Pat_trick

It’s honestly frustrating to see this. Neil Druckmann explicitly said Naughty Dog wanted to eliminate crunch and that it was something the studio didn’t want to do anymore, a stance repeatedly highlighted in discussions around The Last of Us Part II’s post-mortem and internal documentary efforts to change ND’s culture.

Now we have reporting that Naughty Dog is forcing mandatory overtime on staff to hit milestones on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet for a mid-2027 release, directly contradicting Druckmann’s stated goals of avoiding crunch going forward.

Yes, overtime happens in AAA development, but when the studio leadership has publicly promised no more crunch and there’s this much internal pressure on employees, it is fair to call out the hypocrisy instead of accepting “overtime is normal” as an excuse.

Kingdom Come not winning anything is a crime.

Even though I liked Ghost of Yotei, I feel it was a step back from Tsushima.

Tsushima thrived on restraint, tonal consistency, and subtle storytelling, Yotei explains its themes and pushes emotion too hard. The narrative often tells instead of showing, which weakens all impact

Also Erika Ishii's delivery frequently over-emphasizes emotion, shifts intensity too abruptly, and uses a modern cadence that clashes with the historical tone. Rather than letting moments breathe, the performance draws attention to her. And if you saw how she behaved at the Game Awards, that makes a lot of sense.

His intentions are good, but the way he's presenting the argument is a bit flawed.

Calling generative art “soulless” misses the point. The issue isn’t spiritual, it's practical. Generative AI lacks creativity because it lacks agency. It does not form goals, or understand what it produces.

Its outputs are generated by optimizing patterns in existing data not by attempting to communicate or create new ideas.

Starfield is a fun game, but it never feels special. It’s competent across the board without really excelling at anything.

The biggest issue is how hollow the scale feels. It has thousands of planets but only around 20 points of interest and exploration quickly loses its appeal.

After going to a handful of random planets, you’ve essentially seen everything they have to offer, since they all look and play very similarly. Once that illusion breaks, there’s little reason to keep exploring.

I would recommend people playing through it once just to see if it's appealing to them. But it really reinforces the narrative that Bethesda doesn't understand storytelling and depth of gameplay anymore.

Expedition 33 feels less like a traditional indie and more like a AA independent game. Independent studio but with publisher backing and a mid-sized budget.

To me calling it indie isn’t wrong under modern definitions, but it does blur the line for smaller self-funded devs.

@UnlimitedSevens Yep. I wish Capcom went back to releasing Mega Man games more frequently. It was nice getting an yearly dose of the blue bomber.

I Couldn't care less about trophies but I feel for the people that like them. It's not a complex addition and it makes the product more appealing.

Concord 2: Electric Boogaloo.

There are websites that sell these kinds of robots.

@tameshiyaku I think this is reading way too much into the trailer. From what we’ve seen, the only real “shift” is that Lara looks more like classic Lara again. That’s it.

There’s nothing in the trailer about her personality, attitude, or how the story treats what she does. Being more traditionally sexy doesn’t automatically mean she’s arrogant or that the game is suddenly endorsing colonialist power fantasies again. That stuff comes from writing and framing, not from shorts and a tank top.

Criticizing the old games for never questioning those things is fair, but I don’t see how you can conclude we’re “going back” to that just from a visual redesign. Feels more like you're projecting concerns onto something we barely know anything about yet.

On topic, she's a good voice actress and her voice seems to perfectly suit the character.

Echoing everyone's feelings: Amazing game, not indie.

@Balaam_ So what's GoTY in your opinion? Genuinely curious.

For me it's Kingdom Come Deliverance II, but I knew it had no chance of winning.

That is a solid month. I always wanted to play Wo Long but ended up forgetting about it and Mirage looks interesting but not enough to buy it.

I proudly went down from 1540 hours in 2023 to 843 hours played this year. I love video games but it was an addiction.

That would be great. Dead Space has tons of potential and EA never understood it's a niche horror franchise that won't sell 10 million copies.

May the new developer take the care Dead Space deserves.

It looked terrible, thank goodness it was fake.

@Summer235 Ah, fair. Probably a fan that doesn't like their favourite franchises being criticised.

The language makes it look like it's a new IP.

If not, I would rule out ESO as they've stopped with major expansions and the game is basically on maintenance mode.

Bloodborne 2 seems unlikely as it's not Sony's marketing style and The Duskbloods is coming out on Switch 2.

Darksiders seem more likely than anything else, the art has a striking resemblance to its style.

@Muscleblackcop Are you ok? Do you need medical help?

@carlos82 Oh, don't get me wrong, 5 and 6 definitely were action schlock B movie inspired games. But to me 7 and 8 didn't even feel like RE games. I do think they're good games too, but very removed from what RE is. Very little charm and personality with the characters (a few villains aside).

RE 9 to me looks more like RE than 7 and 8 did.

@DennisReynolds True. Ironically Rob Zombie directed a movie that is very much inspired by it. Not to my taste, but I know this type of horror definitely has its crowd.

@slabula Oh, it's totally fair and I do see why people enjoy it. On a personal level, it's far from the more subtle horror I enjoy, but it did put the series back in the spotlight.

@slabula Fair enough, I guess it's not my kind of horror and not what RE horror originally was.

@Jammer I know, the future looks terrible. Those in power really love 1984.

@DennisReynolds In my opinion Rob Zombie style torture porn is very far from horror. I know some people found it scary, I just found it gross without the fear factor.

Lovely to see the world walking towards larger corporations that monopolise markets. That won't backfire on us common folk at all.

I'm more interested in this one than I was in 7 or 8. Both strayed way too far from horror and Ethan Winters was a wet blanket.

This one seems to refocus on the horror element of the franchise.

"Justin Lin, the director behind multiple Fast & Furious movies" That's enough to have 0 faith in this movie.

@Hyena_socks I agree, that's why I've said what I said.

I've seen a few posts by certain authors hyping the hell out of a game to later say the game didn't live up to expectations. Expectations the individual set in the first place.

I've been checking this website for five years and there's definitely someone who's frequently guilty of this behaviour.

@Questionable_Duck Pattern recognition is not fortune telling.

How is this janky as hell movement jaw-dropping? The animation is terrible and the game is chugging a lot.

Maybe analyse what you're seeing before saying it's the best thing ever?

Some posts here are extremely guilty of hype culture. A a year from now this is game is going to release, you're going to give it a 6 out of 10 and say it was a slight disappointment. All of this out of the excessive hype you built for this game.

Do they get to avoid Erika Ishii's atrocious pronunciation of Japanese words?

I wouldn't play it for free. Hell, they have a free Call of Duty and I never played it.

There's only so much time in my life and I'd rather not waste it with crap.

If you need microtransactions to maintain your game, maybe, just maybe, your game is to effing expensive to make. Maybe you should scale it down to a realistic size/budget instead of trying to take money off of customers without offering a complete product.

No sh*t, Sherlock.

It took them years to notice something that was obvious to most people.

I didn't buy Persona 3 at launch because I thought they were going to do a definitive version of it.

Time passed, I focused on other games, and I still haven't bought it. If I thought that there was not going to be a final version, I would've bought day one.

Extremely controversial opinion:

I agree. I think FFX is the peak of the series.

The characters are more fleshed out (Not Kimahri) than in any other entry, the turn based combat adds an extra layer of depth and Nobuo Uematsu KILLED with the soundtrack.

The only flaw it's how linear it is, but at least it makes sense with the urgency of the plot.

@Oram77 True, they definitely improved as the generation went along. I also see no hope for Fairgame$$$

@Oram77 Quantity and quality are not equivalent.

Although I'm not as pessimistic as some people are, Sony's live service blunder held back the possibility of other better projects.

Concord will go down in history as one of the biggest gaming failures ever.

@themightyant How is it too far consumer focused to let a game have private servers be run so they won't be extinct?

It would cost the companies £0

To me it looks like the union f'd up and made them discuss NDA subjects publicly.

Rockstar took the advantage of the breach and fired them knowing they have the legal right.

If true, the employees lose, Rockstar wins and all due to an Union that doesn't know how to protect their members.

I honestly hope I'm wrong.

@get2sammyb Yeah, I agree with you. I thought about a little bit and if it's the original intent, they're correct. I've deleted the comment.

I still think there was too much leniency with your review, but hey, opinions are different.

Yet every reviewer including Push Square completely ignored its huge flaws and gave a glowing score to it.

Nostalgia should not get in the way of analysis.

That's pretty disgusting.

The internet is generally pretty fast to cancel anyone accused of anything, but in this case we're talking about someone who's actually proven to be guilty.

This person shouldn't get a job anywhere.

I've played solo several times at the server slam and completely disliked it. It's slow, the loot variety was limited and the art style for the equipment leaves something to be desired.

I'm also not that skilled at MP games and more than half of my runs ended up in death and feeling of disappointment and time wasted.

I also think it does the extraction shooter bit quite well, it's that I've learned that for me this genre is very unrewarding and it feels like I'm not progressing quite frequently.

I hope that those that like the genre enjoy it, but I think due to their punishing nature, extraction shooters might have a more niche appeal.

@DarianStarfrog If you think that's true, you're very naive. The developers bit way more than they could chew, and a lot of the game's issues came from their lack of ability in programming. It was their first project, and a very messy one.

@Dalamar Doing a poor job with the dubbing is the developer's fault not the customer's.

They could have either spent more money with a better studio or not dubbed at all to avoid backlash.

I found it extremely slow and boring. But it's also very good looking and there's clearly a lot of effort in it.

As long as the transactions don't become predatory, I hope it succeeds for the sake of people that like this genre of game.

This game looks like classic UE 5 slop.
Choppy character movement, lack of impact with weapons and neutered colours.

It's looking even more generic than the Oblivion remake.

Yes, Nintendo with their 155 million Switch units sold is quaking in their boots.

The Xbox failed because of this mentality of trying to be everything. Thinking that TikTok and a console are direct competitors makes no sense.

Instead of focusing on a market, they're trying to penetrate every one and failing at most.