Mythologue

This is the sea change that is usually expected every console generation or two. MS have shown that they're gearing up to be competitive following the release of their next console, which will probably be around November, 2027 or 2028.

They've sown the seeds and they're preparing for a tentative victory in the tenth generation. I personally think it's coming. These showcases are beginning to demonstrate the cost of Sony's complacency and neglect for their own audience.

Crusader Kings is a decent game if you're into historical, deep strategy stuff. Other than that, this is a pretty bare collection. It's sad to think that it's also the most appealing to me this year, so far.

Dragon Age was the big one that stood out for me. Civilisation 7 is obviously up there. Outside of the rest, none really stand out to me, but I'm hopeful that SH2 will be good. That's wishful thinking though.

Honourable mentions to PoE2, a game I've been keeping my eye on for a while, and AC Shadows, which looked better than I thought it would.

Outside of PlayStation, Gears of War, Fable and Perfect Dark all caught my attention.

@rjejr The Lord of Blood variant is in the Mohgwyn Dynasty Mausoleum, one of the "river" locations. Looks a little like the acropolis. You have to traverse the passages of a barely lit mausoleum to reach it.

I like the look of Astro, but refusing to acknowledge the dearth of games is becoming frustrating. There seem to be two genres in Sony's arsenal; 3D mascot platformer, and third person action-adventure.

I don't know what happened to racing games and RPGs, or FPS games. A revival of Motorstorm and another deal with From would absolutely win me over again, but both seem pretty unlikely.

There's something about this game that's giving me Colonial Marines vibes.

I played the game through to its natural conclusion and enjoyed it, but I don't think I want more of the same, which I suspect this DLC will be. I can beat the game one or two more times, but I don't want to spend any more money.

Yeah, MS buried Sony with that showcase. Fable and Indiana Jones alone were pretty heavy hitters. If people are on the fence now as to which platform they want to invest in for the foreseeable, I think this might have just won them over to the green side.

Trophies are usually a needless inclusion. It's not like I dislike them, but they don't need to exist for everything. It lets people play the game the way they want to instead of being led along by pointless tasks that they wouldn't have given a second thought otherwise.

@Gaia093 Umm...no. Unproven Chinese developer because;

1) This is the first result that comes up when searching for the game.

"Black Myth: Wukong is an upcoming action role-playing game by Chinese developer Game Science..."

2) There are two companies named Game Science. One is Chinese, the other is American. It's an ambiguity issue.

Is this really such a big deal? It's being developed by an unproven Chinese developer, from what I can find. I might be wrong, but I'm sensing this will probably be a flop like The Day Before.

This really just screams "creative bankruptcy". As far as I can tell, it's just another game chasing a trend. We won't even remember it a year after its release.

If only developers started moving away from vehicle brands and returned to the design of Burnout and Split/Second, with fictional brands. Damage models are entirely uninteresting when using real brands and the restrictions that come with them.

That being said, decent racing games are few and far between these days. I'll keep my eye on it.

Silent Hill 2 first, if it's as good as I hope. Which it probably won't be, in all honesty.

Either Astrobot or Path of Exile 2 for second place. I played the first of the latter on PC. It's tough as nails but a lot of fun when you get deep into it and acquire more advanced powers.

I didn't really have any expectations for this, but I was hoping to be proven wrong. That they might have pulled something exciting out of the air. I can't say that I'm convinced they did that. We're roughly halfway through this generation. There's really not a lot to show for it.

Once more disappointed that Sony don't seem to be paying any mind to the racing and driving genres. As it stands, this is one OK platformer and a reboot that I'm hoping isn't going to be as dire as I'm expecting it to be.

I'm more than happy to discard the rest.

I still remember Thronebreaker and CP. If anything, developers need to spend more time developing games, not less. Annual and biannual franchises usually sacrifice quality in exchange for tighter release windows. I hope CDPR don't head in this direction.

This is good, but Sony really need to pick up the pace if they want to compete with something like RetroAchievements.

@Hyena_socks Yes. The risk is that there's a wall that every technological advancement is eventually going to hit. I actually think that graphics have gone as far as they need to, presently.

A more productive focus could go to NPC scripting, physics, and optimisation, among other things. The problem being that it's hard to market an entire console on the premise of better physics and AI pathing, frame rate, resolution, etc.

Thanks for noticing the PFP

Just another example of trolling and bombing. I loathe Ubisoft, but there's a pretty obvious reason why people are taking issue with this particular matter.

At the end of the day, I don't think it makes much of a difference. It's definitely going to sell.

@Hyena_socks This seems to be a case of diminishing returns. Compare the PS1 to the PS2 or the NES to the SNES, or the 2600 to the NES. The differences are visible and immediate.

Compare the PS4 to the PS5, however, and it's almost impossible to see any real evolution. Sony need to prove that the PS5 is an actual step above the PS4.

Unfortunately, I'm convinced at this point that the PS5 isn't really capable of all that much more than what the PS4 has already given us.

I'm not entirely opposed, but aren't LEGO games usually film, comic and television franchises? Why are they making a game based on a game?

Please, no more Borderlands. Bioshock has been effectively dead for over a decade. Give us another of those. I wouldn't turn my nose up at a reboot of the first.

Enough Battlefield. Bring Burnout back already.

@fancy_bandage_PSN Have to admit, I've never heard the "Minecraft is forgettable" angle before.

Elden Ring. I reached the three fingers door but I haven't touched it yet. I'd like to get all of the endings in the game with "save scumming" and I know how painfully laborious it is to reverse the effects of the door.

All games should be 60 these days. That being said, if I want to play something smoothly and with solid performance, I might just end up playing it on PC anyway.

2024 has been pretty slow for me. Nothing all that exciting or truly groundbreaking. That being said, I've heard that Helldivers is solid, and I'm waiting on Shadow of the Erdtree.

You can use PPSSPP on the Steam Deck if I recall correctly. Just saying...

Shadow of the Erdtree in around three months, so a third playthrough of Elden Ring with a faith build. Besides BG3, there's nothing I've yet played on PS5 that comes close to this level of quality, so I'm always finding an excuse to play it again.

On Steam, Fallout 3 and my usual daily dose of RS14.

Just in time for entirely disabling its progenitor which multiple people spent money on. Classy Ubisoft.

@kcarnes9051 This is the same as how publishers can technically revoke a license to use a product which has been paid for, in full, by the consumer. Something which is already happening, and has happened prior. That's not entitlement, to assume that you get to use the thing that you spent money on. Arguments to the contrary are fiercely anti-consumer.

@kcarnes9051 How can it be entitlement when people are paying for it?

It's looking pretty dire, I have to admit. Little Nightmares and Pacific Drive are in the maybe pile. It looks like I'll have to wait until 2025.

If you're not going to place emphasis upon awards at the game awards, don't call it the game awards. We can see announcements literally anywhere. Upload them to YT, like GTA and Dragon Age.

Happy about the act III fixes. I love this game to pieces but the performance in the last third is abysmal.

Also can't remember where I saved prior to the end. Might have to go through a whole lot of fighting again just to see this epilogue.

@PinderSchloss The Witcher is more of a point and click game. Where some games can be translated to controller, I can't picture the original game working on a joystick. I mean, it could, but it'd probably require a full-on overhaul of the game's mechanics.

As for The Witcher 2, I wouldn't know.

@z0d15g0d The complaints are unimportant. The conversation is not.

How many people are actually upset about this, and then how many of them are upset just for the sake of being upset? This seems deeply unimportant.

People buy CoD because it's CoD. I imagine most of us here probably bought those games back in the day, around 2008/2009 or earlier, just to play with friends. That's probably what's happening today. One kid gets it, then you multiply it by four, five, six, or more.

I'm not a fan. I haven't played CoD multi-player in years. But that's just the way it is. And refusing to buy CoD doesn't change anything substantial. You get a different CoD, or you get more aggressive MTX. It's like a drop in the ocean.

Like others have mentioned, the success of the PS5 is possibly just a knock-on effect of the PS4's astounding success. Now that console was pretty fantastic, if for no other reason than it was (at least initially) vastly superior to its Xbox counterpart.

So people enter the PS ecosystem during the eighth gen and get roped in by its high quality array of exclusives. Then they enter into the ninth gen, perhaps expecting a repeat. The damage that MS did to itself with Mattrick or whatever his name was, can't really be understated.

But that doesn't really indicate the PS5 as being a superior console to the XSX/XSS. Predominantly, I picture the majority of the support coming from brand loyalty and what I like to call "ecosystem lag" (the struggle to join another platform based on creation of new accounts, new saves and progress, payments, etc.)

I moved from the 360 to the PS3 to the PS4, then briefly to the Xone before moving to the PS5. From what I can tell, there's really little in it between the PS5 and XSX/S, and I mostly just decided on this console because I had the previous one and it was more convenient.

For anyone curious, two hours of BG3 will probably see you through character creation, to the end of the nautiloid and maybe some ways in to opening sections of the bulk of the first act. Up to the ruins and remains of the nautiloid, maybe.

Probably not enough to even give you an idea of what the game is truly like.

I imagine the supposed discounts were considered to retain or push up subscriber numbers. I don't know what the numbers are but I've heard a number of people mention just letting it expire. It's probably going to level out and maybe begin to decline soon.

I'll probably just begin using Gamepass. I'm not a huge fan of subscription services either way, but day one releases and additional subscription services on top of that really sold me on the idea. Plus, kinda want to see what Starfield is all about, try Cities Skylines 2 and give Crusader Kings another go.

Got the Xenia Canary going, and running quite well, so I'm just testing out a number of games on there. TDU, Dirt, Fable II, Saints Row II, planning on trying Saw. Thinking of getting back into WoW.

@LowDefAl Then everyone who doesn't own premium will just suggest that they're not looking forward to any games. That skews the results more.

Corpo culture at it again.

@Neverwild Some people do, in fact, work for free. Also, Dwarf Fortress, No Man's Sky and Minecraft, just to name a few, saw years (or even decades) worth of free updates. To say nothing of the modding community.

@Deadhunter I don't know if you did the quest with the artist and his "patron", but the FPS in the house drops to maybe single digits...? There are also a number of audio bugs.

I seem to recall that these prices used to drop to something like £25, maybe? This just looks dire.

@nocdaes It's not so much the price as it is the price coupled with the idea that there are superior handheld options on the market. This seems to be the bronze medal option so I imagine people expect the price to reflect that.