GirlVersusGame

PS3 and PS4 were my favorite for actual exclusives. PS5 for me has mostly been about playing Indies and others that only previously lived on PC because previous consoles couldn't handle them. It looks like PS5 has had some fantastic games like Astrobot, I just haven't played them. I think Death Stranding 2 was the only big title I played this year... and I never finished it.

Some brilliant titles right there, now to find the time to play them. I think Pacific Drive will be first, I've wanted to check it out for a while and I'm pretty sure I don't have a copy.

@1UP-HUSKY I played mostly bootlegs back then. Disney were one of the only companies who did manage to keep most of their IPs out of the black market so that makes sense. I've been trying to keep my nephew off Roblox, it's not exactly a safe game. FOMO doesn't help, especially with kids.

I can't help but wonder what happens when children have more access to cosy games than Triple A 'you shoot me I shoot you' style games. If there were cosy games when I was growing up I didn't see them but now they are churning them out frequently. It's a good time for parents getting their kids into gaming.

I was out for the night and forgot all about it, looks like I didn't miss too much.

@Ashkorsair I thought it was just me. I had to read it three times until I even understood what it said.

@EfYI Killer Frequency will have you going back for all the endings, it's an easy enough 100% if that's your thing. One of my favorite Indies of the year, I hope people aren't sleeping on it.

@Kiefer-Sutherland Surprising in the best way. I was worried when they said it would be Unreal 5 because a lot of U5 games that I have played had some slight or major issues when they did make it to console. Ark for example, the job they did on the port was mediocre and it shows after you start building up a sizable base. I've had no frame drops or stutters at all on this game. I thought switching to controller might hamper the game too but they did an amazing job with that too. There are wheels for hotbars (10 of them) the UI and inventory management is identical to PC. There's a little bit of pop-in with pebbles on the ground if you play on performance mode but it doesn't affect the actual draw distance. The only downside is that it can steal hours out of your day and you won't know it. I played until 4am and thought it was maybe midnight. I don't know about multiplayer because I've just been playing solo and burning through Netflix. I've been fairly busy in the forums too and only saw one report of a crash since Tuesday. I had the game running for 14hrs without a hiccup, if the tracker is right I've logged 64hrs.

It might be worth adding what I saw a couple of weeks ago, it speaks volumes about the Devs. Someone posted a farewell on reddit, they'd logged 6K hours and had since developed an eye problem which meant they couldn't play anymore. A Dev responded and said they were calling a meeting that day to see if they could implement something into the game to help anyone with that same condition. I've never seen any studio go out of their way to help their community like that. I've no doubt that they will deliver on all of the promised updates (in time with PC) and with any necessary patches.

Satisfactory made the jump from PC to PS5 on Tuesday and I made the jump with it. At the moment I've set up a good system of automated iron, copper and cement. The game-play loop is to take ores and refine them into materials, then take those materials and refine and manufacture them into more advanced components. I.E: copper would be further refined into copper sheets for pipes, wire and then wire into cable.

As you continue to meet the various milestones your factories and facilities expand and grow with your various needs. I never thought I'd see it on console or that I'd abandon my PC world but here we are.

My first automated coal plant went up today. It's smoggy but gets the job done.

Edit: Here's an example of a small working automated copper line. The miner pulls the ore up and out, the ore then splits off into a series of smelters which make ingots, the ingots pass through various constructors that then create the copper sheets (for pipes) cables (for power lines) and the wire. It then passes through a tunnel I built that leads back to my main Hub where it enters the basement level and through the use of conveyor lifts it ends up in a system of organized containers. Each container is lined up with it's corresponding label so all I have to do is grab the material needed from the corresponding container. It has a little bit of a learning curve but once you get it the game becomes deeply satisfying. The wires are a bit of a mess too, I'm waiting to unlock pylons. I'll probably wall and roof off the area too.

@Vermines I'm watching it again right now while I explore in Satisfactory. At first I was going to fire up the soundtrack (it's absolutely brilliant) but instead I opted to just watch it again. It's definitely dark and depressing but it's a really rare look into a culture I'd otherwise know nothing about. The sequel didn't go down as well with some people but like you I enjoyed it. After that movie Temuera couldn't go to any bars without someone coming up to him and challenging him to a fight. They all wanted to take on Jake the Muss. A lot of people are going to hear him voice Boba Fett or see him portraying the character and never know about that movie, I can't unsee him as Jake. I think Once was his first proper movie, before that he did a handful of TV movies and then his career took off.

@Oram77 Once Were Warriors (1994) is a perfect example of this.

So is cat litter but the alternative is to have them mess all over your home. Even pineapples and avocados are bad for the planet, people still eat them.

It definitely is when you bought all of the same content on Xbox. It looks very expensive but it takes hundreds of hours to get through all of that content. There are plenty of aircraft that still haven't made it off the tarmac in my playthroughs, some flights take all day. I think eight hours was my longest long-haul flight, it makes you really appreciate people who do it for a living. Aerophiles will be in Heaven.

@IkeCrane I still have a pirated copy of Street Fighter on VHS, I had an unhealthy infatuation with Raul Julia (Bison) A lot of the Russian bootlegs had awful translation and dubbing. Even when I watch something like Independence Day on Bluray I can still hear some guy there smoking, coughing (most likely drunk too) dubbing Will Smith. It was the same for games too, I think I still have a Barbie bootleg that was dubbed by two guys and it sounds like a fight broke out on the skiing level. I'm sure I have some screeners, for a while I collected the 'for your consideration' tapes from the Academy Awards. I think I still have MK on VHS.

I found the sequel. The original is there somewhere among the other 600ish tapes, some factory sealed. I bought out a lot of video stores and lockers to make sure they'd be preserved somewhere by someone. That box is all Manga Entertainment, I forgot they even did Street Fighter. I don't know where my screeners are but I collect actual film reels too. They take up a lot of space and some are too heavy to lift once they go on a platter and get stored away. I know people love digital, it's good to preserve history too.

@IkeCrane Brilliant then I'm picking up, thanks. I watched the new movie and it was alright, there were some interesting ideas in there but it was a bit too serious at times. I even tolerated the second movie Annihilation and that was mostly just green screen and really bad acting. Mortal Kombat II (the next movie) looks rough and if you even slightly criticize the previews you get torn apart by the fanbase. When I first saw it I thought it was a fake AI fan-made trailer, it's not.

Mortal Kombat is one of those rare games that beats the absolute hell out of me, and no matter how much I try to get good it doesn't happen. But I love the aesthetics, the characters, and the overall vibe of the franchise. Even the cheesy 90's movie holds a special place in my heart. I'll probably buy the Kollection just for the PS1 Trilogy, assuming it's included. It looks like a great piece of gaming history to have on the shelf.

@Oram77 Oh? say goodbye to your time, it will suck you right in. I've just fired up Satisfactory, the Dev stream is live for the launch too and the community are great and friendly. It's basically a Dad game, but a really good one.

@Oram77 The game that showed you that leaning against a wall during a gunfight will heal you right up. I still have it on PS2 and Black Monday. It's weird firing it up and looking at the old high street stores (that are now closed) and seeing the old sky line. If any game serves as a time capsule for me it's The Getaway. If I'm remembering the locations right it would be Hyde Park, Soho, Scoresby, Frith Street and Upper Brook Street in Mayfair. I wish games like that would show up on Premium, it would make paying for it more worth while.

@Oram77 Fun fact if you did have myspace your account is probably still there. I went to check after reading this article and sure enough my profile is still there along 50K+ contacts. I thought they would have wiped inactive profiles. Bebo is probably still there too, I can't remember my username so I can't check. It doesn't feel that long ago but I couldn't even speak English back then so it must be. I'm going to see if I can wayback my old Bebo, now I'm curious.

Edit: I found some traces of my old Bebo stuff and it's very cringe like I expected. Myspace was great though, I met people on there that I know offline now and years later we're still friends and meetup. I wouldn't try that now with Facebook, times changed. You have to have your head on a swivel and embrace a little cynicism. The earliest gaming social/platform I remember was Playfire, I don't know if it's still around. They were definitely headquartered in the UK. It was great they had lists/wishlists/badges/private messages etc. I think it tracked trophies too.

I sure would love another one of these. It's already been delisted from PS4/Switch.

'I don’t use TikTok, so I couldn’t care less'

This is my favorite poll option ever.

TABS isn't that bad. I've played it on Steam, I didn't even know it was on console. It will be interesting to see how well it performs on console.

@Ichiban That was my thought when I saw the announcement too.

Glad to see that there will be many more people discovering and enjoying V Rising.

Making sure my friends don't starve in Abiotic Factor 🍲

@KundaliniRising333 I wondered why it jumped to the top of the recently added when it was already there a couple of weeks ago. It's been on my backlog for months.

@Oram77 I've been playing it since launch, and it has free Halloween DLC at the moment. It's kind of like Diablo meets survival/crafting. It's got a very fun game-play loop and can be played either solo or co-op/pvp.

@Shepherd_Tallon I think the biggest FOMO for me was the feed on PS4 that showed you what your friends were playing. At the time it was around 600 people so it was constant. If it's on PS5 I'm not seeing it and it makes it so much easier to just work through other games. That and not playing online games anymore, in chat people would talk about other games and it would make me want to play them. Then there's social media I closed all of those pages and other than this site don't follow things all that closely anymore. There's nothing wrong with investing your hard earned money in something you love but it helps to balance your actual life too and if I was working my way through every new release I'd have no time for anyone but myself.

The industry has helped too, seeing friends priced out of nextgen (some folks are really struggling) seeing studios close, and people lose their jobs all showed me a greedy side of the industry and it's given me serious food for thought.

I've done a complete U turn in the last year or two. I once bought almost every new title that caught my interest and assumed I'd just get around to playing them but once I started exploring the world of Indies (mainly through Plus+) it felt like falling in love with gaming all over again. I didn't even know there was a word for what I had (FOMO) but I don't have it anymore. I haven't stopped spending I've just gotten a lot more selective. I never thought I'd reach a point where I was looking forward more to a game like Powerwash Simulator 2 or Satisfactory than some big name franchise but here we are.

@Kienda It's hard to disagree with that last point. I'm a medium, but it's a not a career for me and a life time of experiences (even positive ones) have shown me how seriously it needs to be taken. It's a blessing to be able to stay in contact with your loved ones but getting to that point doesn't happen over night. It takes years of careful development. I've met many folks on their way 'up' who weren't in a great place at all and every one of them stays with you.

It's taught me to respect the life I do have and to be grateful of the people around me but I'd be lying if I said there weren't risks even if it's something that naturally occurs. For a while I used to help kids who dabbled and stirred up some trouble, it's a lot more common than people think.

People need to remember that the culture Kojima is part of sees the Spirit World as something a lot more tangible and has real reverence for it. It wasn't until I moved to the West that I understood how taboo it was and how feared it was. I tend to not even mention it to people because their reference point is TV and movies and both play off the fear of the unknown. Life here is short either way, it's worth being patient. Safer too.

500 Days of Summer moment. If you know, you know.

@naruball It's going to sound different to each person who hears it and I don't think it's about how he says it, rather it's about how we interpret it.

It's human anatomy and he was just expanding on what actually goes on beneath the surface. It sounded a lot more educational than disrespectful and I didn't see him putting anyone down, everything he described is part of nature. He was asked a question and then answered it with actual insight and intelligence, most people would struggle to answer that question unless they read art-books and actually studied the physical form. I had to learn the exact same thing for art classes, and plenty of those life drawing models wore less than Eve. It's the only way you'd see everything and understand how muscle/tone/etc relates to your subject. Eve is his subject, he obviously sees what's below the surface of that character and that was his way of trying to translate the specifics of something that appears highly sexualized to so many people.

I would imagine that a female director wouldn't need to focus or emphasis on those aspects of the male form because most female gamers have the luxury of pursuing the opposite or same sex/etc on their terms and so don't depend as much on video games for that fix or release. You also have to remember that women don't always need that kind of in your face stimulation, imagination goes a lot further especially when you take into account that it's a game that requires hand eye coordination and apparently guys struggle with multitasking.

When I look at Eve I don't see the same thing as a lot of people in this thread, nor do I hear alarm bells ringing. Maybe it's exposure to so many different cultures, in England nudity is seen as taboo but in parts of Europe it's absolutely normal. I've seen the look on tourists when they visit a European city and round the corner into a red light district or they see some form of public advertising that features nudity. It's a culture clash, it happens in gaming too.

The overall difference is that men don't talk about being sexualized when it happens to them. They were raised to believe that sharing their emotions is a sign of weakness. That's why the suicide rate is so high with males in the adult entertainment industry, they never developed the skills to express themselves when it does happen to them. There's a lot wrong with the world right now, this game is the least of it.

It might not seem like males can be treated as sexual objects, they absolutely can and do. I'm not trying to be preachy it's just the reality, if men were more sexualized in gaming it would open up the platform for discussion. When it's so well hidden it doesn't get discussed, recognized, and it just continues. Perhaps female game directors are aware of that and don't want to be part of the problem. That's how every female director I knew in the film industry was, they knew what went on behind the scenes and wanted to try to bring some balance to a very messed up system. Men don't just abuse women and women don't just abuse men, it's all interchangeable. One has visibility, the other does not.

I've tested the game on both models and not run into the issue at all but did see those reddit posts start to pop-up over the last few days. My games room is very well ventilated though. I just had a phone battery expand in Kuwait, it cracked the whole case and overnight too. I was told I was lucky that I saw the cracks, the battery was about to explode and I was due to fly out a couple of hours later.

That map is very specific. Maybe it's the constant influx of player signs, they show up on there too. I've started to skip the plotting menu entirely, just head out and deal with whatever I run into head on rather than try to flank around it.

There's absolutely a double standard at play here. We do talk about men in the exact same way it's just not as visible, you'd have to watch a specific podcast or read a particular magazine to see it because that's the format we choose. I'd be banned from here if I had the same conversation on here as I had last night with a girl friend.

Sexual attraction is normal, it's hardwired into a person and mixing guilt into that whole system doesn't help anyone. Do people need to mature and experience real contact? not for me to say. The situation for women in Korea isn't great and every Korean female I know left for the West because they'd experienced a lot of abusive relationships. That's not because of gaming, that's just how those particular people were raised. Others wanted to start families and they struggled to find someone who was prepared to grow up.

There's a fine line between content that damages and content that empowers. Some women might feel uncomfortable with an article like this but women often mature faster than men and being comfortable with your body is part of that.

The only thing I'd be cautious about is basing any potential dating standards off of a videogame. Porn (which again I have no issues with) can in large volumes warp the expectations of young people before they enter into a relationship. One particular guy friend is so messed up because modern society means he doesn't know up from down. He relied too much on nonsense like twitter to teach him what women want and believed that garbage, that's the long-term last effect.

If a person is developing their sexuality through their own framework (gaming) and you call them a weirdo then that has a lasting effect too, it increases the risks of pushing them further into their own isolated space .Then one day the penny drops and they think they don't fit the 'normal' mold. I've met tons of guys like that in random online games, they spent all their free time gaming, they never developed the skills to even talk to a woman and it's sad to see. Someone contacted me last week who I hadn't talked to in 14yrs, both his parents had died and he still hadn't found a relationship. He was absolutely miserable, all he had left was gaming.

The point I'm trying to make is you don't really know what a person is going through and gaming isn't meant to revolutionize the world it's a form of escapism. Someone could see this article, form a mental opinion and not share it. But then for the rest of the day think they are a creep because they got something out of reading other peoples opinions. I pretty much stopped posting on here because it's summer, I'm busy and there are only so many hours in the day. There's two sides to this argument and so far I've only seen one.

@Jammer Mine came by email.

Yes to both, I'm maybe 3hrs in. I've mostly just been stealing bandit cars then taking everything not nailed down to raise my connections with people. I'm not seeing too many player made structures today, a lot of signs but so few structures helps to remove the temptation of easier traversal. Day one on the first game looked really built up, that was my main concern for this one.

I was sent this picture a couple of days ago so I'm finishing up a work-trip early to get home and play it. Organizing music festivals meant I haven't console gamed in almost a month, I'm due an all nighter or two and this is the perfect game to get lost in. I've skipped every new trailer, preview and review. It's going to be great.

Do you feel pressured to buy special editions for early access to avoid being spoiled? - No I just avoid gaming sources and sites until the game is in my own hands. It's not worth the risk of spoiling something that I want to enjoy in my own time.

Oblivion, Roadcraft, and I have a spot reserved for Architect Life when it launches tomorrow. Lushfoil has it's moments too.

@trev666 Well said.

It looks like it was originally conceptualized on PS3, then built on PS4 only to then be upgraded for PS5. I see elements of so many games in there, it doesn't look bad. There are just a lot of unknowns, I'll wait until it releases and see what the reviews say.

That's fine they can keep making them and I'll keep not buying them.

Not yet, that disc situation put me off making a buy yet and realistically there aren't enough hours in the day to play half the games that recently released. I do really like the art and aesthetics of this one though, that's the main draw for me wanting to try it.

@Perturbator That's been my hope for so long. It's Rebellion Press though so it would most likely go through Rebellion Games. I'd take anything 2000AD, they have such an amazing roster to pull from but Judge Dredd is up there as my most wanted. Slaine would be amazing too, each time Rebellion pull off a great game I think 'one step closer to a Dredd game'.

@Matroska Kevin Durand, and he absolutely does. Especially as he ages because he didn't always.

@Oram77 Okay now I see it.

I missed the first one in London, I'm going to try to make the Riyadh show. Hopefully they lock a date down soon.

@DonJorginho That's so awesome of them, seriously one of the most wholesome studios that's ever been.

The worst part about this is that they still own the Nemesis system. At least until 2036

@Ilyn Thanks for the long detailed reply. Fairly heavy on thinking definitely sounds like a bonus. The one thing I love about Plus+ is that I always find a game I never heard of before and they sometimes turn out to be a lot of fun. I think I'll give it a go. Most of the genres I enjoy came from random Plus+ listings, this one already looks promising.