GirlVersusGame

@MrPeanutbutterz It took seeing Solid Snake in a terrarium for me to come to my senses on special editions. I sent him to to Oxfam, I couldn't even look at his Team America-looking face it was a travesty. You worked in a game store though so you probably saw the best and worst of special editions up close. I should have zoomed right in with a microscope before buying off of Konami.

It’s unclear why this was kept secret for so long, but it’s not looking like the conglomerate will be getting a return on its investment in this instance.

• Probably to allow them to put the game out there without the kind of market scrutiny that Tencent drum up when they are seen to be behind something big. It means future development and acquisition is based more on data than public perception, reputation would have been a factor and investor confidence would reflect that. It would also protect investors interests in that live service sphere, there's a lot of copying and piggy-backing, everyone is looking for the next big thing but they don't understand their customer-base at all.

They may have also been looking at long-term growth (live service) and public validation is a distraction, not when you aren't required to disclose your investment. Selective visibility is a lot more common in the games industry than people think, which is also why the industry has lost so much of it's soul and why so many people have lost their jobs. Regulatory scrutiny in China can be volatile and Tencent use multiple methods of investment, not all of them need to be disclosed. I'd speculate that they went through an Exchange-Traded Fund, there's more diversification, less scrutiny and a lot more investor options. China is a complex market, my guess is that they were looking at passive income as a return on their investment and that particular kind of investment didn't require exposure, not like Western markets.

Which is another reason why investors are drawn to companies like Tencent, it suits a certain style of investment and offers the kind of security that I haven't seen in the Western games market. A game will flop and you'll still get paid. The profits in attributable equity to it's holders is unmatched and as long as that continues they can gamble with I.P.s/games and franchises. They are involved in a lot more than the gaming sector.

That's the first time I've seen a hexagonal shell box used for a game, cosmetics companies have been using them for years and they seem to suit games too. Definitely more colourful, I'm more curious about an art-book than anything else. There weren't many last year and mostly digital.

I forgot this was even coming to PS5. I played it for a day on gamepass but didn't have the time to invest into an RPG. It felt like a mix between Skyrim and Borderlands. Really odd aesthetic, a little bland but it was early game so it's hard to tell if it improves. I find it hard to judge any game on gamepass, it's too easy to walk away when it doesn't feel like you invested any money in buying the actual game. That was most of my experience with gamepass, it cheapened too many games.

I still think of this album from years before the game released. Strangely similar from Jakub Józef Orliński a Polish breakdancer and countertenor.

And that right there is why I preserve everything on physical, Sony would have to walk right in and Spirit away my games. Not to mention it preserves the game art/box. Remember when we had collections like that? Devil May Cry, Splinter Cell etc.

Those are all day one MGS releases, I leave some sealed. That paper one I took out of the Zone of Enders box, I still have the original Japanese MSG demo somewhere too. I have a couple of crates full of PS1/PS2 demos. There's others somewhere in my collection like Japanese demos/promos etc but other than that it's cinema reels/VHS/DVD/Books etc. I'm aiming for Fallout levels of preservation. Maybe I need to start with PSP too, at the moment it's PS1/PS2/PS3 and PS4.

Hopefully paving the way for Die Hard Trilogy on Premium.

Leave them in, I want to experience the originals for the first time in their original form not cut or modified to suit current standards. They are only games, no one is forcing anyone to play them and if they did cut that content it wouldn't really be preserving anything. I'd just go and find the originals instead.

Meanwhile I'm standing at a bar in a pub for a trophy to pop right now, after that it's off to stand in an English phone-box for ten minutes for the next one.

Delay all the way please Sony, some of us are still catching up with the PS4 catalogue.

@DrVenture69 I took some convincing by a tour manager to check out some Folk Metal, I never went to the sound checks and waited for them to go on that night. That band was Korpiklaani, then after that the others followed like Eluveitie, Turisas and Ensiferum. Before then Metal to me was Slipknot, Slayer, Anthrax, Venom etc, some Symphonic and Melodic and a lot of Apocalyptica and unhealthy amount of Screamo (noise)

We've talked about and shared some really random bands in the music thread. Sometimes back and forth for hours into the morning. There's some Slipknot there right now but it's done with animal sounds/dogs barking etc, crows on percussion. It was a weird night. I'll listen to anything, Classical and Metal are my go to. I'm going to check out Ranarim. Swedish Folk Music will be a change from Swedish Death Metal.

I'm only up to 502 on my Spotify list, 3.5K would be a feat. I tend to replay the same piece of music though and I couldn't do that for 3.5K tracks.

When I see those numbers I know it's time to make the list a little bigger. With a list that big you should share some stuff on the music thread, we're always finding new stuff and sharing.

@DrVenture69 If that's on your Spotify then you have very good taste in music. I've played about two hours worth of the game and that music you mentioned reminds me a lot of a piece called Spem in alium. Latin for 'hope in any other'. It's a Renaissance motet by the English composer Thomas Tallis (1500's) I've heard it live a couple of times. The music in that game is very similar, you might think so too if you heard that piece. It's performed by eight choirs with five voices each and many see it as the most important piece of early English music. I'd agree.

That's one of the best renditions you'll find of it on Spotify, the others fall flat compared to how it sounds live and The Oxford Camerata are one of the best when it comes to that kind of monophonic/plainchant. The same technique that would have been used in the game's soundtrack, which is why they sound so similar.

He looks like a man who's never smiled a day in his life and it can't help that they gave that pixel Kratos his eyebrows. If you cover the top part of his hair he looks just like him.

I gave him a spear, it's uncanny.

I might be trying Everybody's Gone to The Rapture, depending on how Valentine's Day weekend goes, I could end up anywhere it's always a mystery. I finally finished and one hundred percent'd Infinite Wealth over the week and after that epic journey decided to try my first walking simulator. What Remains of Edith Finch was so good and so well written, so I tried another walking simulator 'The Invincible' which was absolutely brilliant and needs to be experienced by anyone who enjoys good sci-fi and intelligent narrative. It's based on the 1963 novel by Stanisław Lem. I'm hoping The Rapture delivers that same 'amazing', I'll know at some point this weekend. Happy gaming weekend folks.

@Kiefer-Sutherland Killer Frequency and Abiotic Factor were two of my favorite games of last year, Abiotic Factor gets better and better as you progress so stick with it if you think the start is a bit of a slog. Resource gathering gets a lot easier, food and drink too. Not to mention unlockable branching paths that make getting back to your base a breeze. There's a great story buried in there too. I played Half Life on PS2 after getting my hundred percent. I wanted to see if it really was paying homage to the greats and it was in spades.

@Messiahbolical Now there are two of you?

@Zuljaras Your collection just got bigger.

At first I thought it was a new Lords of Shadows, then Darksiders then Kings Field. It's nice to see some colour and saturation, it looks Diablo 3 before Diablo 4 decided to make everything so brown. That vibrancy alone would make me want to give it a try. It feels like I only see colour now in those kinds of games when someone bumps the saturation for photo-mode. Those Devs know what they are doing.

@SystemAddict We just need that Tenchu 2 level editor but online so we can try other players levels. It's cheating when you know where all of the traps are.

The PS1 was powerful for the time.

@exile93 Oh we're long past enjoying it.

That was three platinums ago now and the grind was never ending, it felt like I'd been playing for weeks. I played it across four time-zones, the story was great, the characters interesting but they locked NG+ behind DLC so I cheated and bought 15 levels on the PSN store for the last trophy needed. The XP after level 55 was dismal even in the dungeon.

Violin Concerto in F Minor, RV 297 'Winter': I. Allegro non molto if anyone is wondering about that piece of music in the trailer.

That God of War chicken game was something, I'm definitely going to have to try the first Control game now too and that John Wick game looked more Punisher PS2 than anything of recent memory. Maybe Sleeping Dogs. Castlevania looks great too, I loved Dead Cells and that looks like a cross between Dead Cells and Bloodstained Requiem of the Night. Shame there was no Eurotruck Simulator 2, I really want to see how console handles it.

Yakoh Shinobi Ops looks promising too but left me wanting a new Tenchu game, I'm not sure about that massive intrusive cone that was on the UI. Resident Evil just reminded me that I need to play another one other than the first two games, I didn't know what was happening in that trailer or why.

Very good. That Castlevania game looked so much like Dead Cells that I'll probably try it, and if the God of War Trilogy is where the series begins? then maybe I'll finally have a way to give the series a go. Kena 2 was definitely unexpected, and hopefully that game with the rubix cube for a boss doesn't cost people their jobs.

@StitchJones You must have had some very interesting times in shoes of Arthur Morgan. I was out picking flowers while you were changing the course of history. I'm cautious about so many games after Dragon's Dogma 2, it felt like I finished everything in one day and we haven't seen a pixel of DLC and most likely never will. We live in an age of half finished games and pay-walled NG+, I hope Crimson Desert lives up to it's promises or else I'll be waiting for the next Witcher game. I don't mind waiting if the juice is worth the squeeze.

I only recently played Cyberpunk, day one edition would have put me off ever trying again. The current version of the game pushed it right to my top ten of all time. Enshrouded will be my pre-order exception, as soon as that comes to console I'm going to drop everything and jump on. Valheim too, I don't mind playing exclusives on PC but I'd rather support the console market. It increases the chances of further ports.

'Furthermore, you can go fishing, hunting, and mining' Must resist the urge to wait until post-release. I hope we can steal fruit too, not just pay for it like the trailer. I hope this is true too 'Crimson Desert's Open World Is at Least Twice as Big as Skyrim's, and Larger Than the Red Dead Redemption 2 Map' from IGN.

@Oram77 The method has changed for some video-game movies too. What they do now is is call up various agencies and say, 'I'm shooting in X for these parts in X amount of time'. This is because the location is now confirmed before the talent, example the new Resident Evil. I did one day on their set in Czech Republic and they picked that location because of how taxes affect their investors. In Germany for example the loop-hole was a fifty percent return on your investment, through distribution rights alone. If the film flopped you'd still get paid. In Serbia for Silent Hill it was similar, those tax incentives meant the movie flopped but investors saw their return.

Now it's become 'Who do you have that's available?' No auditions or rehearsals, it's that streamlined. It's 'I just want someone with a name' The actors don't care about the script, they just want the payday and they get it. Maybe they spend two weeks doing callbacks and cleared their schedule for a big part they didn't get which too has become common.

Or maybe contract negotiations fell through. Maybe they were on hiatus from shooting a TV show. Whatever it is, those actors weren't busy at that time. That's how I've seen it work from the inside, I still sit in on closed sets, those actors know nothing about the project or the part and so they don't feel the need to do their job properly, just to show up and get paid.

They'll say 'he was made for the role', but really it's what the agency sourced not the studio. It's no secret, people just want to get paid. Zach Cregger (the director for that Resident Evil production) knows what's he's doing with that movie but the producer's ultimately decide on the talent and that's where a lot of those game to movie productions fall flat. Look how badly that Borderlands movie was cast, that was all down to agency availability, nothing else.

They see only the profit not the picture itself, they've already projected the distribution sales and rights for that Resi movie and it's not even in the can yet. I'll look into a couple of sound stages and see if Helldivers has been booked in, I can't see that not being one big CGI/green screen production. My concern is what effects house they'll use, I know one in London that works with Marvel and they put two hundred million dollars into the VFX for just one movie, that includes the 3D scans and particle simulations. I'd like to think Sony would go big but I don't see it. Not when I've seen and heard how game adaptions are viewed at the top.

Post-production is even worse. Colour correction, editing, special effects other than big set piece visuals (like wire removal) are done as quickly as possible since the equipment costs a lot to rent and the people doing the work aren't cheap to hire. Then boom they release the print to the distributors, cash their checks, and return the money to the investors. All before the film is seen by a single person or a single ticket has been sold. That's how Borderlands was done and Silent Hill, followed by the completion bond which means more money especially in a country with cheaper exchange rates.

Basically game adaptions are a license to print money even if they flop and that's why investors love these projects. They aren't looking at projected ticket sales anymore, they are looking at the return on their investment. Everything after that is just an added bonus, distribution right now is a mine-field, few can navigate it, those who can are winning big.

@Oram77 I thought you were joking when you mentioned this on the Starship Troopers article. It's actually happening.

I've seen much worse than this in my Steam recommendations and I'd play that game before Call of Duty.

@PuppetMaster It is but there's a lot they pulled from the vaults for their two Japanese released volumes. Much like Fromsoft's Design Works volumes, I'm sort of obsessed with art-books, I don't think much of those Resi Archives made it to the West. Here's what I mean.

The first approved design of Ada.

Storyboards, most of the games had their scenes storyboarded.

Original creature drafts and concepts.

Then there's stuff like Resident Evil 1.5

It looks like a living art-book in all the right ways, it's a shame more developers can't or won't do that. There's a wealth of art-books and concept drawings from Konami, I think I've seen some of those Mega Man pieces from their Official Complete Works books they put out a couple of years ago. It's strange they didn't focus that much on Resident Evil, maybe it was too violent or gruesome for public display. I especially like the guestbook message at the end. That's very excited hand writing and very humble too. It's nice to see videogames being taken as a serious art-form.

Wow they really quoted Leonardo da Vinci at the beginning of the game, that alone speaks volumes.

Games I'd like to see but in an alternative time-line: Burnout remastered collection (with every original music track) Mercenaries 3, The Saboteur 2, Rockstar's Agent, a new Wipeout, The Getaway 3, Snowrunner 2, Gotham by Gaslight (cancelled Batman game) This is why I have no expectations but I watch either way.

This will (hopefully) be the weekend I finally finish Infinite Wealth, after Nurmagomedov versus Davis (MMA fight) then it's back to some virtual fighting of my own. I thought two hundred hours for a game was a lot but apparently it's not for that franchise. It never ends, happy gaming weekend folks.

I'd play this just because I did play a Mod of those engines in Train Sim PC and all of the voices were ripped from the show, it wasn't bad. The genuine thing will be so much better. I look forward to seeing Thunderbirds make the jump to Flight Simulator (not really but there is a Mod on PC)

I love some colour but there is such thing as too much. It feels like they oversaturated everything to suit the attention span of a child. Which is fine if that's who it's aimed at but the franchise for me will always be the first two games. The whole idea of a hunter is to slowly and methodically stalk their prey, then wait for the perfect window to strike. I don't like the pace of what I saw. It turns an intelligent design (dinos) into cannon fodder.

I can sort of see the connection to the earliest sketches of Alloy but the colour and speed is too much for me. I like slow and steady, I'm sure there's a demographic for that sort of thing.

I remember that game, I'll definitely pick it up on PS5. I never thought I'd see it make the jump to console. At this rate I'll have no reason for PC, other than Kenshi and Dwarf Fortress.

I'm starting to think I'm not the demographic for GTA anymore, I can't conjure up the hype at all and I try each time I see it mentioned. I'm cautiously optimistic at best. I don't want to support another game that ends up being a vehicle for one big online game. It feels like we were cheated out of another Ballad of Gay Tony or Lost and the Damned for whatever GTA Online is now. FOMO hasn't hit yet, I'll give it some more time.

@Oram77 And yet that beard was the most realistic thing about the whole movie, it has some of the saddest CGI to ever befall a licensed movie. It's been about three weeks and I still find it hard to watch a movie. The experience went from confusion to disappointment right onto frustration and finally topped off with anger. They absolutely butchered the name of Silent Hill. At this rate Scream 7 will be better.

That three minute clip is better than the entirety of the new Silent Hill movie. The acting too.

I never thought I'd play a climbing simulator but the pace and art-style from the demo made me do it. There was a little anxiety at the start but it levels off as you get to grips with the mechanics and the rock-faces. It's definitely not the kind of game to rush and I'm learning as I go.

Fun read and great vibrant pictures, I'm really looking forward to Tokyo Xtreme Racer it was my first racing game and had my favorite soundtrack. Now all we need is a new Burnout.

@FinneasGH That sounds like my early experiences at launch when I was always missing one percent of the map then had to drive around and kept running out of fuel right before I found it. The old PC Spintyres ran a lot like that before it became Mudrunner, I still return to it from time to time so I can appreciate how good we have it now. Spintyres was great but very janky and unforgiving. It's a shame it was pulled from Steam, it really showed where the series came from.

@ZeroE How's Season 17 going? I like the look of the new Voron G-5352 (Ural) I was hoping they'd add the Ural-532362 with the REM-KL, I had to Mod it in. I haven't checked Mods on console in so long, Mod.io were so strict on branding.

Below Zero was a great addition to Subnautica. I've wanted to try another Metroidvania and Ultros looks unique enough to guarantee a play, very Lovecraftian.

I'm being schooled by Infinite Wealth this weekend. I need to Ace my SEGA proficiency tests in the pursuit of platinum and the less said about the dating mini-game the better. Happy gaming folks.

'We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.
Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.' - Ultros Devs.

I never heard of it until now but it's giving off serious Devil May Cry and Nightmare Creatures vibes, also some mid 2000s Emo/NuMetal. I'd play it, I've only played one Final Fantasy game so far, I'd be happy with that being the second one.

I tried to play it multiple times and each time kept getting drawn back to No Man's Sky, it's not a bad game it just didn't hook me like so many other Bethesda games. I think the biggest let down was that a game about space exploration didn't exactly focus all that much on wandering. If they do reward exploration? I missed that part. I kept finding the same copy pasted outposts/locations and all of the rewards seemed to only come from quests. That's an area they can improve on. Maybe work on some of those loading screens too, there were so many.

@Czar_Khastik Or the one with the backwards watering can spout. I'd play either.

@Link41x I played From Russia with Love on PS2, it's definitely better than some of the others like The World is Not Enough, Tomorrow Never Dies (so wooden) and 007 Racing (which really was a thing) Nightfire made up for all three.

@Muttt I just finished CatQuest 3, it goes faster than the first two but it was great. There are a couple of missable sidequests that are hidden behind lost items, it's worth doing them for the rewards, even if you have to use a guide to find the items to start the quests.

@Onearmbandit It would be rude not to, I'm grinding XP and Yen while I listen. I was going to go with Cold but then I'd want watch to watch Queen of The Damned again and Lunatic always sounds like 'take my cellphone' I can't unhear it.