Markatron84

@Deljo I saw this comment and was like "oooh what did I miss? What's the tea?". Looked for the comment you were replying to, couldn't find it. Turns out that user is on my ignored users list. Guess I made the right decision 🤣

I'm straddling the line between "Nah, but I am tempted" and "No, Monster Hunter Wilds just isn't for me". On paper, Monster Hunter should be a Mark-ass game, but I tried Rise and got 4 hours in before becoming completely overwhelmed by all the mechanics and information it was giving me. I know Wilds is supposedly the most approachable Monster Hunter game yet, but I'm sure people said that about Rise.

@trev666 Avalanche Software is a subsidiary of WB Games.

Edit: I think I know where the confusion stemmed from here. Avalanche Software, a subsidiary of WB Games, developed Hogwarts Legacy. But there's also Avalanche Studios, the developers of Just Cause; they developed Mad Max, which was also published by WB Games.

That episode of Gamescast is well worth a listen. There's a lot of interesting information about how WB Games has been mismanaged the past 8-10 years.

I used to understand the desire some people have to own their media physically, but in many cases now I really don't. Most games nowadays are patched numerous times after the game itself has gone gold and the discs have been printed. There are countless games nowadays that you really wouldn't want to play in their raw unpatched state, or discs that simply won't function one day because the servers get shut off.

Owning physical games isn't the be all and end all of game ownership that it used to be.

Also impressive: there are currently more people playing Wilds right now this second on Steam than DOTA 2 and PUBG put together.

@Splat same here. My place of work wouldn't shut if a hydrogen bomb went off in our car park.

@get2sammyb early access is a bit mental on a game that isn't a port.

@breakneck Avowed is doing well, unless you ask one of the anti-woke brigade, in which case it's the worst game ever made and an example of why the games industry is dead.

@Majin_Deicide Thing is, anyone who were to potentially buy any/all of WB Games' studios wouldn't be getting any of the IP, because those are Warner Bros.' (as a whole) IP. So at that point, you're just buying what? Office space and people? You'd be better off not spending the money on buying an entire company and just hire the affected employees directly.

@dBackLash @StrickenBiged thanks for explaining it to me. Like I said, I'm still struggling to even understand a lot of generative AI stuff. You'd think with the amount of news (and uproar) posted about it on a daily basis I'd have figured it out by now 😂

I'm still not that knowledgeable about generative AI tools, but it's my understanding that - when creating an image, say - you tell the tool what you want and it pulls from sources online to create something? How hard is it to go "oh bt-dubs, make sure there's not too many fingers, innit"?

@Member_the_game I am without a shadow of a doubt absolutely positively 100% sure it'll be multiplatform at day 5. Not day 1, because they will probably sell a premium edition with "5 days early access" or some such nonsense.

In that filing, for example, his lawyers state that “behavior that was known at Bungie included:

“A very senior Bungie executive texted Barrett and others sexually suggestive material, including lewd photographs, texts about his sex life (including graphic descriptions of particular sex acts), and texts concerning the appearance of women working for Bungie;

And

Bungie maintained an email channel that shared lewd and semi-pornographic content to the entire studio. Those images were occasionally shared on a projector at studio events;

I f**king love this level of stupidity. He's essentially saying "I didn't do the inappropriate things I was fired for allegedly doing, but if I did, everyone else was also doing it". Well which is it Chris? Bore off mate.

The AA market didn't disappear at all. Publishers and investors wanted (want) to see unreasonably high growth and abandoned AA because they wouldn't make "enough" profit.

Yoshida continued that, to his knowledge, no first-party studio has been forced to make live service games. He noted that sometimes teams see the direction the company is heading, and pitch their titles accordingly.

This sure seems like being forced to me. How many times do you pitch a game that goes against what the parent company wants and have it rejected before said parent company has enough?

A few years ago where I work, we were "not forced" to sign new contracts that were less beneficial than the prior ones. The alternative was no longer working there and not being offered redundancy because not signing the contract was "a choice".

Of course Sony can't hope to match the amount of games Microsoft is publishing on PS5 in 2025; if an in-development game was live-service they cancelled it, and if was one of the few in-development games that was single-player it costs $250 million and takes seven years to make.

"F**k movies and the Oscars, but waaaah the movie based on my game is taking too long."

Also, look, I swear a lot, but for a writer Fares sure doesn't seem to know many words beyond s**t and f**k. At least spice it up with a c**t every now and then.

It was alright; good, even. There were some cracking looking games there. I do have some key takeaways though:

1. From the monologue in the trailer, Saros sure does just sound like it'll be Returnal 2 in all but name.
2. Randy Pitchford. Ew.
3. Randy Pitchford's mate Randy. Double Ew.
4. Woo! Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. I'm so in.
5. Days Gone Remastered, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
6. No sign of Ghost of Yotei was disappointing.
7. There's no way that Fairgamedollarsign hasn't been cancelled at this point, right?
8. It wouldn't surprise me if Marathon gets cancelled.
9. Nor would it surprise me if that Gummy Bears project gets cancelled as well.
10. Wow, Sony's got bugger all going on right now, huh?
11. Days Gone Remastered, HAHAHAAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

edit: Oh, and Mindseye looks like the most boring run of the mill thing ever.

@Kienda get out.

Fairgame$ better be there or literally nobody will be up in arms.

From what I've seen/read, Yasuke basically excels at combat, but is useless when it comes to stealth and parkour; y'know, two of the core pillars of Assassin's Creed. So Naoe all the way.

The Order is probably the very best example of a game that fell short of its full potential. I don't think it was bad. I enjoyed it while it lasted, it was/is absolutely fantastic on a technical level. It just could've been so much more.

Did the PSN Outage Ruin Your Gaming Plans Over the Weekend?

No, because PC players complained enough so that Helldivers 2 doesn't require them to log in to a PSN account. Not so stupid now, are we? 😉

Insomniac Games has put out so many quality games over the years. Resistance ain't it.

Have you been playing Helldivers 2 recently?

Recently? I bought the game in August and haven't stopped. It's my favourite game of the past 10 years.

@JB_Whiting don't worry, the anti-aliasing on the PC version is also awful.

Nobody likes hearing it, but this is one of things where we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Hookshot Media is like the patron saint of blue balling. I might not like to hear that there's every likelihood a Devil May Cry remake isn't happening, but you're the one who brought it up. Was just living my life before that 🙄🤣

Due to the positive response on these 4 themes, we’re doing some work behind the scenes to bring these special designs back in the months ahead.

For money.

@andrewsqual not true. If a game on Steam requires the consumer to use another launcher or account, the page for the game has this information on it. There are numerous Xbox Game Studios games on Steam that don't require an Xbox account to play.

@Jacko11 advocates for physical games.

@Papers92

Now, please add a sign in option for Helldivers so I can get that sweet Platinum trophy!!

I second this!

@Rich33

PSN accounts should not be mandatory for SP games, but 100% should be mandatory for online/MP games as it allows Sony some control over cheaters / toxic players. Same for all other publisher accounts

This how they handled the PSN requirement with Ghost of Tsushima on PC. An account was only needed to play the Legends mode; for single player, an account wasn't required.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare

Do you think JR actually gave a crap about reaching into individual studios to push things around? I am not sure that focuses the attention of CEO's.

Ryan was focused on making money, saw live-service as the means to that end and gave no mind to how the studios were supposed to do it, just that they should. That's the problem. If he'd been more mindful of what the studios were good at making, he wouldn't have pushed for live-service to the degree that he did.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare while head of PlayStation Studios, I doubt Hulst was super eager to take all these studios renowned for and experts at crafting almost universally acclaimed single-player narrative-focused games and set them to work on live-service multiplayer games that had no expertise and experience in making. Also settle down with the caps buddy.

@ThomasHL absolutely. The reality is that these plans were put into place long before Hulst was in charge, and he's been left to make the best of a crap situation. If anyone is to blame for the failed live-service push, it's Jim Ryan.

@Americansamurai1

also here's hoping they use a better engine on their next game

Oh my god, yes. I love Helldivers 2, but it's a bit... janky? Not enough to get me to stop playing - I'm only level 75 and still gotta unlock two more ship modules! - but it'd be nice if their next game was a little less rough around the edges.

Be still my beating heart!!!

@Nepp67

Well when you have Sony's devs practically doing ***** all for the PS5 it is not hard to feel like the PS5 is starting to feel old.

Hey, come on, that's not fair. The developers are doing plenty; their games just get cancelled before they can come out. 🤣

Someone needs to sit Roger Clark down in a locked room with Jez Corden. Corden doesn't get to leave until Clark has drummed into him that he too has no f**king clue. About anything.

Outraged? Really? I can honestly say that no game being announced has ever left me outraged.

Remasters and/or remakes of earlier God of War games would do me, though. I didn't like how God of War 2018 played, despite loving everything surrounding the gameplay.

@ATaco one of my department managers at work a few months ago actually said to me, "there's no games coming out lately". The autistic urge to list every cool arse indie game that I know he'll have never heard of because they're not Call of Duty was almost too great.

You know, Sony making or publishing live-service/multiplayer games isn't an inherently bad thing, right? And that the desire to bring these games out was to bring more money in so that these ongoing sources of revenue could supplement/finance your beloved single-player games, not replace them?

They don't want to just spend $300million making their next blockbuster game only to have it not sell enough to break even. They want to have some live-service games bringing in billions so that if Wolverine, Horizon 3 or whatever don't sell enough to be profitable due to ballooning development budgets, they still have the recurring revenue to keep those blockbusters coming.

And live-service games can be brilliant. Helldivers 2 is my favourite game of the past 10 years. Rocket League was a breath of fresh air. Destiny 2 at its height was a peak first-person shooter. Battle royales aren't my thing but I will die on the hill that Fortnite plays brilliantly and excels at what it does.

Live-service multiplayer doesn't automatically mean bad.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's Clones wouldn't have sounded as cool.

I have three predictions:

1. Incels will continue to cry over the main character in Intergalactic "not being attractive" every time the game is shown by Sony or mentioned by media outlets.

2. Forza Horizon 5 will not be ported to PS5 because that game is going to be delisted from digital storefronts sometime between 2025 and 2027.

3. Incels will continue to cry over the main character in Intergalactic "not being attractive" every time the game is shown by Sony or mentioned by media outlets.

So all those years of publishers and media outlets throwing the term "Halo killer" around were for naught?

I sense that Imran Khan might be a Killzone fan.

Arrowhead wasn't on my radar at all before, then I played Helldivers 2. I haven't been so invested with and "into" a game in a long, long time; 157 hours played so far (since late August) and I just went to keep going.

Anything that Arrowhead announces in the future will automatically be something I'll at least keep an eye on.

One franchise Sony won't abandon in the future is Intergalactic. I can officially corroborate this release schedule from a leaked Sony internal document:

Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet - 2027
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet Remastered - 2028
Intergalactic: Part II - 2034
Intergalactic: Part I - 2035
Intergalactic: Part II Remastered - 2036

Depends if I end up getting anything for Christmas and/or my birthday. Whatever the case, Helldivers 2 will be in the mix. I only have Christmas Eve and Day off, so I won't be going mad.

Incels. Incels everywhere.

Incels. Incels everywhere.