MiaowMinx

I'll either eventually get it on PC, or just make use of the amazing mods available for the original. (I stepped off the console-upgrade cycle in favor of occasional PC upgrades.)

On the one hand, it's 2 games I'm not particularly interested in, and a third that won't run on my PS4. On the other hand, I've heard that the incompatible one is gratingly preachy on certain political topics, so at least it's no loss, lol.

I think I have 1-2 months left in my subscription. Looks like the only thing I'll really miss is the ease of cloud backups, but I did fine relying on USB before.

One game I can't play as it's PS5-only (also not particularly into Pokemon-type games), one game I can't play because I have nobody to play it with, and one game I have no interest in playing as I'm not into strategy. Garbage selection from my perspective.

Quidditch looks like it might be interesting to mess around with. I'm lukewarm about Harry Potter, but I admire J.K. Rowling's spunk.

MLB The Show doesn't appeal to me, and I can't tell at a glance what Little Nightmares 2 is like. It would've been nice if the article had given us more information about it instead of banging on about the other two better-known titles.

This is one of the worst months for me since I subscribed a few years ago — a cartoon game, a wrestling game, and a fighting game? Ugh.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I wish Playstation would either drop the price of Essential by cutting out the games, or have subscribers pick 3 games out of a wide selection of genre options.

I'm all for it — it never made sense for those to be there in the first place, and I prefer to see Lara as a tough, athletic adventurer, which she definitely does not appear to be in those pics.

@Frmknst I'd much rather pay half the price and skip the "free" games, given how rarely they're both available for PS4 and in a genre I'm interested in.

@zhoont I didn't have a PC capable of handling it, but I was really enjoying watching streams of other people playing it all the way until that update, and had been looking forward to eventually playing it with my mother and brother. Once that update hit, a lot of the fun seemed to go out of it, and the boosted difficulty level (which seems to have gotten worse over time) ended any interest my family and I had in trying it ourselves.

Not a great month for me — two games I haven't heard of, and one that I can't play as I can't justify the high cost of buying a PS5.

This month wasn't for me — a kid's game reportedly plagued by microtransactions, a 'painting' style game (which tend to be awkward with thumbsticks), and a game that won't run on my PS4.

I've said it before and will say it again: they should either offer a cheaper cloud save & online-play-only subscription option, or use the extra money to switch the monthly freebie to a "pick 2 games out of this list of options" system so people aren't so dissatisfied.

@Volsung Exactly. I've been paying for PS+ purely so I can play online with my brother once in a blue moon on the fly. It was fine when I was paying around $40/yr (discount site price) for the convenience, but with the higher price it's not worth it, especially as I'm planning to build a budget gaming PC to play on next year instead of getting a PS5.

Zero interest & no hype here. I've never really been into comic-book superheroes.

I might give Sackboy a try if I run through my entire 20+ year-old backlog someday, but otherwise I have zero interest in any of those.

Good to know. I'll make sure to either buy it second-hand for PS4 (if there's a physical release available) or use my modded Switch; either way, their decision means they won't get any money from my bank account.

People taking the "sigh, I'll buy it on another platform" or "fine, I'll wait for a sale" are still rewarding the company's decision to throw PS4 under the bus.

Nice fur look, but I really wish they'd go back to the original eye shape from FF III & V...

I haven't played the original, but HD-2D graphics always look unpleasantly like they were designed by someone who grew up using a LCD to play 16-bit games and therefore doesn't expect the smoothing/blending effect of the CRTs the games were designed for.

Eh, a racing game, a fighting game, and a game I can't play...not impressed.

Beyond underwhelming for Essential subscribers on PS4 — just a racing game and a fighting game.

I'm extremely happy with this month's selection — I've been curious about the THPS and Yakuza games for quite a while, I like turn-based combat, and Little Nightmares sounds really interesting. (Though to be honest, I'm just happy that we're getting a month without games focused on children's cartoon characters, ball-based sports, first-person shooting, or online multiplayer.)

$100 plus an annual $40(ish?) subscription fee just to use a phone clip-on that has the cockeyed Xbox/Switch layout? Um, no thanks.

I've bought plenty of PS4 games since getting my Pro last year, but they're always second-hand, just like my PS2 & PS3 games. The only digital stuff I've paid for (aside from monthly Plus 'freebies') is the Witcher 3 DLCs when they were on a steep sale, which I only bought because the Complete Edition disc version isn't compatible with base W3 savegames.

@SamMR As long as she's not a super-feminine girly-girl, over-sexualized, flirty, manipulative, or otherwise matching annoying stereotypes about women, that's fine.

That said, I'd much rather play as a butch or tomboyish woman than the kind of female characters that usually show up in GTAs.

I'm planning on waiting either for the physical release if there will be a normal PS4 retail version, or until I find the higher-priced special edition second-hand. I'm okay with waiting; I realized last night that ever since I lost my last cat to a cancer-induced heart attack in December, I haven't been in a headspace where I'd be able to relax & enjoy a game with a feline protagonist that can die.

I just started the fan "Steam to Vita" port of Doki Doki Literature Club. Sadly no trophies, but it's nice to relax with (so far) when it's too warm for me to comfortably use a game console or my PC.

@BeerIsAwesome Is that taking into account the "buy Xbox Live Gold for N years, then pay $1 to upgrade the whole time period to Game Pass Premium" loophole Microsoft has apparently continued to allow?

@YorkshireNed Audible/Amazon has done it to my mother several times as well. Usually it seems to be a case of the company de-listing an audiobook she purchased (so it's shown as 'unavailable') and posting a 'new' version she doesn't own that's identical aside from newer cover art. A few times, though, audiobooks she paid for and listened to simply vanished from her library seemingly without reason.

@Robocod No, only the digital and PC copies of GTA IV had music removed — the PS3 and Xbox 360 disc versions still have the full original soundtrack. (Though if somebody installs the 360 disc to an Xbox One, the console downloads & installs a ported version with the new inferior radio stations.)

Well, that art style sure killed my interest in buying it. Blergh.

I've been playing through Final Fantasy V for the annual "Final Fantasy 5 Four Job Fiesta" charity run using SNES9X on my computer, and Burly Men At Sea on my PS Vita.

@GADG3Tx87 Same here. I have a personal policy of not buying any digital games over $10; as far as I'm concerned, Atlus just turned down the cash I would've paid for discs in favor of getting nothing from me if I ‘acquire’ the Steam or PS4 versions at some point. (Note that my PS4 is currently unmodded, hence the “if…at some point.”)

@MonkeyDLuffy19 It's always possible to adapt a well-done game in some way without damaging the creators' vision, as long as their vision didn't boil down to creating a game as punishing as possible so only elite players with a ton of time and patience can finish it.

@IonMagi The Atlus website now states that P3P and P4G will be coming to PS4 (no mention of PS5), while P5R will be released for PS5 in October:

https://persona.atlus.com/series/portal/us/

According to the Atlus website at the moment, P4G and P3P are "coming soon" for PS4, while PS5 is just getting a P5R port in October: https://persona.atlus.com/series/portal/us/

Not at all happy — I already own God of War, I have no interest in fighting games, and less than zero interest in children's cartoon characters that became popular years after I reached adulthood. Edit: I primarily have PS+ Essential just so I can play online with my brother on occasional weekends anyway, so I'd be perfectly happy if they reduced the PS+ price and dropped the "free" games.

@Loftimus Same here. I'm only a subscriber so I can play online with my brother once in a while on weekends; I'd definitely prefer to pay half-price for just the network access without the "free" games I'm mostly uninterested in.

@Santifa Exactly... I struggled a little too much with the original trilogy's controls when I tried them on PS2 a few years ago, but I really enjoyed Vice City Stories & Liberty City Stories (PSP on Vita with right-thumbstick camera mod), and the PS3 remake of San Andreas.

If Rockstar had just remade the Trilogy that way and improved the resolution a bit like PC modders seem to be able to do, I would've jumped at the chance to buy a copy. I was really disappointed when we instead got the cartoonish bugfest they released instead.

Count me in with the people saying they'd like to have the GTA Trilogy as the monthly freebie; as buggy & malformed as it is, I can't bring myself to spend the money to buy a copy.

@JuggaloRazzam Same here — a good smoothing filter is the closest thing we can get to reproducing how games looked on CRTs. The so-called 'CRT' filters are almost always designed by people who seemingly haven't had enough childhood experience with real CRTs to realize (for example) the scanlines aren't visible unless you're extremely close to the screen.

As a longtime gamer, the idea that ditching PS4 would somehow result in amazing leaps in the abilities, gameplay, etc. of PS5 games just strikes me as bizarre. Look at the way games evolved during much grander hardware improvements between PS2 to PS3, or PS3 to PS4 — the only changes that were actually hardware-dependent were basically the graphics & sound.

It's no different from the gap between consoles and PCs; you could go spend $2,000 on a fancy gaming rig, but you'd still wind up playing the same non-exclusive games on it that we play on a $150 PS4/XB1 or $500 PS5/XBS, just with prettier graphics and the ability to mod some of the games, because the hardware doesn't actually make that big a difference.

@meyerparkX Why do you figure Sony "needs" to kick old systems off the store...? I'd say that the PSP is pretty much dead, but the Vita is thriving thanks to the modding community in spite of Sony's chronic neglect.

@Bleachedsmiles Nah, I love my hacked Vita specifically because it lets me play a huge variety of games away from my TV & PC — in front of the air conditioner on hot days, in bed late at night or on lazy Sunday mornings, when I'm sitting at my mom's bedside when she's in the ER or hospital...

The ARPG & action game might be interesting, but as far as I'm concerned, annual sports games are what's left in the discount bin after all of the even-slightly-appealing games have been sold.

@Milktastrophe From what I can tell based on videos, Mind Zero and Lost Dimension are completely different subgenres of JRPG, and definitely don't appear to be anywhere near as interesting or in-depth as P4G.

@Marios-love-child As long as the PS5 version does takes advantage of at least some of its benefits, it doesn't make sense to feel salty because games on it are also available in a lower-quality form on PS4. You bought the PS5 for the superior graphics/sound/processing/etc., after all, not because it would be an exclusive gated club for people who are lucky enough to have both the disposable income needed to buy a PS5 and the opportunity to snag one.

I'm only hoping for a few things in the next Witcher game right now: better swimming/horseback controls, the ability to kill NPCs, and female major characters being dressed sensibly rather than mincing around in high-heeled boots with their tops unlaced to show off their chests.

@PhhhCough I'd like to see a remake/remaster of Castlevania 2 based on the fan re-translation, akin to Metroid Zero Mission, Return of Samus or AM2R, preferably without having Simon given the overly-effeminate kind of appearance/movement common in later Castlevania games.

(After trying to play Castlevania 64 long ago and Mirror of Fate more recently, I'd be really hesitant to see the series go down the 3d or 2.5d roads again.)

I really enjoyed Castlevania II (esp. with the newer fan re-translation/feature patch) and the GBA Castlevania games, but my main memories of my attempts to play SOTN consist of being frustrated by how much slower Alucard was compared to the countless enemies and being mildly annoyed at the showy visual trails around him. Then again, I didn't encounter any of the newer games until I was in my late 30s, so I don't have the nostalgia for SOTN that a lot of other people have.

@IAM1982 My guess is that it will keep going until Sony is on the verge of releasing the PS5 Slim/Pro (which is what I'm waiting for), which will then have the same scarcity issues.

4/15 — I got the right answers for the games I've actually played, so I can't complain.

I'm planning to continue my first playthrough of The Witcher 3: Blood & Wine though I still haven't finished the main game yet, plus a little Fire Emblem Awakenings (N3DS) which I just started the other night.