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.
The games console is dead and has been replaced with affordable PC hardware running custom firmware shoved into a console shaped box to sit next to the TV with iterative updates and the occassion change of case and peripheral design every few years in order to remain relevant.
Meanwhile PCs themselves have become more affordable and easier to use negating the two biggest factors for games consoles to exist in the first place.
Apart from brand loyalty and game exclusivity (something slolwly going the way of the dodo.) there is absolutely no reason to buy a dedictated games console any more.
Consoles always had a place in the market because custom hardware meant they could do things that couldn't be done elsewhere. Now a new console just means the numbers of the specs go up a little bit allowing for ever so slightly smoother, crisper graphics...woo.
"But but but...this time you can buy a portable one!" I hear you consumer whores screaming. So its a Playstation with a higher risk of being lost, stolen or broken...woo.
Wake me up when someone announces a games console that does something new and interesting.
@Olmaz I'm afraid your evidence doesn't amount to anything.
You see, research on subjects such as this is highly contestable. Even leaving aside the foolish notion that you can prove a nebulous thing as psychological harm (it can show deviation from arbitrary social norms – something I will agree on – but deviation and harm are not the same thing.) there is the fact that studies that backup pre-existing ideas and popular opinions tend to vastly outnumber that go against the grain.
It's all too easy to find professionals willing to say pornography is the cause of all society's problems because pornography is a societal taboo and therefore a nice simple scapegoat.
It's not so easy to find professionals willing to say, "porn is a-okay!' because doing so is career suicide and even if they do, they find themselves up against people like you who's ideologies are so strong they cannot help but dismiss, downplay and even destroy anything that runs counter to their worldview.
Hence why I refuse to argue with you. It is a pointless endeavor.
I have built my worldview through firsthand experience, constantly asking questions and not accepting things at face value. You have been taught yours. We have two very different perspectives on reality and I learned long ago it's a waste of time trying to convince a fish in a bowl they're not swimming in the ocean.
@Olmaz So, from a cursory glance at your links, its the same BS that has been trotted out for longer than the internet's existence.
I get it, I really do and I'm not interested in arguing as I know I'll never change your mind.
I'll just say this: there will always be things that society deem to be harmful to children and in every case, those things turn out to be non-issues and attempts at stifling and controlling them turn out to do more harm.
@Olmaz Considering we now have a younger generation with more puritanical attitudes towards sex and nudity than we've had in generations, I can't say I do know it.
As I stated, pornography, regardless of how readily accessible it is, isn't the problem. It is a lack of education and parental (and individual) responsibility that's the problem.
And honestly, what harm is this non-stop erotic cavalcade supposed to be doing, exactly?
@Olmaz Pornography is not harmful in context. Prudish and puritanical views on sex that lead to children not being provided with that context, on the other hand, is.
I spent my childhood in the pre-internet days when hardcore pornography was illegal in the UK and even simulated sex was frequently censored and it didn't stop me finding my parent's secret stash of illicit tapes and magazines. The fact is, children of a certain age will take an interest in sex and will find ways and means to acess sexually explicit material.
So rather than trying to prevent this, what should be done is to educate them properly. This was something I had, thanks to my liberal parents and whilst I'm sure puritanical minds such as yourself might argue that I'm a corrupting influence because of my liberal, open-minded attitudes, the fact of the matter is, my exposure to porn and other explicit materials at a relatively young age have had no deletrious effects on me or anyone around me.
If kids are watching some of the extreme porn out there and think that's normal and acceptable behaviour outside of pornography and consensual sexual play then the fault lies with parents for not teaching their kids better in the first place and not the porn itself.
It isn't the overabundance of new games or increasingly selective gamers that are at fault, it is a lack of marketing.
Even in the days of the PlayStation and before, where the number of new releases were a fraction of what we see today, you couldn't just plop out a game and expect people to buy it. There are plenty of great games from the 90s that quickly fell into obscurity because apart from a review and a few words prerelease, they went practically unnoticed.
Relying on word of mouth to sell your game is always a risk and, if I'm honest, rarely as organic as it might seem (all those streamers and YouTubers playing and talking about your game didn't exactly go out and buy it, did they?)
To add to the problem, the choice of artwork and game's title don't exactly inspire impulse purchases as they're so generic I imagine most people wouldn't pay the game a second glance even if it were heavily discounted.
Truth be told, this article is doing a far better job of raising awareness of the title than anything... Which my eternally cynical mentality wonders is the whole point.
@Brundleflies21 The movies may not have been good (although 3 is a fun horror movie and Bloodlines is far better than its given credit for.) but Barker himself, however wrote a direct sequel, The Scarlet Gospel, which I've heard good things about so there's no reason this can't be good as long as he's involved.
Iron Galaxy need a spine transfer as they're clearly lacking one of their own.
Honestly, I am beyond tired of this toxic, narcissistic culture we're forced to live in where criticism or any form of friendly deprecating humour is considered an attack that demands supplication or risks punishment.
SS2 is still a great game but when you take off the rose-tinted glasses, it has a few issues that detract from the overall experience – especially for new players coming in fresh.
It's also fair to say that although System Shock 2 laid the foundations for everything from Dead Space to Dishonored, the games that followed in its wake have superceded it.
System Shock 2 might be a classic but it's not beyond reproach and after a quarter of a century, it's showing its showing its age, not enough to make it unplayable but certainly enough to lose it a point or two when it comes to reviewing this rerelease.
I've been a subscriber of the top tier for the last 5 years and I've seen the selection go from including games I wanted to play to games I already owned, to the digital equivalent of a bargain bin with one gem of a game every few months or so.
Then there's the retro collection which started off poorly and has somehow managed to get worse each month. That this is one of the rare benefits of Premium just makes it sting even more.
I had to pause my membership for a month back in April and saw absolutely no reason to go back as its not worth it to play the occasional round of Street Fighter 6 and odd discount on games I want.
That they even went and cancelled the Playstation Stars program was the final nail in the coffin and it will take substantial efforts on Sony's part to regain my trust and tempt me into resubscribing.
I picked it up purely based on word of mouth and have not been disappointed. It's the best original Final Fantasy game I've played since IX and deserves the praise being heaped upon it.
What I find curious about this, though, is that it shows gamers know genuinely great games and yet for some reason are perfectly content with overproduced slop 99% of the time.
I don't understand the mentality (although I suspect marketing, media hype and undercritical reviews play a substantial role.) Surely this is the quality we should expect from games all of the time (even if they do fall short) instead of being so rare they become newsworthy for months?
@mvhess Why am I here? Because I've been playing games on the Playstation since I got my first back in 1995.
Believe it or not, gameplay and story are not mutally exclusive and many of my favourite games manage to both tell a good story and be fun to play (for example the Metal Gear Solid games.)
Frankly I have resented the AAA games industry's push towards cinematic experiences above gameplay since they began dumbing the gameplay down and removing challenge about 20 years ago (it came as a response to people complaining they didn't have the time to 'git gud'.) Thankfully the rise of indie games and FROMSoft's uncompromising attitude kept me from giving up on the hobby entirely.
At the end of the day, I like shiny games with pretty graphics. I like games with good stories and cinematic flair...but more than either of those, I like video games to be games and not merely a collection of interactive elements with the occasional mild challenge thrown in to give me the illusion I'm achieving something like I'm a lab rat pushing buttons for food.
And although Sony and the other Western AAA publishers refuse to do that any more, there are plenty of developers) that get the balance between gameplay, production values and cinematic storytelling just right.
@LiamCroft I have and you seem to gloss over and dismiss their faults. You mention traversal gets annoying in the last 10 hours or so (that's the length of an entire video game!) and that while combat is improved, there's still about the same amount as the original.
The fundamental problem with Death Stranding is that the core gameplay mechanic isn't engaging enough to warrant the effort needed to progress further. If that remains unchanged then all the improvements elsewhere are meaningless.
it doesn't matter how much glitter you cover a turd in, its still a turd at the end of the day.
Comments 58
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.
Re: Rumour: Leaked PS6 Specs Reveal Affordable, Power Efficient Next-Gen Console
I...really don't care any more.
The games console is dead and has been replaced with affordable PC hardware running custom firmware shoved into a console shaped box to sit next to the TV with iterative updates and the occassion change of case and peripheral design every few years in order to remain relevant.
Meanwhile PCs themselves have become more affordable and easier to use negating the two biggest factors for games consoles to exist in the first place.
Apart from brand loyalty and game exclusivity (something slolwly going the way of the dodo.) there is absolutely no reason to buy a dedictated games console any more.
Consoles always had a place in the market because custom hardware meant they could do things that couldn't be done elsewhere. Now a new console just means the numbers of the specs go up a little bit allowing for ever so slightly smoother, crisper graphics...woo.
"But but but...this time you can buy a portable one!" I hear you consumer whores screaming. So its a Playstation with a higher risk of being lost, stolen or broken...woo.
Wake me up when someone announces a games console that does something new and interesting.
Re: UK Citizens Using Death Stranding 2 on PS5 to Bypass Porn Blocks
@Olmaz I'm afraid your evidence doesn't amount to anything.
You see, research on subjects such as this is highly contestable. Even leaving aside the foolish notion that you can prove a nebulous thing as psychological harm (it can show deviation from arbitrary social norms – something I will agree on – but deviation and harm are not the same thing.) there is the fact that studies that backup pre-existing ideas and popular opinions tend to vastly outnumber that go against the grain.
It's all too easy to find professionals willing to say pornography is the cause of all society's problems because pornography is a societal taboo and therefore a nice simple scapegoat.
It's not so easy to find professionals willing to say, "porn is a-okay!' because doing so is career suicide and even if they do, they find themselves up against people like you who's ideologies are so strong they cannot help but dismiss, downplay and even destroy anything that runs counter to their worldview.
Hence why I refuse to argue with you. It is a pointless endeavor.
I have built my worldview through firsthand experience, constantly asking questions and not accepting things at face value. You have been taught yours. We have two very different perspectives on reality and I learned long ago it's a waste of time trying to convince a fish in a bowl they're not swimming in the ocean.
Re: UK Citizens Using Death Stranding 2 on PS5 to Bypass Porn Blocks
@Olmaz So, from a cursory glance at your links, its the same BS that has been trotted out for longer than the internet's existence.
I get it, I really do and I'm not interested in arguing as I know I'll never change your mind.
I'll just say this: there will always be things that society deem to be harmful to children and in every case, those things turn out to be non-issues and attempts at stifling and controlling them turn out to do more harm.
The road to hell and all that...
Re: UK Citizens Using Death Stranding 2 on PS5 to Bypass Porn Blocks
@Olmaz Considering we now have a younger generation with more puritanical attitudes towards sex and nudity than we've had in generations, I can't say I do know it.
As I stated, pornography, regardless of how readily accessible it is, isn't the problem. It is a lack of education and parental (and individual) responsibility that's the problem.
And honestly, what harm is this non-stop erotic cavalcade supposed to be doing, exactly?
Re: UK Citizens Using Death Stranding 2 on PS5 to Bypass Porn Blocks
@Olmaz Pornography is not harmful in context. Prudish and puritanical views on sex that lead to children not being provided with that context, on the other hand, is.
I spent my childhood in the pre-internet days when hardcore pornography was illegal in the UK and even simulated sex was frequently censored and it didn't stop me finding my parent's secret stash of illicit tapes and magazines. The fact is, children of a certain age will take an interest in sex and will find ways and means to acess sexually explicit material.
So rather than trying to prevent this, what should be done is to educate them properly. This was something I had, thanks to my liberal parents and whilst I'm sure puritanical minds such as yourself might argue that I'm a corrupting influence because of my liberal, open-minded attitudes, the fact of the matter is, my exposure to porn and other explicit materials at a relatively young age have had no deletrious effects on me or anyone around me.
If kids are watching some of the extreme porn out there and think that's normal and acceptable behaviour outside of pornography and consensual sexual play then the fault lies with parents for not teaching their kids better in the first place and not the porn itself.
Re: 'Increasingly Selective Consumers' to Blame for Underperformance of Blades of Fire
It isn't the overabundance of new games or increasingly selective gamers that are at fault, it is a lack of marketing.
Even in the days of the PlayStation and before, where the number of new releases were a fraction of what we see today, you couldn't just plop out a game and expect people to buy it. There are plenty of great games from the 90s that quickly fell into obscurity because apart from a review and a few words prerelease, they went practically unnoticed.
Relying on word of mouth to sell your game is always a risk and, if I'm honest, rarely as organic as it might seem (all those streamers and YouTubers playing and talking about your game didn't exactly go out and buy it, did they?)
To add to the problem, the choice of artwork and game's title don't exactly inspire impulse purchases as they're so generic I imagine most people wouldn't pay the game a second glance even if it were heavily discounted.
Truth be told, this article is doing a far better job of raising awareness of the title than anything... Which my eternally cynical mentality wonders is the whole point.
Re: Pinhead Is Back! Single Player Hellraiser Horror Revealed for PS5
@Brundleflies21 The movies may not have been good (although 3 is a fun horror movie and Bloodlines is far better than its given credit for.) but Barker himself, however wrote a direct sequel, The Scarlet Gospel, which I've heard good things about so there's no reason this can't be good as long as he's involved.
Re: Tony Hawk's Latest Game Mistakenly Trashes Dead Activision IP
Iron Galaxy need a spine transfer as they're clearly lacking one of their own.
Honestly, I am beyond tired of this toxic, narcissistic culture we're forced to live in where criticism or any form of friendly deprecating humour is considered an attack that demands supplication or risks punishment.
Re: Mini Review: System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster (PS5) - Cult Classic Returns, Cybernetically Enhanced
@willi3su They have a point though.
SS2 is still a great game but when you take off the rose-tinted glasses, it has a few issues that detract from the overall experience – especially for new players coming in fresh.
It's also fair to say that although System Shock 2 laid the foundations for everything from Dead Space to Dishonored, the games that followed in its wake have superceded it.
System Shock 2 might be a classic but it's not beyond reproach and after a quarter of a century, it's showing its showing its age, not enough to make it unplayable but certainly enough to lose it a point or two when it comes to reviewing this rerelease.
Re: Now Your PS5 Is a Bona Fide KORG Synthesiser
Without the ability to export audio, this is just another toy with little practical use.
Re: PlayStation Thinks Its PS Plus Games Are 'Improving' Every Year
HAHAHAHAHA!
No.
I've been a subscriber of the top tier for the last 5 years and I've seen the selection go from including games I wanted to play to games I already owned, to the digital equivalent of a bargain bin with one gem of a game every few months or so.
Then there's the retro collection which started off poorly and has somehow managed to get worse each month. That this is one of the rare benefits of Premium just makes it sting even more.
I had to pause my membership for a month back in April and saw absolutely no reason to go back as its not worth it to play the occasional round of Street Fighter 6 and odd discount on games I want.
That they even went and cancelled the Playstation Stars program was the final nail in the coffin and it will take substantial efforts on Sony's part to regain my trust and tempt me into resubscribing.
Re: The Expedition 33 Story Keeps on Getting Better with 'Unusual' Sales Increase
I picked it up purely based on word of mouth and have not been disappointed. It's the best original Final Fantasy game I've played since IX and deserves the praise being heaped upon it.
What I find curious about this, though, is that it shows gamers know genuinely great games and yet for some reason are perfectly content with overproduced slop 99% of the time.
I don't understand the mentality (although I suspect marketing, media hype and undercritical reviews play a substantial role.) Surely this is the quality we should expect from games all of the time (even if they do fall short) instead of being so rare they become newsworthy for months?
Re: Death Stranding 2 (PS5) - A Masterpiece in Every Sense
@mvhess Why am I here? Because I've been playing games on the Playstation since I got my first back in 1995.
Believe it or not, gameplay and story are not mutally exclusive and many of my favourite games manage to both tell a good story and be fun to play (for example the Metal Gear Solid games.)
Frankly I have resented the AAA games industry's push towards cinematic experiences above gameplay since they began dumbing the gameplay down and removing challenge about 20 years ago (it came as a response to people complaining they didn't have the time to 'git gud'.) Thankfully the rise of indie games and FROMSoft's uncompromising attitude kept me from giving up on the hobby entirely.
At the end of the day, I like shiny games with pretty graphics. I like games with good stories and cinematic flair...but more than either of those, I like video games to be games and not merely a collection of interactive elements with the occasional mild challenge thrown in to give me the illusion I'm achieving something like I'm a lab rat pushing buttons for food.
And although Sony and the other Western AAA publishers refuse to do that any more, there are plenty of developers) that get the balance between gameplay, production values and cinematic storytelling just right.
Re: Death Stranding 2 (PS5) - A Masterpiece in Every Sense
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Re: Death Stranding 2 (PS5) - A Masterpiece in Every Sense
@LiamCroft I have and you seem to gloss over and dismiss their faults. You mention traversal gets annoying in the last 10 hours or so (that's the length of an entire video game!) and that while combat is improved, there's still about the same amount as the original.
The fundamental problem with Death Stranding is that the core gameplay mechanic isn't engaging enough to warrant the effort needed to progress further. If that remains unchanged then all the improvements elsewhere are meaningless.
it doesn't matter how much glitter you cover a turd in, its still a turd at the end of the day.