RoomWithaMoose

@TicklefistCP Not really. Game has silly celebrity cameo. AdamNovice muses about what would happen if they added another silly celebrity cameo.

It wasn't even phrased in an evocative, coveting way. Literally just: 'Ya know what would be crazy...?'

Certainly doesn't warrant jumping on them, assuming their political beliefs, and disparaging an entire political demographic.

Having tuned in halfway through this trailer, I cannot begin to articulate the amount of confusion I experienced.

Hoping they retroactively rename it 'Slim Shady vs. Swim Shady.'

@TicklefistCP They can do Trump and Obama, if that satisfies your 'us vs. them' worldview.

@Kraven That was more directed at the live chat — where I noted several people disparaging the frame drops — than you specifically.

But, I mean, still, I wouldn't say it's much worth mentioning this far out from release. It's very much to be expected that performance wouldn't be perfect yet.

I was honestly really digging it until the Rogue-like reveal.

@Oram77 I thought character movement seemed too slow for the scale of the boss and arena, couldn't really notice any significant comboing, and half of the fight was cutscenes.

It did LOOK cool (I especially liked the portal wall effect). But I always feel people are bad at observing actual gameplay for spectacle games like these.

@Kraven Never sure why live show chats are obsessed with performance when the games are works-in-progress.

Literally no reason to assume it won't be buffed out by release.

@Dalamar Honestly, I liked Aloy's characterization in Forbidden West. That was probably one of the better things about the game.

I mean, yeah, she is kinda insufferable. But that's also the point. Her knowledge of lost history and actual 'chosen one' status has made her jaded, disconnected, and self-destructive. Literally all of her friends understand this, and try to help ground her. It isn't until later in the story that she learns to slow down and appreciate her life and connections. And she ends the story a better person for it.

It's literally her character arc, supported by the game's plot and themes. I'm always confused when people complain about her characterization. Like, they understand how stories work, right? You can still dislike her, of course, but it's not bad characterization.

If Mario Kart World taught us anything, it's that gamers don't like open worlds unless they're designed to abuse their dopamine addiction.

So expect a lot of "empty, tacked on open world with nothing to do" feedback when this is out.

@Oram77 Check back in a year when Infinity Ward and/or Sledgehammer games has a "course correcting, single-player focused" entry ready to go and the conversation about the series completely turns around.

The internet is as fickle as it is angry.

@Doomcrow There's nothing about this that's similar to Halo.

It's about as alike Halo as it is Call of Duty 2.

I think there's two important things people are missing here:

1. Treyarch had one year to make this game (disregarding any overlapping development time they had). The last time Activision forced them to do this, they shipped a game with NO campaign at all. And when Infinity Ward was forced to do the same, they shipped a piss-poor WarZone campaign mod. That they managed to put together a campaign with actual levels in the first place is somewhat admirable. Regardless, anyone paying attention knew this wasn't going to be anything to write home about.

2. The CoD mines are a real...figurative thing. I think if the zany, wacky antics are the campaign are indicative of anything, it's that Treyarch would desperately love to work on anything other than a military shooter.

@Can-You-Believe-Sith Make an actual bad game.

@MonkeyGibs I highly doubt Microsoft is giving Activision much input on anything as of yet. Kinda like how Sony let Bungie do its thing before it started imploding, only Activision is worth 10 times as much and, hence, can be trusted to keep making the dough.

Outside of demanding GamePass support and the occasional brand synergy, I think it's safe to assume Microsoft will have little to no influence over Acti's biggest franchises for a long while.

@Darude84
"[Absurdity] overshadowing anything it manages to get right, such as another extensive multiplayer suite."

"There is a certain charm to the absurdity..."

"The excellent feel, controls, and gunplay of a Call of Duty game making each combat encounter enjoyable."

"Some genuinely fun sequences are getting lost in the chatter"

"However, there’s still some joy to be found in its silliness."

"Multiplayer [...] remain[s] one of the best examples of online action in the business."

"Zombies rounds out the package and impresses once again"

"More examples of quality than trash"

I'd say the review goes back-and-forth a bit too much on if the absurdity ruins its overall quality. But that seems to be more of a striking point about the game's extrinsic circumstance; quality-wise, there's several references to the campaign being decent fun. And the multiplayer and zombie modes are really given nothing but praise.

The review gives off more a tone of disappointment rather than outright objection to its quality. So yeah, overall NOT BAD, but with a lot of caveats.

@Rich33 Given that the 'ongoing' news is limited to UK physical sales and Steam concurrent players, I doubt it had anything to do with this.

I'm sure it was planned beforehand. American gamers will be home for Thanksgiving, a lot probably already have the game mostly downloaded for Redsec, and CoD's release will have military shooters fresh in their minds. Perfect time to give them free access to the game and see if they can secure some purchases.

@Darude84 Nah, bruh, that's 'Blackest' Friday. Black Friday starts whenever the deals start, and every day is Black Friday until the deals end.

It's basic economics.

@ShadowRJ Pretty sure the logic is: "GoY didn't get the big nom, so we have to compensate by putting it in a bunch of other categories. While Bananza got the big nom, so we don't have to worry about putting it anywhere else" (you're telling me Bananza doesn't even deserve a nom for art direction, game direction, action/adventure, audio design, or best score?).

Also, Bananza is their obligatory Nintendo big that gives them the right to ignore Nintendo everywhere else (Mario Kart World certainly deserves a best score nom). And since Death Stranding 2 is repping Kojima and PlayStation, GoY doesn't to fill that obligatory PlayStation role.

The funny thing is 33 is such a darling, they gave zero s***s and just nominated it for half the categories, most of which it'll probably win (three of 33's performances nominated, and not a single from Death Stranding 2. Funny).

Doubt this will revitalize much. Do we even know Switch 2's region-free model vs. Japan model sales? Pretty sure the Switch 2 is just selling because it's the Switch 2.

Still, any sign of Sony getting serious about their Japanese market share I appreciate. Most of the DNA I think they've lost this generation was that Japan flavored goodness of yore.

I personally don't think the rumored portable PlayStation 6 will do too much to disrupt Nintendo's homeland dominance. But surely it'll make some heads turn, and hopefully that will warrant a reinvestment in Japanese software.

Side-note: I just realized I should buy Tokon at launch just to contribute to the pro-Japan demo shift.

@Dalamar Trigger would not be a good fit for Zelda.

Love their work, but it's a completely different vibe.

Looks more 'Zelda' than I thought it would. The recent Galaxy trailer actually got me more excited for Nintendo's cinematic future. Hopefully this is good and Sony Pictures establishes itself as a strong partner, and we can fast track to live-action Metroid and Sony Pictures Animation Splatoon.

@ATaco "They" seems pretty nebulous here.

@UltimateOtaku91 That's actually not just from Tour, Heroes, and Pocket Camp, but ALL of their mobile efforts sans Pokemon Go. And Heroes accounted for over half of it. Which is why Nintendo insisted to just do a girl gacha game — a GGG, if you will.

And sure, that's still $2.2 billion in revenue. But we don't really know the profits, since I believe it was total revenue reported. And that's between, what, like 8 games? How much did they all cost? F*** if I know, but the costs certainly increase with every game. So you can probably assume most of their games weren't worth the effort, aided by the fact that most are delisted. And with no other title even reaching half of Heroes revenue: "Generally not worth it. Just make some Gacha with anime women and call it a day."

I dunno. Let's ask Nintendo how it went for them when they brought some of the biggest gaming IPs to smart phones.
...
What's that, Nintendo?
...
"Generally not worth it. Just make some Gacha with anime women and call it a day."

Thanks Nintendo!

@Frmknst Well, there's definitely a correlation. Quality often increases chances of success, whereas lack thereof deceased chances.

Regardless, the majority of people are convinced they understand something's quality from watching a trend-following-for-clicks, 40-second TikTok. So no, general people will never disassociate success from quality.

@kmtrain83 Despite what the worst part of the Internet wants you to think, the issues with the designs were never political. They were just uninspired, incongruous, and dull.

A few of them looked okay, none of them looked great, few of them looked like they belonged in the same game.

The Deck is barely competition for the Switch, the Machine will barely be competition for PlayStation. I honestly doubt it'll even do much to undermine Xbox's next console, despite how many outlets have already ran with the idea Steam has beaten Microsoft to the punch.

The Machine looks slick — don't get me wrong. And I think I've finally found my VR headset. But this isn't going to completely disrupt the console market.

@Bionic-Spencer CoD has been releasing medicine campaigns at full price since the 2000s. Battlefield just released a mediocre campaign at full price and sold better than anticipated.

They'll be fine.

@dodgykebaab Given that the CoD launcher has been s*** for years, CoD's quality varies year-to-year, and Microsoft doesn't have a history of releasing single-player always online games, I see little rain to attribute any of this to Microsoft.

With the size and success of Activision and Call of Duty, I doubt Microsoft has canooded with series direction aside from mandating GamePass releases and marketing.

...Is, uh, is everyone here forgetting that CoD campaigns have always been hit-or-miss — mostly miss for over a decade?

Battlefield campaigns also tend to suck, and 6's was no exception.

And those sucky campaigns haven't dissuaded many buyers from purchasing games in either series in the past; why would that change now?

I swear, half the people on this site have some weird CoD mania this year that's keeping them from understanding CoD-adjacent reality.

@johnedwin Shrugs

I just think Sony has done a lot better in the past.

@MrPeanutbutterz @Rich33 I can respect your guys' opinions. And I'm not saying Sony's modern stuff is bad.

But, for me, Ragnarok didn't best GoW 1 or 2, the Spider-Mans are Insomniac's least inspiring works, Astro Bot is phenomenal (that's the closest to top-tier PlayStation this generation), Forbidden West is worse than Zero Dawn (and honestly mediocre) — haven't played Yotei, but it doesn't really look much more interesting than AC Shadows. Rich, you forgot Returnal, which I actually do think is fantastic, even if I don't like the Rogueness of it. I love Rift Apart, but wouldn't call it much more than a solid-ass Ratchet — and not necessarily the best one, at that. And Demon's Souls isn't Bloodborne.

And that I can summarize an entire generation of first-party releases in one paragraph really says it all.

@Rich33 The generation, in general, has been great. PlayStation's output? I wouldn't say so.

I don't think Sony's put out anything on the level of Bloodborne, The Last of Us, and Shadow of the Colossus so far. And I think it's undisputed fact at this point that they've put out significantly less than any generation beforehand.

They still release high quality games. But not at the quality or quantity standards I'd expect from them.

Honestly, we hear so much about PlayStation and Switch breaking records that I'm completely numb to it at this point.

@Northern_munkey Literally just read two That Park Place (shudders) articles to see what the hubbub was about. And it amounted to practically nothing in both cases.

I'm very glad PushSquare doesn't report on all the culture war nonsense. Especially when there's not much of a story there to begin with (oh no, the lead posted a pic jokingly showing two fictional women that were called ugly for no reason by the internet drinking 'incel tears.' She's definitely the aggressor there, and the whole project is tainted now...). Tangentially referencing it as ineffectual boycotts is the most it deserves.

@Frmknst I do not think I would consider Red Dead Redemption 2, a $400 million sequel from the GTA guys, either arthouse or anti-mainstream. It's kinda like saying Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is an obscure arthouse movie.

Honestly surprised. I know it's a Rockstar game, but I never even hear about its sales numbers. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and GTAV constantly charted for over half a decade. Where were RDR2's sales? Steam? It's the 23rd best selling right now, and has been on a top 100 streak for...1 week now.

Not that I'm saying Take-Two is lying. I'm just...surprised.

@SeaDaVie The population part is true. But the samples were not truly random. I don't remember a lot from my stats class, but there's more to survey compatibility than individual population. They need to be as random as possible to assume compatibility in the first place. And sure, it's all PushSquare users. But it's easy to assume the wording of the second poll mostly attracted PSPortal believers, while the first poll was done in an environment where everyone had an opinion about the thing and wanted to express it (anecdotally speaking, I'm pretty sure I voted in the first poll. I hadn't even noticed the second).

I do remember basic math and have a pragmatic mindset, though. Ignoring statistic principles, that's ~1440 that said they would buy it and ~800 that say they did. While that difference is mostly insignificant in itself, I think it's pretty safe to assume that either PushSquare has lost it's more moderate traffic in the last 2 years, meaning more faithful that were more likely to buy the thing, or that previous thing I said about survey bias. To put it in more direct terms: I'd assume the 24% that wanted to buy the Portal are more likely to continue regularly engaging with the PlayStation site than the 76% that felt otherwise. So, I wouldn't claim that comparison is indicative of gains or losses in popularity. It seems like a logical end-result of both surveys, given the time and place they happened.

So, back in 2023, 24% of ~6000 said they would absolutely/probably buy the thing. Now, 51% of ~1600 said they own the thing.

Uhh...

@ButterySmooth30FPS This, actually. There's functionally not really a difference between buying a disc with all launch content physically on it and buying digitally and storing that data on a hard drive. There's a reason people can still play P.T., regardless of Konami's f***ery. And that buyers are locked out of playing street date breaking discs should tell you everything about your actual ownership therein.

I honestly feel like a lot of physical diehards don't actually understand how digital "ownership" works. What we should be pressing companies on is allowing buyers to back up their purchases outside of their ecosystems. Regardless of if I buy a disc or digital, I should be able to transfer that data to a PC and back it up on as many storage devices as I want with whatever formats I desire.

EDIT: Ideally, we would also be able to burn that data to a disc. But at a certain point, it's hard to ignore pirates and how they'd easily profit off these freedoms.

@Nyne11Tyme Anything can be woke. Some "moderate" conservatives were just trying to say pro-authoritarianism sentiment is woke — right-woke, specifically. Whatever that's supposed to mean.

So sleeping with a moose can be woke, anti-woke, or just fragrant beastiality. Just depends who you ask, and if they feel like being morally outraged.

@Nyne11Tyme Anti-wokism in 2025. Huh...cute.

@Shigurui
GTA San Andreas sales: 27.5 million
GTA IV sales: 25 million
GTA V sales: 215 million

GTA Online makes half a billion a year. The PC community was big enough to create a 'roleplay' mod, which somehow became so popular it was bought by the actual developers. Social media content is rife with GTA V/Online gameplay and references. And GTA VI is estimated to be one of the biggest media releases of all time.

GTA has been big since III. But the ongoing success of V is unprecedented. When I said "biggest IPs," I mean 'BIGGEST IPs.' Right up there with Star Wars, Batman, The Simpsons — except even those seem comparatively small next to contemporary GTA.

@Ludacritz I don't know what the purpose of this comment is.

I really don't care about facetious dramatics; it's neither funny nor effectively provoking to me. I assume it doesn't do much to amuse you, yourself, either. And it didn't clandestinely make any genuine points.

If you're done being ostensibly offended over me suggesting you are missing out on a great game, I believe this conversation is over.

@Enuo Leisure Suit Larry?

@DennisReynolds I was going to say I'm doubtful that would solve the supposed bot problem, given the Xbox Series poor sales. But was surprised to learn — according to reports — Xbox's launch sales were almost 1:1 with PlayStation's. So that would be a fair solution, assuming the majority of buyers across both consoles continue to play the game.

But, regardless, I'm sticking with what I originally said. PC players are not aiming gods by default, and aim assist exists. I've been out-aimed plenty of times on mouse/keyboard exclusive games, controller exclusive games, predominantly gyro-aiming games, and crossplay games which incorporate all play styles. I've never seen a reason to sulk about it online; I just try to match my competition and keep playing until I stop having fun.

I honestly don't think there's much space for Saints Row in the contemporary gaming landscape. It was always an uphill battle to stay relevant with GTA in the mix, but now GTA is one of the biggest IPs on the planet and most of the people who remember Saints don't take it seriously anymore.

Plus, I don't think there much general demand for a GTA-adjacent sandbox these days. Much less a '70s themed one. I always say any game can be successful with the right marketing. But it's hard to imagine any new SR being more than a blip on the release schedule.

I say complain less and get better. Or don't take it seriously and just enjoy the game. Or petition DICE to add mice/keyboard controls to the console version (if they haven't already), and do even worse because mouse aim does not guarantee someone is more accurate.

@somnambulance Very surprised to see someone on here with that opinion about the PS2. I mostly agree. PS2 is very famous for having ALL the games, but when I think about the masterpieces of that generation, and PlayStation holistically, very few of them are 'PS2' games. Especially if we're just talking what Sony themselves put out. Shadow of the Colossus, I'd say, is indisputably it's masterpiece. I'd probably add God of War 2 and Jak & Daxter to the list. Everything else, though, was great — but not the best of all time.

I would agree the PS3 had a bigger array of phenomenal titles. But I'd still take 2 above 4 and 5. Probably one, as well, if I weren't so nostalgic for that particular era of gaming.