Matroska

@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For the record, the Switch 2's CPU is 4 years out of date already.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 When the PS6 comes out in, say, 3 years, it'll be a not great CPU that's 7 years out of date.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.

I've never heard this swish sound - I'm not saying you're wrong, I've seen it mentioned around a lot. I've noticed enemy-specific audio cues - there was a particularly annoying enemy, a Chromatic type, and it seemed impossible until I noticed that really obvious noise it makes before it shoots you is the audio cue.

Also, sometimes you can actually parry successfully if you do one too early. It depends how early and how long the attack windup is. I've dodged too early and then hammered the parry button and got it to work, too.

@Max_the_German Not just the PS5, if you grew up with the Master System, Mega Drive, NES or SNES, pretty much all games were 60fps then. Then on the PS1 and N64 it suddenly became rarer because of 3D. Even then, over 100 games were 60fps on the PS1, Tekken 3 for one example. Also, oddly, the battles in FFVII but not the rest of the game.

At this point they're basically depending on Switch sales as over on PC a huge part of the target audience is playing COE33. As much as I'd like a PS5 port, I could still play it on PC or Switch but I'm too into Oblivion and the aforementioned game. They couldn't have known about Oblivion but I think they really underestimated the appeal of Clair Obscur. Probably due to the Japanese not really rating Western games.

@Enigk It's available all over the place. It's on Amazon now, and The Game Collection, and Argos. So the first three places I checked all have it. In America it's in stock at GameStop.

But that does remind me of another issue with physical preorders - they can cancel them if they later find out they don't have enough stock. Or you get locked in with the retailer you preordered from even if they can't fulfill the orders and other places still have it (like what's presumably happening in America with COE33).

Edit:
I checked the interest rate thing and I'd make about 75p in 5 months on the price of the game. Not enough for a packet of crisps or a can of Coke, sadly (I remember when a can was 25p...)

@DonkeyFantasy Stock isn't going to run out for a physical copy either, especially for a major first party game. At least with a digital preorder you get to preload the game before launch and start playing as soon as it hits midnight.

It's a pretty foregone conclusion, though. Firstly it's been long established that people that like JRPGs or similar games are significantly more likely to buy a Playstation than an Xbox. Secondly, anyone willing to pay £50 for something is obviously much more invested in something than a person trying it as one game of many in a monthly subscription.

It's like saying "People that buy £500+ bottles of whisky know more about whisky than people who only have tried free samples of Bells in supermarkets". The payment part is a barrier to entry that's breached by interest, passion, knowledge, or whatever. But it keeps more passive or casual people out, whereas anyone can wander into a game when it's free to try, like a supermarket free sample.

@ecurb7 The point is that there's a correlation between time spent playing the game and if people paid for the game or not. The group that paid for it (us) have played it more on average than people who got it for "free".

@danzoEX Loads of Japanese devs have done Kickstarter stuff. Even famous devs like Keiji Inafune who worked on Mega Man, Onimusha, Street Fighter etc.

Talking of this game and Clair Obscur, one of the devs of the latter recently recommended this game. To be honest, I'd totally forgotten about it until that. It really released at a bad time.

https://twitter.com/expedition33/status/1917500503627555303

@GirlVersusGame To be fair, and while I do overall agree, I played this game for probably 2 hours and I have absolutely no memory of the story or the characters. It made such a weak impression on me. As someone said earlier in the comments, or to paraphrase them, to me it's like the kind of game you'd rent (back when that was common) play a bit and then forget about.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of games I love that are very far away from being considered classics - like the .hack games. Man, I even enjoyed that cowboy game called Gun, if you remember that. And that was terrible.

Good for them. This has now entered the special category of games that I've actually dreamed about. I can barely remember what happened but last night I know I was having dreams about being in this world with these characters, but the typical scrambled dream thing where different things are happening.

@DennisReynolds Well I do get that. The play in bed, or even if you're feeling a bit risky you can play in the bath, kind of thing. I get that. I've just never seen anyone play outside with any handheld apart from one guy with a 3DS on the train (which I forgot about until this post). But yeah, some games are so much better in bed, like the Ace Attorney series. Like reading a good book in bed.

@Ravix To be fair, people don't pay £1000 or so for the new phone each year, they just adjust their subscription and get the latest model. They stick at about 40-50 each month while keeping the newest phone. With the Switch 2, will parents pay £450 to 500 to get something that seems to be the same thing they already paid for? Time will tell, but it's genuinely up in the air as far as I can see.

@DennisReynolds As a genuine, good faith question, what do you mean by portable? And who else do you know what plays games outside? Because with all honesty, as a Switch owner myself, I've never seen anyone in public with a Switch or any handheld. For one, the screen isn't bright enough to see outside. But even past that, if people are out and about, they're doing something - they're with friends or whatever. I don't see this "oh but it's handheld" thing in real life. As a genuine question, do people you know actually, say, go to the park and play on the Switch?

@Ravix I don't know. The last time Nintendo had a huge hit of a console on their hands, the follow up was a massive flop that forced them to go to a new console really quickly. In that case the reason was the mainly non-gamer crowd that made the Wii so successful weren't the type of customer to buy the next console. The question now is that will tens of millions of parents buy their kids a console that looks the same as the last one, with the main launch game (MK) looking very similar to the last one to non-gamer parent eyes.

And when each new game is so expensive. I think kids are more likely to want the new Switch than non-gamers were to want a Wii U, but it's all down to if the legions of parents will be happy to spend £500 plus on something they'll see as "but we already have a Switch at home". And as you say, even the gamer parents will realise most of the stuff on offer is available elsewhere for less, and often running and looking better. It really could go either way, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion (for either failure or success).

It's interesting that Xbox is on its knees so it's just down to Playstation and the Switch, but only two of the games in the top 10 can be played on the Switch and both of them are on everything else anyway.

Especially striking since I'd imagine Nintendo have a higher percentage of physical sales than Sony since the Switch has limited storage, the games are actually played off the carts rather than being fully installed like on PS4/5, and that since the Switch is the more kid-friendly console parents aren't often going to be willing to put their card details in for digital purchases.

@dardel The problem with the dodging and parrying in Clair Obscur is that it overshadows the entire rest of the battle system. If you're bad at the real time elements you're going to die a lot, apart from on Easy, even if you totally grasp the game tactically. You could be an idiot who's terrible at the game in general but has amazing timing and you're going to win every fight without taking damage.

Even the QTE things when attacking make too much of a difference, in my opinion. Lune has an AoE fire attack that does great damage to all enemies, but if you mistime it, it hits her instead. There are single target buff spells that, if timed perfectly twice, now affect the entire party. Granted, these are easier than dodging and parrying but I think it being a turn-based tactical RPG is really overshadowed by the action-y elements.

The whole thing's pretty muddied by badly defined ideas. Most FFs aren't truly turn-based - things happen in real time based on the ATB meter, which is effectively a universal cooldown for each character. If you don't do anything enemies can still act, whereas if we played chess, you couldn't just take all my pieces while I sat there thinking. I mean it's called "active time battle", it's right there in the name.

But then people might say "okay, but I just want menu-based combat where I don't have to dodge or parry or anything". Okay, but you do have to dodge and parry in Clair Obscur. So what do people actually want? Real time but with a menu? Actual turn-based but with real time elements? Actual full turn-based like FFX or DQ? From SE's perspective people are asking for three different things while thinking they're asking for one.

@Ray_Ray_Regasis Yeah but there's typically a small crossover for JRPGs and WRPGs. I'm an exception, I got Oblivion and this, and I've liked both subgenres since FFVII and BG1. But there's no evidence at all that those 200k on Steam would've bought this if they didn't have Oblivion Remastered. They already had access to the original Oblivion which could be modded to look amazing and be much more advanced in terms of gameplay, not to mention the fan patch that fixes thousands of bugs that are back in the remastered version.

@KillerBoy Sure but "people" aren't just one hypocritical person. Some people say something is bad, other people do the thing the other group of people think is bad. It's like saying "people say stealing is bad but people still steal". Also there's a difference between a classic but antiquated game getting a remake or remaster and a recent game that's basically getting a res or FPS boost for £60.

@LiamCroft There's also an appearance you can get by giving a costume to a kid who's at the party you have before you leave. I can't remember getting it in the first place but when I spoke to him I gave it to him and it said "appearance unlocked".

There's also the thing at the same place with the tokens you exchange for various things including a haircut for Gustave.

Edit: Apparently the token rewards are unmissable (well, the tokens are) so I guess there's no need to mention them.

Edit again: Ah, just noticed there's a separate section for costumes.

@Bagwag82 Madame Web's a relatively recent film set in the Spider-Man universe that's famous for being an embarrassing flop. It's surprising you haven't heard of it as it was all over the internet when it came out due to being so bad. Most people haven't seen it but they know about it due to it being a massive meme, same as Morbius.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is a Tarantino film, you have to have heard of that, surely? 😅

Argh, just got it and now have to wait 14 hours to play it where now all other games don't seem interesting to me to play.

@LiamCroft Okay, thanks. They liked it overall but those were two criticisms they made. As I said, I put more weight on PS reviews than EG's so I thought I'd ask.

Also they said there's only a few towns - is that another exaggeration?

@LiamCroft It says fun exploration but the Eurogamer review says it's incredibly linear and the dungeons are boring. It compares it to FFXIII. I trust PS more than EG bit it's still a stark contrast.

@ChrisDeku No, the animations are new. The original game didn't even have enemies reacting to being hit, and no sound effects for things in combat. Also if you went into third-person there were no animations for running diagonally (like say you were facing north and strafed and ran at the same time so you moved NW) so if you did that, your character used the run forward animation but slid sideways. It looked awful. Oblivion was incredibly undercooked at the time and felt really weird even back then. As did Skyrim in a slightly better way back in 2011.

Like so many other people, the first person perspective puts me off. Also the stealth focus. I like when stealth is an option, whether we're taking action game or RPG, but I dislike when it's the kind of thing where you're usually boned when spotted by multiple enemies and so getting spotted may as well just auto reload your last save.

I've not seems apply to the guys here, but all too often game journalists seem to struggle with the gameplay elements the most. Both in terms of doing them and in terms of describing them. It's a shame but it's not rare to read a review and not really know how levelling up works, how combat works, how deep is the crafting system, what the endgame is like, etc, but you do know all about the writer's feelings on various controversies the game might have triggered, as well as all sorts of assorted fluff.

That Eurogamer article above takes 9 paragraphs to name a specific mechanical reason the combat was tough - no lock-on (and incidentally a lot of gamers that like combat focussed games prefer that) but just 3 sentences in we know the writer is "amazed" by the "glistening sweaty limbs of a warrior in a fluffy bear skin cloak". True to form he also admits he "died immediately" in the tutorial.

@Stevemalkpus @get2sammyb I just searched around for this. A few years ago the CEO of Take Two said they want to make more RDR games but that's it. No mention of Rockstar officially announcing it, nothing on their Twitter.

If it had the board game thing in Project Justice this would've been a definite buy for me. Same as the school life mode in the first one. Those two things have had this kind of mythical quality to me since those games came out here without them.

I hope they fix the NPCs and their conversations.
"Hello!"
"I'm tired of talking to you!"
Man stands on table
"Do you know about mudcrabs?"
"Good bye!"
Man repeatedly walks into corner
"Hello!"

@UltimateOtaku91 It's not that they've never been about hardware power. The NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube were all more powerful than the Sega or Sony competitors. The Xbox (original) was probably more powerful than the GC though. Remember, they called the N64 that because it was 64-bit rather than 32-bit like the Saturn and PS1. They used the name of the console, and several games like Mario 64, to boast about the power. Imagine if Uncharted 4 was called Uncharted 1.6 (or 1600 depending on if we're talking GHz or MHz) because that was the speed of the PS4 CPU. It's pretty weird when you think about it.

@TBubs311 Yeah, it was pretty ham-fisted. It gave the game what I assume was an unintentional Young Adult kind of feel, like basic satire aimed at younger teens. It's also not a particularly interesting thing to satirise - most agree with the sentiment. And doing it in such a cartoony way makes the satire feel toothless and ineffective.

Well Obsidian didn't own or make Fallout (well funnily enough until Bethesda owned it, with New Vegas). Black Isle was the developer and Interplay published it. Some people from Black Isle made Obsidian not long before Black Isle was shut down, having cancelled the original Fallout 3. Unfortunately Chris Avellone, who wrote a lot of Fallout 2 and had the idea of the vaults being used for experiments on the population, and Tim Cain, the creator of the series, don't work for Obsidian anymore (Cain wasn't a founding member but did join in about 2010 or 2011 but left a few years ago).

Talking of the 90s originating, very loose translation, it's by a group called Working Designs who did quite a few similar arguably grating localisations. You can actually get fan translations for these games that are labelled as "Un-Working Designs" they're so notorious.

I remember playing Phantasy Star Universe many years ago and I was in a group with two American kids who constantly freestyle rapped - very badly. So yeah, I know how annoying this stuff can be. Perhaps that rap experience is one of the reasons I hardly play online games, come to think of it. 😂