Shepherd_Tallon

@lazarus11 He does right? I was half afraid to say it in case I was remembering it wrong. I kept getting distracted by scenery and views when that guy spoke.

I mean the game has its issues, but it's nowhere near what happened with Cyberpunk as some have suggested.
I've only had one crash so far. If I can forgive The Last of Us for launching with a bug that broke the auto save feature, I can forgive a game for crashing one time.

@Brumblescope I try to avoid criticising the writers here because I generally enjoy their stuff, but it does feel like there's a bit of a fever going around when it comes to this game.
Legitimate concerns about performance on the base PS5 version are absolutely fair of course, but some of the other things that have been raised have left me wondering if I'm playing a different game.

The more I play of it the more I love it. The clunky UI has stopped being an issue for me too as I've gotten more used to it.
Take the game as it is and it grows very quickly.

I've just woken up after 4am and I've got that buzz in my gut that demands I go and play more of it.

I play a lot of tabletop and read a lot of fantasy novels, so I didn't think twice about going to the tavern for info.
Then I overheard the beggar asking for a coin, so when the prompt to give him the coin appeared I figured, yeah okay.

I don't mind the sprint or jump functions either, but I agree about some of the other controls. A lot of it feels unnatural, but I'm taking it as it comes to me and just spamming L1 (block) and R1 (basic attack) during combat.

They have to update the UI though. It takes 3 button presses to complete actions that are super basic in other games.
And that first puzzle was so simple, but the instructions were so poor I had to look up what I was being told to do, twice.

One thing I would insist everyone do though - I had to reduce the gamma to 35, down from 50. It was giving me a brutal headache otherwise.
I had the same issue with Black Desert actually. I found that game hard to look at for long.

@Slippship I tend to have this approach too.
(Was just thinking about The Last Ninja the other day. Can't remember why now. Just popped into my head.)

A lot of people will bounce off of it I think.
Some of the UI is very heavy and convoluted. And walking feels like GTA - clunky and not always accurate. The precision jump helps with platforming though.

That huge 20gb+ patch addressed a few things, but it's going to need more work for the menus. There's so much going on there.

All of that aside, when you're just walking around in the world or in combat it feels great. I'm playing on pro with a Bravia Oled (HDR, VRR, quality settings, two patches installed so far), so I can't comment on the visual issues others are having. It looks and runs really good for me.
I keep thinking that just wandering around the world feels like being in a David Gemmell novel. That side of it is amazing.

7/10 for me until they fix the interface, but it's still going to be my go to fantasy game for a long time. There's so much to do.

I got the platinum in RE Requiem last night so I'm back to finishing off Nioh III today. I think I'm almost at the end.
After that I'll get into Yotei Legends properly for a few days before Crimson Desert lands.

Excellent!!!!
Can't wait for next Thursday morning!

I tend to buy physical and had forgotten about the targeted pricing thing. I think I only know about it because I read about it on this website.

They could release half a game each month as long as two of those halves added up to Alundra and I'd be happy.

Want me to stop asking for Alundra? I will. As soon as they give me Alundra.

I'd grab Golden Axe and Streets of Rage in a heartbeat and I've loved some of the Valkyria Chronicles games, but the rest of the Sega catalogue just isn't for me.
Shinobi and Sonic, I'm glad they exist and I loved them as a kid in the 90s, but at some point I forgot about them.

@AdamNovice We all have our moments ✌️

If they do remake it, please cut Steve out. Or if he can't be cut just change every single detail about the guy.
I always wanted to love that game, but could never fully get passed how completely annoying that little fool was.

Resident Evil Requiem, Nioh III and Marathon.
I have a feeling I won't get to Nioh and Marathon until the end credits role on RE though.

No thanks.
@UltimateOtaku91 Exactly this. Was just going to say the same thing.

42 here.
As much as I loved both versions of RE4, Requiem is the RE4 game I've wanted since I first played og RE3 when I was... 16?

My 43 year old cousin who first got me into Resi back in the 90s popped over the other day just to watch me play it for an hour. He doesn't have the time to play it himself anymore.

It's not my type of game at all but I loved what I played in the Server Slam. I was happily surprised.
I just fired it up to do the intro sections before I go back to Resident Evil for the night, but I'll definitely play Marathon long term.
Other than the menus it's very well put together.

I'd have given it to Nioh 3 but Resident Evil is too good.

@GamingGod I was thinking this same thing just last night. The Nioh series is definitely the best of those hardcore franchises that isn't made by FromSoftware, in my mind at least.

Nioh III is the best of the series for me so far too.
They've really nailed the formula this time.
I'm enjoying it so much that I'm also considering the platinum.

Too many big games at once!
Resident Evil Requiem, Marathon and Nioh III for me.

I have to do two hours work now, but I'm itching to turn the Pro on.

@captainsandman Agreed the menus are a bit much right now, but otherwise I like what I've seen of it so far.

@somnambulance
Gaming still bringing the family together though!

@LogicStrikesAgain It sits beside the PS1 in my mind in the sense that I bought both for third party games.
In the case of PSVR2 I've got;

• Moss 2
• Legendary Tales
• Behemoth
• Undead Citadel
• Aces of Thunder
• Grimlord (Out next month apparently)
• Flight Simulator's upcoming VR mode

That's not counting Horizon, or the VR modes in Gran Turismo, No Man"s Sky and Resident Evil.

There's plenty to play on it, if you have the time.

@somnambulance Agreed.
Just yesterday I removed Expedition 33 from my list.
I really want to play it, but I'll never have time because every month there's another game competing for my time or something else to read or a rulebook to analyse.

I know an older nerd in his 60s who assures me I just have to hold out for retirement. He says as far as hobbies are concerned it's like being a teenager during the summer again.
Sounds like bliss.

Didn't get in. Probably for the best. It's looking like a busy gaming weekend.

@somnambulance Had the same thought re the Marathon server slam. And Smyths just shipped my copy of Resident Evil too.

Who has the time to play all of these games???

@Mio_Nakashima Ah I miss the bargain bin. Good times 😌 I discovered Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins in the same bargain bin around 2009. I had never heard of either game before.
It was like finding treasure.

@Mio_Nakashima I think this is the way it's always been.
If 90million people buy a console, selling 12million copies of a game would be a massive success, but the majority of people are still playing something else or going through their backlog.

Not buying a full price game at launch is smart consumerism though. I need to get back to doing it that way. Nothing beats adding something to a wishlist and then being rewarded with a sale.

@marcoboyle Brutally accurate.
This is the exact experience I've had over the past few years.

Our team bloated to 330+ during and just after the pandemic.
After that we dropped very quickly to 60ish.

Trying to look after a team that size was rough, but seeing so many cut in a few months was traumatic. And it all happened because of pandemic era over-hiring.

I registered my interest for the beta anyway. Wouldn't mind giving it a go, but this weekend I can't see myself playing anything but Resident Evil for more than a few minutes.

@Titntin
"The modern phenomenon of fake outrage and organised attacks...."

Agreed with this whole comment.

We all hate when we see people lose their jobs (it's happened to most of us at one point or another).
I was stunned last week when I heard the news, but as more information has trickled out it seems this closure was tragically inevitable.

Double agree on your point about all of the cuts and closures announced since last week that nobody is batting an eyelid at 🤷

I think I still have the PS1 version in the back of a press somewhere. Never did get around to finishing it.

I'd love to go back to it, but I'm still trying to finish Nioh III before Resi gets here.

I was going to get a retro handheld or track down old copies of Advance Wars, then I found out Nintendo released Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp not that long ago.
So;

• Nioh III
• Helldivers II
• Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp
• And a lot of Crunchyroll

@Questionable_Duck I've read three articles and didn't see any of that mentioned. Thanks for that info!

@Ashkorsair It's already happening. The Phil Spencer news is already distracting people.

@datamonkey Agreed. I thought it made sense at the time too. I mean it did. It just worked out all wrong.

But yeah, hopefully that's the end of the closures.

@UltimateOtaku91 I was just saying something similar. It feels like it won't be long before X-Box loses it's identity as a platform.

Plus, they're really doubling down on the "MicroSoft Gaming" brand.

@datamonkey Ember Labs would be a solid buy though. If the next Kena game does well at least.
It's got K-Pop Demon Hunter vibes and Sony crave IP that sells.

That said, with Totoki in charge I don't see too many more casual acquisitions on the horizon. And there are other ways to own an IP I guess.

@Dan12836666 I reckon the only thing it will change is that in future studio closures won't be discussed outside of investor calls. They'll just fade away quietly so advertisements on social media etc can continue as normal for as long as possible without backlash.
And maybe Sony have realised since the acquisition spree that they've published more titles with external devs than in house, and they didn't need to go on that panic buy spree after all. (Although tbf they couldn't have known at the time that MS wouldn't buy up more of their partners, or that X-Box would spend too much money and have to turn publisher.)

I'm gutted that people will lose jobs over this. As I mentioned earlier I've been there and it sucks. (We were one of the gaming companies that grew disgustingly big during COVID, and then came down hard on the other side of it.)
But I don't expect anything else to change.
Mc Donald's fire people and close locations all the time, but people still eat Big Mac's.

@themightyant Exactly that. A damn shame.

@themightyant It's been the same for me. I was gutted last night and this morning, but since then I've caught up with myself and I'm trying to reason it out a bit more without really knowing what actually happened.

Also, someone just pointed out to me again that if Bloodborne 2 was announced next week or if Sony bought Kadokawa, the masses would move on from this story pretty quick.
I found it hard to argue.

@Jey887 I fully understand this.
A few years back I stopped engaging with most websites (even this one for a while, but things have improved here a lot) because of constantly bleak headlines and hostile comment sections.

This is also why I try to stay disengaged from stories about CEOs and the likes - Gaming is a fun hobby. I don't want to stress over whatever Phil Spencer or Hulst say.
I want the work day to end so I can log off and have fun.

@themightyant I see you here and on Eurogamer trying to singlehandedly hold back the flood of speculation.

We need a thousand more like you.

This is one of the many reasons why I deleted all social media, and specifically why I have my YouTube bookmarks set to open on my subscriptions.
I don't trust the YouTube home page to not spoil whatever I'm reading/playing/watching.

It's quickly become one of my favourite games of this generation. It seems to be far more accessible than the other two games too, but that might just be because I'm over-levelled.

I love the new ninja mode. At times I feel like I'm a character in Ninja Scroll.

@themightyant So damn true.

@themightyant I agree on all of these points. We'd been wondering a few of them out loud here too.

In a few years someone will be out of NDA and then we'll learn more, probably.

@themightyant I've been on a similar journey.
When you look at it from a sales numbers perspective it makes sense I guess (had to clench my teeth typing that), but on this occasion the fan in me is louder than the pragmatist.

I don't normally comment when a decision like this is made. I've been caught up in rampdowns and department closures in the past.
I always felt gutted, and that the people on the outside looking in would forget about it eventually anyway, so when they would try to pat me on the back or say "scumbags had no right to cut all of those people" or whatever I'd just block it out and get on with finding another job.

Additionally, big industry wide moves aside, I try to not get too familiar with the people behind the brands involved in my favourite hobbies. I don't care if it's Hulst, Totoki or someone else making the decisions, as a fan I don't care too much about what the people behind the scenes say as long as they bring me games.
I don't know what most of my favourite authors look like either. It preserves the illusion. Don't look behind the curtain, that kind of thing.

I don't know them. They don't manage any of the rugby or football teams that I follow so I don't care about their decisions.
I just want to play games.

And as long as the people at Bluepoint who want to stay at PlayStation are given that opportunity, then great. I'm sure plenty of them would do well at Nixxes.

I'm self aware enough too to know that when X-Box and Ubisoft were making cuts or closing studios, beyond lamenting that folks were losing jobs, I didn't think too much more of it.

But this particular case just generates so much speculation and without knowing what went on behind the curtain it's hard to not feel flabbergasted and genuinely gutted that a talented studio closed before it had a chance to really get going.

I was talking to another industry friend about this overnight.

Given that Media Molecule and Bend are still alive, the only way Bluepoint closing makes sense to me is if every single thing they pitched was garbage (unlikely), or, if this is a kind of brutal course correction under Totoki.
As far as I know he's a money guy, and he can't have been impressed by what is looking more and more like panic buying during the acquisition spree.

Or maybe they're positioning for a delayed PS6 launch, cutting overheads so they don't have to push prices up as much because of ram costs and shortages.

I don't even know what point I'm trying to make honestly.
I'm just speculating. Trying to make it make sense.

I don't know what to say. I'm somewhere between stunned and gutted.

Remember that one early patch for original Skyrim that resulted in dragons flying backwards?
Everyone loves Skyrim now, but at launch it was so broken. There was one murder questline that I could never finish because a critical NPC died in a dragon attack too.

Yet it's still a franchise that I go back to decade after decade... 🤷

@Ainu20 True. It would be a pretty big investment and they'd need guarantees of a potential market.
It's the kind of thing that will either grow organically if it attracts more devs or not at all I suppose.

I've been wondering why more external studios don't licence this engine.
I wonder if Sony reserves it as a tool only for titles they publish, or if the difficulties mentioned are keeping potential users at bay.

It could be a tidy revenue stream.