Fizza

If I could be completely frank for a moment, the fixation the wider gaming space has on Highguard is kinda baffling to be honest. Like yeah it was silly for Keighley to place such a giant spotlight on such a generic shooter but I feel like I've heard discussion of it every day since and I'm just say here wondering why when the game itself is so milque-toast and unmemorable XD

whatever gets a discourse cycle going I guess 😅

Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed underperforming while Grounded 2 has quietly carried on and done well for itself is giving me major deja vu of when Bethesda released Hi-Fi Rush, Redfall and Starfield in the same year and only HFR was well-received XD

Scott Pilgrim as a series (be it the books, movie, first game or Netflix anime) holds a very special place in my heart so EX has been one of my most anticipated releases ever since its announcement at SGF last year.

can't say I was expecting it to come out a month from now though XD

I still think Highguard looks generic as all hell (very much the 'fantasy-tech' look we've seen countless times over in Western entertainment since the 2010s) but I can't lie the sheer bizarreness of its marketing strategy, or lack thereof, has definitely piqued my interest regarding it. I'm gonna wait for a proper reviews/impressions to come out (preferably without all the paid hotel and food expenses clouding influencer's judgement XD) but it is F2P so its not like I really have much to lose by trying it out ┐( ∵ )┌

The various questionable-at-best issues pervading the recent slate of Yakuza titles (though particularly Y0DC and YK3 as we have direct comparison points with those two), from the needless narrative changes to the de-emphasisation of grittiness in favour of the 'lol random' side content, feel rather indicative of a team who have had almost all their creative energy burnt out of them by the series' annual release cadence. It reminds me a lot of Ace Attorney in a way where, while later entries are still good (some even being on-par and surpassing those of older age), the loss of a central series figurehead really hurt the consistency of each subsequent game made in their absence.

I do hope Yakuza can steer back in line soon but given how RGG seems a lot more zoned-in on Virtua Fighter and Stranger than Heaven currently, it feels like the series is in a 'continuing for the sake of continuing' spiral right now 😞

this tidbit coming out around the same time as Ubisoft's implosion is remarkable timing XD

Massively deserved though! Its not a perfect game (and learning that it had a Gen-AI texture in it, even only briefly, certainly felt like a supreme kick in the shins) but Clair Obscur is still a remarkable JRPG that felt like a passionate culmination of elements the dev team loved from other games mixed into a truly unique end product that I can absolutely call my GotY for 2025 ❤

oh my god the remake had a trophy list, it was THAT far into development
https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/25539-prince-of-persia-the-sands-of-time-remake-unreleased
how does mismanagement of this scale HAPPEN man

this godforsaken company is the most incompetent studio I've ever seen 💀

@B-I-G-DEVIL No God of War 1/2 either feels like a mad missed opportunity as well given the recent anniversary 💔

that native PS3 emulation really can't come soon enough 😭

'We don’t see why the remake and remaster can’t co-exist?'

Its unfortunately very simple in the eyes of SEGA/RGG:

@8thDoctor I don't think I've ever seen a game's reputation be done in almost solely by its marketing quite like CotW if I'm to be perfectly honest; so much emphasis placed upon it for disinterest at best and utter fury at worst XD

@ShogunRok If Cygames were anything to go by, I can already see the 'white text on a black background' Twitter apology image published a week from now in my mind's eye 💀

SNK proving time and time again that their greatest enemy is themselves 💀

The maddening part is that the characters themselves and how they look in-game look absolutely top-notch so I have absolutely no clue why the marketing team decided to reveal them within an AI-generated sludgefest 😭

@Blaze215 Apologies for the morbid analogy but the creation and maintenance of the car didn't require horses to be mangled without their owner's consent in order for them to function in the first place 😶

@old_gamer74 I haven't played Yakuza/LaD yet so I can't speak from experience but Gaiden and Infinite Wealth play extremely differently from each other (one is a beatemup and the other a turn-based JRPG) so I think it moreso comes down to whether you vibe with turn-based games or not XD

@graymamba Kinda reminds me of how they casted Johnny Yong Bosch (best known for playing Nero) as Dante in Netflix Devil May Cry 😅

uhh I think there's been a bit of a mix-up here fellas XD

On a serious note though, while Hurst certainly looks the part of Norse-era Kratos and is a great actor in his own right (as evident by his performance as Thor in Ragnarok), it really doesn't sit right with me that Kratos is being played by a white man in live-action. I understand that he's gonna be grey-skinned at pretty much all times but Kratos has always been a tanned Greek underneath so choosing Hurst feels like a strange move (even if, again, he'll probably play the role perfectly fine).

Nothing screams sunk-cost fallacy quite like stating 'we recognise that this is terrible for our company both logistically and reputationally, but we've already invested so much into it to the point where we can't back out now' 💀

ah yes I do love the one (singular) classic title being the overall inferior version of a game you can already play with trophy support on PS5 through Arcade Archives, really pushing the Premium side of PS Plus Sony 🙃

The Extra lineup is admittedly very solid though, RE Village and LaD Infinite Wealth are very strong additions to start off the year 👍

me when I get stuck in the next God of War game and Kratos suddenly starts advising that I put glue in my pepperoni pizza instead of cheese:

While I can somewhat understand his point about technological progress being stunted if the impression that all AI is evil sticks around (procedural AI programs for instance often get lumped in with generative AI in discussion when they are vastly different in both applications and ethics), people were very clear that they specifically disliked the generative part of Level-5's usage of it first and foremost so it feels like he's dancing around the issues involved with both the creative rot and environmental damage associated with Gen-AI in a way that isn't particularly reassuring whatsoever 😓

@Dogbreath 'It's a shame that worthy uses get mixed in and tarred with all the AI slop out there.'

Would you mind me asking what you consider to count as 'AI slop' if you also have no issues with stuff like medieval furniture and homes being generated by AI? I feel like anything that's created by Gen-AI would fall under the category of AI slop regardless of how good or bad it looks since there's absolutely zero human intention and thought process behind what is being made.

I hold a very firm anti generative-AI stance myself so statements such as these are utterly infuriating for me. However, if a company can acknowledge why people are so against the use of Gen-AI after being called out for using it themselves and vow to not use it again in the future, I do tend to offer them a singular grace in that regard (the key word being singular: if they do it again even after initially backing down from it, they're dead to me).

As an example, Clair Obscur at launch left in placeholder textures made with Gen-AI but replaced them with proper handmade textures within a week of their discovery. If you want to hate them entirely on those assets being in the game in the first place I won't try to argue against you, but I do feel like the speed at which they responded to the criticism tells me that they realised how damaging having Gen-AI in their game is and will (hopefully) not do it again in the future.

Unfortunately I don't really get that same vibe of regret and understanding from Vincke here. Its the typical CEO mindset of selecting the most profitable means of game creation and then being amazed why people don't like something which is so obviously controversial. I don't believe its reflective of Larian as a whole but its a very bad look that Vincke should apologise for imo.

'I was asked explicitly about concept art and our use of Gen AI. I answered that we use it to explore things. I didn’t say we use it to develop concept art. The artists do that. And they are indeed world class artists.'

Well if the concept art is developed from AI-generated sources then can you really claim the game isn't being built off of Gen-AI at that point? 💀

Been blazing through Marvel Cosmic Invasion for the past bit myself so this'll be the perfect opportunity to take care of the multiplayer-centric trophies tied to it XD

Jesus man how has all this Gen-AI garbage been adopted this quickly and this blatantly by almost every corner of the industry, this sucks 😭

@graymamba Unfortunately Eurogamer isn't just one guy like a Youtube channel, its an organisation with many different reviewers who each hold very different stances on how bad it is to use Gen-AI in games (see how Black Ops 7 received a 3/5 despite being even more egregious with its AI usage than Arc Raiders)

@47Levi My personal theory as to why there's relatively little pushback towards Gen-AI in Asian game development so far is because developers in those regions (though particularly Japan) operate under an efficiency-first mindset at all times and Gen-AI does speed up the process of game development faster than pretty much all techniques that came before (provided you kiss your morals goodbye 🤷)

(I jest somewhat but this is still ridiculously petty either way 😭)

I'm very surprised most of the reviews for the MK Kollection were so glowing because based on my own research it seems to be rife with a ton of extremely debilitating issues for a collection of its nature:

• atrocious levels of input lag
• bleh online experience
• key features missing for no discernible reason (why do MK3/4 not have movelists?????)
• sloppy AI-upscaling for basically every stage background
• general emulation issues such as broken audio/visuals

It feels like such an unusually low-quality release from Digital Eclipse, a studio which has an otherwise super reliable track record in recent times which has me suspicious that WB/Netherrealm may have pushed it out before it was realistically ready to make up for the financial void MK1 put them in but that's entirely speculation. This whole debacle has really deflated my excitement for a collection I was really looking forward to trying out over the Halloween season 😭

@Veritas7Ax Its crazy to think that we used to get entire series on a single system back in the PS2/3 days and nowadays with the ballooning costs and development time of modern AAA releases, we're lucky if we even get two games from the same franchise on one system 😭

While I feel like she's kinda just stating the obvious here, I absolutely agree with her in turn. Smaller-scale games tend to be a lot more focused in their vision due to not having the budget to hide imperfections behind cutting-edge visuals like AAA releases do and given how they're typically viewed as being less important than the standard tentpole releases of any given year, they're allowed to get far more experimental with their gameplay/genre choices (see how metroidvanias and roguelikes dominate the indie sphere for instance XD)

Sony has not been lacking in the quality department when it comes to their game releases but by sprinkling more small titles inbetween like Astro Bot or Miles Morales, the wait inbetween their BIG titles would feel a lot less painful than it currently is imo XD

@shonenjump86 Rumble Roses and Bloody Roar at EVO trust the process🤞

@katamariUK I'm extremely thankful we have Bloodstained filling the void next year but man what I wouldn't give to see a wholly new Castlevania these days, especially as someone who's gotten deeply obsessed with the franchise over the past year and a half XD

Imagine telling someone before its release that Silksong would end up being described as 'flavour of the month' 😭

I'm happy SHF has done so well for itself though; while I haven't played it (nor any other SH game) as of now, my friend group has been raving about it ever since its release 🔥

Finally: all my time spent on Backloggd can be put to good use XD

Awesome surprise and the perfect kick up the rear to finally get me to nab the Platinum XD

Never thought I'd live to see the day but welcome back bub 💛🖤💙

I've been eagerly awaiting Insomniac Wolverine ever since I first played Insomniac Spider-Man for the first time earlier this year and I'm so happy to say that this gameplay reveal far exceeded my expectations. The extravagant linear setpieces, the impressive setting variety and the sheer unrelenting goriness of it all has me absolutely giddy in the best way. Praying I have the healing factor necessary to get me through till Fall 2026 now XD

@somnambulance Steam and Switch 2 eShop are confirmed to be down and it seems like PS/Xbox Store won't be far behind XD

Every single digital storefront is breaking under the sheer magnitude of Silksong, what a time to be alive XD

and then there's me who probably won't go at it until November/December at the earliest since I still haven't 100%-ed the original 😅

yowza 😭

I don't know what to believe at this point since Insomniac Wolverine is as much of a cryptid as the main character its centered around XD

I'd be incredibly excited to see it finally resurface nonetheless as, having just played Insomniac Spider-Man earlier this year, I've been thoroughly convinced that Insomniac have the chops when it comes to dedicated Marvel games (though I do hope Wolverine plays a fair bit different to Spidey XD).

Oof, sad to see the launch be as rough as it is given how much I've had my eye on Lost Soul Aside for a good long while now as a huge fan of DMC and its action-game ilk. It really does seem like there's a cracking character-action game here that's buried deep under mountains of modern-AAA sludge (probably mandated by Sony in order to justify its pricetag) which is a real shame to see. I'll still give it a fair assessment with that demo they put out the other day but LSA seems bogged-down by corporate meddling in much the same vein as Shadows of the Damned was back in the day 😞

Its really funny that Sony is publishing Perfect Run here because the premise is straight out of InFamous XD

(that ain't a bad thing mind you, we need more InFamous games in the world if Sony is unwilling to do it themselves🔥)

@Jill_Sandwich Given your PFP/username, I'm surprised you'd ever wanna go back there to begin with after encountering Nemesis 😛

Wasn't expecting it given RE1/Dino Crisis lacking them beforehand and it won't matter much to me since it'll be my first time ever playing through RE2/3 but I always love trophy-hunting in any game that has them so I'm a fair bit deflated that isn't the case here XD

@AndyKazama With a brand new Funky Mode featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series 🔥

@wildcat_kickz Its certainly very funny looking back on things but given how massive of an announcement that was, I can't really blame him to be honest XD

My incredibly unlikely hope/prediction is that there will be at least one new game announcement that doesn't have my eyes staring up to the heavens XD

anyways F4 reveal for Marvel Tokon pls 🙏

Shockingly great month for once honestly; RE2/3 are obviously the highlights (and the fact you don't need PS Plus to play them like you did for RE1/Dino Crisis initially is great too) but Spider-Man Remastered is an extremely high profile get and smaller titles like Atelier Ryza 3 and Unicorn Overlord pad out the lineup very nicely as well. Genuinely got no complaints this time around and I cannot wait to play RE2 for the first time while I wait for Gamescom to kick off 😁