IntrepidWombat

Haven't even finished Reverie, and Daybreak is on the shelf wrapped up. This will be a day one anyway - physical copies of these games just don't last.

Watching the eBay prices of Zero and Azure, and they're just going up and up. Going to have to bite the bullet eventually.

It'd be cool if I could buy the emulator ($24.99, who says no? I'll pay for the work they put in to develop it), put my discs in the PS5 and play them - granted, with many features absent, but still playable. Come on Sony, you could have the best BC in the console space right here.

It still surprises me how much praise I continue to see for FF7 Rebirth. The demo was an unplayable mess on multiple attempts. I feel like we're playing completely different games.

Didn't play many new games this year. Here's my list though:

1. Stellar Blade
2. Persona 3 Reload
3. Silent Hill 2
4. Vampire Survivors

Trails through Daybreak is still in plastic, and Conscript is on its way. Don't know if I will get to either of those.

More Silent Hill 2. Bloober has far exceeded my expectations. This is a Resident Evil quality remake - the GameCube one. It's 6:30 am on a Saturday, and I've already played more this morning (about an hour) than I have in an entire weekend lately. I'll give myself another hour or so before I get my day started.

I'm burnt out on RPGs for now. I have such a heavy backlog of them that I want to get in to and enjoy, but they're not holding my interest right now. I'm craving some new Resident Evil - Silent Hill 2 remake is excellent (despite a couple small technical issues). I'm looking forward to getting my copy of Conscript, then I may finally try Evil Within 1/2 again.

This one will probably wait for a couple years, but it looks and plays fantastic.

I don't know if I played any of the Budokai Tenkaichi, but I still have a couple of the older Budokai games for PS2. I really enjoyed these, but goodness, how many times can you possibly retread the same story beats? This game does look cool, but it'll be one I watch on Twitch.

Love this for Atlus. It'll be a great pick-up in a couple years.

Really looking forward to it more than I thought I would. My disc arrives tonight.

My disc has shipped and will arrive today. I decided to play a bit of the first Silent Hill last night, and man does it hold up in a lot of ways. The lighting and fog effects, the camera angles, the sound design, the puzzles, the environments - it's incredible what they accomplished 25 years ago on that platform. I knew the game like the back of my hand when it first came out and could clear it in a sitting. I've forgotten most of it (that game is 25 years old OMG), but it's just such a fun play.

If the reviews are to be believed and it has that RE2R energy, I'm looking forward to experiencing a new classic.

I've been chipping away at the demo. It's fine - definitely one that I'd like to play at some point, but I may just be growing out of JRPGs or something. I can't stick with one to save my life this year, even when they're good.

I might have enough time to finish the Metaphor demo this weekend. The good news is that it's getting colder outside, so unless I find a place to go hunting this year, I should be able to get some more gaming out of the way. I was cautiously optimistic about the Silent Hill 2 remake, but after the reviews dropped, I went ahead and preordered it. I should have it in hand by the 11th.

Today I really need to finish the work I had planned for last week. My brother's wedding turned in to a day of work from 8:30am to 12:45am with a few hour party in between - lots to do today. My riding mower is struggling hard, so today it finally gets some TLC.

@zupertramp I ran in to the same thing. What I ended up doing was restarting the game and playing until I was comfortable again, then went back to my old save.

That explains a lot. I went to fire up the Metaphor demo last night, and it gave a licensing error. I needed to get to sleep early anyway.

My very first paycheck ever was about $128. I cashed it, went to Wal-Mart, and bought a brand new copy of Silent Hill 2 as well as a Greatest Hits copy of Final Fantasy Tactics since I had only ever borrowed it up to that point. I had enough left over to get some gas, buy a couple Jr Bacon Cheeseburgers, and put a few dollars away. I was 16 at the time, so balancing school with a job was new. What wasn't new was playing a game every chance I got, and Silent Hill 2 had my full attention for weeks (to the detriment of my grades...though I did read Death of a Salesman and write an essay on it in a single night - got a B too). It's one of my favorite games ever made - but I'm not in a hurry to buy Bloober's rendition. The enhanced PC edition has been my go-to for years. The remake will stay on the market for a long time and see some pretty drastic price cuts (and suspect some improvements as well). The game that has my attention for day 1 is the physical release of Conscript that releases the day after. I suspect that one will be much more limited like Signalis. I'll play that in the mean time.

Looks cool. I like the vibe.

My PlayStation feels a little neglected. I don't think it's been turned on in 10 days or so.

About to head up to the venue where my brother is getting married to help set up. After that, I'll run my son home and try to knock out a trip to the grocery and auto parts stores. My lawn mower needs a full on carb rebuild and valve adjustment, so I'll knock that out if I have some time before the wedding tonight.

Maybe tomorrow evening after the football game, I'll spin up the Metaphor demo. We'll see.

@clvr The themes have similarities, but no, it's not a copy/paste affair. If you go in with the assumption that it is, then yeah, bias is going to get in the way and you're going to make that assumption. It tells its own story with its own theme. If you haven't played it though, you really don't have a leg to stand on. At least play the demo - then maybe you can speak to it? The characters are fine, but it's not winning awards for its story. The combat is where this game really shines. I am extraordinarily picky - this is one of two new games that I finished this year. It plays nothing like either of the Nier games.

@clvr This makes me think you didn't play Stellar Blade. There are certainly many, many points of inspiration, but SB is its own game. They play completely different from one another.

Yeesh. It's awful.

Soul Reaver, Stellar Blade DLC, and Lunar were great to see. Ghost, man, I don't know. Tsushima was good, but it was. So. Repetitive. If they cut down on all the unnecessary side stuff (or make the side stuff interesting), then I could see grabbing it eventually. Lack of Resident Evil sucks, but there's still TGS.

I'm cautiously optimistic. I hope that they tighten up the side content. The fox hunts and haikus and all of the other repetition got really old after a while.

There was a fan remaster done years ago that uses the Dreamcast version, and it's absolutely brilliant. If this is better than that, then I will get on board.

I'll take a remake if it's Capcom making it. Code Veronica? Dino Crisis? Inject that into my veins.

@DennisReynolds Don't you do that! Don't you give me hope!

Resident Evil anything. I don't think we'd see it here, but that's really all I want.

Half the LEDs went out in the living room TV, Windows Update bricked my PC's boot SSD, and my wife's laptop is dead dead - all in one day. As much as I want one of those controllers, ehhh, it's not in the cards right now.

@playstation1995 Here we go Steelers, here we go! I hope Fautanu can go. We need him against Bosa.

Very busy weekend ahead. If I do everything right, I may have some time for Vampire Survivors, Triangle Strategy, or Diofield Chronicle.

I don't really tend to care about this kind of thing, but I will be buying a controller. That's the best a Dual Sense has ever looked.

@evasdf That's what I want. Digital purchases and physical both.

Not a lot of time to game this weekend. My son and I are playing a lot of Vampire Survivors. A little Clash Royale with my wife (FTP crew for life). I did get a used copy of Triangle Strategy off of eBay. It's not quite the spiritual successor to Final Fantasy Tactics that it was billed to be, but it's good so far.

Thirty seconds of the character's cutsie yips and yahs were all I could take - they're like nails on a chalkboard. I couldn't even watch the entirety of the gameplay demo. I'm glad there's a game out there with broad appeal, but it's just not for me. I didn't vote in the poll as I didn't play it.

@MrGawain It's usually in the game settings when it's available.

@lacerz I'd buy this if it was 100% backwards compatible with all generations including physical discs, trophies be damned.

@ButterySmooth30FPS Playing newer games at higher fidelity. Gaming the market - a sale on Steam might be cheaper than a sale on PSN. Modding games that you want to mod. Playing older games in higher fidelity. There are plenty of reasons to have both. If you want to match PS5 Pro, you don't need to spend that much.

@ButterySmooth30FPS Not necessarily - your existing console isn't going away if you already have games. I have my PS5 and PC right next to each other. Easy as switching an input between the two.

@ButterySmooth30FPS That's silly. You can build a $700 (or less) PC, use a PlayStation 4 controller, and hook it up to your TV.

That price point and no disc drive? They're out of their minds. Physical media and price are the only reason I stick with PlayStation. This is 100% "Just build a PC" territory.

I replayed this one recently and really loved it all over again. I received this one as a Christmas gift the year it came out and spent the rest of the winter break glued to it. Final Fantasy Tactics will (probably) always be my favorite, but this one scores a lot. Draw and Junction are still novel - there's a lot of depth to the game as a result. Really underrated systems.

My first DualSense is still going strong after 18 months and a few hundred hours, so no issues there. The battery life is atrocious, but it is what it is. I always turn off the haptic feedback anyway - it'd be nice if I could just use a DualShock 4 - in my opinion, the best console controller ever devised. All of the features that I want are still there. It doesn't make any technical sense that we can't use them on PS5 games.

I'll pick up a spare maybe on Black Friday and order some hall sensors for standby in case one of them goes out.

NFL is back, baby. Looking forward to tomorrow's slate of games. The Diofield Chronicle will be my primary game, though I may play around more with Final Fantasy XVI NG+. I'm winning an auction for Triangle Strategy, so maybe I'll be playing that next weekend. I've had a Switch sitting in my desk for 6 years and have never bought a game for it, so it'll be interesting to get it up and running after only really taking it out to top off the charge on the battery every few months.

I can't even fathom how this could be financially viable for these devs - it's amazing how much they've given away. The game as it is against the original release might as well be a sequel.

I remember the first run of Final Fantasy Tactics Greatest Hits for the PS1 had a bad batch that wouldn't read. It was the first thing I ever ordered online, and we had to return it to an EB Games store in the mall. That's the only time I can recall having an issue with a disc.

@BigJoze Making it F2P immediately allows for a larger audience by virtue of being free. That compounds with the fact that Sony doesn't require PS+ to play F2P titles either. It was just an example though not saying they should do exactly that, just a vector they could take with some kind of game as a service.

A new GaaS in this day needs some kind of hook. Instead of whatever the heck Concord is, Sony could have tied it to an existing IP.

Example: Bring back Resistance as a fully-fleshed out single player game. Knock it out of the park. Put your best and brightest studio to work on it. Then release the multiplayer component as a free to play game with bonuses for progress in the campaign. Give it multiple modes like 4on4 or some PvE horde mode. Make an overarching goal like taking back parts of Europe. The primary development costs are recouped by sales of the single player title while the GaaS multiplayer element brings additional cash flow. If it doesn't support itself after a few months, pull the plug and call it a success since they released a strong single player game with a good campaign.

Not super excited for anything for the rest of the year. I played the Diofield Chronicle demo and fell in love with it, so I'll probably grab it - it's super cheap on eBay right now. Episode Aigis comes out this month, so I will look forward to the reviews of that. The physical release of Conscript comes out on Oct 1st, so I'll buy that day one only because physical copies of indie survival horror don't usually last long (Daymare titles excepted). I'm going to hold out for reviews on Metaphor and Silent Hill 2. That should about be my year.

I am not a fan of Ubisoft games at all. I am a fan of pre-Disney Star Wars - the EU is so very rich. Timothy Zahn's original Thrawn trilogy would have been a slam dunk for sequel films with a fresh new cast. The Knights of the Old Republic lore is some of my favorite too. The only bright spot for me in the last 10 years or so has been Jedi Fallen Order.

Absolutely a day 1 for me. You can tell these devs were fans of classic RPGs - the Legend of Dragoon influence is awesome. This is what I wanted from Final Fantasy XVI.

@Ralizah "Games starting at full price and dropping in sales is about adjusting prices to account for lessening demand, not milking your biggest fans for everything they're worth."

To continue playing the devil's advocate, I could argue that most games (barring exceptions for truly exceptional titles) are never more in demand than in their early release windows. What any commodity is worth is determined by the market - if the market is willing to pay $110 for a game, then that's that game's full price, and the $70 price point is the first price drop based on a projected fall-off of demand. I'd also argue that the publisher telling people up front, "Hey, the price is going to drop in three days" is a pretty stand-up thing to do. They could just say, "We're going to launch the game at $110. We will drop it eventually, but you're going to have to guess when. Either be patient or buy it now, but we're not telling." Given that people are willing to pay the price, I'd say that's between those people and the publisher.

Ubi's credibility went out the window ages ago. This doesn't hurt their brand image because it's already in the toilet, but that doesn't stop people from buying the corporatized garbage they continue to spew out. If Capcom announced a Resident Evil Code: Veronica remake and that I could play it a few days early for an extra $30, I'd do what I've done for the last 20 years any time a Resident Evil game comes out: take the day off work, ensure that I had it in hand as early as possible, and play the hell out of it with a smile on my face. Who am I to say that people who eant end to do the same thing with this game are wrong?

@Ralizah Is it really gross though? People want it, and they're willing to pay the price, so why not make a buck? When you think about it over the life cycle of the game, isn't that how it's always been? If you want to play it first, you're going to pay the most. The price will naturally drop due to decreased demand, so those who waited are rewarded with a discount. I dislike the Ubislop experience, but this to me is just downright clever. Monetize the FOMO.

I've been bouncing off of every turn-based game I've tried lately - SMT V Vengeance, Soul Hackers 2, Dragon Quest XI, Lost Odyssey... I really enjoyed Stellar Blade, so for giggles and grins, I booted up Final Fantasy XVI NG+ for some more action goodness and am enjoying it on Final Fantasy mode - more so than I did my first time around.