Mythologue

I've owned a PS5 since Christmas of last year and have so far played Astro, Elden Ring, GT Sport and Witcher 3. Those familiar with the mentioned games will immediately understand what the problem is here.

I'm certainly not committing to an upgraded PS5 until I'm actually convinced that getting one was worth it in the first place.

@Deoxyr1bose I'm hoping this is Konami's Capcom moment, where they completely turn themselves around following years of controversy.

Well, it's good to see that art is slowly dying to the automation takeover. Wonder if there'll be any genuine ingenuity left by the end of the century.

Has Kojima ever considered the fact that some of his games just aren't that good? It's OK to have one smash hit and accept that they can't all be groundbreaking.

They'll vanish eventually. Slowly, but I imagine they'll be gone sooner rather than later. NFTs, IMHO, are not really long for this world.

They need to, in all honesty. Sony are absolutely slipping when it comes to their grasp on the market. Their exclusives as of late have been subpar, and they don't really offer much else beyond a fancy controller. It feels to me like the PS5 at present is what the Xbox One was back in 2013. That is to say, not all that impressive and a product of complacency.

From what I can recall, DS3's biggest mistake was the implementation of mtx. If they stripped that away and reimagined it a little, it'd probably be an OK game.

An incentive to pre order a game and break the golden rule? I'm good, thanks.

It's not fantastic. More than that, I think it's just a reflection of the industry as a whole these days. Derivative and uninspired ideas to feed the faceless corporate machine. "Depressing" wasn't an option on the poll, sadly.

I'm sure it'll be a good time but I'm also sure as hell not spending full price on anything, never mind preordering.

They're parallel markets, not really competing ones. People who know they are going to buy games are probably not going to subscribe to some monthly or annual plan. If they know they're going to buy the game, then they'll buy the game. Subscription services are rendered redundant at that point.

I may have mentioned this before, but nobody is asking for this kind of excess. Games seem to be getting expensive on account of the developer's whims, not the consumers wants.

Disco Elysium, for now.

I haven't played it, but I imagine it's probably a point or two above where most people are prone to placing it. If I had to just guess, I would assume that puts it at around 6 or 7.

@thefourfoldroot1 I'm not well versed in business but I imagine that a cost/benefit analysis would probably show that the cost of this advertising campaign (which is undoubtedly substantial) would significantly outweigh the pull that it would have as a niche product. Ironically, it might actually be less expensive to advertise something everyone already knows of, and are more likely to buy.

@MFTWrecks I don't know much about Oahu but I imagine that it's probably larger in area than The Crew 1 and 2, but obviously smaller than continental USA. Smaller source location means greater density and fidelity. So, there's potential that a game of the same size as the predecessors would be more faithful.

@daveofduncan And Fuel. Underrated, apocalyptic open world racing game in a huge setting.

The problem with BFBB that I only really just noticed when I was replaying the remake is that it didn't have enough heft. Combat was very light and floaty, where it would've been a lot nicer for it to be heavier with some impact. It's the same with the tikis. I hope that's changed here.

Side missions are usually introduced to bloat the game to an often ludicrous degree. If they're fun or intriguing, like in TW3 or FromSoft games, then it'll be good. But I have my doubts, and in all honesty, it's a little off putting for me. I could do with less fetch quests.

@thedevilsjester Alyx would be a system seller, I think. The problem is that GabeN's relationship with Sony in the past has been a little frosty, likely not least on account of his old ties with MS. Even if Valve saw some potential in it, I just can't imagine them working so closely with Sony. There's potential for it, of course.

I might be in the minority here, but I could never really get into Horizon's world. It's inspired in its own way, but not particularly striking. Doubling down on this with VR, which I always found to be quite uncomfortable in the first place, sounds like a bit of an uphill struggle to me.

Like I've mentioned elsewhere before, PSVR2 needs something like HL:Alyx or Portal VR, or it's going to lag severely behind the PC market. It needs third party titles to fully complete.

My two cents: in spite of best efforts by Sony, VR is still primarily a PC thing.

@NEStalgia With respect to writers and former staff, it's never quite as simple as a single individual being responsible for the whole. Callisto Protocol was tragic, Dangerous Driving was a weird mess (although entertaining in its own right), Death Stranding was kinda dull (it depends on opinion though, of course).

The lesson I learned from all of these examples is that a single individual is never solely responsible for a product, or even a component of a product. This is something that I hope the industry, and the audience, starts to consider lest they get burned again by a meaningless name drop.

I have a weird sinking feeling that something's going to be off about this game.

I hear a lot about the surrounding details of this game but not so much about the game itself. It shows all the signs of a game that releases to vaguely mediocre reception and ends up only really being a big thing with a relatively small cult following. I might be wrong but I don't think I am.

@Paultall Storage space doesn't really translate well to game size. There's zero chance you could predict how large a game is given how much space it takes in storage.

@vikramsingh What does a next gen game look like anyway? It seems like we're already brushing against the limits of graphics and world size. What's the next innovation?

@SerJosh97 Sure, but that only really proves the point. What's a game that's 40% off at £49.99 versus a game that's 40% off at £69.99? What does that say about games that aren't on sale (God of War, for example), or that will be removed from the sale within the next few days or weeks?

Physical copies offer more diversity because price drops can occur pretty rapidly as people shift their used copies. With digital, it's far slower and you don't have that diverse market.

That's still a "meh" from me. PSVR was just kinda OK. Nothing all that special about it, and extremely niche to boot.

@Shinnok789 Agreed, but the one caveat with focusing primarily on digital releases is that you're forced to accept the prices on digital storefronts. I'm in a similar position in that I went pretty much exclusively digital within the past four years or so, but the prices are so obscene and unjustifiable today (£70 is eldritch) that I'm considering returning to physical releases.

I feel like I've heard this one before. It usually ends with a game that isn't quite as good as what they were producing initially.

I can't say I've ever even heard of such a game. How many people were following it?

It's pretty weak when the most outstanding game seems to be a Spongebob title, but there you go I guess.

Deserved. Fast became one of my favourite games of all time. It's just so refreshing to see a separate take on the open world formula that isn't this same Ubisoftified design that's been done to death to the point of sheer boredom.

Why offer Fallout 76 to anyone at any price? It's one of the worst games from the last generation. Even after they'd tried to fix the major bugs and errors, it's still just a tired slog.

Fallen Order is a very solid game, but it's the only game here that stands out as appealing in any way. It's also three years old. Shame.

Decided to return to Fallen Order for a second time since I completed it a little while ago on PS4. Fantastic game, doesn't make use of the PS5's power at all though. Loading times to respawn are around 20 to 30 seconds. Quite jarring.

It's easily one of the greatest games I've played. Maybe that notion would dwindle given a second playthrough but it was such an entertaining game that it was genuinely difficult to put down for the day.

It avoided the typical, dull, vacuous, bloated, tired tropes that plagues most other open world games in droves. Even otherwise fantastic games like Spider-man, The Witcher 3 and Horizon fall into these same traps. On that fact alone, it's entirely refreshing. I actually enjoyed exploring the world.

So, following a playthrough on PS4, I'll likely be returning to it on PS5. Cannot guarantee that I'll be able to stomach it all the way through again but I'm certain I'll enjoy it for a little while.

It took a couple of years at least for PS4 to show itself off. Up until that point, those games that had released were fairly mediocre (Knack, Killzone, Driveclub). Even so, there was a strong showing as well around 2014/2015 with Arkham Knight, Bloodborne, Dragon Age Inquisition and so on.

This generation feels like it's lagging. There hasn't yet been a seriously strong contender, and we're more than two years (about a quarter of a generation) in.

The one thing that irks me about ND, contrary to the fact that they're otherwise a mark of quality in and of themselves, is that they never seem to know when to let an idea go.

Uncharted was a great franchise that could have easily ended with the third entry. The fourth was a decent addition, but then they went out of their way to make yet another. It's the same with The Last of Us. The first game really didn't need a sequel at all, never mind two.

I think what FromSoft did with Bloodborne, similar to what Frictional did with SOMA, is how some developers should treat their IPs. Some games are just meant to stand on their own, in isolation.

@somnambulance On the one hand, I'm not a fan of Bloober in the slightest. On the other, I'm tired of the same developers rehashing ideas and thinking that, because they had a hit once, they can emulate it over and over. Mostly to diminishing returns.

At least with an indie studio, you have that slightest bit of humility that isn't usually associated with big name developers.

I have an inkling that Elden Ring and Ragnarok are going to be vying for first in the overall rankings (my money's on Elden Ring). HFW might be third. Stray will slip its way in there somewhere as well, I guess.

@Mauzuri Agreed. It seems to be a game that will center around fetch quests like pretty much all other RPGs, rather than a fully fledged universe that makes the most of all the universe's quirks.

Oh, and on top of this (in case this wasn't already clear) there are also no house points or a gobstones minigame (confirmed in the recent demonstration).

I think that ever since most people became disillusioned with CDPR following the disastrous CP77, I've only just begun to realise that a lot of what made W3 so good really hasn't aged all that well.

It's a solid game and set a benchmark for the time, but ever since, I've certainly played at least a handful of RPGs that have far surpassed it, if not in their world building and characters then at the very least in their mechanics and polish.

As an aside, it seems that this is only really pointing towards my prediction that, not far into the future (maybe 10 to 20 years from now), there'll be a convergence of big name hardware developers into purely digital mediums. At that point, physical hardware will probably cease to exist entirely (with respect to consoles, not PC).

PS6 and PS7 will probably exist, but I find a PS8 or PS9 actually quite far fetched given this increasingly digital, and modular, landscape.

Apart from Armored Core, which would certainly be a curious addition considering FromSoft's reputation and character these days, nothing much here that really grabbed my attention.

I remember when DS did this whole cryptic thing and it ended up being a walking simulator. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the less a game (or advertising) presents of itself upfront, the less entertaining it's actually going to be.

Elden Ring, but no Rykard. Sadness.

@Savage_Joe Which would make sense, of course, only this article suggests it's actually the opposite of what you're describing ("woke" people are being blamed for the dev's failings, not the other way around: they're the ones being attacked).

Days Gone was just not that good a game. It was fine, but that was it, really. More zombies, more open world, more chores, more clichés, no appealing story beyond cardboard characters and the bold assumption that we'd really care about them.

Everything it did, The Last of Us (and its sequel) did better, with deeper characters, a more original world and an intricately crafted plot. Days Gone was OK, but just OK. It brought absolutely nothing new to the formula.

@Savage_Joe Awareness has always been a positive thing.

Elden Ring is the only game that I've paid full price for in years. One of the earlier games I remember not waiting on was SOMA (although that was something like £27).

But either way, as technical prowess improves, I find that games become increasingly hollow and vacuous. Games are more expensive to develop and market today, sure, but it's mostly for the sake of needless detail and reach. I don't need a game to be of photographic quality. It's a game, not a film.

Meanwhile, I can play old school Runescape, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft, and find I get more out of these four games than a single AAA title put out today (for the most part).

I've actually been replaying it on PC, but I don't know how much of a leap there'll be between the current version on PC, and the future version on PS5. I don't know if I can stomach another (fifth, after this one) playthrough of the game.

I'm also quite conscious of Elden Ring and how much that game may have spoiled pretty much every other fantasy open world out there, for me at least.