Matroska

@somnambulance Not saying this to defend this game which I don't care about, but the Matrix was really derivative itself. It's basically Ghost in the Shell and DBZ with a general smattering of various Hong Kong action movies mixed in. Some scenes are incredibly similar to certain DBZ scenes, or at least parts of them. And the whole scrolling numbers thing is taken straight from GitS as well as various scenes being very similar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnvb2INP79M
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jYwyNA7JXbs

@TruestoryYep Well talking of the sex part, if you're 16 or 17 you could have sex, but if you took a pic or video while doing it you're breaking the law by making CP. Filming a legal act between you and another would be a serious crime that could get you years in jail. 🤦🏻

Soon we'll need to show our actual driving license to be able to get into the vehicles. 😮‍💨

To be fair, calling it Rogue-style is better than calling it Roguelike since the latter is a very specific thing not just "vaguely like Rogue in some ways," which most people, including many gaming journos, don't seem to understand. That's why people coined the term Roguelite.

@Acquiescence One of the writers on this very website described the Uncharted series as being first-person shooters.

Your know, these polls with lots of answers would benefit from auto-sorting by vote amount in descending order when the results are displayed. Just to make the ranking really clear.

They also lost the FFVIII PS1 source code which is why the Remastered version doesn't have analogue movement. They had to use the PC version as the basis and that was made to be played with a keyboard so had no analogue movement.

@Coolmusic Exactly. And it's not a "counterpart" anyway. That implies it's also a fighting game. "One that has the same functions and characteristics as another; a corresponding person or thing."

Like if you said "this is the British PM and his Japanese counterpart" it means the Japanese PM, not just a random Japanese guy.

Given the weird seething reaction in the comments section about the sales drop (physical only, in the UK) it seems he succeeded in making it divisive amongst the general public, at least. Or at least he made it attract the generic "it's pretentious (I can't explain further)" or "I don't understand the story (and that's not a me problem)" type comments.

That 4% stat is probably because they're including money spent on DLC, microtransactions and mobile games.

@Oram77 "Technically from FF7 to FF9 they used the ATB system"
Well actually from 4 onwards. It was only 1-3 and 10 that were pure turn-based.

@Czar_Khastik I can confirm this. I've already made £2.50 from both endeavours.

@Now-Let-Me-Say01 No it didn't. The Wii was the best selling console that gen by far and the PS3 outsold the 360 even though it came out a year later and was more expensive. The 360 just seemed like it was doing better because of a massive headstart in terms of release date.

@SingleStooge If you mean the one with the logs over the sea, that one isn't actually that bad. There's one later where you have to keep going higher and higher, some really specific jumps, and it takes ages to do. If you fall off it's likely you'll have to redo the whole thing unless you happen to land on an earlier part. One of the most tense things I've ever done in a game.

For me, the best three consoles of all time are the PS1, PS2 and SNES. What works so well for them is it the massive amount of third party non-exclusive games. Games like LttP, Mario World and Super Metroid are all time greats but it wouldn't matter for much if it wasn't for the massive amount of other games that were also on PC or the MD.

Look at the PS1, what do you think mastered more to its success? Gran Turismo and Wipeout or GTA, Tony Hawk, FFVII, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, etc? Also most games end up being multiplatform sooner or later anyway, like FFVI on the SNES was a huge deal but it's since been on just about everything.

@Godot25 It didn't take exactly one year to complete. They'd started trying to get it to work on Xbox before the original release, as previously stated multiple times. They didn't start on the day of the original release. Also games aren't released the day they're finished, it's usually a month or two afterwards.

Also, read the article.

The way it looks really reminds me of a current gen version of Star Ocean: The Last Hope, aka Star Ocean 4. Not just the characters but the environments. The game concept also has this PS3 era feel to it - and not saying that in a bad way.

A good amount of games I'd play but nothing that really blew me away. I agree with the above post that objectively it was varied and shows of the range of games on the PS5 as well as having many games that are coming out quite soon. Kind of workmanlike rather than seriously impressive, though.

Really want to get this, as well as carry on with Clair Obscur (pretty sure I'm right at the end of act 2 and have been for 3 weeks) but everything's been so busy recently I don't have time. On Friday I'm going to Romania for a long holiday too.

On the bright side, it'll be in its final form by the time I'm back.

@Rich33 Well there's more buzz about Harry Potter recently because of the TV show. They've been announcing cast members for a while and recently announced Harry, Ron and Hermione.

@Ray_Ray_Regasis VG Chartz is infamously inaccurate. I still quote it sometimes if there's no other source but I'd take the devs report over anything that site says.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/how-reliable-is-vg-chartz-sales-figures.173567/

@Hapless @thefourfoldroot1 @McBurn But it was already stated in the article that they're all one big story and that 3 happens first. To quote: "the same story arc," and that 1&2 take place "after the events" of 3. And not to mention that these games came out roughly 40 years ago - but even without that, Sammy already said that stuff.

DQ1&2 do take place after 3 but are meant to be played first because the fact 3 is a prequel to 1&2 is meant to be a surprising reveal later in the game. The underworld world map in 3 is the world from 1&2. It's pretty cool that for such old games that are pretty light on story they were creative in that way.

Definitely a 1. I might upgrade the score when I play it, though.

@ChrisDeku To be fair, Stellar Blade isn't meant to be realistic. In fact it's meant to be overtly stylised and unreal. I have no issue with Cloud having perfectly styled hair at all times or him carrying a sword that's easily twice his bodyweight, but it'd be absolutely ridiculous if Joel had Cloud's hair and sword.

@AndyKazama It does if they set it during the events of the preceding lore, or have the main character discovering it. All the Souls games' histories are very strong stories.

I'd also say that looking at by "the way" it tells its story doesn't make sense. The way LotR tells its story is via hundreds of thousands of words printed on paper. But that doesn't mean the way the Jackson films told the story had to be 12 hours of text on the screen. This doesn't have to be a silent character wandering around an open world aimlessly, while reading armour and weapon descriptions and dying 600 times. You have the history of the world, all the past events, and the main character on a quest that leads to him discovering all of this.

Definitely getting this.

@belmont Well I'm not sure, didn't finish Rebirth but as far as I know it ends at the end of Temple of the Ancients and that happens right afterwards. Does the game end with Aeris running away? If so then I guess they've already skipped it.

Censorship isn't just to do with sexual things - changing a map (like of who owns what sea or land, e.g. Taiwan) or a reference to an historical event would also be censorship. Not being able to depict a swastika in Germany is too. Any change made not for creative reasons but to try to avoid offending certain people. The worrying thing nowadays is people/developers engaging in self-censorship.

@belmont Well weirdly they did Yuffie's shorts button up. In the original and all other appearances it was undone, also for a while in Rebirth's development. Then for some reason their ethics department, who apparently travelled here from the Victorian era, thought it was too racy to have a button undone.

They also removed Cloud stealing Tifa's panties, though he can still look through the wardrobe. They also took out Tseng slapping Aeris. So they'll definitely remove the part when Cloud goes mad and repeatedly beats the crap out of a defenceless Aeris in the next part.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ol5sjM4oVAQ

@ChrisDeku Also Quina is non-binary.

@DaniPooo Yeah totally agreed. FFVII had this revolutionary feel at the time so it being the one to be modernised so much makes sense, even if I didn't enjoy it. It feels utterly tragic if IX ends up being the same. If VII Remake was the one to go all in with being modern and experimental, IX Remake is the one that should be a labour of love to how JRPGs used to be.

@AverageGamer Yeah and over the last 30 years how much of that was seen by someone who's now, say, 15? And even then, seeing some memes isn't the same as wanting to buy the games. How many zoomers do you think have watched Star Trek TNG because of seeing Picard doing a facepalm in a meme?

Things do move in generations typically, things start to get a legacy feel, like "oh yeah, I think my dad used to play that". WoW was huge, way bigger than Doom, yet that's absolutely a Gen X and millennial thing in terms of the majority of the players. It's why series like Final Fantasy keep trying (and failing) to reinvent themselves, to attract younger audiences so when is older people stop gaming (or die...) they still have a fanbase.

@Cornpop76 Agreed, but a boomer is 60 to 70 something. You and I are millennials. Most people that played Doom back in the day were gen X. But you're right, though, I can't imagine many people born in the last twenty years giving a crap about Doom. I doubt many even know what it is, especially the younger end (whereas even a 6 year old knows GTA or FIFA/FC whatever.)

@GirlVersusGame Really? Oh no. Imagine the trauma of slowly aging to look like Elon Musk. I suppose the ultimate evolution is to be permanently stuck in the pose of doing a constant Nazi salute.

"Hideo Kojima has constantly pushed the barrier of video games, spanning as far back as the decision to make Raiden the main character of Metal Gear Solid 2"

I'd say even before that. It was pretty unusual that MG was a game from the 80s where you were NOT meant to shoot or kill everything in sight and were generally meant to avoid enemies. And then the weird meta stuff on MG2 that was revisited towards the end of MGS2.

Later than that, later than MGS1 even, but Boktai was an interesting thing where the cartridge had a solar sensor on it that powered up your weapon the more sun you were in IRL. The idea being to get gamers to get outside (and also leave the UK if they happened to live there...)

@ApostateMage Or they'll buy it, wait for him to collect rocks and then steal them off him.

@tselliot 😆 I came here to say the same thing - well, hopefully that it'll come filled with wine.

@ElkinFencer10 People use the "it's a handheld" defence, which is okay. They said the same for the Switch. But that does mean that Nintendo did so badly they dropped out of the home console market with the Wii U being their last belly flop into that arena. I don't think Nintendo fans would accept that, though.

For the record, the Switch 2's CPU is 4 years out of date already. By comparison, the XSX and PS5 CPUs were finalised the year before the consoles came out. So that presents a problem for multiformat games. It's a weaker CPU even if the console had come out 4 years ago. When the PS6 comes out in, say, 3 years, it'll be a not great CPU that's 7 years out of date.

Also even though it supports VRR in handheld, the HDMI output for docked doesn't. That's a weird choice by Nintendo.

@Oram77 God, it does. Have you seen 3:10 to Yuma? There's a really annoying guy in that who looks like Musk too. Fortunately he gets stabbed to death.

@CypherUK It's the first game they've made as this team but it was founded by ex-Ubisoft devs. The director had worked at Ubisoft since at least 2015. Goes to show what Ubisoft teams could've made given creative freedom.

@Dragoon1994 It is third-person. All GTA games are.

They don't tend to go for western games in general, as said above, but in some ways the JRPG influence could actually backfire because it could seem like clueless foreigners trying to do a very Japanese thing. Kind of like an American trying to sell that awful American "cheese" in France.

It doesn't help that there are examples of this from the past like Sudeki, Septerra Core and Anachronox that range from awful to okay but all of them are united in not really understanding JRPGs or Japanese games in general. A great thing about COE33 is it has such a wide base of influences. It doesn't think "JRPG = wide-eyed teen boy on happy journey with childhood friends" and it's also taking influence from Nier Replicant/Automata, Dark Souls, and a little bit of Digital Devil Saga and not just FF.

@CutchuSlow I guess if you sit there all weekend for 32 hours (16 a day) then it would take three weekends to get to 96 hours even if you don't play during the week at all. I once played MH World for 20 hours in one go but I don't think I could make a habit of that.

@ErrantRob Oblivion is digital only. This chart is physical only. Given a minority of people buy physical games now it's not really representative of what's selling. Though obviously there's some correlation as we know COE33 is selling well. It would be good if they actually put in the sales figures - in Japan they do an games can sell quite poorly and be in the top 20. Japan's got twice the population of the UK more or less so it could be some of these top 10 games are selling like a couple of thousand.

I couldn't properly get into the first one despite being really into the setting, tone and various ideas. I just found it weirdly stressful like a horror game. Depsite that, I'm still really looking forwards to this. The characters and stories Kojima comes up with are just so compelling and unique I can't say no.

@Fandabidozi2025 It's a manga series that's widely regarded as a masterpiece. There are games and anime based on it. It started in 1989 so it's been around for a long time. It's acknowledged as an inspiration for various things like Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma (which also had Berserk crossover DLC), Final Fantasy VII, and has little references in things like DMC and even a scene in Infinity War.

Unfortunately the artist and writer died a few years ago with the story unfinished but it's been continued by others based on his notes (which is probably what's going to happen with A Song of Ice and Fire...)

@Oram77 It doesn't trivialise the whole game, you can't do the set-up required for its maximum damage until late in the game. You know how on FFVII the maximum damage is 9,999? Well with a certain set-up Cloud can do something like a million damage every time he gets hit by an attack. Or Barret can one shot everything in the game with his ultimate weapon with a certain set-up.

But those things require a massive time investment and are only possible towards the end of the game. And the existence of those things didn't stop the game being regarded as an all time great. Even if it isn't only doable at the end of the game, it can still be good for the game. In Morrowind and Oblivion you can make yourself permanently invisible reasonably early. In Morrowind specifically you can steal the best armour in the game right at the beginning. .

True RPGs tend to be like that. It's only with the advent of action adventure games masquerading as RPGs (e.g. Horizon) that this flat, bland experience has been normalised, where everything's tuned to be safe, consistent, and unrewarding to experimention and clever builds.

@Andy22385 "We all enjoyed games for years or even decades at 30 fps."
People say this quite a lot but 60fps was standard on the 8 and 16-bit consoles. Then as 3D became the norm it dropped, but even then on PS1 there were over 100 games that ran at 60. Not sure how many on PS2 but the Gran Turismo games, MGS2, DMC3, God of War 1&2, Tekken 4&5, and all Onimusha games were 60fps.

It's definitely true that certain games got away with abysmal, sub-30 framerates, like Goldeneye and OoT. But then that's Nintendo, they're still getting away with it in games like BotW.

@Korgon They also patented the d-pad being a cross shape. That's why the PS d-pad is broken up into 4 parts by the controller shell despite still functionality being the same. I do wonder if the people allowing these trademarks and patents have any idea about the things they're ruling on. Though the patent expired about 20 years ago so people can use it now (also not sure how Sega got away with it for the DC controller).

@UltimateOtaku91 Yeah, and in WoW, Hogwarts Legacy, many others too. Not defending it, it's ridiculous, but it's probably something extremely specific. Maybe it has to be a creature you capture, keep in a ball, then summon to glide, rather than simply mounting a flying creature. Maybe it's specifically gliding as opposed to flying. Maybe it's standing on the gliding creature (if that's what happens in Pokémon and Palworld) rather than sitting on it.

This is the same company that sued the creator of Fire Emblem for making a strategy RPG for PS1 after he left Intelligent Systems (makers of FE and a company not owned by Nintendo). That's like Sony suing Hidetaka Miyazaki for making a Soulslike.