Matroska

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. 😂

@get2sammyb , you've had about 19 years to read FSN on PC! 😄 The remaster only adds a flowchart, though that is quite handy for seeing alternate scenes without making loads of saves, to be fair.

"It’s perhaps worth remembering that few thought Helldivers 2 would be a success either, and it went on to become Sony’s best-selling first-party game of all time."
Well, a possible counterpoint is that people responded as shown in the poll even though they know you can get a surprise success. Their minds are more open to the possibility because of HD2 yet they still don't have high hopes for Marathon. (Also, potentially, each game like HD2 that's popular takes away players from future releases. Think how many more players other games would have if FIFA and Fortnite didn't exist.)

Damn, I didn't realise this was an online shooter. I don't typically play FPS but the artstyle of this got my attention and I was interested in getting it until I read this article.

@GirlVersusGame Ouch! Yeah, it felt like it was just a matter of time before I fell off. I actually walked while watching the LotR trilogy - I ended up walking 38 miles. Though my treadmill has this annoying thing where the timer only goes up to 99 minutes and then rather than simply stopping counting the time, it turns off. When it first did that I nearly walked off it into the TV. So yeah exercise bikes are way safer, lol.

I thought the original was okay but it was sort of expected to be like New Vegas (in space!) but I thought it was more like Mass Effect. But yeah, the characters were undercooked, it could often be boring, and the sense of humour could be grating.

@GirlVersusGame Well you don't have to hold the handlebars on an exercise bike, but I guess the seats aren't that comfortable so there's that too. I've done it quite a bit with games too - like you said, it's better with more mindless stuff because I find you tend to stop pedaling if you're doing something really focused like a Dark Souls boss. I tried it with my treadmill too but that's just an accident waiting to happen. 😂

The crowd animations are kinda of stiff and the trees look overly fluffy, but yeah, some of it does look actually photorealistic.

@carlos82 Yeah exactly. I look at it on a £ per day basis. Like, the PS5 cost me £450 but I've had it since launch so according to my phone calculator that's (being basic and saying it came out 4.5 years ago) 27p a day and getting cheaper each day. Gaming is a cheap hobby, not an expensive one.

@Mostik Yeah I remember many years ago going to London and having my mind blown that it was £5 a pint. Here in Birmingham at the time it was about £3 - so as you might think of it too, that's 3 pints for a tenner rather than 2. Now it's nearly £6 where I live just south of Birmingham.

"The only issue is kids, little ones pestering parents for games at a £80 - £100 a pop is ridiculous!"
Yeah true. And I think there's some cynicism on Nintendo's part here. Of all three console manufacturers plus PC, they're by far the one who benefits most from the "kids nagging parents" effect so they can take the piss with it more.

Nintendo have always been kind of dodgy in this way. They tend to get away with it. Like BotW has pay-to-win in the sense food, weapons and arrows etc are limited resources but you can just get them daily with an amiibo. You can pay for the best horse. Pay for a wolf companion who fights for you. Pay for armour that detects korok seeds for you (with no normal way of detecting them). The remaster of Twilight Princess has only one truly new thing, an extra dungeon. And that was locked behind the Wolf Link amiibo. Oh, and the wolf bodyguard I mentioned before? He has levels and you can only level him up by also buying TP and playing through that dungeon I mentioned.

I said they get away with it. Well they do in America (and Japan, though it seems they're still more besotted with mobile gacha) but internationally they're still seen as more of a kids' toy manufacturer. I know that's contentious online (where there are lots of Americans) but IRL it's just a given. I think most parents aren't aware of the aforementioned stuff or just think of it as typical cash grab stuff that kids' products do all the time.

@carlos82 Yeah, same. A few weeks ago I went out to some pubs in the village I live in, with some friends and my nephew. I bought a pint at each pub (4), got him some soft drinks at each one, then got my hair cut, took him home, and got some cans from the shop. The day cost me about £70. More recently I bought AC Shadows for £60 and many days later I'm still playing it. I mean, Jesus, I've had rare nights out that cost literally hundreds. I'm not rich but games are ridiculous value for money for what you get out of them.

@Kelrics90 Does that matter if the English voice acting isn't done in China, though? Like, for example, Japanese made games have certain things censored due to Japanese law, yet the same game published by the same company in, say, America can have those things still intact. For example, exploding heads in RE.

Isn't it the power draw rather than the power output? The console isn't powering something else, it's taking power.

@Sakhasm They'll be running a lot of the same games so a spec comparison is relevant. It's not apples to oranges, it's like comparing different TVs, different ovens, different cars, and so on. Especially since the Switch 2 is more expensive than a PS5 digital edition. (Even then the apples to oranges figure of speech is weird; you can absolutely compare them - which has more calories, which has more sugar, which has more vitamins etc.)

@LifeGirl But as was said, they're often by the same bands so it'd be the same rights. And even if it's different bands, a lot are signed to the same label and it's via the labels they'd get the rights. That said, you're still right that having the old and new tracks would be the obvious best choice. Maybe they're gonna do an original track DLC.

I'm sure I'll get one at some point but so far it's a bunch of older games that will run and look better elsewhere (and have done for years) plus Mario Kart. The latter will obviously be fun but in exactly the same way MK8 is. Also, as I've got older I don't really play games with friends - if we meet up it's to go to the pub, go out for the day, see a band etc, so it's basically me driving in circles on my own if I get MK. Not really bothered about playing randoms online. So yeah, it'll take a new Zelda or some exclusive JRPGs to tempt me.

@DogPark Nope. It's "kooky". I googled "cooky" and it's a rarely used alternative spelling of "cookie" but that's obviously not what he meant.

@Oram77 Well as of a decade ago it had sold 9.5 million so it was a big hit. It's also going to benefit from anticipation for the next TES.

@ButterySmooth30FPS You can say that again (like these VAs do)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OX8najPmiyc

@Jorogumo These console specific sites always only mention their own platform for multiplatform games because that's the platform they're covering.

Here's an example from Pure Xbox
https://www.purexbox.com/news/2025/03/the-sinking-city-is-getting-an-unreal-engine-5-remaster-for-xbox-series-xs

And Nintendo Life with a list of upcoming Switch games that are almost all multiplatform.
https://www.nintendolife.com/guides/35-upcoming-nintendo-switch-games-to-look-forward-to-in-2025

Well I think of it this way: you know when an American movie depicts England in a film and it's all really off and kind of funny? Even just normal modern England? And it becomes its own genre of "the American version of England in movies"? Well this probably comes across something like that to Japanese people. The AC series has always had this thing with whatever it's portraying feeling like a pop culture version of that time and place, like Odyssey felt like Ancient Greece via Jason and the Argonauts.

I notice they've done various things to appeal to the Japanese more, like an in-game warning about climbing on torii gates, which would be seen as incredibly f'd up in Japan. And afaik they removed all mentions of Yasuke actually being a samurai from various official Japanese materials because a samurai isn't simply a swordfighter but was an actual social class you'd tend to be born into, iirc.

His inclusion does feel odd since, at least so far, he was there at the start and then I just becomes Naoe's game for ages with him never seen again since the start - though I am spending a lot of time exploring.

@dskatter Probably. I'm not a football fan but he's uncontested as one of the all time greatest players in the most popular sport in the world. He's definitely a household name around the world. Why he's in a Japanese fighting game is a different question though. 😅

@Chupa_loyzer There's more reason to pre-order a digital game than a physical one, really. Assuming you're saying it's justified to pre-order physical because you're reserving your copy, I've never found a new game to be out of stock when I've gone to buy it. However if you pre-order a digital game you can preload it. Once you've paid, the game will typically auto preload a few days before launch. Then you just turn on the PS5 on launch day (even the second it becomes launch day if you're really eager) and start playing. Then also add in pre-order bonuses, the same as with physical.

To be honest, this idea of "celebrating" what's basically the birthday of a franchise has snuck up on me. People celebrate the anniversary of their marriage, the birth of a loved one, religious ideas like the supposed resurrection of Jesus... And also the arbitrary point a videogame franchise happened to start.

It feels like celebrating the day your washing machine was delivered every certain number of years. "What? Hotpoint didn't send me a card and miniature bottle of champagne? Why don't Hotpoint respect me?"

@Slippship Well it's a Pro focused article so Pro owners are more likely to come into the article and also more likely to take place in the poll.

@Oram77 Yeah if a game was going to come out around then anyway, why not? But they didn't make it specifically for that. Also games with Mario come out so often (on average 7 times a year since 1981, or more than once every two months) I guess it's more likely to have one by around the anniversary date.

It should say:
"If you feel uncomfortable at any point while playing, that's intentional; it's a f**king horror game".

I think the actor who played a character in Furiosa looks more like him. Kojima pointed that out too.

https://geektyrant.com/news/hideo-kojima-says-furiosa-co-star-is-perfect-for-metal-gear-solid-movie-i-could-only-see-him-as-snake

@PuppetMaster Nintendo are at #22 with this statement:
"It's very unlike Nintendo to release so many middling products (such as Endless Ocean Luminous and Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer) in one year. Even the company's go-to franchises delivered relatively lackluster results in 2024: Four different Mario titles scored 77 or lower, and the storied Zelda franchise produced its lowest-scoring release in two decades."

MS are in 9th place.

Interesting how 4/5 of them are Japanese and the last one is French. No North American publishers and 80% of them are from just one relatively small country. Clearly Japan is doing something very right and NA is doing things wrong.

@Jrs1 To be fair, it's an obscure enough thing that the sort of people that would know little enough to think it's a standalone console wouldn't know it exists in the first place. Most of my friends aren't gamers and didn't know about it until I mentioned it. Even several who have a PS4 or 5 hadn't heard of it. It's more of a hardcore gamer thing.

I take it it still has the thing where if you import your save into the sequel, you get an extra bit of story and meet some of the characters? And yes, Suikoden II is one of the best games I've played. The first one is great but was actually made as a practice run in order to make the sequel as good as it could be.

@Deadhunter Yeah, I'm the same. And thanks to the Dualsense having a mic, you can't pretend to not have one anymore. 🥲 Probably best to find someone on here with the game and just say you're not a fan of chatting while you play a game.

I don't want to @ him, but that first comment makes no sense. In the Best Game category you have a Canadian game, two Japanese games, a Swedish game, a Chinese game, and one British game. That's a great selection of international games, and only one is British and yet somehow that's chauvinism?

@Deadhunter I don't know but even if it does, the Dualsense has a built-in microphone. I doubt it would force you to use it, though.

@naruball Sure but this is one of the most famous and beloved WRPG franchises. Even unfinished, half-baked games in the same series like DA2 sold well because of the love for the series. This is like if the next CoD, GTA or FIFA flops and kills the franchise. Inquisition was controversial amongst fans and criticised in a multitude of ways but still sold 12 million and became Bioware's best selling game.

Those Prince of Persia games came after the series had faded into near obscurity thanks to various bad games and after the cultural peak of the series was all the way back in 2003 or so. They also weren't advertised much. They had an uphill battle. Veilguard could have simply been mediocre and would've sold well. Instead it killed the franchise and the dev team, it didn't simply sell badly.

@LifeGirl And that it did so badly it killed the franchise and decimated the developer. It was an enormous misfire. And I say that as someone who actually bought it and initially enjoyed it despite reservations, so I'm not just jumping on the hate bandwagon.