OrtadragoonX

@KundaliniRising333

Sonic fans are into being tortured. It’s normal for hedgehog maniacs.

I was done with the franchise after Sonic 06. I did play Generations on PS3 and thought it was decent. But my emotional attachment to the franchise died with Sonic 06’s bugs, non-functioning camera system (it was worse than SA1’s camera, and that’s actually an accomplishment because SA1’s camera just shoved itself into the nearest wall texture; they didn’t have a high hill to better it), and it’s utterly insane story that was stupid even by Sonic 3D standards.

SA2 will always be the true end of the franchise for me. That game fixed most of SA1’s mistakes and its plot was actually somewhat sensible.

It also doesn’t hurt that SA2 has literally one of gaming’s best soundtracks. I still blast the SA2 OST in my Civic Si all the time.

I am a bit perplexed by the boss complaint. Sonic bosses, minus a few notable exceptions, are usually way too easy. Do they take away your rings or something’s? Because that’s the only time a Sonic 2D boss is truly hard. Even the infamous Death Egg Robot from Sonic 2 is only hard because you have no rings in Death Egg zone. Seriously turn on debug and give yourself one ring. He’s really easy with any amount of rings.

Some Sonic bosses can be annoying. Like in SA1 the final Eggman fight in Sonic’s story is annoying as hell because the camera in that game doesn’t work your view of Sonic is constantly being shoved into the nearest wall so you end up making jump mistakes and kill yourself. But if not for that it would be an easy fight.

@Porco

Because Sonic Team is generally a mess.

Granted they are better than they were back in 2006 (Lest we forget the nightmare that was Sonic 06) but they are still a rarely functioning studio.

And really the problem is just Sonic itself as a franchise. It’s tired and played out. Sonic is good when he is in a Genesis game. Which is why Mania was so good because Whitehead and the crew simply designed a Genesis game and released it in the modern era which took advantage of how Sonic was always meant to be presented and played.

Sega really should have used the Mania engine for this game. It would have helped it presentation massively.

Thank god this crap is finally over.

Now can someone from MS without an NDA write a good book chronicling events from start to finish. I’d like to read that.

@theSpectre

2038. Maybe.

I liked the first one. But I didn’t fall head over heels in love with it. I enjoyed the main story campaign but I was turned off but all the collection elements, which I mostly ignored. I thought Miles was a better overall game, though.

I’ll be playing Mario Wonder first. Since I’m actually hyped for that.

I never heard of this until it was canceled.

But it’s usual Sega crap.

Why can’t they give us a reboot of Phantasy Star Online? That’s the type of game that could succeed as GAAS. It’s a well known and beloved IP, it had a rich history on Dreamcast, GameCube, and Xbox, and it could be converted into Live Service quite easily. Come on Sega.

They could also start revisiting some of their dormant IPs. I’d love to see a new Golden Axe made by the guys who did SOR4. Hell even a new Altered Beast would be nice.

Can you set Arabic voices with English subtitles?

That’s how I always played Unity. French voices with English subtitles. Really enhanced the realism of the setting. I’d like to do the same with Mirage.

These games are so much better to me when you just play the main campaign. Too much Ubisoft filler work to go off the path.

Wouldn’t it be crazy if Reggie Fils-Aime was hired as SIE CEO?

That would be nuts. A guy that ran NOA for more than a decade gets a new job as the president of PlayStation.

That’s a lot of Sephiroth to take at one time.

The issue with PS3 emulation are the SPEs. RPCS3, the best (really only) PS3 emulator on PC shows that. Earlier PS3 games run DRAMATICALLY better under emulation than later release games. Because those earlier games didn’t take full advantage of the SPEs. MGS4 is technically an early game for the system so it’s likely that the SPEs weren’t leveraged for too much. It runs like a dream on a powerful gaming rig. 4K @ 60fps if your PC is powerful enough. It didn’t have a locked framerate and there are very specific times where it runs at 60fps on PS3. Not often at all but in very specific moments when it’s light on the RSX.

But later games are usually the problem. Because developers realized that the only way they were going to develop games that were more “equivalent” to their 360 versions was by leveraging the SPEs to do tasks normally assigned to the RSX. The RSX just couldn’t hang with the 360’s GPU.

Early games typically just used the two PPE cores combined with the RSX. They reused 360 code. And honestly this strategy ran like complete booty in many cases. So instead they started offloading what they could to the SPEs. And PS3 games started running better and getting close to their 360 version counterparts.

@Orpheus79V

If anything it would have ran better on Xbox 360. Probably significantly better. The game is super GPU limited. The 360’s GPU had way more memory to pull from compared to the RSX, which maxed at 256 megabytes. The 360 could use most of its 512 megabyte system memory as dedicated GPU memory when needed. Plus modern gamers really underestimate the 360’s 10 megs of EDRAM and what it allowed developers to do back then. 360 was the way better system from a performance standpoint.

Looking back Sony’s decision to use segregated memory for the PS3 really hobbled that system out of the box. Had the RSX been able to pull from the Cell’s block of memory that would have made the system much easier to develop for. Plus memory latency was always a problem on PS3 due to using entirely different memory blocks for the Cell and RSX.

Although there have been rumors floating around that the game’s code is actually a damn mess that was poorly documented. Which actually might explain a lot about that how that game ran on PS3 and that would have hurt a 360 port drastically.

@__jamiie

They had to be recompiled. And chances are they had to rewrite some of the more “performant” code that was offloaded to the Cell’s SPEs on the PS3. For example, the PS3 versions of UC3 and TLOU offloaded anti aliasing from the RSX to one of the SPEs to speed up the routine. Whereas the GPU block on the PS4’s GCN handles that job; would have had to be rewritten from scratch. Not bone crushing work by any means though. ND handled it in house with a relatively small team.

Modern day publishers don’t want to really spend a dime on older games. So chances are they don’t even want to dedicate a team to recompiling and rewriting SPE code. A lot of late era PS3 games offloaded normal GPU functions to the Cell due to a lack of memory bandwidth. Bioshock Infinite only runs on PS3 because of that capability. But it required complex code. Far beyond the 360 version of the game.

The Cell wasn’t really the PS3’s main issue. It’s main issue was low memory for the RSX and the RSX being a pretty weak GPU in the first place. It was an off the shelf 7800GT with its memory bandwidth cut in half. So it was out of date and hobbled right from the get go.

Such a shame. I really enjoyed the Reboot Laura trilogy (especially Rise of the Tomb Raider).

Also guys let’s just enjoy games.

Starfield looks like a good game. I’d like to play it. But I’m not gonna bash Xbox owners over it because we didn’t get it. I don’t want it bad enough to buy another console (already have a Switch and a PS5 and with a kid fixing to be here in two months I just won’t have the time to add something else) but it does look like a good game.

Right now I’m enjoying the hell out of Resident Evil 4 Remake. Seriously this is probably the best remake ever made in my opinion. And I had relatively low expectations because RE4 is in my top ten greatest games of all time. I got it on launch day back in 2005 on my GameCube. I had lowered expectations. But this game honestly blows the original out of the water.

So just enjoy playing games. No need to flame and be console warriors. That should have died with the SNES and Genesis.

Least surprising news ever.

@playstation1995

“No no no. It’s a Pimp Named Slickback. It’s like a Tribe Called Quest you say the whole thing.”

It was ok.

Compared to the last SOP it might as well be Citizen Kane.

@Cashews

Yeah that ending was fantastic. You can infer so many things and come up with so many theories about what exactly happened. And none of them are exactly wrong.

It’s a vague ending in the best possible way. It really made you think.

I also love Final Fantasy Tactics’ ending. Probably the only other FF ending that is up there with VII’s in my opinion. Too bad the director put his two cents in 20 years later for no reason. I much prefer my own head canon explanation for what happened to Ramza, Alma, Delita, and Ovelia.

@Mikey856

That wouldn’t be so bad if the games felt inventive and fresh when they finally release.

That’s a real rarity these days honestly. Last time a somewhat triple A game really hooked me where I was cracked out on it and never got tired of it was Returnal. And that’s mainly because it felt like a PS1 or Sega Saturn game with today’s graphics and production values.

It wasn’t necessarily inventive but it was fairly fresh considering all the overly bloated open world games that also want to be movies (that rarely works; open world progression doesn’t really gel with very linear story lines) that permeate the industry. And the same old same old sequel.

What I really enjoyed about it was how it told its story. It was mostly environmental storytelling and inferred motivations. Rather than spelling it out in insane detail with movie style story telling it felt like a game that would have felt at home on the Sega Saturn with how it told its story.

@Powerplay94

Plus the final boss (won’t spoil it for people who haven’t played it) is a ton of fun. One of my favorite boss fights in a recent game release.

It’s challenging, a beautiful spectacle, and extremely emotional if you pay attention to the story build up to it.

@GreatAuk

Honestly I wish they would take a break from Horizon. Make another Killzone game. Get a new writing team assembled. Let them practice with a new Killzone campaign (I think a full reboot of the franchise would work) and then take that experience and apply it to a 3rd Horizon game.

@NotSoCryptic

A lot of it comes down to poor writing. Guerrilla has always suffered with a sub par writing team but what made earlier games, both Killzone and Zero Dawn work was that they had relatively uncomplicated storylines and very simple character arcs the cast. They knew their weaknesses back then and they built their game plots around that.

For Forbidden West they decided to go for a huge Hail Mary storyline play. And their writing team just wasn’t up to the task. Forbidden West has a very complicated story. But because of writing problems they weren’t able to explore it naturally and thus were forced to rely on common cliches and forcing events in a weird fashion.

Plus they didn’t even try to go for character arcs in the second game. The only character who saw any real development over the course of it was Sylens and to a lesser extent Varl. But even then it was so forced and unnatural.

@ApostateMage

I think that’s because she actually had a character arc in Zero Dawn. A pretty good one at that. You saw her turn from an insular and very introverted character who was mistreated by her society at the beginning into someone who was willing to accept help and became a team player by the end. It was a simple character arc but it was decently written.

By comparison in Forbidden West there is literally zero character development for Aloy. And everyone acting like they wanted to drink her bath water got old really fast. She starts as a smug Mary Sue and ends the game as a smug Mary Sue. She’s never challenged in any meaningful way and she gets everything she wants.

One of the best PS5 games?

Nah. It’s good. But it’s not great. At least from a gameplay loop standpoint. And the story is real meh sauce.

Visually speaking it’s still the best looking game ever made in my opinion.

@KundaliniRising333

The combat is much deeper than it appears at first.

I’m playing without any of the difficulty aides. And some regular battles are actually truly hard if the enemy gets good “locks” (the game’s main battle gimmick; essentially when the enemy cast spells you have to use the right combination of differing attack types to break the “lock” or at minimum reduce their damage by a percentage)

I’ve gotten wiped a number of times on regular fights. The bosses have been fairly easy so far though. Although I’m sure that’s fixing to ramp up.

@Vivisapprentice

I just got that trophy earlier.

Honestly to me it gets easier as your Moonbeam goes on. The first 7 or so reflections have weird timing. But once it’s moving at top speed after that you can sort of just spam the X button (if you’re on PS5 like I am.)

By the way this game is absolutely phenomenal. It has the exploration and light puzzle solving of Secret of Mana, the general gameplay loop and presentation of Chrono Trigger, and the active gameplay elements of Mario RPG. That’s like three of my favorite RPGs combined into one awesome game with a sweet story. I’m about 9 hours into it so far and I’m loving every second.

This is the kind of game I would have rather had on Switch but since it’s part of PS Extra (which I have) I decided to just give it a go. And this is my biggest surprise of the year honestly. I’m definitely going to buy it on Switch after I NG+ the PS5 version.

@mariomaster96

Yeah I hated that crap.

I never bought the DLC or watched any of the supplemental material.

This selection sucks. Combined with the price increase it’s a disaster.

I’ll keep trucking on Red Dead 2 (this game really deserved a PS5 version) and playing my Switch for now.

@PATRIOTA7MI

I dunno. I enjoy some online games.

I’m definitely dropping extra and going back to essential.

Remote Play and my experience with it kills any desire of mine to have this.

I have a Switch. It plays games on its own without any network connectivity. I can play it anywhere I want.

Plus I’m going to ask a question. People who are interested in this have you played a big AAA 3D game on such a small display?

I’m gonna tell you that I don’t even play TOTK handheld on Switch very much. It’s just not nearly as good as playing on the TV. Instead I use it for more traditional handheld 2D games. Where portable devices really excel.

And if you really just want something portable to play when you don’t have access to a TV what about the Switch Lite? It’s the exact same price. It’s a flawed product in my opinion but it still plays games without an active network connection and you can take it places.

Honestly I’m not sure what I’ll do. I’ve got to November to decide.

I swear NetherRealm gets more use out of the letter “K” than the entire Russian writing script.

@Atreus97

I would be cool with playing as Faye. Her combat style looks super cool.

But Atreus? Absolutely not. I hated the Atreus sections. His combat style just didn’t have the “weight” that Kratos did.

@UltimateOtaku91

Actually that is incorrect.

The game runs at 30fps because its coding is twenty levels of awful.

Digital Foundry confirmed this by testing the PC version. The game runs all out on a single thread core with 99% utilization. The other CPU cores are basically idling. And all of these consoles and modern PC CPUs have at minimum 8 core CPUs.

That’s a super inefficient way to program a game. That dude was being stupid.

Man a Switch or a Steam Deck is so much more versatile than this thing.

I think it will bomb.

As the great Comrade Dyatlov once said about radiation.

“Not great, not terrible.”

@XboxTheBestBox

Arabic is most certainly a beautiful language. Their architecture is also gorgeous. I’ve always had a fascination with it.

Like I expected. It’s so much less versatile than a Switch or a Steamdeck.

I’ll stick with my Switch.

@WhensDinner

I think the key difference is that for most people a PS5 is a stationary device.

Whereas a laptop is CONSTANTLY moved around and gets handled in all sorts of directions, including upside down. Any breach of the Liquid Metal will follow the path of least resistance and handling the device in certain orientations will exacerbate that.

I think Liquid Metal was the right choice for the PS5. But I would have been worried if it was used on a PS Vita 2.

Granted a theoretical Vita 2 that needed Liquid Metal would have had a battery life measured in minutes.

@FenIsMightier

Ah I got ya.

That seems like an issue that Sony should fix immediately. All they would have to do is remove the region notifier for all current PS Plus members. Hell even letting members switch their region at will would fix the issue.

It’s weird that the console’s physical games aren’t region locked but accounts and digital games are. That’s utterly stupid. Like you said even Nintendo isn’t that daft and they do some stupid crap sometimes.

@FenIsMightier

Alright cool I was just wondering. I had never heard about anything like that before.

And what does Sony do to the account if say you created it in Europe and then move to the US? I honestly don’t know.

@AdamNovice

Wait for real they do that???

@ItsBritneyB_tch

I dunno. From a pure aesthetics standpoint I still feel that the PS3 Super Slim with the bathroom sliding stall door is still the ugliest PlayStation ever made.

PS5 is definitely a close second, though. The Phat PS3 wasn’t a looker either (it looked like a grill) but it was one of those “it’s so ugly that it’s cute” type of devices.

The PS5 is just ugly. It feels nice and premium. But that’s it. It’s a hideous device that I will never get used to seeing on my entertainment center.

No console will ever look as good as the Sega Saturn. The Sega Saturn case design oozed coolness. It was simple and understated. But the pure black mold gave it this villainous appearance that I always appreciated.

Close second would be the GameCube. In Jet Black. Another sick looking console. PS2 Slim is third. Because it was just so tiny that it was adorable.

Well that’s disappointing.

Not that I was going to buy one anyway though. My launch unit has been a trooper so far.

That price is commercially criminal.

I’m actually interested in the Switch version. But not for 50 bucks.

That crap is for the birds. Maybe when it gets down to 14.99.

@Cherip-the-Ripper

Technically IW was never independent.

But they were formed out of the developers who had made Medal of Honor Allied Assault on PC. They left EA and went to Activision and created Call of Duty as a spiritual sequel to Allied Assault.