Mortal

GT7 at #1 is kind of bittersweet as a lot of fans are upset with Polyphony right now - the game was always a more accessible introduction to sim-style racing, with a forgiving physics model that meant a lot of people referred to it as a "simcade", however the most recent patch shook the physics up, pushing it closer to sim. Where players used to know the braking points, they now have to brake earlier. Where you used to be able to brake heavy and late, that approach will now see you understeer heavily. Some welcome the changes, some hate 'em.

As the late, great Saturo Iwata said "Every Ubisoft game is Open-World, but not every Open-World game is Ubisoft".

GoT may have done an Open-World with similar mechanics to Ubisoft, but they did it with a richer, more focused story and intent than Ubisoft ever have.

And for @Lup because I never got around to replying in the other thread - Ubisoft get hate for their games because all of their games are Open-World. They basically rehash the exact same mechanics the exact same way, hell for a bunch of the Far Cry games they even reused the exact map in the sequel. Pure laziness on their part. When a different developer steps up and does it all but better, they're going to get attention and praise for it, because they've taken the Open-World game and done it better than a company who do nothing but Open-World.

It's so admirable that the devs are continuing to support this terrible, terrible 3/10 game! They should get 'Developer of the Year' for this! Haha!

Seriously though, Nexon are actually listening to the players with these updates and implementing changes that the players ask for, changes that make the grind less grindy and the game more fun!

Honestly looks like Ubisoft trying to sell a Star Wars/Assassin's Creed game as if it's Star Wars/Uncharted. If Naughty Dog were producing this I'd be confident in it, as it's Ubisoft and they have a tendency to over-promise and under-deliver, I'll sit on the fence and see what the post-release reviews say about it.

@GamingFan4Lyf see if there are any VR arcades near you. If you're interested, I'm sure they'll let you try one of the modern VR headsets to see if you still have issues.

I bet Bungie are watching this intently. They flipped Marathon to a hero-shooter-extraction game and people complained. Concords beta showed not many people were interested. If the Valorant beta also has low interest, surely Bungie will start to rethink making Marathon hero based... Sure... Right?!

I don't have a PS Portal yet, but I'm in the market. While I could just go to the local Walmart or Bestbuy, I'm having fun trying to get one cheaper on eBay. I've come close three times, but strangely if the auctions aren't above retail, they get closed early and reposted straight away... While others seem to think they can still command over-retail for an item that is now readily available on store shelves.

Going to be entertaining to see scalpers trying to sell these on eBay for 3x retail, with no-one interested because the game it's associated with is mediocre.

"We're too far along to change anything meaningful, so here's our fluff peice apology"

I give their attempt at apologizing a 3/10.

@Kanji-Tatsumi it may be one person's opinion, but it's one PushSquare chose to stand behind, publish and defend when readers called out the review for being superficial, excessively harsh and missing commentary on any of the things that make the game good, the same things that are keeping players playing it right now. The reminders that they published a 3/10 review are good, hopefully they'll serve as a reminder to not just consider reviews more thoroughly, but also if the person reviewing the game is the right one to do so.

@dschons if you get a question wrong, you can still refresh your browser to reset the quiz. I tested it after seeing people completing the quiz in less than a minute, as the only way those are valid is if you're not reading the questions and just picking the answer you know to be right for that question.

So the 10/10 scores are still dubious.

I'll still be throwing time into The First Descendant as when I boot it up later on, I should have Valbys research completed, so I'll get to go kill some Vulgas... With laundry?!...
Also aiming to deep back into No Man's Sky just to see what the most recent updates have done to the game.

As @GamingFan4Lyf pointed out - Overwatch 2 is F2P.
Why bother coughing up $40 on a game that may be good, when the already established king of hero-shooters will cost you nothing to play?

@MickOnYourFace you can adjust the settings to remove damage/health, so you can figure out crafting and what you'll need to do to survive first, then restart with the settings on normal.

@nomither6 it's not even as if Sony had to go hard to make a special edition here - just take a page out of MS' book with inspiration from the X360 and make some unique face plates for the bundle! Job done!

@Danbottomburp character level really isn't a reliable representation of another players experience or "power". When you hit level 40 you can use a crystallization catalyst to reset your character to level 1. Your gear including weapons stays at whatever level they were at before, so you could have a level 3 character with level 80 gear, because your gear is high level you'll punch hard, but as your character is low level you'll be a glass cannon. If that player was playing with you on high level missions, it shows that they've already completed and unlocked those missions, and are re-doing them on a reset character. Nexon haven't and shouldn't lock those players out of hard missions as that is the end-game experience.

Did PushSquare push this poll because the game hit 10 million players, or because they can't write an article without a handful of people poking at the 3/10 review? Bahahaha.

Anyway, previously I gave it a 6, but on PushSquares measure it'd be a 7. I like playing it, I don't take the story seriously so the bad lipsync (I assume Nexon left the lip-motion as-is from the Korean language version) is comical. The grind is rewarding enough and the steep curve most Colossi pose is challenging enough to make you want to go grind some loot to get a better kit for that specific boss. And that's the loop - facing Dead Bride without chill resistance? You're going to lose and need to grind up. Facing Devourer without toxic resistance? Back to the grind you go.

I haven't played it and so can admit that I have no valid opinion on what the game is like, and I don't subscribe to the idea that someone else's opinion (such as that of a content creator or reviewer) is a suitable stand-in for my own opinion. I have downloaded the beta, but don't know if I'll get time to play it.

But... To those that are playing it, how would you review it when compared to other hero-shooters e.g. Overwatch?

@neon-xxiv

"it wasn't nothing to write home about" - so it is something to write home about?

@Dissident objectivity doesn't apply. Opinions on whether or not it's a good month are purely subjective.

That aside, as I already have Crisis Core and have no interest in the other games, it's a "meh" month. My Extra sub is also set to cancel in a few weeks, as even when it's a good month I rarely actually play and/or finish Extra games. Something about a game being "free" through the extra tier makes it less important to focus on and finish vs. a game I paid full price for.

West coast Canada. Wasn't working initially but followed @Bil_Do and it works!

@Nepp67 I don't know why you think I have a sunken-cost fallacy - I wasn't singing praises of the game, going out of my way to shout out loud that it's the best game ever if you just give it a go! I haven't actually spent a penny on the game and gave it a 6/10, which would be an "okay" game at best. I'll likely keep my attention on this game into the end-game phase, and then it'll become a back-burner game to play when I don't want to get tied up in a single-player story.

Interesting side note on the monetization. I've never understood the perspective that high-cost microtransactions are a desperate attempt to get people to spend money. High cost microtransactions actually do the opposite - if 100 people look at the $95 for an Ultimate Descendant and think that's expensive, only the players with money will buy in, the "Whales" as they're often referred to. If you reduce the cost to $15, you'll catch a lot more of those 100 players. That would be the "desperate" practice as they're relying on people to repeatedly think "$15 isn't much" and spend $15 repeatedly without thinking that it all adds up. $95 is a deterrent to anyone that doesn't have free-cash, and for the large part the people that complain about it seem to be people that want the end product (the Ultimate version of the Descendant) but not actually put in the effort.

The rest of us that are willing to put in the grind don't really have any complaints about the microtransactions because they don't interest us.

*With the exception of the decision to make paints a 1-time use item applied to 1 part of the Descendants armor/body, with the player needing to pay for more. That is a filthy monetization practice.

@get2sammyb I'm not implying Issy doesn't "know" the game. I'm implying they're not the right person to review it.

We, as consumers of what this site provides, expect reviews to be fair and unbiased. If I read a review of a Souls-like game and the reviewer is pessimistic, giving it 2/10, I'd assume the game is very bad. But I'd also expect the review to be thorough and detailed. If I find out afterwards that the reviewer doesn't like Souls-like games but jumped at the chance to review the latest one, that throws the review out of the window

As I stated in my initial comment - this review reads as if the reviewer rushed through the game and doesn't like grinds. It's a superficial review.

This review reads as if someone unlocked Bunny and then just spent the game running through levels, or someone that loads into a Strike in Destiny 2 and speed-runs it, skipping all of the ads to get to the boss, and then complains that the game is dull... It will be if you skip everything, never work on a build to get into the finer details of ability synergy etc. Games like Destiny 2, The Division, Outriders and The First Descendant live on build-craft. If you're not going to get into build-craft, you're simply providing a shallow review.

This review is why in the old days of gaming magazines, the magazines had reviewers that specialized in certain genres i.e. if a new racing game was coming up, you assigned your reviewer that knew racing games to it. If you want to review a grindy live-service game, you don't assign it to the reviewer that has no patience, runs to the end as quickly as possible, complains about grinds and wants everything (including builds) to be attainable right away.

Game is a 6/10.
This review is a 2/10.

Realistically, as Nexon used a freeware icon pack, they currently don't need to do anything - if Bungie want to protect their assets, they'd need to go after Iconduck for infringement. If they're successful there, they could ask for it to be ruled that anyone using the icons needs to change. Bungie do not have course to pursue Nexon directly.

And @Khayl Adam I appreciate that you changed the "last" in the article title to "first", but there's still a "last" in the fourth paragraph.

@Kahyl Adam it's the first descendant, not the last.

I voted HellDivers 2, because I forgot that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth existed. While I was hyper for Rebirth, played right through it and enjoyed it, the fact that I'd forgotten about the game tells me it wasn't that memorable, HellDivers on the other hand has given me some hilarious moments playing late into the night with friends!

@RubyCarbuncle so you've learned how to let other people tell you what is or isn't good, and to never see for yourself if it is or isn't good. Well done!
I can understand applying that mentality out of caution towards something that costs money, afterall no-one wants to waste money and so reviews from trusted sources are a good reference, but when the game is F2P there is nothing to lose from trying it.
Sometimes you don't need to listen to the rest of the herd. Sometimes there is no harm in having the experience yourself and forming an opinion based on that.

@Flaming_Kaiser only framerate issues I've experienced are in the main hub, Albion, which is likely due to the amount of players in the hub. In the game world I haven't had any frame drops. Albion isn't a "world" region, it's just vendors and other players so framerate drops there aren't going to get you killed.

@RubyCarbuncle I have some questions...
1 - If you avoid all F2P games unless they're "exceptionally good", how do you know they're good? Opinions are subjective, so good to you may be completely different to what I think is good. Do you go purely on the opinions of others? If 80% of people don't like a game, that means 20% do like it, how do you know whether you're in the 80% or the 20% if you never try a game?
2 - While Genshin Impact is "F2P", it's a gacha-game. Do you think The First Descendant is a gacha-game?

The release date was perfect for me. Just hit the wall of apathy with D2's Final Shape and it's monotonous grind, and after walking away from D2, the First Descendant fills that slot nicely.
Still only about 5-6 hours in, but ripping around areas as Bunny is fun. Seriously appreciate the open "matchmaking" style of missions i.e. if you're in the same instance as someone else and they're doing a mission you need to do, you join up and co-op the mission while it's in progress.
While the microtransactions are a "hot topic", it's a F2P game - while it's free to play, it's not free to make or run, so while I likely won't be buying anything, I can understand the inclusion, and with the amount of Thirsty Whales buying Bunny Ults in the first 48 hours, you know Nexon likely made a pretty penny!
Good game overall. Hopefully the end-game has legs and keeps me running around long!

Over here we have @Ken_Kaniff showing their "old man shakes fist at cloud" sentiment!

@Northern_munkey did you notice that the loot still drops based on the event level and not character level?
I ran the first colossus mission, which is lvl 10, while I was lvl 7. Everyone else in the group was lvl 10. All loot dropped for me at lvl 10 or 11. In the beta I used this trick to get loot that was 5+ levels above my character by tagging along with higher level players doing their missions.

@naruball maybe..
Although if I were I'd more likely make a statement such as "I could care less about the games on sale" when I obviously mean that I couldn't care less, or intentionally mix up their, there and they're in every comment I make.

Don't forget that three dots make an ellipsis!

@riceNpea @naruball it's amazing! We can all pay fewer than full price for videogames!

Played for a few hours yesterday to unlock Bunny. Game seems much the same as it was during the beta last year, which is a good thing. Aside from the day 1 issues (frame rate drops in the main hub and 1 boot) it's as much fun as I remember it to be. I'll be logging straight back in again tonight once the kid has gone to bed!

@LifeGirl that's my concern as well - No Kojima.
MGS was one of Konami's biggest IPs. After their divorce with Kojima, they tried to push MGS along without him and we got MGS Survive...

This remake feels like they've realized they don't know how to progress the MGS saga further and make a great MGS game without Kojima, so they've resorted to rereleases aka copying his homework, but adding things in unnecessarily to make it less apparent that it's still Kojimas MGS3 that they're copying.

Phil knows he'll be considered a hypocrite because of MS' recent activity with buying developers and flipping games that were to be multiplatform over to Xbox exclusive, but he doesn't care about that.
Realistically any CEO/President/Company Mouthpiece will (or has) made contradictory statements like these, because this is marketing.

Phil isn't trying to sell on what MS did yesterday, they're trying to sell based on the idea of MS tomorrow. It's just that with Phil's track record of using statements that are vague and could easily be interpreted various ways, and MS' actions, no-one believes him anymore.

@Northern_munkey aye. They're stuck on the idea that F2P live service will have aggressive microtransactions and will be lacking any actual content unless you pay for it. No interest in actually checking the game out to form their own educated opinion because that is what all F2P are in their world.

In other news; in the last 24 hours, Fortnite, a popular F2P shooter with microtransactions was played by around 1.7million players. That's 1.7million players that must be very upset right now after playing a game that is obviously a terrible game with horrendous, predatory microtransactions because it's F2P.

Oh wait... No... Turns out F2P games with (or without) microtransactions can actually be enjoyable! What a world we live in!

@Wilforce it's kind of a blend of both. It has the abilities/powers of Destiny with the frenetic combat of Warframe. I'd say the gear system, at least in the beta, was like Outriders, giving you the ability to get quite granular on your builds.

@Northern_munkey I played the beta! I've been waiting for a release date for this for quite some time. I don't quite get the people that are being negative when the game is F2P and microtransactions aren't forced, in fact during the beta the developers stated that they're not going to push the microtransactions and instead work towards a balanced progression/unlock system that is rewarding without the need for microtransactions, but leave them there for the people who don't have patience/want to unlock characters without effort.

Most people that throw negative comments around about an unreleased F2P game are normally just bandwagoning - the game isn't out, we don't (fully) know what the microtransactions will be. It's F2P. Actually giving the game an honest go will cost you exactly $0.00.

I enjoy that each of the characters has their own abilities that make them unique, with different playstyles and progressions.

The only thing I'm anticipating is people getting ushered off the stage before they've finished giving their 30 minute acceptance/thank you speech.

The title is dubious for me purely because of the involvement of Alain Jarniou. The original Test Drive Unlimited was a great game on the Xbox 360, giving us an entire Hawaiian island to explore, with a balanced focus between "side quests" (pick model up here, drop her off here or pick up clients car here, drive it there without damaging it), races and social aspects. TDU2 moved away from the side quests and pushed the social aspects into hub areas, creating an experience that was far more focused on arcade races, less about social aspects and just driving, creating the framework that a lot of "social racers" now follow. Nothing released since the original TDU has had the same magic of being able to hang around in the giant crater or racing around the race course and just goofing around with other players.

I feel like there was a fumble like this recently regarding something else getting pushed to PSN early.

I think the reality of the situation is that Sony pre-load content onto the PSN servers a few days ahead of release, keeping the licenses offline until release date and not updating the PSN storefront until release date. It's quite likely that whoever uploaded the Final Shape and Erd Tree DLCs just forgot to keep the licenses suspended on the streaming side of the servers, resulting in early access.

It'd be quite a simple mistake to make. Sony should probably invest in having someone varify all content before it's pushed to make sure release dates aren't broken.

Oddly this trailer dulled my excitement. While this is all pre-rendered, the cars look like they're skating over the road (there's no visible wake left when they go through water) and at one point a car going through the tunnel veers left AND leans left - if you steer hard left the weight gets shifted to the right, so the car should lean right, not left!

Low key hoping there's an announced actual release date for The First Descendant.

Mixed bag for me. I'm going to play through Final Shape to conclude the story, but I haven't bothered with the season pass for the additional episodes. This game has had such an undulating history, sometimes being absolutely crap and sometimes being great but never consistent. So finish the saga and then move on.

Players weren't engaged by the idea of Skull&Bones to begin with, but Microsoft sunk it by giving us Sea of Thieves.

Quite interested in this one. Played the beta and enjoyed it a lot! Been waiting for a confirmed release date to be revealed ever since! It's currently sitting at "late summer 2024" from what I know.

@Fyz306903 you can restore the dislike functionality with a browser extension or a custom app like YouTube Revanced. YouTube never actually took dislikes away, they just removed visibility and the dislike button from the UI.

@Pat_trick and don't forget the Japanese people that are down voting the clip because of the inaccurate representation of feudal Japan, not so much that Ubisoft chose to make Yasuke the main character, more so that everything else they've chosen to represent is wrong.