Comments 167

Re: Japanese Final Fantasy 16 Sales Plummet by 90% in Second Week

Konks

You can beat the game tapping square endlessly and using R1 when the boss tells you by swinging his weapons. Not surprised it sold all its copies immediately and then dropped.

I am close to completing it and while it’s enjoyable I won’t remember this game in a few months.

Re: Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection: All Games Included and What to Play First

Konks

The three older games that were made during the Cold War itself are peak OldSchool Hard. You will need to rely on guidebooks online to understand some of the puzzles where you instantly die unless you follow a completely complex pattern on the floor that the game provides zero context or hints for. At the end the game starts giving you directions to your death (for a plot reason but still it is really awful to have to restart from a long time back).

In fact I recommend you just watch play throughs of those three on YouTube after you sample them a bit.

Re: Lord of the Rings Needs to Be the Biggest Game Franchise in the World, Says Embracer

Konks

The licensing to the movie characters likeness was not sold to them so they have to go from scratch and cannot rely on look alike characters or voice actors.

This makes the LotR IP much trickier than Marvel or DC or SW. if you have a guy in black armor and a red laser sword everyone knows it is SW. Same with the superheroes.

The beauty of LotR is its mostly eloquent redressing of Nordic and Anglo-Saxon fables. However, there is no “‘monster name brand IP.” The movies are 20-ish years old now. The general public will not remember that a particular ranger is Aragorn on sight.

Re: Random: Final Fantasy 14's Yoshi-P Couldn't Stop Playing Zelda During PS5, PS4 MMO's Test Stream

Konks

@Phornix there is actually a video on RDR2 by a guy named Jake and linear games by Yahtzee on the topic of “ghost house train” in major AAA games.

In essence we have “kids” games like Zelda treating you like adults with pretty open and unguided crafting and exploration, while “grown up” games like RDR2, GoW, Naughty Dog games, Gears of War on Xbox, etc treat players like three year olds with heavily scripted events/QTEs that you keep retrying if you fail until you do it the correct way.

I do think BotW hit that niche: an open world where you could do basically whatever you want within the easily understandable rules governing gameplay. By contrast RDR2 would, prior to a patch a few weeks later on, sometimes delete guns you owned and replaced them with a basic double barrel shotgun be cause they expected you not to have the advanced weapons found yet and wanted you to use that particular gun with no regard to the fact they deleted a better one. Jake showed off egregious examples where the game wanted you to “escape” or “hide out” and you failed 100% of the time you did either of those things without going to the arbitrary waypoint the developers set.

Re: PS5 Pro Is '100%' Happening, Says Reliable Report

Konks

The value proposition is nonexistent. If anything it will make the regular PS5 cheaper, which is a plus.

Almost every game I play today I can play at 60fps or better on my 5 year old graphics card. The PS5 is more than capable. Having a PS5+ with say 6700XT-ish performance will sound nice but all these studios are building their PS editions around support for the original PS4 in almost every case.

You aren't seeing low FPS/performance due to the machine being uanble handle it. You are getting under 60 because the game developers decided they don't care to target 60 on console. You could have a PS5+ be more powerful than a PS7 and it can only do what the game lets it. The only reason XSX games all hit 60 is backend stuff from Microsoft to upscale.

Try for example most EA or any Ubisoft game from last gen. On PS5 you only get 900-1080p at 30 FPS to this day because the developers locked it in... you can have a 5-6 year old GPU and run it over 60 at 1440p easily. The machine has nothing to do with it.

Re: Poll: Are You Playing Star Wars Jedi: Survivor?

Konks

Will get it at a Walmart or Target end of year sale. I haven't quite beaten Ragnarok, then I have both Horizons and both Last of Us. FFXVI and AC6 too. Thats a lot of games.

Hoping by Christmas the game gets better than 25-30 fps and doesn't crash as much as a Twisted Metal vehicle... if not? Glad I skipped.

Re: Activision Blizzard's Player Numbers Have Taken a Tumble

Konks

Blizzard lost me with all the endless itemization and negative reward-loops in Immortal and the Nzoth patch and later Shadowlands.

I have more hours on WoW and Diablo 3 than probably any other game besides Europa Universalis 4 and Oblivion, but I say that in the past tense. Logged off WoW in January 2021 and never got the itch to try the new expansion--which I had done every single release starting with TBC.

Re: AI Can Be a Tool for More Efficient Game Development, Says Sony Veteran

Konks

AI will be well adapted for Warzones and Fortnites and Destiny type games where the plot to the extent it exists is meaningless.

If they want to use AI to draft side quests or entire storylines for AAA games I will pass. You will end up with a series of unconnected plots that are unnecessarily convoluted with too many objectives that have really nothing meaningful behind them.... that said, a lot of games these days already feel this way.

Re: Diablo 4's Max Level Will Take Most Players 150 Hours to Hit

Konks

@Jayslow ahahaha.

These sorts of games always tout this stuff but the players find the path of least resistance farming a particular dungeon or segment to a boss over and over on replay.

The deal is that at least in D3, hitting max paragon wasn't really entertaining or meaningful at all. Nor will level 100. You will beat the story well well below level 100. For many people that will be the end of it. Which is a shame as these games are about crazy seasonal gear bonuses chained with certain abilities. A Diablo plot has always been as rich as a budweiser left open in a car in the Mojave desert for a day and the left to cool.

For those of us who like the grind though level 100 is a natural consequence and not a goal. Its about getting your pre-BIS then your best seasonal gear. Which could take a few afternoons or a few months depending on RNG.

Re: Destiny 3 Begins Trending on Twitter As Fans Are Fed Up with Current Game

Konks

@Mitsui I wouldn't call them entitled. If you bought all the expansions half the stuff has been legit deleted from the game. Not "well make a private server" or that. It simply does not exist anymore. While games like WoW have done this over the decades, D2 basically licked its chops at the first chance to purge content out of its relatively young (at the time) game. It was unprecedented in MMOy games to see stuff purged so fast.

Re: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor PS5 Physical Copies Require a Download to Play

Konks

@Balie3000 what is at the back of mind for me with digital is I have all these licenses on Steam, and whenever Steam is bought out (and that WILL happen at some point before I am too old to play video games) there is a good chance the new owners will make the service far more intrusive and onerous. The way it is now if you sue Steam for a dispute they can permaban your account and you lose all the games you own. Imagine a store going into your house and taking everything you ever bought from them just because they over-charged your account so you started proceedings to get your money back?

Anyone claiming that PS digital is cheaper than physical is simply ignoring a lot of basic facts. You can get AAA and GOTY like Elden Ring for 15-20 bucks discounted weeks after launch on a retailers website of physical copies. On the store they have no reason to discount it because its a beloved game with great reviews. Target had Cyberpunk 2077 for $17.99 in post-Christmas 2020 deals--that game seldom sees those lows on the PS or Xbox closed environments.

Now if we are talking a open platform like PC digital copies, yes you can get stuff very cheap. But we aren't discussing that at all. We are discussing PlayStation.

Re: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor PS5 Physical Copies Require a Download to Play

Konks

I canceled my physical preorder just now. Getting major deja vu here of FO76 or the newer CODs where whatever data is on your disc is so minimal (or in 76 literally an empty case as a troll) that you still install at least the full 150 GB but probably a lot more due to day 1 patching.

If it ends up being good I will catch it on sale. As I am new to PlayStation my console and 1TB SSD are pretty plump with games. I will get to this when I have beaten more games and removed them.

Re: Gallery: Is Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores the Best Looking Game Ever?

Konks

Its a shame that PC games besides Doom
And Doom Eternal aren't optimized at all. I cannot even imagine a game with HFW or Ratchet/Clank performance looking the same on a machine with 8gb DRAM/8gb VRAM. No way. It would be screaming so loud you'd need noise canceling headphones and it would still stutter and screen tear.

This is why I appreciate my PS5 more than my PC on most games. You put a disc in and enjoy. You aren't googling niche issues that your particular drivers/windows settings/hardware create that may only impact your build. Sure you can play Cyberpunk 2077 on Path Tracing at 19 fps native or 50s-60s with DLSS frame-apeing with a 4090 but frankly its just a lot of Window Shopping at this point. We have all beaten the game as much as we care to. You only boot the .exe to see those cool graphics and then close out and do something else.

Re: Consumer Spending Growth on Subscriptions Like PS Plus Is Slowing

Konks

@Balosi to your point and how it's different from Netflix is not a lot of us have the privilege of being able to completely beat more than one game in a month. With Netflix you can set it on a show and casually watch while doing other things and still get value. Not really possible to beat say Doom Eternal while also sending work emails and making lunch.

Re: Consumer Spending Growth on Subscriptions Like PS Plus Is Slowing

Konks

The problem with these models:

1) These plans benefits the consumer most to subscribe the day a major title launches, and unsubscribe within that same billing period, to play the full game and maybe another;

2) These plans benefit the company most when consumers subscribe when buying the machine and let their account be charged indefinitely whether they use the machine or not.

Both cannot be true.

Re: Kingdom Come: Deliverance Dev Warhorse Studios Mustering Creative Host for New Project

Konks

I greatly enjoyed the game but admittedly never beat it. I really like that the game doesn't want you to try Souls nonsense sword play. Either get the jump on the opponent or you are dead (at least in the early stages). I learned how to read (you don't know at the start) and took to being a cavalry archer. Little stuff like that made the world so cool.

How was it on PS4? I did not have a console until this January so I had played it on PC.

Re: 16 Games Hit PS Plus Extra, Premium Next Week

Konks

Riders Republic is really fun on a controller on PC. I never really put a lot of time into it but played it 6-7 hrs during my Ubisoft + subscription. Highly recommend to anyone who likes arcade race with progression systems.

Re: The Last of Us PC Is Still Punishing CPUs, Despite 14GB Performance Patch

Konks

Needs to be the end of the road for Iron Galaxy... imagine porting a 9 year old game's remake and not even optimized to run on $4,000 machines

By simple comparison, with the remake being a polished TLOU2 engine, Iron Galaxy literally failed at having a 5700 XT / RTX 2060 equivalent game work in 7900 XTX / RTX 4090 (both of which have 7-8 times the raw compute power of even a PS5).

Iron Galaxy needs to lose their contract.

Re: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Offers a Final Glimpse of Gorgeous PS5 Gameplay

Konks

Really liked the first one, admittedly late to the party a year or so. My big wonder now is how the game ends up performing. Even this "in game" Footage is almost entirely rendered ingame cutscenes, which can certainly achieve a particular refresh rate that may not necessarily be consistent.

I have EA Play so my plan is to wait for it to hit that.

Re: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor's PS5 File Size Might Be Ridiculous

Konks

Hopefully not a siren warning us of bad optimization.

I will have to go physical on this one whenever I buy it. I have a lot of space, 2 TB in addition to the base PS5 storage, but I get 1 TB of downloads a month from my crummy ISP and we use 700 gig just through streaming and work. 155gb is all my leeway on one game.

Re: Diablo 4 Details Its Many Endgame Activities

Konks

I am guessing D3 support is ending? Thats the only way I could see myself playing D4.

Its more of the same and will be balanced each season with different seasonals making certain builds (and thus classes) S tier and others A,B,C tier.

I had a buddy who would D3 this and PoE with me dozens of hours a week. We had our fun. He is now a dad and doesn't log on. I don't think there is anything new for a regular D3 player in this offering.

Re: Rumour: PS5 Pro Really Is Targeting 2024 Release Date

Konks

Unless independent reviewers show that it is constantly hitting 60 fps at 4k with basic RT, it will be a pass. Too many games are being based on PS4 yet to this day with minor bumps for current gen. It will be even rarer to find games that take advantage of a Pro model.

Re: Talking Point: Would You Care About a PS5 Remote Play Handheld?

Konks

I constantly had trouble getting Remote Play to work. It didn't like my modem and network settings. I made some changes and it didn't work.
I refused to open the DMZ just to play this so I gave up on it. I will pass.

Now as to a freestanding PS handheld? Nope. Steam Deck has nail-gunned the coffin shut on handheld gaming consoles and coated it with quick dry cement to boot. It would sell a bit better than the VR but nowhere near enough to justify Sony developing it.

Re: Soapbox: PSVR2 Already Feels Like It's on Course for Failure

Konks

It is absolutely superior a headset to many out there. But people throw out how Oculus sold 10-20 million units, etc... well, yes. But how many of those get used even once a month in 2023? PSVR1 road the VR headset hype wave. But I don't know anyone with an Oculus or Steam headset that even uses it weekly anymore.

I don't think there exists a market for this stuff outside of these waves of hype--like so many things. You sure don't see a lot of digital guitar and drum kits sold now but in their prime those could not be kept on store shelves.