Sorry but this game looked like what it's being mocked for before I saw any of these videos. It looks like a basic, antiquated experience trying to get sales from graphics and its license. A game that wouldn't have been great in the 2000s but would've at least seemed less out of place.

A lot of Sony games are smoke and mirrors to disguise that what you're actually doing is so basic, so simplistic, both in terms of input and thought process, but they look nice and have a cinematic appeal.

Those excerpts make it sound like it should be a 7 but knowing how game reviews work it'll get 8s and 9s.

My first plat was MGS3 but I don't remember that being that hard other than any inherent difficulty in the game itself. This one sounds brutal, though.

@Nightcrawler71 To be fair, once you move through the main story to the current point, and it's still very early days, it's actually very quick to do daily things like give gifts, use "character pixels" (stamina for farming that regenerates over time) and "city stamina" (stamina for job/hobby things like races, fishing, taxi work, mahjong etc, fully refills each Monday), and find a few collectibles like crows.

In a way, it's almost disappointing how you go from loads to do to just checking in a bit each dday. Though obviously more story is added over time and other features, much of it is optional. Like, you never have to do mahjong or fishing or whatever.

@AtlasLivesAgain To a point, yes. It's called Ascension and each time you get a dupe you can unlock 1 of 6 unique skills for the character. You can change around these skills whenever you want so you aren't locked in. So obviously you'll have all skills when you've got 6 dupes.

These makes more of a difference for some characters than others but there isn't a sense that a character is seriously gimped without dupes. In other games, like Nikke, the characters are basically useless eventually without dupes because it increases their max level.

I liked Yotei a lot but didn't finish it. I agree that in many ways it's better than Tsushima but there was something missing. One day I just didn't really feel like playing it and that was the end of that. Also, it says in the article that Atsu's quest was more personal because Jin was simply trying to save his island/country which is a broader thing, not a personal quest for revenge.

The thing is, for Jin it was very personal as he struggled with honour vs pragmatism, a culturally-specific morality vs actually successfully defending Tsushima. And packaged into that was the fact that becoming "the ghost" was a betrayal of his uncle. With Atsu it was just "you killed my parents so I will kill you". It's actually more boilerplate than Jin's motivation and struggles as the latter are more specific to Jin, Japan and that era.

@GamingGod Games typically run way better while also looking better, which is why PC gamers often laugh when console-only players treat 60fps as a gold standard while they're playing at 120fps+. Typically fighting game tournaments only use PCs unless Sony have paid them to promote PlayStation. That's why this stands out so much and is potentially disastrous for the game - though I think the Marvel effect will carry it through (not that Marvel properties are immune to flops...)

@Bluemoon2008 He's one of the most famous streamers. He's well known enough to apparently have a cameo in the Street Fighter movie. Also Epic wanted him to promote Fortnite but he turned them down, so clearly even the makers of one of the most popular games thinks he'd be an effective promoter in making it even more popular. And various devs know him and care about what he has to say, like Ed Boon of Mortal Kombat fame. He's also commentated at EVO. So long story short, what he says does matter to a lot of fighting game fans and devs.

@LimitedPower Sure but what's left after you said it could maybe be considered the most stylistic and is certainly extremely authentic to what its trying to emulate? What is the other metric you were measuring it by if not stylisation, authenticity or realism?

@LimitedPower Well he didn't say "most realistic", it's just that you personally equate "best looking" with "most realsitic" and have then naturally assumed he means that too. That said, I'm surprised he went for this style rather than an anime gacha game.

Signalis is good. It's basically a top-down, sci-fi, classic RE game. But I played in on my Switch years ago. The other two I have no interest in.

@Kienda Zendaya and Jon Bernthal are also in both films, strangely enough.

@AdamNovice The Australian one.

@rjejr There was a certain writer here that I haven't seen for a while that did articles that came up as partly AI when checked.

"It speaks to Xbox’s increasingly American-centric target market"
It's always been like this. The original Xbox sold something like 80% of its units in America. It only sold about 5 million in the entire rest of the world (and sold terribly in general).

Played the original, lost my mind with frustration because it was the first dual analogue shooter I'd played. I was either looking at the sky or the ground.

Eventually got good enough to do it on Legendary and knew all the tricks like area skips. So I have a soft spot for it, but not really interested in playing it again.

Annoying to those who bought it, but to be fair, it's only enough money to buy a pint (I remember when pints were £1.80...)

@RoomWithaMoose The PS5 has almost twice the install base of the Switch 2 and Xbox Series S/X combined (90 million vs 55 million - at least according to a quick google) and the game currently only has 839 players on Steam. Trying to get people to not buy the game on PS5, if it had any chance of being successful, would do enormous damage to the devs. So the idea that "we accept the devs don't have the money to release a physical version (thus removing our precious choice) but we're going to try to convince people to take away most of their sales" is a ridiculous stance.

It doesn't seem to be about trying to affect any kind of positive change - for that, try getting people to wait for the GTA6 physical release (they won't) - but this has zero chance of doing anything. And if it did affect anything it'd be the devs, not Sony. So not only is it contradictory in terms of accepting the devs don't have much money to their name, but then trying to shred their sales, it's guaranteed to make no difference. Therefore it can only be taken as main character syndrome grandstanding.

@RoomWithaMoose But it does acknowledge there are financial reasons for being digital-only for one thing. And again, the argument is basically "I want to have a choice to buy physical or digital... But anyway, I'm going to buy this digital-only product where I have no choice for physical because I hate having no choice! But just not on this one platform, but instead maybe on this other digital-only platform!!" It's just a mangled stance. And even recommending you buy it on PC, a platform that went digital-only ages ago. And back then there was an outcry about that, like there is now with PS, but it's all swept under the carpet now.

@NieR_Dark Well I partly address this above. It also ties into something else I was going to say. People may defend PC being digital-only by saying at least there are different storefronts. Yet people religiously stick with Steam. It makes up about 75% of all PC game sales globally. If you compare it only to the EGS, it's actually about 97% to Steam and 3% to EGS - even though the latter gives more of the money from each sale to the devs.

Totally agree with the idea of bringing back the Playstation Stars thing, or something similar.

@dskatter Because if Sony going only digital is bad, this game has been released as digital only. Wherever you buy it, it's digital only - and if being digital only is bad, then surely also hate games that release digital only, but that's a side point.

Not only do most people not care about this, it's this weird main character syndrome thing where they think they're actually going to change anything by making people buy a game (again, a digital only one!) on certain platforms, and a game that's going to sell small numbers anyway.

@TheSingularity Yeah, was about to post the same thing. It's a weird nerd kind of virtue signalling. Like people that treat open source vs closed source as some kind of human rights violation.

@dskatter I bet they loved the 900 korok minigames in BotW, though.

I haven't played many games since Crimson Desert, and even then just dipping my toe in, but I love murder mystery type games so I'll get this if it's not expensive.

Edit:
Oh wow, £5.89 on Steam. I'll get it there instead of waiting, then.

It's like Bully made by Swery65.

I'd rather have another PoE, Avowed being an action RPG sequel to those two games. They can make it in 3D if they want but the more detailed dialogue, more interesting combat, better writing and depiction of the setting, etc... Avowed was a massive disappointment even if I ignore the fact it crashed everyone 2-3 hours on average and once even crashed 5 minutes after I booted it up after the last crash.

@TheSingularity Your post kind of goes against itself. Yes if you asked vegans if they thought eating meat was evil, you'd get a far higher than the actual average of people saying it was evil. But this is a PS site. You're far more likely to get people fiercely loyal to Sony here than if you asked the general population. This is very poll is like asking vegans if they think eating meat is bad.

>"Chinese studio"
What a crazy surprise. I wonder why this is so often the case with blatant rip-offs, and not just videogames.

@darylb24 In both cases it's not quite what you said. Naoto isn't a tomboy (the tomboy is Chie) but she thinks no one will take her seriously as a detective both because of her age and sex, so she pretends to be a boy and also acts in a more serious way (how she perceives maturity) than she normally would. And with Kanji, it's not exactly that he's feminine, it's that he likes doing something that society perceives as for women. It's like saying female footballers are masculine because they like something traditionally associated with men. He likes working with textiles IIRC and he's insecure that it makes him seem gay.

That's why Naoto's shadow is like a little kid wearing a lab coat that's way too big for them, and Kanji's shadow is a stereotypical gay man.

Yeah. I mean, yes it's more expensive but living in a house is more expensive than living in a shed so why don't we all just live in sheds? And you save money by not having to pay for online, cloud saves etc. Wider game selection, cheaper games - and extremely cheap if you put on an eyepatch. So you'd actually save money in the long run, even without donning your wooden leg and parrot. And mods too - and while some may say "I don't want mods" it's amazing how many console gamers say things like "I wish the minimap was bigger" or "I wish I could change the UI size" and other various tweaks; well you can with mods.

I know it sounds like some silly clickbait headline but I do think traditional console gaming is dying. MS are doing some Steambox type thing and Nintendo dropped out of the home console market by switching to a handheld that can send its signal to a TV.

I loved consoles when they had a real identity and personality, and when PC and console had almost entirely mutually exclusive catalogues. But that's over now, sadly.

@LikelySatan Oh yeah, absolutely. But the corruption of FIFA only manifests when it benefits certain people or teams and this was one such case.

And also look at France vs Paraguay. Endless very suspicious decisions made in favour of Paraguay when their opponents are the favourites and the head of FIFA has literally made up a pretend award to give to the president of the host country.

Sometimes you are the corruption, sometimes you're trying to battle against it.

@LikelySatan The most corrupt team just got embarrassed internationally. So nice to see.

@LikelySatan I do see the truth to that idea but then you only need a ball for piggy in the middle or catch, and no one takes them seriously. I mean, you also technically need at least 22 people and a massive area, plus goalposts. By contrast with tennis you just need 2 people and 2 rackets and a small area with some kind of waist high fence. And with the same concept American handegg just needs a ball yet almost no one cares about that. The armour? Well what about shin pads and football boots, and what about rugby that's also very physical but they're not dressed in armour?

So basically, I think there is some truth to that but if that was all there was to it, certain other sports should be way more popular.

@Fluberuper You find it hard to believe because you're used to focusing on sports that no one else cares about. The Super Bowl only gets something like 130-150 million viewers worldwide. The thing is, when something is international you get people having to watch it later or just watch highlights. The last England match started at 2am on a Monday, for example, so most English people missed it.

There are considered to be 3.5 billion football fans in the world. But beyond that, there are billions more that are at least aware of what's happening in the sport roughly 50 percent of all humans follow.

@TheDarts That was only the third time Mexico have lost at the Azteca since 1966 in competitive matches. England were playing at 7000 feet above sea level, without time to acclimatise, with Mexico at a massive home disadvantage. Bellingham had someone shining a laser in his face, England players had water bottles thrown at them, Mexico fans tried to wake them up by setting off fireworks outside their lodgings. It was amazing what they went through.

@leisureal88 Well given that 85% of PlayStation games sold last year were digital, you're not in a minority. What we have in the article above is a game dev that poops out broken slop, and a corporation that pays people minimum wage to create and deliver junk food, trying to get some free advertising by preaching to the choir of terminally online, permanently raging people.

@Orpheus79V Yeah, 5 came out in 99. Year after the DC (for Japan) and a year before the PS2. Also sorry to be off-topic but yes, finally a goal.

@Balosi You had SNES games coming out until not long before the PS2, too. At least in Japan.

I feel kind of lucky I'm playing less games recently. First console gen I might not bother with. (Also, come on England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿)

@Dogbreath To be fair he was born in a rough area to a mom struggling with drugs, yet ended up going to art school and studying poetry, acting, ballet, and jazz and performing in Shakespeare plays. He also founded a few non-proft organisations to help disadvantaged people, created a charity concert, and founded an organisation dedicated to reducing crime and keeping young black people away from criminal activity. He's not basically just the archetypal gangsta rapper.

There's numerous stories like this, too:
"After receiving a letter from Joshua's parents expressing the boy's dying wish to meet the rapper, Tupac flew from New York to Maryland to visit him. He spent time with Joshua, holding his hand and taking him to a basketball game, before the boy passed away approximately 45 minutes after Tupac left. The meeting deeply affected Tupac, leading him to dedicate his publishing company to Joshua's memory by renaming it to Joshua's Dream."

@Northern_munkey @-wc- There is actually a phenomenon where raising prices increases sales. Customers equate prices with quality so they seem more desirable. Not saying this will happen here, but luxury goods manufacturers do this strategically to actually increase desirability versus their competitors.

There are also examples like this:
https://startupproject.org/blog/how-i-doubled-the-price-of-my-software-product-and-sold-ten-times-as-many-copies/

There's also what are referred to as Giffen goods:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good

@Jireland92 There's significantly more to a GTA than a MK. And it would've cost literally hundreds of times the money to produce. It's like people complaining about it being £200 a night for a camping spot but being happy to pay £200 a night for a 5-star hotel room in Paris.

@JoeNobody Yeah but at the same time, Gears of War has local co-op and doesn't do this. Neither company has done this before. It also makes no sense for MS to insist that anyone wanting to play this has to give Sony more money. MS get nothing from this apart from probably less sales.

Not quite as bad as needing up to 4 GBAs to play Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles in 2-4 player mode on the GC but this is ridiculous.

Honestly looks like a load of crap. The sort of junk that would be 50p in CeX back in the 2000s and you wouldn't even bother looking at the back of the box.

@Waa-Laa IIRC what happened is loads of people wouldnt turn up to work or school when a new DQ came out so Enix/Square Enix started only releasing them on weekends. There's a myth it's a law in Japan but it was voluntary.

@DennisReynolds "MS coming into gaming is easily one of the worst things to happen to gaming, fanboys can disagree all they want but nearly everything we hate about gaming all came from MS."

Agreed. You could see their awful approach with the 360. PS3 had controllers with rechargeable batteries, 360 had old fashioned batteries you had to buy. PS3 had a wireless connection built in, with the 360 you had to buy a wireless adapter. The PS3 was also a bluray player (still the standard for physical visual media), the 360 used DVDs and then later released a HD-DVD add on you could buy (and the format died almost immediately). The PS3 had free online, 360 charged for it.

Add in the 33% failure rate and quite honestly you have a greedy mess of a console filled with cut corners and cynical design decisions. That sums up the entire Xbox brand. Plus the weird thing of calling it the 360 because they thought people would think the Xbox 2 was worse than the PS3, yet they then released the Xbox 1 alongside the PS4. Did they ever know what they were doing?

@Dalamar It's not to copy DS for the sake of it. The reason DS did it in the first place is so your thumb is freed up to either move the camera or hover over the dodge button. Same as in FPS with R2 being shoot, though it's even more important in them since you aim with RS.

@4fold Sure but if in Dark Souls, enemies only did 0.5% of your HP bar per hit and died in one hit, it would be unbelievably easy. Typically enemies dying slower and you dying quicker emphasises the mistakes you make. There's also the fact the character they used seemed to have abilities from later in the game being used on guards from the start of the game.

Keep being tempted to buy First Light but it's a bit much for a relatively short game (I almost always play games that are 70+ hours) and it's summer now, well technically 🌦, so this is when I'm normally doing my other hobbies that are more outdoorsy.

The next games I'll definitely get are GTA6, then Fable. And of course, Fable has been delayed by months because of GTA...