RBMango

@Oram77 Oh, I think I know the one you're referring to. I haven't started that one yet but now I'm looking forward to it.

@Oram77 Without spoiling anything, which region is that side mission in? I'm 40 hours in and not sure I've seen a horror-tinged side quest yet.

@Hapless I refuse to call it X and wince anytime someone calls it that in my presence.

Besides Xbox apostles, everyone with basic critical thinking skills and economic knowledge knew adding Call of Duty to Game Pass day one was completely unsustainable and cost them an insane amount of money. Xbox cranking up the prices of XGP to accommodate Call of Duty was inevitable, and anyone who didn't see this coming either did not pay attention or believed too much in the Xbox top brass' PR nonsense.

After getting all five endings, I'd go with a 7. Good horror game, and it's rare that I play something that compels me to finish it multiple times.

You also get a matching pair of clown shoes with your pre-order.

It's a fascinating game. Maybe the strangest piece of psychological horror I've played since Returnal.

This shouldn't be a surprise considering the writer is Ryukishi07, but they put a ton of effort into making the new game plus playthroughs unique and essential to the full experience.

@Northern_munkey I was going to comment something like "this is another Tuesday for Braindead peeps", but you beat me to it.

Considering the Xbox brand is almost a ghost in Japan, that shouldn't be too hard. 😉

For the most part, Arrowhead is really good at keeping their fingers on the pulses of multiple subsets of the Helldivers 2 community. If they keep that up, they'll be fine in the long-run.

I still can't believe they didn't take the opportunity for a 1-2 punch at the State of Play to re-reveal Marvel's Wolverine and then show off new characters in Tōkon. I guess hawking speakers and a crappy God of War controller was more important.

@Oram77 The one with the sliced off face?

Ever since the leak a while back, I've been keen on seeing what this is. This is the very rare live service I'm down to try day one.

Picked up my copy today with a beautiful steelbook. I'm looking forward to playing it tonight.

Even as someone who's not a fan of most of Insomniac's recent stuff, I think Wolverine looks sick.

@get2sammyb Square poo-pooing their sales numbers is a meme at this point. I'm more surprised when a game actually does meet or exceed their sales goals these days because it rarely happens.

No offense to Hamaguchi, but when it comes to Square's game sales talk, I tend to put a lot more weight into what they say during their corporate financial meetings, where fiduciary obligation is a thing, instead of what the devs say.

@Czar_Khastik @Oram77 I played the betas on both PS5 and PC, and never once encountered a bug, server crash, or framerate hitch. That's incredible, especially for an engine as infamously problematic as UE5. I hope Sony poached the tech talent at Firewalk and integrated them into their other studios.

@Czar_Khastik @Oram77 Y'all kid, but Concord was legit one of the smoothest UE5 games I've ever played, even in its beta form. Whatever problems I had with Firewalk, their tech work with UE5 was stellar.

Sony have lost their damn minds including speakers in a State of Play.

$85 for a red stripe is hilarious.

I'm so happy to see that it's super gory.

Outside of Saros and Wolverine, that was the worst State of Play I've ever seen. Depressingly abysmal. Even Saros didn't look that great, in my opinion. It looks like a Returnal conversion mod.

Kingdom Hearts 4

applies clown makeup while crying

If you thought the law of diminishing returns impacted the graphical transition from PS4 to PS5, it would be extra brutal from PS5 to PS6.

Besides Saros, I'm expecting Marvel Tokon and Wolverine. I don't think we'll see anything else, though.

Wow, Kojima really went "I'll make my own P.T., with blackjack and hookers!"

@get2sammyb Pattinson as the lead in a Kojima espionage game would break my brain in the best possible way.

Hauser is a really good actor, but I just can't see him in Resident Evil.

@Oram77 I guess we see light humor differently. Without the IRL tonal inflection and style of communication, asking me for information to back up a claim I make and following it up with "we'll happily wait" comes across as internet snark instead of light humor. And I can be a snarky boy, so I take a "fight fire with fire" approach. But, if you intended for light humor, I believe it and take no offense.

For the record, I don't want to argue about Grubb either, and I don't usually go this far defending game journos in general (especially ones who behave like children and/or psychos)..

@Zeke68 @Oram77

Times where Jeff Grubb has been correct and first with info:
>Fairgames delayed to 2026
>State of Play May 2024 at the very end of the month, and even doubled down when it was May 28 and Sony hadn't said a peep
>God of War spin-off (with others confirming it mere moments later)
>Marathon's showcase for April this year
>Hi-Fi Rush was a financial disappointment within Xbox, and stood by that even when Xbox itself rejected this claim. Vindicated when Xbox almost shut down Tango
>Kojima was working with Xbox on a new game. He got A LOT of s**t from fanboys about this one, and lo and behold...

There are more, but I'll stop there. Has Grubb been right all of the time? No. A lot of the time? Yes. So please spare me this cocky "Jeff Grubb has never been right" nonsense. It's objectively not true. You can easily Google a single instance where he's been right.

Jesus, what's with all the Jeff Grubb slander here? You don't have to like the guy (I'm not a fan of his childish social media behavior myself), but he's often right on the money with his information.

Why are we still here? Just to suffer?

Kiwami 3 is one of the RGG projects I hoped they would tackle one day, so I'm very excited to see what it looks like.

My gut tells me we won't be seeing the God of War Metroidvania or Intergalactic at the upcoming SoP, but I'm confident Marvel Tōkon, Saros, and Wolverine are locks.

So when are they going to reveal that Leon is the obvious second main character?

If we're going by raw technical detail, Death Stranding 2 might be the best for me. There are moments in it that trick my brain into thinking I'm staring at real-life footage. And it runs at a smooth 60 fps, which is crazy. Visually, DS2 is almost flawless.

But, if we're going by art direction, Ghost of Tsushima might be my favorite. That game's color palette, weather effects, lighting, shot composition, and sense of atmosphere is so overwhelmingly beautiful that it has made my jaw drop open and even moved me to tears on multiple occasions. It might hold the record for the number of times I've said "wow" out loud while playing a game.

Honorable mentions that currently come to mind would include Red Dead Redemption II, The Last of Us: Part II, Uncharted 4, Persona 5, Cuphead, Journey, Shadow of the Colossus, and Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2.

Crowbarring Star Wars into this game might bring some new players into the fold, but it looks utterly desperate and pathetic to me.

@get2sammyb Then that definitely concerns me. MSM2 had extremely mediocre and messy storytelling and writing, in my opinion.

Even in the very early build footage that leaked, gameplay-wise, it looked impressive. They were also definitely pushing for the M rating with the amount of blood and gory dismemberment. So, it's no surprise to hear playtesters saying the game is good.

My main concern is the writing, as I believe Insomniac has hired some of the most boring writers in the industry over the last decade and beyond.

Persona 6, baby! Got my clown makeup ready and everything.

Thank you for the KH4 breadcrumb, Nomura. I look forward to the next one in 2028!

By default, mine would be Sword of the Sea, since that was the only August game I played.

And we'll get Kingdom Hearts IV news, right?

Right.......?

Different strokes for different folks and all, but this is definitely not the most exciting game of 2026 for me. Maybe the demo you got to experience was more polished than the one we all saw.

I wasn't particularly thrilled with the Uncharted 3-esque plane setpiece (especially with those abysmal framerate dips and obnoxious motion blur), but the rest of it looked fine. The best part of the State of Play was easily the narrated demonstration of the espionage and combat stuff at the end.

It wouldn't surprise me if he's already filmed a small something like the original 2016 DS teaser for Physint. I know he said it's only in the conceptual stage, but this is Kojima after all. Man loves his trailers.

This is a third-party solo SoP I can get behind.

At this point, I will be astonished if this isn't canceled and releases at all. Unless Haven's AI and cloud development tech is essential to PlayStation's future operations, they should just cut their losses with this studio and game before it gets worse and even more expensive.

I've played and would recommend all three of them. So, yeah, high quality month imo