Lovespuds

The wands are probably the most expensive thing in my collection these days.

I am excited for the game but have my reservations about having an AI partner with you at all times.

@Kidfried
Actually, that's quite an interesting analogy, Mad Max scores hovered around 7 and despite its flaws, I had a fab time. I have bought Days Gone anyway as my son wants to play it, but I feel confident I will enjoy the game.

I love the description of 'open world comfort food', it does a great job of setting my expectations as a gamer who loves open world games.

I have to get Maximo on PS2 out of the way first and then I hope to jump into Days Gone.

I remember when making it into the Guinness Book of Records was an achievement. Now you simply do something nobody else could be bothered to do and there you go, a world record.

Bit spoilerific, I am glad I had beat her before seeing this article.

I found her quite tricky but this was the fight where the penny really dropped with regards to combining countering and step dodging while being really aggressive at the right time.

I simply cannot believe how incredible this game is, From Software have done it again, another bona fide classic in my opinion.

@munkondi
Agreed, I feel that I know the various reviewers likes and dislikes here, and how they align with my own; as such I know I can trust the reviews, it's a fab site.

It's a shame no review copy was forthcoming as I am looking forward to seeing the PushSquare review fir Sekiro.

My copy from Shopto arrived this morning and I have played about 2 hours, it is living up to the hype but I am trying to forget my Dark Souls muscle memory at the moment, its proving to be quite tricky fighting my first mini boss. By the way, you guys should see the steelbook for Sekiro.....BEAUTIFUL!!

@ellsworth004
Limited Run just posted it too, I have used them a few times now with no problems receiving the games into the UK.

https://limitedrungames.com/products/the-messenger-ps4-preorder

I have my preorder in, chuffed to bits to have the likes of The Messenger and Celeste on physical media.

It's on my list, I have a hell of a backlog at the moment so I will hold on in the hope of a physical release, maybe Limited Run games or something.

There are so many good games to choose from that I see no reason whatsoever to support EA's (and the rest) practice of putting half baked games out and expecting me as a consumer to stick with them while they tease a 'roadmap' of content that should be there from the start.

I played Destiny with my pals when it first came out but as soon as I was forced to grind the same missions and areas I was done and I never went back, even when people were going mad for the raids etc., I just wont support this kind of product.

I'll stick with my God of War, Sekiro, The Witcher and the like.

@Gremio108
Nah, I am all about milking every ounce of gameplay out of my FromSoftware titles. I played through Bloodborne maybe 4 times in total over a period of maybe a year and I have contemplated creating a new account and hunting the platinum again 🙃

@daldrum
You could not be further from the truth when you state the game just consists of 2D puzzles.

Without saying too much, there are some lateral thinking puzzles in the game that blew my mind when I spotted them hiding in plain sight, let alone solved them. It's a fantastic game and when you say it takes talent to come up with puzzles you are talking about Jonathan Blow, the guy is a genius!

@GamerDad66
It does take advantage of Pro buddy but to be honest, I found 4K mode ran quite poorly, HDR implementation is fantastic if your telly is up to snuff though.

@Frigate
Wow, I was oblivious to this, thanks so much buddy. Have a tip top weekend.

I just finished Mark of the Ninja Remastered last night so I think I might take a run at one of the 48 games on my backlog (they are all staring down at me from my shelf, mocking me for spending money on them when I have no chance of playing them all); I have decided to play Nino Kuni 2 and hope to wrap it up before Sekiro releases next month.

Very jealous of you Sammy, getting to play the new trials game, very keen to play that too.

@Nightcrawler71
Yeah, same here buddy, I am around 45 hours in and I am maybe a 3rd of the way through, it's a whopper of a game.....bloomin good fun though!!

I honestly couldn't be less interested in this game, it seems like such a blatant 'me too' Destiny clone, and I got bored of Destiny fairly early on.

There also seems to be a to have been a lot of grumbling since the beta. How I miss old Bioware ☹

@Arcade_Tokyo
Hey buddy, I didn't mean any offense by the way, I realise how tough it can be finding spare time, especially with young kids. Thanks for a cracking read though, it was great fun and well written, congrats on a quality piece of writing.

All the best for 2019 👍

It was a very entertaining read but I have to say, you should allow time to pursue your own hobbies and pastimes. I have been married for 22 years and game almost every evening. My wife and I get home from work around 5.30 and cook a meal together before catching up on our day with each other. By around 8, I will settle in for a couple of hours of gaming while my wife watches her soaps etc. We realised a long time ago that it was just as important to have your own time as it was to spend time together.

My kids are in their late teens so they tend to be doing their own thing these days so that does make things easier, but I still found time even back then.

Can I pick Sekiro 3 times 😃

I plumped for Sekiro, Catherine and The Outer Worlds.

What an incredible year for games, I feel like every year outdoes the last, I am constantly amazed and enthralled.

With Sekiro and the possibility of TLoU2 releasing in 2019, my hopes for this year are really high. Anyway, my picks for this year are:

God of War
Spiderman
Hollow Knight

I have to give an honourable mention to Deadcells and Dragons Quest to.....what a year for Playstation 4

I am really sad to hear so much negativity in the comments, I absolutely love this game and while I concede the music is repetitive I personally really liked it, I would hum along to it constantly.

I think the repetitive stuff is something you can level at almost every JRPG ever made, for example, I haven't played FFVII for 15 years but I can still hum every song in that game to to how repetitive it was when I played it. I gavent heard thd same complaints about repetitive music in Nino Kuni 2 either and the same goes for every Zelda I have played. Just to clear, I am not comparing the songs themselves, after all, Zelda would beat anything else 😃.

Interesting list Rebecca, I will definitely look to check out all of your Indy picks as they have largely flown under my radar.

As I move on from Red Dead I am slowly coming to recognise that it has some pretty big flaws that really stopped me from loving it as much as I should have. In particular, I found the mission structure super repetitive and the shooting really boring after a while. The world and story were utterly incredible and that's what dragged me through to the end, but I did find it a slog over the last 10 to 15 hours.

As long as it's another spin off and they leave Nate to enjoy his well earned retirement I will definitely be up for another Uncharted.

It would be cool to see a Sully origins story perhaps? Maybe even a game with one of my favourites, Cutter? I think there are lots of directions the franchise could take that would appeal to the Uncharted fan base.

I had such a great time with this game, utterly brilliant to play, the story was none-to-shabby either. It is actually 3rd in my own fave games of the year behind God of War and Dragon Quest 11.

I thought that all I wanted from FromSoftware was a Bloodborne sequel, that was until I saw gameplay of Sekiro.

I have come to realise that new games from FromSoftware are even more exciting than sequels or remasters. Don't get me wrong, I will play anything they make and I adore Bloodborne but I do enjoy pondering on what they might come up with next.

@stevenfins
I am so jealous buddy, I would love to experience those games again for the first time. You really are in for a treat fella!

I just got the Platinum trophy in Hellblade and Spyro 1 and I am about to jump back into Monster Hunter, I have seen on or two videos on the subject of January releases getting overlooked come GotY time and the Monster Hunter gameplay made me fancy revisiting the game.

Ploughed a good 25 hours into this game, mainly on grinding for crafting materials and I have to say, I had an absolutely brilliant time....I really need to get back to this game, it really is chock full of fun and great content.

Its even more impressive that GoW is in with a realistic chance in so many categories.

While I have ground to a halt around two thirds of the way through RDR2, I replayed GoW a second time to go after a platinum and I can see me playing it again in the future.

GoW got my vote for each category it ran in, Bear McCreary's soundtrack is utterly epic and I think it looks and runs better than anything else I played this year (I was forced to turn off the broken HDR on Red Dead).

Saw the Giantbomb crew play thu s a few months back and it looked tremendous fun, great to see it reach PS4.

The items may be inconsequential but even that short video has be gagging for this game......I am getting seriously hyped to the point that I am contemplating booking Monday off to get a 3 day weekend on it 😁

Games drop in price very quickly, especially at this time of year when there is so much competition for consumers money and time.

There are many games I buy at release but I buy them because I am excited to play them and I want to be part of the zeitgeist, it never concerns me that the games I buy drop in price.

There are titles that I identify that I want to play but that I am not in a desperate rush to play and in these instances I will hang on until I have a window of time to play it which often results in picking the game up a little cheaper.

@Gremio108
I was also a subscriber to GamesTM until very recently. I cancelled mine as I found I disagreed with their reviews pretty consistently and was frustrated by the large amount of freelance writers used which made it difficult for me to build a familiarity with the editorial staff.

I have a real softspot for nagazines as someone who read Zzap64 as a kid, PCzone as a teenager and OPM throughout my 20's but the fact is, anything you might read in a magazine is generally old news these days if, like me, you visit games websites and listen to podcasts.

I don't think I have seen a decent Snooker game on the last couple of PlayStation consoles so I have high hopes for this. I'll see if I can pick up where I left off with Jimmy Whites Snooker on my trusty old Amiga, I used to really love snooker games.

My only gripe with this game is the horrible, generic nature of the title.

Seems pretty black and white to me, I know precisely where 'the line' is. Any piece of media that legitimizes sexual activity with kids is an utter disgrace, any media that legitimizes sexually activity against someone's will is disgusting; any person with a desire to experience that media is a deviant, simple as that.

The idea that censorship is a bad thing, in the context of this subject matter, is completely disingenuous.

It was a toss up between this and Assassin's Creed, both of which I am keen to play.

Because Red Dead 2 is on the horizon I opted for North Star as I didnt want to suffer any open world game fatigue by rolling from AC straight into Red Dead 2.

I also wanted to support the devs and publishers of these kinds of titles, I truly believe games like North Star add so much variety to the PS4 catalogue and as such, I like to give them my money.

Oh my god, I am so happy to see The Pupeteer getting some love, I always assumed I was alone in my adoration for this game.

I would be thrilled to bits to get hold of a remaster on PS4.

I own and love all of the Assassins Creed games (I even had a great time with III and Unity) and I do have Odyssey pre ordered however......I am a little worried at the direction the series has taken with the introduction of mythical creatures.

It was the historical setting that I found irresistible and it seems from the trailers I have seen that Medusa and Cyclops will both feature in ths game and this detracts quite heavily from the historical accuracy I enjoy.

On a side note, if Medusa's hair consists of snakes, does her armpit (and other🙄) hair consists of little snakes...just wondering

@PS_Nation
Agreed, the game is bloody brilliant and in my humble opinion, somewhat underrated.

This is one of my eagerly anticipated titles, I imported the PS3 version from Hong Kong and if the remaster has English subtitles I may well do so again if an EU release date is way off

Gotta say, I was really intrigued by the rumours surrounding the behind doors demo at E3, people seemed blown away with what they saw.

Now, having seen the footage for myself, I can totally understand where the hype had come from, the game truly looks like a generational leap, I cannot wait to play this game for myself. It's fair to say, CD Project Red are fast establishing themselves as one of the leading developers in the industry.

Well I am still super excited for Sekiro personally. I buy 2 or 3 games a month and I have only experienced one game that was adversly affected by in-game purchases, that game being the last Mordor game.

In general, I have managed to enjoy every game just fine without using micro transactions and I am sure Sekiro will be no different. Anyway, I prefer to know something as a matter if fact before I waste any effort being upset about it.

I feel like it's much harder to keep track of the news from Gamescom in comparison with E3 (although you guys at PushSquare did a sterling job of keeping us informed). Without a focal point like the conferences at E3, I suppose this will always be the case.

All the same, there has been a lot of fun articles and videos coming out of Gamescom and in general I have really enjoyed the content and news over this past week.

Thanks for the review, this looks like a pretty great game and your review definitely has me interested. I guess the devs must be gutted about Dead Cells releasing so closely to their own game, especially given the quality of Dead Cells.

@Enuo
Nah, each game in the series is fantastic. Dark souls 2 might be the weakest of the series, but that is only in comparison to other Dark Souls titles, it still stacks up well as a great game in its own right.

This sound fab and right up my street, thanks for the great review!

I was completely oblivious to the existence of this game and that is a real shame, it does make me sad to think of really talented devs struggling to get exposure for their projects, it must be really tough to see your games flying under the radar of the gaming community.

@FreakerZ
Need to get back to this game, I reckon I sank around 30 hours in before getting distracted by something else. It is a fab game for sure.

I am enjoying a second play through of Nioh at the moment, great to see Japan's star rising again in respect of quality videogames.

@ToniK
Pretty sure this will turn out to be an action undertaken by a few employees rather than some high level strategic decision undertaken by the board.

They have to own it now, as demonstrated by a the formal response, but this whole issue will go nowhere and the over reaction is completely unwarranted in my humble opinion.

Personally I think there has been an over reaction across the board. There was no justification on the part of Bethesda to act in the way they did but I suspect this was the result of one or two over zealous employees.

Equally as stupid are the over reactions of people on the internet. Honestly, I find it depressing how quickly people will create a huge fuss over nothing on the internet these days, particularly against companies that for the most part, demonstrate that they are doing their best to service their customers.

Any company who release games like Prey, Evil Within 2, Wolfenstein and Doom are pretty awesome in my book.

I am distracted by Deadcells and Spiderman' s releases so I am not pining for RDR2 too much, game does sound great though. Surely we will see some new gameplay footage soon?

Had my eye on this for a long time, got my physical copy for 20 quid on Shopto with my gold membership.

Really excited to get my hands on this, thanks for a great review!

Absolutely cannot wait to play this, I have watched the Giantbomb crew play this on UPF here and there over the last 6 months on PC and it looks fantastic.

Just wish there was a physical copy I could pick up.

God only knows how this guy is still given a platform to air his opinions, he is wrong more often than he is right.