GirlVersusGame

I actually cared for a moment until I realized it was EA and I haven't bought one of their games in years. I do have Saudi friends though, some are gamers and they are no different than anyone else. Their way of life and the faith they follow is just a consequence of their environment and the society they need to adhere to. It feels like most people who have a problem with a culture or country hasn't met that culture or stepped foot in their lands.

I'll add that as a female who has visited the Middle East on many occasions I've never once run into any issues due to gender. I've felt safer in the UAE than in parts of Europe. The same even goes for Iran, the people there are beautiful and constantly get demonized. People aren't their governments and yet they get put in a box because of their faith or their nationality. If there are any Saudi members left on this site I hope they never see this thread.

The series has been getting a little easier with each release (when it runs properly) they provide a lot of beginners lessons in the latest one but it still takes a while to learn the basics. You can always switch to auto-pilot once you get up there. I've never used a controller on the PC version, just sticks, thrusters and so forth. I'd be interested to see what if anything gets released that is compatible with PS5, and to see how it runs before I consider making the switch. With all the DLCs on PC it was about 250GBs but I never got through half of them, if I do get it I'm not even going to consider platinum. It's not the kind of game you rush, it's a simulator in the true sense of the word.

Some of those are very rough. Day 9 looks like part fruit bat, gorilla, tiger, and a lion. Day 5 and Day 8th aren't bad but Day 2 has just enough wrong with the flames to make your brain hurt a little.

Meanwhile Satisfactory's looks like a mid 2000's clip art-bash but only one of them unlocks a Christmas tree so life goes on.

Best gaming news in quite some time. I couldn't get hyped for First Light, I think James Bond is too young. He reminds me a little too much of the cartoon, which makes sense considering he hasn't become a full agent yet.

@StitchJones I don't think I've tuned into The Game Awards yet, I've seen highlights but they were no E3. I think I'd rather be lied to about how incredible Watch Dogs looks than watch someone promote Doritos and Soda.

@StitchJones It could be, I was hoping it's an Elder Scrolls announcement but that gate in desert looks like it was copy pasted from existing work, modified, and then molded or printed. If you look at Blizzard's track record at 'this will excite the players!' you'll see a recurring theme where hype follows their monetization goals. Their re-balance streams back at launch were so awkward, they were basically telling people they broke the game and were trying to hype it up. If I still played the game I'd bet all of my mounts on it either being a major endgame re-balance or a new Dlc that you enter through a gate. The Holidays are right around the corner, it might be their way to keep the player count up over Christmas and keep investors happy.

Right now their biggest investor in the UK Aegon Asset Management are cutting jobs, they are calling it a cost cutting exercise. Their new plan rolled out a couple days ago. Then that post showed up. The timing is very convenient. It might not be immediately obvious but the same investment fund holds almost 9% of Microsoft, that's 1,398,320 shares. When people talk about Ubisoft/investors/etc those are the kinds of investment funds that are responsible for people losing their jobs. PMV Capital Advisers, another investment fund are also going to be pushing to gain more control over Microsoft in the coming months. It all trickles down into their different divisions. That first investment fund has almost four million clients in the UK, €320+ billion in assets. I prefer the game side of things but people are seeing more and more stories about companies like Ubisoft because so many outside sources are getting involved, they are ruining the industry from the top down.

If something goes viral you can point to that post and say 'this is what we are doing next! look at the engagement, people are hyped'. I personally think publicity stunts like that are less about the player and more about the company. But I could be wrong and I've grown cynical from being involved in similar ecosystems, I can't see past the greed.

@BearsEatBeets It's hard to unsee some of the similarities.

There are probably some other hints hiding where the different Blizzard artists host their portfolios etc. If that gate was over there it's not now. In the past I've stumbled across dlc leaks for other games by browsing different portfolios.

Marketing, marketing and more marketing. Parents are seeing the PS5 on billboards, buses and train stations. Nintendo had a pop-up store in London for what seemed like a few weeks and then it was gone, they should have done it closer to Christmas.

To make things worse they had a ticketing system (queuing) I picked up a few collectibles/plushes and would have gone back but it was gone. Sony don't need to do that because they have a marketing stranglehold in the UK. Pop-up stores are meant to create a conversation through engagement, which could have worked in their favor had they spent more of that time showing what the Switch 2 can do. I don't even think I saw it there. They had an endless supply of plushes and models from their different franchises which would make great stocking stuffers but that was about it. My take away was that Nintendo didn't care all that much about marketing the console, they were there to market Nintendo as a brand.

Joshua Tree National Park is in California, Blizzard HQ is also in California. They did unveil a statue in 2023 for Diablo. I was hoping Elder Scrolls but I remember something similar from the Artbook, it looked a lot like the included image.

In the book I think it was a concept for a nightmare dungeon that may not have released at launch. They could have reworked dungeons or added some new tier of dungeon to the game. I haven't played in a long time but I do remember them saying Diablo would have a ten year roadmap and either they were going to or have reworked dungeons and endgame content.

It looks a lot like the Tree of Life at Disney World, no idea if they publish or own any of the above mentioned games. Either way it's impressive if it's a real sculpture and not AI.

The armor looks like maybe Elder Scrolls, the door looks like it's from Dark Souls. No idea.

Looks like a great feature. My first platinum was Littlebigplanet on PS3. Fairly straight forward, collect costumes, ace some maps, publish some levels. It was a team effort, I didn't even know what trophies were. When they took down the servers they took with them the chance of ever getting platinum again.

@Zuljaras Alright I have to ask what are we looking at? are those steelbooks? I haven't played Space Marine but I did play Inquisitor, Chaosbane and Mechanicus. Inquisitor plays a lot like Diablo but has a more bite sized game loop, still highly addictive and a lot of fun. I liked it more than Diablo 3. Chaosbane was incredibly copy pasted but classes were kind of fun. Mechanicus is an RTS, it starts off super difficult and balances out somewhere in the middle, if you can reach that point. It also has one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard. It's by Guillaume David, look-up the track 'Noosphere' you'll see what I mean. I'm really looking forward to Mechanicus 2, there's a serious lack of good RTS games on console. I'd love to see R.U.S.E. show up on Premium or even Tom Clancy's EndWar.

I'm out of the country this weekend so no console/Satisfactory to play. I managed to get a start on my new storage/Mall before I left. Those struts carry eight conveyor belts per level and each belt delivers a different component or material from each of the various plants across the world map.

The storage goal will be to keep building skywards, then at some point connect the left side to a train network. For the time being I'm playing Rimworld on the Steam Deck, I almost lost my colony to a pack of wild cats. That white thing (Thrumbo) carried the fight on it's back then carried off the remains to be cooked. That's why I always prioritize animal training. That's about it, happy gaming weekend folks!

Deranged director sounds an awful lot like -

"Hey tough guy, wake up. You're not dead. Well, not yet, anyway. You're getting a second chance, another throw of the dice."

@Zuljaras Were any of your 5 a guess?

Ouch, two of them were a fluke.

Firefighting Simulator: The Squad won't be missed. The spray on those fire hoses are completely scuffed on console, the AI teammates are also some of the worst I've ever seen. I had to keep leaving them outside and deal with the entire inferno solo. Other fires were bugged and didn't go out, it made Police Simulator feel like a Triple A game.

Surviving Mars isn't surprising at all considering Paradox are frantically trying to milk old games to make up for the losses of Bloodlines 2. I had about 600ish hours in the original Surviving Mars and all the DLCs. I played the new version and could hardly tell the difference between the PS4 and PS5 version. It's basically a DLC bundle with improved frame-rate and little else. I only ever noticed a drop in performance on the PS4 version after building an absolutely massive colony and even then the people and moving parts are so small that the game hardly even has to render them. It's definitely a cash-grab. I didn't even realize that GTA game was on there, it's hard to forget the day one experience of the Remasters. Even if they are fixed now I think I'd avoid them and instead remember the originals.

As long as companies are transparent about the use of AI then I as a consumer can decide whether or not to buy their product. It really depends on how much and what for. If it speeds things up for the person who is actually doing the job then fine. If they start featuring completely AI made characters or environments then I'm out. I view gaming as a hobby and also as an art-form. If they can't carefully balance the two it becomes nothing more than a business to me too and just the act of deciding to buy the product or not becomes the game.

That's absolutely wild even by Ubisoft standards. They are making it far to easy to stop buying their games. Valhalla was my last AC buy and that already feels like forever ago.

@CaptainWow It's worse than that too. A friend of a friend went insane after following nothing but conspiracy theory videos. They followed Facebook pages that created AI videos about alternative history and weird TikTok AI voiced reels or whatever. The result was them actually getting sectioned for their own health. There was most likely an existing issue there but daily doses of AI content escalated the situation and sent them over the edge. The last thing they told me was that giants built the pyramids, they looked me dead in the eye without even hesitating. I'm sure it has positive applications too, I just see it damaging and threatening the hobbies I enjoy. It's hard to even know if there will be art students ten years from now, they already bounce from job to job.

@CaptainWow Uploaders wised up and added 'concept trailer - fan made' to try and get around it but Masters of the Universe has caused a stir with the higher ups and they want the insane amount of AI trailers pulled because it conflicts with the product they are trying to market properly. Amazon MGM are taking it seriously so hopefully something comes of it. It's very misleading, the argument is that the slop could affect the actual movie when it releases next year. I don't know if this is public yet but some studios are trying to have Youtube to divert the revenue earned on those trailers back to the studios themselves.

If it goes ahead it would significantly stem the number of fake trailers that are flooding Youtube. They are making big money off of copyright infringement. Some uploaders are clocking billions of views by churning out multiple trailers for the same fake movie. I usually don't agree with a lot of behind the scenes legal wrangling that studios do but I don't see anything good coming from misleading a target audience.

Paradox just handed Cities Skylines 2 over to a new developer then rushed the release of a redux Surviving Mars to gain back some of the projected loses from Bloodline 2. They absolutely knew it would tank and still went ahead and released it as a full priced game. It's good that they admit the blame but they also released Cities Skylines 2 on PC in an absolutely woeful state. It was littered with bugs and even on a top of the range machine the performance was just dreadful. People are still running into FPS problems, I can't imagine how it would run even on a PS5 Pro. They targeted 30fps on high end PCs, a lot of content creators ditched it and went back to the original.

They've been telling investors that they are going to write off the loss and focus on management games again. Dropping Colossal Order after fifteen years is a really bad sign of things to come. I'm hoping someone else comes along and releases their own city builder, I don't trust Paradox with the franchise anymore.

This has been happening with movie trailers for a while now. It's so bad that people become convinced that a new Mad Max or Aliens movie is right around the corner. Studios can't get them taken down fast enough. They monetize them to hell and back too. Technically they are using studio property and logos etc, also actors who never even gave their consent. It's only a matter of time before platforms like Youtube update their TOC to combat all of the fake slop. Like Matt said the more it happens the more I lose interest in GTA6, the original leak definitely affected my interest in the game. I didn't want to see behind the curtain and it was everywhere that week.

@AndyKazama I'm surprised we haven't had Hades yet either. It's a couple of years old now and I feel like a lot of people haven't played it.

@PuppetMaster This. As soon as I heard they were pulling the Sega Collection I raced to the store and picked up a copy. They only had two left. I think it even came with a poster.

Only Lego Horizon Adventures for me this time. I really enjoyed the Lego Batman ones and the Villains one so we'll see how Horizon plays.

That shark game Maneater is a bit of a technical mess on PS5. I've never seen a game crash as much as that one and crashes are one thing but it also has a habit of wiping your saves. There are also quite a few reports of it turning peoples consoles off. It's also broken on Epic and on Xbox.

Nice I'm 14 games behind the current Cod series. That's about 13yrs of boycotting the franchise. Here's to another 13yrs.

@Jammer It's the first gacha game I ever tried and I would like to agree with you but it does fit the style of the game. I played it pretty much day and night for the first week of the launch and then something clicked. I understood the gacha model and deleted the game. It's a shame too because I really enjoyed the game and saw all of the potential future updates could offer (especially the outfits) I'd buy it right now if it was a non gacha game and then play it in my own time without the RNG and dailies, but that's not going to happen.

I think it was the dailies more than the RNG. I played an MMO before and it too had dailies, I was bringing a console on vacations/etc just to grab items/keys. At the time I called it efficiency, now I call it addiction. That's the thing with Nikki, it appeals to little girls and to adults, I've seen how addiction can affect adults, and don't want to see how or if it can affect children. Or the gambling mechanics.

Either way it's transparent. It tells you what it is and doesn't really hide any of those gacha mechanics. There's definitely an appeal there for people who can balance their time spent on there, I can't. In just a week I had a folder of about 200 pictures, a week of gaming felt like maybe one day. I miss it but I don't trust myself to not get seriously hooked.

For £600 to £700 I'm there, I already have a vast Steam library and like the idea of a half way point between PC gaming and console gaming. I think sellers need to justify the price of their tech, but buyers are their own persons with their own resources and if they decide they want to spend their money then it's none of my business.

I swear I forget this game exists until I see articles about it, then I forget again only for the cycle to continue. They don't seem to be doing much to drum up the hype and what I do know about it would probably fit on a cocktail napkin. Space, religion, Porsche, Adidas and that's about it. I can definitely wait until 2027, they aren't doing or saying enough about it for me to feel the kind of hype that maybe I should. A couple of years ago a female protagonist would have been enough to catch my attention, now I'm too guarded about potential hooks and gimmicks. I'd rather just play a game for the sake of playing a game especially if it's set in a fictional world. I've enjoyed a lot of previous Naughty Dog games though so I guess I'll wait until the reviews drop.

@Jammer It's hard to tell even on the inside. The reporting and figures I see when I'm over here are different than what I see when I'm over there. It's business as usual for a lot of people and with most industry because it's not our war, we don't want to be there either. I've always seen them as our neighbours and friends, now it's all in shambles. We've always had a grey economy, sanctions etc only served to make it easier to cut out the middle man and funnel technologies and funds elsewhere. It's similar to the kind of privatization of the 90s except we're not shooting and blowing up each other this time, the collateral damage is global.

New games and movies find their way into circulation and it's Sony and Microsoft who lose out (which means eventually the gaming industry does too) We still spend about $5 billion on gaming, even under restrictions. You can imagine the damage that can cause when the studios, staffers and teams aren't getting their cut of what is essentially their property. It's like the novelty bootleg system that I grew up with has been weaponized and some people have no choice but to support it.

I think the same could be said for hardware such as RAM, it's there if you want it but the correct distribution of profits is currently rerouted to the state. Semiconductors and chips are big business, what should be going into a home PC or a console is going into drone technology and guided systems for missiles. As long as that kind of senseless killing continues the supply chain won't fully bounce back, and even then it's commonly known that certain materials and components and gases like neon gas are part of why we're still there.

The worry I have is that a continued and sustained conflict between both sides is now turning people from 'we shouldn't be there to' a kind of revenge mentality that gets projected onto anyone but the people who were responsible for it to begin with.

We're cut off from social media by design, Facebook, Twitter, and such. Then other platforms like Youtube and Instagram get highly scrutinized for thematic content. A lot of younger people VPN and have a better understanding of the situation but there's a large part of the population who don't. Social media laws and restrictions evolve almost daily, I've wiped so many of my own accounts and changed details to keep up with the literal order of the day. AI is starting to play a role in monitoring too. But in my experience people already monitor people, there's a lot of paranoia and with good reason.

I look at Microsoft like I do Boeing. You assume from the outside that such a massive cooperation understands the industry and the technology they are surrounded by. Until something major does happen to remind you how much they value profit over engineering. They also have a similar corporate culture shift in common. When they do focus on rapid growth and profitability they de-prioritize the actual technology and the software. This is something they should have seen coming, and probably had a team on hand to predict but compartmentalization could have lead to the higher ups not listening. They have pretty much no user support anymore either, people get told to use ChatGTP on various forums. And that's from support, not other users.

I came really close to buying the knock off today until I checked my PC copy and saw it was a completely different studio and Dev. Sony needs to do something about these low effort knock-offs. I jumped on Megabonk when I saw ambiguousamphibian play the game, it's really good but like so many PC games I really want to see them make the jump to console. It's the perfect game for the PS Portal.

Not too much gaming this weekend. I'm preparing the last of the Santa Claus stuff with my yearly toy drive and December is creeping up incredibly fast. As much as I love videogames I like trying to introduce non virtual toys to children too and toy drives allow you to do that. If I do get some time I'll probably work on a mall for Satisfactory. It's basically a large depot people on PC build to store all of the different materials and components needed for manufacturing and milestones. Some people load them manually, others automate the process through a series of conveyor belts, trains or other vehicles. I'm at the point where I need to overhaul all of my storage before I get buried underneath it all.

My last build was a factory for motors, they aren't easy to build. It takes multiple processes to get to the finished piece. It turned out really well and very efficient, which is pretty much the point of the game. It also requires a whole power plant just to function and took about three hours to design on paper. No regrets.

To give an idea of scale, that's my character praising the sun.

Stalker 2 is also tempting as is Rimworld Console Edition. It's really too early to tell. There's also that Yorkshire Simulator on +Plus.

@Splash_Woman That's what happened with my nephew. I bought him plenty of offline single player games with amazing world building and storytelling. Then Roblox and Fortnite made the rounds in school and he didn't want to miss out. Also, throwing rocks at trains?

@ECharles20 I think the anti rich sentiment comes from the zero sum mentality of getting wealthy at the expense of the poor. An economic fallacy for sure, but a common one unfortunately.

This has been the situation back home for a very long time. The assumption is that you swindled and robbed your way to wealth because many others did and became super wealthy overnight through dubious means. For others it was generational and it's often impossible to tell the difference between the two. At least from the outside looking in.

I ran into that same mentality when I first moved to the UK, you were either X Y or Z and every one of them were a stereotype that related to peoples understanding of how your country operated. I could use some censored colourful language to explain how that felt, but won't. It didn't help that X Y Z do co-exist, but I think you have to walk a mile in a persons shoes to understand their life.

I thought that whole thing was ancient history until my government decided to go marching into another country and do unspeakable things (where I did have friends) The past was dug up again and along with it came extreme polarization throughout every news agency and social media platform on the planet. Something people might think differently about if they were on the receiving end. It's mostly lifted now.

Philanthropy isn't beaten into people, you either embrace it or you don't. The trigger for me was seeing real poverty, people with nothing. My parents made sure I learned the value of money.

@LeeBB_Art You are in the UK?

I think you have to factor in location too. I lost a really good American friend because financially they did run into trouble and Twitter programming turned them against me. They doom-scrolled daily, became bitter (without accepting the help I did offer) and then one day just snapped. They blamed all their problems and the problems in their country on 'people like me'.

Some countries are being hammered harder than others and you never know what's going on in someone's life unless they tell you. My friend was seeing it as someone who had to take on a second job just to pay the rent and to eat. I'm sure I'd start to get bitter too. I'll leave it there, I was mulling over a reply for what felt like hours and figured no one else in the same position would speak up.

As for the Ubisoft situation - the entire point of the article. I'll boycott the hell out of them if they do start to replace character design and environmental design with AI. It has no soul and I don't want to see artists struggle even harder than they do. You could argue that people who make the decisions have no soul either. Maybe they don't and you can't always make a change in the world even if you want to. You can however impact the games industry by either deciding to buy a product or not. I think people often forget that gaming is a luxury, there's no gun to a persons head but if there were the barrel would probably read FOMO.

It was a bit of a struggle to find anything this time. I went with 13 Sentinels and a cosy gardening game. Too many games and not enough time. People complain about Plus+ but most of the games I was interested in ended up there already.

It's sad, physical toys and tech can be passed down to siblings or those in need. I've been organizing a toy drive for the last couple of years and physical things like Legos go a long way. They don't evaporate into the ether if a server gets taken down or a game goes offline. I don't know about anyone else but I can trace a lot of my gaming back through Christmas photos with each console or game, they were magical times. It would be different if they packaged it with a plush from the game or something. At least that way you are getting something physical. In-game currency feels like teaching a child the price of something, but not the value.

The Devs must have seen the ten knock-offs on the store and decided they wanted a piece.

It's true to the aesthetics of the source material, the books are a lot more extreme than the movies so I'll be picking it up for the collection.

@SirSephy You can already see the change over on ArtStation. It's a verified service I use to talk to game designers and conceptual artists. The threat of AI has made it all the more cut throat. Which then has a bleed affect on the community. People are a lot more tight lipped about what they are working on and for who. They risk less pay too, if they won't do it for X amount there will always be someone else who will do it for less.

@deadfred77 That's one of my favorite features too. A lot of crafting games give you 100% of the materials back but only if you tweak the settings and that feels like cheating. It's the ultimate game to go at your own pace through. The only tool I used in the beginning was a notepad and a pen, if I could make it work on paper I knew it would work in the game. Now it's gotten a little crazy, this is tonight's build. It's going to need another power plant just to handle all of the assemblers and constructors. There are other ways to generate power, I just haven't unlocked them yet and I'd rather not spoil it for you.

Also some tips that you may or may not know: If you highlight something you placed you can press square to copy it, if you highlight something in the build menu (after pressing L1) you can use triangle to hot-key things (up to I think 10 quick wheels) if you hold down R1 and tap left on the d-pad you can activate your flashlight. Build and use the Awesome Sink asap, you can turn dead spiders etc into proteins (through the crafting bench) then into DNA capsules. If you feed those capsules to the sink you'll get a lot of coupons fast. The MAM is something to focus on too, it unlocks all kinds of gear and extra slots, the rebar gun is particularly useful for monsters. Also if you have a problem with spiders (some people do) you can switch to arachnophobia mode, they then become cats (not my picture)

Car Simulator ✅
Walking Simulator ✅
Yorkshire Simulator ✅
It's going to be a great month.

@Michael2008ish Satisfactory. It's about £40 on the store.

@The_Elder Isn't it brilliant? I was hoping people weren't sleeping on it. The Devs have done a lot to improve the console experience. Not that it was bad at launch, they've just put a lot of effort into ironing out any bugs and improving performance (especially when you build a massive castle) I had so much fun secretly raiding friends when they went offline. They were convinced another clan did it, for about 2 weeks. I watched the revenge plot grow by the day. Good times.

Call of ..Satisfactory, lots and lots of Satisfactory. On last count I built x45 power plants, x6 cement factories, 2 quartz sites, 7 copper mines, x9 iron factories, x2 steel factories and so much more. This is still early game too, it's not the kind of game you rush. My main facility keeps expanding as it undergoes all kinds of modifications. I'm trying to plan ahead for trains too, yes the game has trains. You can build stations and program them to load and unload materials and components. The same for drones, which are more late game. I never thought I'd be playing it on console or that I'd shelve my PC world.

One of the many power stations. That ones has x38 generators and puts out enough wattage to run most of the main facility. It's a simple enough process, the generators take a mix of coal and water and the miner just needs a jump-start from an existing power source then you are good to go.

The main facility itself. It snakes across the map connecting to sites where materials are already processed meaning if I need a component or resources I just have to head there. It has another new two floors since last week and I'd estimate another five might be needed.

A small part of the basement level. It contains all of the various assemblers and constructors needed to make more advanced components. I always put the guts of the build in the lower levels then feed all of the components up into rooms full of massive containers. Those spools of copper wire are being assembled into cables. I want to start building motors soon too, I need vehicles. Those can also be programmed, you can drive a route then have the AI repeat it for even more automation. So far it's run like a dream on console. That's about it, happy gaming folks ☕

I'm not going to play the game so I don't exactly have a horse in the race but AI art is so disappointing overall. I love collecting artbooks but seeing the results of Mortal Kombat's recent Flawless Victory put me off making a purchase. They used AI to upscale the sprites and frankly it looks butchered.

The original HZD artbook.

Forbidden West.

AI just can't compare to the actual heart and soul that has gone into so many Playstation games. Real artists with real vision.

@Oram77 I'd give it stick for one particular reason. The first game was a masterpiece and Aloy was interesting and likable. There weren't a lot of cool female protagonists so it instantly caught my eye. Then Forbidden West dropped and I was there day one for what I thought would be an absolute blast, it was until Aloy went from likable and admirable to a complete b----h. I get that characters evolve and go through their arcs, but doing that made me not want to continue. Maybe I'm being harsh and it's a double standards thing because it happens with male protagonists all the time and it's seen as acceptable. It's just disappointing to see a character you admire become such a product of their environment when some folks play games to remove themselves from their actual environment. For me it became 'you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't', which ultimately affected how I view the entire franchise.

@Oram77 Nice, so a driving simulator, a Yorkshire simulator and a walking simulator.