re: Larian CEO Swen Vincke Sticks His Foot in It Again, Thinks Game Reviewers Should Also Be Reviewed
I can see where he's coming from as unlike other forms of media, there is a distinct lack of standards and professionalism when it comes to games journalalism leading to professional reviews being a wild west that cannot be taken at face value without added context.
Without naming names, there are reviewers I generally trust and others whose opinions dismiss immediately but beyond that very small number of known sources, I can't know if a review from source can be trusted without knowing more about them.
Re: Former PS4 Exclusive Detroit: Become Human Has Now Sold 15 Million Copies
I have recently been wondering how the hell David Cage keeps getting to make games as he writes the most godawful fiction with embarrassingly poor characters and bizarre, nonsensical narrative turns.
I'm grateful that he does keep making them because they're so terrible they're entertaining (in the same way The Room or Neil Breen movies are.) but the guy is an absolute hack who by all rights should have been laughed out of the industry after Heavy Rain.
Re: Microsoft CEO Really Wants You to Stop Calling Generative AI 'Slop'
Slop (Noun):
a) Food waste (such as garbage) fed to animals.
b) Excreted body waste
c) Thin tasteless drink
There is a reason it has become a synonym for high volume, low effort, low value content.
AI generated content by its very nature is low effort and is produced in high volumes meaning it has no significant value, ergo describing it as AI slop is perfectly apt.
So if the shoe fits, why should anyone stop using the term? After all, you can rebrand manure as organic fertiziler but it doesn't magically stop it being a load of **** and the same applies to AI slop.
Re: 'It's Coming to a Turning Point': Persona, Metaphor Director Says Atlus RPGs Must Attract 'A Wider Audience'
Atlus titles maybe niche but artistically and thematically they are peerless in the games industry. In an industry that is determined to be as safe and bland as possible, Atlus have remained defiantly edgy and esoteric.
It would be a real shame to abandon those qualities in favour of mass appeal.
Re: Push Square's PlayStation Quiz of the Year 2025
4/15 and good! It means I still have enough of a life that I haven't memorised every last detail of the gaming industry in the last year like a right proper nerd.
Re: Game of the Year: Best PS5 Indie Game of 2025
I was put off Silksong due to the hype, followed by the talk of its punishing difficulty but I picked it up on a whim and whilst it is brutally difficult its still probably the best game I've played all year.
It's impeccably designed from level and creature designs, art direction, sound design and combat and traversal mechanics that all combine to create a world that invites curiosity and wanderlust that makes the brutal difficulty and punishing runbacks tolerable...if not always forgiveable.
Re: PS5 Fave Expedition 33 Stripped of Indie Game Awards, But Not for the Reasons You May Think
@DenzelDM I never said AI wasn't going to screw things up
What I said is that luddites are ultimately going to make things worse through their fearmongering and attempts to control things beyond their control.
In essence the luddites are enacting a self-fulfilling prophecy where AI is almost guanteed to screw things up for humanity whereas if they took a more pragmatic approach it only has a 50/50 chance of ruining things.
And ultimately the only thing generative AI is a threat to is capitalism and those who cannot (or refuse to) adapt to a world where money just isn't as important as it is right now, which frankly, isn't a bad idea given how badly capitalism screws people over already.
Re: PS5 Fave Expedition 33 Stripped of Indie Game Awards, But Not for the Reasons You May Think
Little do the anti-AI crowd realise that they are ultimately pushing more and more people towards AI use due to their hardline stance that forgoes reason, rationality and nuance in favour of zealous ideology.
After all, if all use of AI is evil, unethical and immoral to these people then they are clearly irrational and their arguments dismisable without discourse making no use of AI off-limits to anybody considering using it.
Not only this but the more people are told what they are and are not allowed to do and attempts at reason and discourse fall on desaf ears then the more they will be inclined to those things anyway.
So thank you very much Luddites, your utter lack of reason in this debate is helping to doom mankind just as much as the pro-AI group despite your good intentions.
Re: Naughty Dog Forces Crunch to Get PS5 Exclusive Intergalactic 'Back on Track' for Mid 2027 Release
Should have just used AI instead of forcing crunch on all of those poor creatives.
Re: Talking Point: With Expedition 33 Winning Best Indie Game, What Does 'Indie' Mean to You?
Independent simply means something is produced and distributed independently of existing means of production and distribution.
Early on, the indie scene was made up entirely of micro studios and bedroom coders because the larger independent studios such as Bullfrog, DMA Design, Id Software, Obsidian Entertainment, Monolith, Raven Software, etc, etc...were making games funded by and published by corporate publishers.
Then those developers started getting bought up and then shut down leaving the creatives the opportunity to go independent again only now in a world where going it alone is a genuinely viable option.
Re: Talking Point: With Expedition 33 Winning Best Indie Game, What Does 'Indie' Mean to You?
@ElkinFencer10 What about Valve?
At the time they released Half-Life 2 they were a small independent games studio who built their own distribution system for the sole purpose of releasing the game independently and whilst Steam itself is an absolute behemoth today, Valve themselves are still a modest, privately owned company...which would technically make Half-Life 3 (should hell freeze over one day) a potential contender for Indie game of the year one day.
Re: 'Some of the Most Cinematic Experiences I've Ever Had': Guillermo del Toro Heaps Praise on God of War
That's all well and good but if I want a cinematic experience I'll watch a damned movie.
I'm old enough to remember a time when video games strove to be cinematic as the industry was young and trying to take after its older, more mature sibling – Hollywood.
This led to all kinds of weird and wonderful games that pushed technology and evolved what video games could be as an art form.
Now games have technology to equal Hollywood it's no longer interesting. They're not pushing boundaries or evolving the artform. They're just doing what Hollywood does and – most egregiously – doing so at the expense of gameplay.
These days I'm far more interested in video games that are, primarily games instead of movies with the odd bit of interactivity thrown in to differentiate it from something I could enjoy for a fraction of the cost using exponentially cheaper hardware.
Re: Fortnite Artist Fights Back Against Generative AI Accusations from Fans
On the one hand, I feel for these artists who find themselves on the pitchforks of the anti-AI witchhunters.
On the other, I hope it pushes some of these artists to be more original and less derivative and develop their own unique styles so their work is less likely to be confused with AI slop.
Re: PS5's Biggest Game Fortnite Accused of Using AI Art
@BecauseBecause Mistakes happen. Sometimes they find their way into the finished work because nobody notices it, other times there's no time to fix them and they're minor enough to go unnoticed by most people.
I can understand instantly assuming AI if its meant to be a realistic or semi-realistic image but when the image is cartoonish or stylised its equally likely to be a mistake or a deliberate design choice and dismissing the notion (if it even comes to mind at all) just highlights the lack of intelligence, sanity or reason in the froth-mouthed anti-AI zealots.
Re: PS5's Biggest Game Fortnite Accused of Using AI Art
@somnambulance If someone considers art and artists so insignificant and without worth they're willing to replace it with computer generated slop, I'd consider losing work from them a benefit.
There will always be plenty of businesses and individuals who understand the value of talent and human creativity and treat artists and their art with due respect. All AI has done is filter out the bad employers nobody really wants to work for anyway so moaning about it putting people out of work just feels like whining for the sake of it.
Re: PS5's Biggest Game Fortnite Accused of Using AI Art
Just wait until these people discover that cartoon characters have been drawn with irregular numbers of fingers and toes for decades...
Re: Dino Hunting Classic Turok 2 Gets an Upgraded PS5 Version
Turok 2 is such a frustrating game. It has some of the most satisfying gunplay of a game from that era and the death animations never get old no matter how many dino heads I pop with the bow.
But dear god, those levels!
Actually, no. The levels themselves might be large and labyrithian but having to hunt down certain things hidden in each of these stages in order to progress can make the experience like pulling teeth.
Re: 'Players Are More Accustomed to Darker Stories': Dragon Quest 7 Dev Says the PS5 Remake Will Hit Harder
@rjejr It's not too disimilar to Dragon Quest 11 - another in the series which is deceptively mature and gets pretty dark in parts.
I think when they talk about the game being dark and mature, they mean in relation to previous DQ entries, which are incredibly light and simplistic in narrative terms compared to the Final Fantasy games.
And to be fair, Japan has history of combining cute and dark - I think its a cultural thing stemming from the Buddhist philosophy of conjoining opposites that flies over the heads of most Westerners.
Re: 'Players Are More Accustomed to Darker Stories': Dragon Quest 7 Dev Says the PS5 Remake Will Hit Harder
@rjejr Dark and mature doesn't have to mean the visual aesthetic has to match (a perfect example of this is Raymond Briggs' When the Wind Blows.)
Akira Torayama's DQ designs are a defining hallmark of the franchise. You don't get rid of them or change them to make them edgier without stripping the heart of the series out.
Re: 'Even I Can't Tell the Difference': Shuhei Yoshida Thinks PS6 Needs Something Other Than Just More Power
@KundaliniRising333 It was not underpowered.
It seems people forget that games consoles are not meant to be cutting edge technology but affordable consumer technology (as opposed to expensive home computers, which have traditionally been the realm of dedicated enthusiasts.)
Saying the PS5 is underpowered because it's not as powerful as a PC at the time of release misses the point of the console existing in the first place: to provide general consumers the ability to play the latest games. After all, if you cared that much about graphics, you'd buy a PC.
Re: 'Even I Can't Tell the Difference': Shuhei Yoshida Thinks PS6 Needs Something Other Than Just More Power
I made this comment on the matter elsewhere:
"The human brain can only process a certain amount of information at any time.
When we look at things in real life, we ignore about 80% of the information our eyes pick up unless we narrow our focus to a smaller area, allowing us to pick up fine details at the expense of seeing a wider area.
Our brains seamlessly abstract the world around us until we need/want to focus on something.
This is why it baffles me that game studios insist on cramming as much visual information as technically possible into games: because the vast majority of it is unnecessary most of the time as moment-to-moment you're not paying attention to fine details but observing the game environment as a whole.
We have reached a point with video game graphics where its nice to know we can render fine details on the fly but its time for developers to learn how to abstract visual information.
Not only will this dramatically reduce development time and free up system resources that can be used elsewhere but it can make games more visually impressive as, by reducing the amount of visual information our brains are looking at, it allows us to notice the details that are there.
It seems that those studios porting games over to the Switch 2 are doing this already with some fantastic results. It would be nice to see developers in general adopt a similar approach and focus on what's actually important to the experience instead of wasting time and resources on superfluous details your average person isn't going to miss."
Re: Complete Your Physical Copy of Ghost of Yotei with a Fan-Made Manual
I really do miss proper game manuals. Part of the enjoyment of buying a new game was taking in the manual and boxart on the journey home from the shop.
And if we go far enough back, those manuals were works of art in themselves: filled with artwork and fiction that fuelled the imagination and fleshed out the gameworld.
I understand why those kind of manuals went away but it really feels like something has been lost along the way. I'm not interested in overpriced collector's editions with cheap tat destined for a landfill. Just give me gorgeous artwork and a well-made manual that builds on the game world and I'll happily pay £70 to own games on disc again.
Re: Rumour: American Civil War Assassin's Creed Game Cancelled Due to Fear of Controversy
Given the number of mouthbreathers who find Bioshock Infinite offensive, I can understand their reticence.
However just because a group of people might get be offended is no reason not to do it...unless their money is more important than integrity — which, as we all know, corporations have in abundance.
Re: People Don't Buy Anywhere Near As Many Games As You Think
I buy between 2-5 games a month but those are either indie titles or games on deep discount. I buy full price AAA titles maybe once or twice a year.
However, I'm one of the lucky few to have both the time and resources to play so many games. I'm sure if I had a wife, kids and boss demanding most of my time, I wouldn't be gaming at all so I can understand why those numbers are so low.
Re: Talking Point: Are You Getting Sick of Sony's Supposedly 'Samey' Approach to Story Telling?
It's not just Sony but Western AAA devs in general. I have been reading through Clive Barker's The Scarlet Gospel and its a well-written, entertaining book...but it is incredibly generic and a far cry from Barker's earlier works in terms of storytelling.
The reason I bring this up is because it struck me early on just how much it reads like a video game. This in turn lead me to realise that's genre fiction in a nutshell: It's not looking to re-invent the wheel but offer those who consume it easily consumed entertainment and escapism.
That is triple A videogaming in a nutshell.
That in itself isn't the problem, however. The problem is that gamemakers seem to think they're doing something special when all they're doing is regurgitating the same genre tropes and cliches and quality of writing that have existed in other forms of genre fiction for decades.
The other problem is that in other forms of genre fiction, there are those that buck the trends and do interesting things whilst still being resolutely within their genre. This just isn't happening in the western AAA game space (at least not outside of Eastern Europe.)
Re: 'It's Not Just About Adding More': Persona 4 Revival Producer Wants to Get the Remake Right
@GloriosaDaisy As others have pointed out, there's nothing problematic in the game. These are teenagers from a rural town who don't spend their lives attached to social media, that has a profound effect on their ability to understand things that exist outside of societal norms and how they react when faced with them.
As someone who spent my teenage years in a rural town before the rise of the internet, I can tell you that I said and did a lot of stupid and hurtful things (to others and to myself) simply because I didn't know better. Age, however, bought experience and wisdom that allowed me to grow as a person.
Likewise, the characters in the game learn and grow from their experiences and become better people because of it.
Expecting characters who's culture and cultural reference points are different to your own to be changed to satisfy your own values and beliefs because you find them distasteful says more about your own intolerance and close-mindedness than it does the game.
Re: Ubisoft and Tencent's New Company Stewards Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, More Starting Today
Don't mind me. I'm just sat here surrounded by great games from independent devs and publishers like its 1986 all over again watching the empires of old burn and tumble.
Re: New PlayStation Rewards Program to Offer Exclusive Merch, Starts Today
So...the reward is I earn the right to give Sony more money for the opportunity to let the world know I'm both a sad trophy-hunting loser and a moron with more money than sense?
Heck Sony, where the hell do I sign?
Re: 'Sony Seeks an Impermissible Monopoly on Genre Conventions': Tencent Fires Back Over Horizon Rip-Off
@CielloArc Now that's just not true.
Bloodstained is a shameless clone of Castlevania with damn near every enemy and location being ripped off. That its in 3D doesn't change the fact that to an uninformed person, they could be mistaken for the same series.
Re: 'Sony Seeks an Impermissible Monopoly on Genre Conventions': Tencent Fires Back Over Horizon Rip-Off
Everyone saying that they're visually similar and therefore Sony are in the right... would you side with Microsoft if they decided to sue the makers of Path of Exile because of its similarities to the Diablo games?
And surely Konami would be right to sue the makers Bloodstained for its similarities to the Castlevania series?
i look forwards to hearing people's excuses why its okay for these titles to clone other games but not this one.
Re: The First Silent Hill F Review Score Is Now Live
@SeaDaVie Okay, I was not aware of that.
However, looking at the bigger picture, it seems it has had a neglible impact on their review scores with their high scores generally falling in line with rest of gaming media.
As for Sibuya Scramble, it seems the game recieved high praise even outside of Japan so there's no reason to assume its perfect score is the result of corruption, given Japan's love of the genre.
Even assuming their scores are artifically bumped up between 1-4 points and the review text itself massaged, at no point does the end result push credulity.
The reality is that if Famitsu review Japanese games higher than Western games, its probably for the same reason 8 out of 10 of the AAA games I've played in the last 5 years have been made in either Japan or Poland: Because they're generally more interesting and fun to play.
Re: The First Silent Hill F Review Score Is Now Live
@SeaDaVie Orr...and this might seem wild — maybe Japan just happens to make better AAA games and therefore get reviewed better.
Here's the thing, both Western (Apart from Eastern Europe) AAA games and Western games 'journalism' are a joke. Western AAA games are thematically and mechanically safe, uninteresting and uninspired and the gaming press enable them through a lack of critical reviews (or if reviews are critical tend not to be reflected in the overall score.)
The hows and whys for this is are far too much me to go into here but it is a very real issue that many people inside and outside the industry are aware of and are not happy about.
For some reason, Japan and Eastern European publishers are far less affected by any of this and review scores tend to reflect this worldwide even if Western consumer habits do not.
That Famitsu tends to score Japanese games higher than Western games not only says more about the quality of Japanese games but their long-established position in games media makes them far less susceptible to corporate manipulation --especially from Western publishers (because Japan is still incredibly nationalistic, that is true.)
Re: Poll: Did You Buy a PS1 at Launch?
Didn't get one at launch as I was still at school and my family weren't exactly flush with cash. I did, however manage to get one early in '96 when my college grant came in just in time for this obscure zombie game called Resident Evil that I'd never heard of but thought it looked gnarly.
However, a friend of mine bought one with his first paycheck after leaving school and we'd often spend late nights playing Destruction Derby, WipeOut and Battle Arena Toshinden.
Those first few years of the Playstation were utterly glorious and while there have been many great games in the years that followed, its all been downhill ever since.
Re: USA's Top 20 PlayStation Games of All Time May Surprise You
@KundaliniRising333 You can't just move the goalposts because you don't like the results.
Those are the games the majority of people buy and play. Your idea of a 'gamer' (synonymous with nerd.) are the minority and have been for quite some time now. You might not like it but thems the breaks.
Re: Gears of War Reckons It's Ended the Console War as Reloaded Tops 1 Million Players
The console wars will never end (because clearly Sony are the best). MS may have waved the white flag but there will always be another enemy to crush, kill and destroy and rivalry to stoke.
Re: Lost Soul Aside's Hilarious English Voice Acting Goes Viral as PS5 Action Game Launches
Some games are destined to be classics and Lost Souls Aside is no exception...it's just a shame it will be for all the wrong reasons.
Re: Gears of War: Reloaded (PS5) - Iconic Xbox Shooter Is the Perfect Intro for PlayStation Fans
I played this when it originally came out and enjoyed it well enough at the time. Its big, dumb fun and hard not to glean enjoyment out of.
...but lets be honest, the only reason it stood out at the time was because Epic figured out how to do a WH40K space marine simulator before anyone else did - a USP that evaporated almost soon as they'd claimed it thanks to everyone borrowing from, and improving upon the formula they laid down.
Gears of War really is a product of its time and while you'd still be hardpressed to have a bad time with it, apart from nostalgia, there's really no point forking over the current asking price unless you have a fetish for crouching behind concrete barriers whilst getting shot at and derivative military science fiction.
Re: The New Assassin's Creed Mirage DLC Isn't Suspicious at All
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Re: The New Assassin's Creed Mirage DLC Isn't Suspicious at All
@UniBoss75 I mean, I'd be just as critical of FROMSoft if they pushed out committee designed games every 12 months... but they don't.
It's really not so much about the end products themselves as on the surface level there's not a whole lot to distinguish them. But like any artform, video games become imbued with the passion poured into them by their creators that shines through every aspect of the finished product.
When you create art without passion the end results might be superficially impressive but bereft of character, depth or soul.
Such work isn't designed to be cherished or remembered in 20 years. It's designed to part fools from their money (and in the case of video games, keep on parting them from their money as frequently and often as they possibly can.)
And that is the difference between Fromsoft's output (except maybe Dark Souls 2&3.) and Ubisoft's.
Fromsoft make games with passion that is clear in every single facet of the finished release. They're not concerned if little Johnny No-knob can't beat the first level as they're not trying to appease the mainstream in order to rake in all their money (that they've managed to do just that is a happy little accident.)
Ubisoft make games to sell as many copies as possible and meet whatever metrics are necessary to appease shareholders and as such the end products are stripped of any real character or soul to present games that are as bland, safe, banal and mediocre as possible in order to be as appealing and accessible to as many people as humanly possible.
Re: The New Assassin's Creed Mirage DLC Isn't Suspicious at All
@Northern_munkey Oh I'm well aware that pretty much every word that comes out of my mouth is likely to be met with apathy, denial, dismissal, mockery or – if I'm really lucky – outrage.
But I'm not going to let that keep me from speaking my mind as the moment I fall silent is the moment I let others dictate the rules on what I can and cannot say.
The last AC game I enjoyed was Black Flag. I picked up Origins and about 8 hours in to it before I realised I'd played this game years earlier when I'd played Far Cry 3.
That was about the time I realised that Ubisoft were working from a template and that their output was not aimed at people like myself.
Re: The New Assassin's Creed Mirage DLC Isn't Suspicious at All
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Re: The New Assassin's Creed Mirage DLC Isn't Suspicious at All
@Bentleyma
That's the problem with them. Ubisoft make offensively bland games.
They're the video game equivalent of Disney's modern cinematic output: easily digestible slop to entertain the easily pleased pumped out as frequently as possible to keep profits high and shareholders happy.
They're not bad – they can't be by design – but they're so safe and by the numbers that they're actively offensive to anyone who actually engages their brain.
Re: Konami Wants to 'Consider Lots of Other Games' for Remake Treatment if MGS Delta Succeeds
As a fan of TRPGs I'd like to see remakes/remasters of the two Vandal Hearts games. Vandal Hearts was my introduction to the genre and I'd love to revist them but due to their use of polygonal grapghcs, going back to them now is a little bit rough.
Re: John Carpenter's Toxic Commando Is Back from the Dead with Bloodthirsty Gameplay Trailer
This looks about as good John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars.
It should at least have a great soundtrack as whilst Carpenter's talent for filmmaking and storytelling died many many moons ago, his music is as great as ever.
Re: Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven Is a Huge New Expansion Coming to PS5, PS4 in 2026
Love Cult of the Lamb so more content is always welcome.
All hail the fluffy one!
Re: 'Special' Hollow Knight: Silksong Announcement Set for Thursday
I tried Hollow Knight as I'd heard great things about it but bounced off it pretty quickly (which takes a lot as Metroidvanias are one of my favourite types of game.)
I've been tempted to give it another go...but the insane hype around Silksong has actively been putting me off.
Re: Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 Enhanced (PS5) - Cinematic Spectacle Offers Little Else
I'll pick it up when it's around a tenner as that's my price point for walking simulators and visual novels.
These kind of games, once upon a time, were considered rentals: solid, well-made games (and yes, this really is still a game. Go look up the definition.) worth playing but not worth owning.
Given that option is no longer available, I'm happy to wait until it reaches a price point I won't miss and won't leave me feeling ripped-off.